Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who is known for his often heated anti-immigrant rhetoric, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday that he supports a "merit-based system" for immigration.
Cotton and Sen. David Perdue, R-Georgia, had both met with President Trump on Tuesday to discuss a bill they had introduced the previous month for reducing legal immigration.
"The President has said in public, as he told us yesterday, that he wants to move in the direction of, for instance, Canada and Australia, and focused on more of what he calls a merit-based system. Our legislation is the first step in that," Cotton told host Joe Scarborough. "He’d like to see additional steps focusing on some of the employment based green cards and visas. And we’re happy to work with him on that."
Cotton and Sen. David Perdue, R-Georgia, had both met with President Trump on Tuesday to discuss a bill they had introduced the previous month for reducing legal immigration.
When asked about the immigration of high-skilled workers, Perdue said:
I think on the H1B temporary visa, but also the permanent green cards like EB1 and EB2, the president wants to get the very best from around the world. Often those programs are implemented in a way that are not consistent with their purposes. They don't bring in PhDs and computer scientists. They replace mid-level data management workers.
During an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" in 2014, Cotton controversially claimed that Mexican drug cartels "have clearly shown they'e ready to expand outside the drug trade into human trafficking and potentially even terrorism. They could infiltrate our defenseless southern border and attack it right here in places like Arkansas." At a town hall meeting last month, a 7-year-old child told Cotton that anti-immigration policies like those supported by President Trump "makes Mexicans not important."
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