Two excellent new immigration proposals are in the works for rationalizing our chaotic U.S. immigration system with all its perverse incentives.  So what's up, Sen. Mitt Romney?  Sen. Susan Collins?  Ready to stamp those down?

That's the nutshell question, given that these well designed measures would do more than even a wall to halt the flood of illegal migrants surging over our border.  Sen. Lindsey Graham (the 2.0 version) calls it a bid to end a "humanitarian" crisis.  Hear that, Transistors Mitt?

Graham has a proposal on the table to end the abuse of the asylum system by people who don't qualify for asylum.  Since so much of that is coming from Central America, a new legal setup is being proposed to process migrant claims from Central America and Mexico itself instead of the U.S. border.  According to Fox News:

"The word is out on the street in Central America if you bring a minor child with you, your chance of being deported goes to almost zero, your hearing date is years away and we release you inside the country and that's the goal of coming," he said.

The bill would end asylum claims at the U.S. border for migrants from the Northern Triangle of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Instead, those applications would be filed at refugee processing centers set up in the Northern Triangle and Mexico. The legislation would also allow unaccompanied minors to be returned to their country of origin, which Graham said would be treating them the same as minors from Canada and Mexico.

His bill would extend the time families can be held together from 20 days to 100 days to help allow claims to be filed without families being released into the U.S. It would also add an additional 500 immigration judges to deal with the backlog of asylum claims.

That would end a perverse incentive to drag a child, rented or not, across the border without papers in dangerous areas controlled by cartels in a bid to seek the best deal for entering the U.S. with neither waiting nor paying.  Once inside the U.S., with a backlogged asylum claim (and many applicants ignore their court appearances anyway), migrants are free to work for a few good years in the states and send remittances home to beef up the coffers of the supposedly wicked home countries that they otherwise claim they fled for their lives, until they are ordered back.  The deportation orders are rarely carried out unless a migrant robs a bank or slaughters someone — and gets caught.

Graham's bill is sensible and realistic, dealing with some of the most abused loopholes in U.S. law, which are incentivizing illegal immigration.

Meanwhile, another excellent measure is on the table from the White House: a plan to encourage merit-based immigration, such as Canada and Australia have (no illegal immigration surges in those countries), ending the policy that makes it more important to be "a niece than a nurse" to make it to the states legally.  According to this separate story on Fox News:

The White House is set to unveil a sweeping new plan that would radically transform the makeup of immigrants in the United States, ending the visa lottery program and implementing a comprehensive merit-based admissions procedure, three senior administration officials told Fox News on Wednesday.

The move would more than quadruple the number of immigrants admitted because of their work-related skills, while dramatically slashing the number of immigrants admitted because of family ties. Currently, approximately 12 percent of immigrants are admitted based on employment and skills, while 66 percent are admitted based on family connections.

Those percentages, under the new plan, would shift to 57 percent and 33 percent, respectively. Ten percent of immigrants would be admitted on humanitarian or other grounds, but the plan would end the visa lottery program.

That would certainly keep out malevolent America-haters such as the Boston bombing pair, who got into the U.S. legally through the lottery system and then set about trying to kill us in the name of their Islamist agenda.  Like the Graham proposal, the White House proposal, crafted by White House adviser Jared Kushner, is a sensible one.

By no surprise, Democrats such as Sen. Dick Durbin are against the whole thing. That's their party line.

Graham says that most Republicans are in favor, however, but he leaves room for doubt along the way, which is disturbing in the extreme, given the crisis the U.S. is in.

Naturally, that comes from the usual suspects, the Trump haters in the Senate. Sen. Susan Collins, whose state of Maine is about as far from the migrant surge as physically possible within the continental states, naturally, wants to incentivize more child-smuggling among the illegals, saying there can be no solution without including DACA recipients, something that migrants will notice as the ticket to getting their own admission to the states. Fox reported:

One Republican official briefed on Tuesday's meeting said Kushner provided few details and said senators did not seem overly impressed with the plan. Another said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., did not offer his views of the proposal. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private session.

That's disturbing in the wake of the current crisis. Who are these idiots and why aren't their names getting out there? Are you there, Mitt Romney? Mister Meritocrat? Why isn't Mitt speaking out about moving to a merit-based immigration system? Why are we reading stories about Republican intransigence?

It's time for Republicans to reform these laws yesterday. Congress has done very little for us since Democrats have taken the House. It's time for Republicans to try something different and support sensible measures to reform immigration law. Where are these people?