NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE A merica’s existing immigration system gives overwhelming preference to family reunions with citizens and immigrants already here. This approach needs to be revised on two fronts.
First, it’s unfair. It gives preference to blood relationships and family connections. It discriminates against people with no familial ties but who have knowledge, skills, and experience and can contribute to our economy and be productive citizens. The people our immigration system discriminates against today are the kind of people our nation has attracted since its founding. The current system also overlooks the fact that many people waiting in line for family reunions might qualify to migrate to America on merit but are instead stuck in a decades-long wait to be admitted on a family basis.
Second, this approach doesn’t serve our nation’s economic needs, because the quota for a family reunion is not set based on labor-market demands. The visa-preference hierarchy favors the old (parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents) and the young (those younger than 21 years of age) but discriminates against the most likely productive ones (people 21 years of age or older and siblings of U.S. citizens and permanent residents). The current system prefers people who are more likely to become financial dependents than economic contributors. Empirical evidence shows that after admitting immigrants mainly on a family-reunification basis in 1965, the U.S. soon opened the welfare system to immigrants.
To fix these problems, we need to establish a merit-based (a.k.a. skill-based) system: an immigration system that gives a higher preference to people who have skills and experience to contribute and to entrepreneurs who want to invest in America to create job opportunities for Americans — in other words, a much more flexible merit-based immigration program to meet our nation’s economic needs. We do not have to reinvent the wheel. Both Canada and Australia have established and successfully operated merit-based immigration systems for years, and we can learn from their systems’ strengths and weaknesses.
Use the Canadian merit-based immigration system as an example. While the U.S. gives preference to family reunions, Canada gives preference to skilled workers. Canada was the first country globally to launch a merit-based points system by introducing the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) in 1967. Today, the Canadian immigration system has ten categories (versus the over two dozen categories in the U.S.), with the first seven focusing on attracting skilled workers, also known as economic-class immigrants.
Canada welcomes about 400,000 new immigrants annually, and 60 percent are skilled workers, compared with only 20 percent of legal immigrants to the United States. The Canadian immigration system defines skilled workers as “people who are selected as permanent residents based on their ability to become economically established in Canada.” People who intend to immigrate as skilled workers do not have to have a job offer at the time of application but have to pass an automated point system that evaluates their skills, experiences, and education.
The Canadian government added the skilled-trade category in 2013 to address a labor shortage in specific segments of the Canadian economy. An applicant must have a job offer from a Canadian employer, but no educational requirements exist. The only two requirements are minimum language skills (English or French) and at least two years of work experience in the skilled trade the applicant is applying for. These things show that the Canadian immigration system is much more flexible than the U.S.’s. The Canadian government constantly revises its immigration system to reflect Canada’s economic needs — something we Americans have failed to do.
Canada’s skilled-worker programs allow its provinces and territories to participate actively in immigration. Canadian provinces and territories can nominate skilled workers they want to bring in; they have the authority to assess a potential immigrant’s work experience and skills to determine if he or she is eligible; and they can also issue certificates of qualification after the assessment. In the U.S., by contrast, all immigration-related matters are centralized under the federal government’s control, and states have little say.
The Canadian immigration system is much more efficient and objective than the U.S. immigration system because it lets potential immigrants do a self-assessment based on a point system. In contrast, the U.S. immigration system relies on federal immigration agents manually reviewing each application, which contributes to the case backlog and turns the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) into a giant bureaucracy.
Since January 1, 2015, Canada has further improved its point-based system for skilled workers by implementing the Express Entry system. This system covers the Federal Skilled Worker Program, the Federal Skilled Trades Program, and the Canadian Experience Class Program. Express Entry is a Web-based system that lets a potential immigrant do an online self-assessment to determine whether he or she is eligible to emigrate to Canada. This self-assessment is a point-based system and takes about 15 minutes to complete.
Several things about this scorecard system stand out. First, it has a minimum language requirement (English or French) for skill-related immigration, while the U.S. doesn’t. The Canadian immigration system requires applicants to demonstrate listening, speaking, reading, and writing abilities in English or French. An applicant must take a language test, and the results can’t be older than two years. The scorecard favors those with a better grasp of English or French, giving language ability the highest point value. The emphasis on language skills makes sense because language proficiency has been long associated with an immigrant’s successful assimilation and economic well-being.
In a 2011 research paper, Sege Nadeau, a professor at the University of Ottawa, shows that immigrants to Canada who are proficient in either English or French earn as much as 39 percent more than minimally proficient immigrants. The Washington-based Brookings Institution published a similar study based on immigrants in the U.S. and came up with the same conclusion: “English proficiency is a strong predictor of economic standing among immigrants, regardless of the amount of education they have attained, and it is associated with the greater academic and economic success of the workers’ children.” Ample research shows that language proficiency is a strong predictor of economic success among immigrants, regardless of the amount of education they have attained. By having a language requirement, the Canadian system ensures that new immigrants can successfully integrate into Canadian society.
Second, the scorecard gives more weight to education, experience, and age than to arranged employment. As we discussed earlier, the skilled-worker program is designed to attract people who can contribute to Canada’s economy. The odds of finding a job for someone who is young and well-educated, and who speaks English or French fluently, are high. The U.S. doesn’t have a similar program, and employment-based immigration in the U.S. makes having an arranged job offer a must but gives little consideration to what kind of job it is.
Third, the Canadian immigration system gives an immigration applicant autonomy and empowers him or her to do most of the work. Anyone can go online and do a self-assessment. A potential applicant doesn’t need a sponsor; all he or she can count on is his or her own ability, knowledge, education, and experience. The process assesses the candidate’s self-reliance and merit: A person capable of understanding the instructions, following through, and providing supporting documents is probably someone who can make it in Canada. The U.S. immigration system engenders dependency, whereas the Canadian approach engenders self-reliance.
The Canadian points-based scoring system is straightforward, transparent, simple, objective, and effective. A successful candidate can gain permanent-resident status within six months. Canada’s merit-based immigration system has been tremendously successful. A 2020 report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that immigration accounted for almost 100 percent of all labor-force growth in Canada in 2018, and 82 percent of skill-based immigrants ages 25 to 64 were employed, more than that of nonimmigrants (76 percent).
Australia has a point system similar to Canada’s, which evaluates an applicant’s age, English-language ability, education, and skills. Applicants can take the assessment online. The total points for Australia’s system are 120, and the passing grade is 60. Also, like its Canadian counterpart, the Australian government tweaks its point system every couple of years in light of new data and to serve its changing economic needs. The most recent tweak was made in 2012.
Australia’s point system emphasizes work experience and existing employment offers more than does the Canadian system. The emphasis on jobs was driven by the Australian government’s conscious effort since 2008 to move away from “‘supply-driven’ skilled migration toward ‘demand-driven’ outcomes in the form of employer- and government-sponsored skilled migration.”
In addition to meeting the minimum passing score, applicants must select an occupation from the Australian government’s Skilled Occupation List (SOL) and have their skills assessed by a recognized authority. The SOL is not static; it was developed by an independent body and is updated annually to reflect occupations in demand in Australia. For example, suppose I claim on the immigration application that I have work experience in civil engineering. In that case, I will be directed to contact Australia’s civil-engineering society to assess my skills and work experience. Only after the engineering society issues a satisfactory assessment result can my immigration application move forward.
In 2011, Australia implemented a two-stage application process called Skill Select for skilled immigrants and investment visas. The process is similar to Canada’s Express Entry process (in all fairness, the Canadians probably learned from the Australians), through which applicants submit Expressions of Interest (EOI) for specifically skilled-immigration visas. Only applicants who receive at least a passing score and demonstrate experience in occupations on the SOL are invited to apply for skill-based immigration. Like Canada, Australia allows its states and territories to nominate skilled immigrants. In addition, Australia allows its residents to nominate their relatives to immigrate to Australia through the skill-based immigration program.
Consequently, 68 percent of immigrants to Australia are skill-based, while 31 percent are family-based. Australia’s skilled-immigration system is highly successful. A government survey of Australian migrants between 2009 and 2011 found these impressive statistics: “The labor force participation rate of independent skilled immigrants is 96%, much higher than the 67% among native-born Australians.”
Canada’s and Australia’s experiences show that a country can reap great cultural, social, and economic benefits from the right immigration policy. It is time for the U.S. to adopt a merit-based immigration system similar to that in Canada and Australia. We shouldn’t do away with family-based immigration and immigration based on humanitarian needs. Still, we should emphasize skill-based immigration by dedicating at least 50 percent of the annual immigration-visa quota to skill-based immigrants (instead of the current 20 percent). With such a system, we as a nation can ensure that we are rolling out the welcome mat to the kind of immigrants we want — those who are willing to work hard and contribute to our country.
This article is adapted from the second edition of The Broken Welcome Mat: America’s UnAmerican Immigration Policy, and How We Should Fix It (May 2023).