What Factors Should an Immigration Points System Include?

Last week, President Trump backed a plan that  would create a new legal immigration category based on “points.” The idea is borrowed from immigration systems in several countries, including Canada, which award points to applicants based on various personal characteristics (language skills, educational attainment, family ties, etc.). The Canadian government, for example, establishes the cap on visas for the year, and applicants with the highest point total receive one of the cap slots for that year.Advantages of a points systemCongress should not cap skilled legal immigration, which provides massive economic and fiscal benefits to the United States. Assuming it will anyway, however, a points system could be a fair and economically beneficial way to allocate some green cards, but policymakers should avoid some of the common pitfalls in implementing one.Ideally, a points system should serve a single purpose: economic growth. Trying to enlist a points system for other goals —family reunification, humanitarianism, “assimilation,” etc.—ultimately results in an incoherent system that doesn’t serve any of them well. To be clear, this is not to say that these other goals should receive no representation in the immigration system anywhere, just not in a points system.First, the main reason a points system makes sense (in the context of caps on skilled immigration) is that the points can consider characteristics that will result in greater long-term economic growth. ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs