There is nothing inherently wrong, racist or un-American about a points-based, merit-based immigration system. Several perfectly nice countries, among them Canada and New Zealand, have such points-based systems. There is nothing inherently wrong with favoring those who speak English (or, in the case of Canada, English or French) with a few extra points. Nigerians and Indians will have a small advantage over Ecuadorans and Thais, Poles and Greeks — is that so bad?
Sen. Ted Kennedy, for example, the liberal lion of the Senate, who sponsored the bill to eliminate national quotas in the 1960s, tried to introduce legislation for a points-based immigration system in both the 1980s and 2000s. (To be fair, part of his motivation was to make more visas became available for the Irish, who, ironically, had more difficulty immigrating after Kennedy's 1965 immigration bill eliminated their large quotas. This was also his motivation for introducing legislation for the Diversity Visa program, the so-called “green card lottery.”)
Among the many problems that confront us when discussing immigration and what is, or is not, the best way forward, is that the question has gotten all bollixed up with questions of race, ethnicity, white nationalism, etc., as well as the confounding of the question of immigration and illegal immigration, as if they are the same thing.
One driver of the politicized reaction to all things immigration, on both left and right, is the surge of Latino immigration, particularly illegal immigration, that began in the 1980s. This was fueled by surging population growth and slow economic growth in Mexico and wars in Central America during the Reagan era. So, on the left, it was easy to cast opposition to illegal immigration as driven by animus to brown people coming from south of the border, compounded more recently by fear of terrorism and Islamophobia. And, to be fair, a lot of energy directed against illegal — and, in cases, legal — immigration has been driven by racism and xenophobia, as illustrated so well during the campaign of our current, alleged “president.”
All of this had made it difficult to have a reasonable discussion about the impact of immigration (legal and illegal) and what any future immigration system ought to look like without the question immediately being thrown into one of left-versus-right, tolerance-versus-racism. So, reaction to yesterday's push by the Trump administration in favor of a merit-based immigration system almost immediately provoked the usual drawing of the battle lines. (The battle lines are a little fuzzy, since corporate America is pretty much lined up with the left in supporting immigration and legalization of the undocumented.)
Out came the usual shibboleths. “Wait, what about Emma Lazarus?” “Wait, haven't we always been a country of immigrants?” “Wait, isn't it racist to favor English speakers?”
Of course, one has to admit that trotting out a white nationalist nutball like Stephen Miller to flog this idea is naturally going to provoke the idea that a merit-based system is inherently racist. And, again, to be fair, for Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon and Trump, the idea is motivated by racial, ethnic and religious prejudice. But I doubt Justin Trudeau thinks of it like that.
One of the ironies, among many, in this debate is that the racial motivations of Trumpophiles behind a merit-based system would probably backfire: most of the immigrants who would come under the system would probably be Asian – Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, just as much of the most recent immigrants to Canada, Australia and New Zealand have been Asian. Moving to a merit-based system would not increase European immigration, which is probably Trump's idea, because Europeans don't emigrate all that much anymore. The answer why is simple: their lives are pretty good where they are. Economic betterment has been the major motivation for emigration since time immemorial — think of the Huns and Visigoths moving into the Roman Empire or the Anglo-Saxons invading Britain.
(It is another irony that Trump's focus on building a southern wall is really fighting the last war. The major influx of illegal immigrants from Latin America in the last few decades, three-quarters of whom were Mexican, is over, as Mexican birthrates have plummeted to close to US levels (i.e., barely above replacement) and as the Mexican economy has improved. The one-two punch of massive numbers of young people looking for jobs that aren't there that sent desperate young people north to look for work has simply evaporated.)
Whether a points-based immigration system would be better for the US or not is certainly a matter of debate. How many immigrants we should take in is also a matter for debate. US immigration policy has traditionally had two pillars – family reunification and skills, with an emphasis on the former. But too often we march out those shibboleths – “We've always made family reunification a priority!” – without asking ourselves if they are still relevant.
We once were an underpopulated country with an almost inexhaustible need for labor – and unskilled labor was just fine. In the late 19thand early 20thcenturies, we needed labor to build the railroads, mine coal, dig the New York subway, man steel factories. We placed an emphasis on family reunification because taking a steamship from Europe and back was long and expensive. We live in a different country today, one with 330 million residents. Our coasts are crowded and expensive, and we are using up our soil and stores of fresh water at alarming rates. We have no massive need for unskilled labor (though there is a debate whether we continue to need to import workers for low-wage jobs in the service industry, like at Mar-a-Lago). Should family reunification continue to be a priority in an era when jet travel is both fast and relatively inexpensive? (It's telling that Europeans and Japanese don't tend to take advantage of family reunification immigrant visas available to them, while more people from the developing world do.)
Finally, whatever immigration system we have is going to be unfair. Is it fair that just because a person is related to an American citizen that they have an advantage in getting an immigrant visa? Should my wife's brother in Lithuania, who could well be a poorly educated jerk, get priority over a well-educated, skillful, nice person someplace else who doesn't have a US relative? (As it happens, my Lithuanian brother-in-law is a great guy with a PhD in pharmacological chemistry, but the point stands.) Right now, every country in the world gets the same ceiling on yearly immigrant visas – 25,000. So, if you're Chinese, your chance of getting in is almost infinitely worse than if you're a citizen of Lichtenstein. Does that make sense? On the other hand, do we really want to parcel out immigrant visas based solely on countries' population? Is it fair to set aside immigrant visas for the highly educated who are from the developing world? Is that moral, to encourage emigration by people in those countries to use them to our own advantage — shouldn’t we be encouraging doctors and PhDs and engineers in the developing world to stay put and help their own nations develop and prosper?
There are no easy answers to any of these questions. I happen to think a points-based system makes more sense. I'd eliminate family-based immigrant visas for brothers and adult children of US citizens entirely. (At the same time, I'd give “immediate relative” status to spouses and minor children of green-cards holders, who nowadays must wait, sometimes for years, to get an immigrant visa.) Generally, for environmental reasons and to help out the wages of the working class (I know, debatable question), I'd prefer that the number of our immigrants to roughly match the number of emigrants (more than half a million American citizens or permanent residents move overseas each year). But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.
But wherever we come down on these questions, it would be nice if the debate were a little less fraught with stock assumptions and hoary platitudes about traditions, racist motivations, blind political correctness, corporate interests or whatever. It's probably too much to ask, but one can always hope.