Anybody who hasn’t been under a rock is aware of the battle that has taken place the last several of days over legal immigration and H1B visas, with the tech Right, led by Elon Musk, saying we need more of both to get more talent to America, and the MAGA Right saying H1Bs are a scam that harm American workers. There is a genuine ideological divide here on the issue of immigration (the tech voices tend to be anti–illegal immigration and pro–legal immigration, while the MAGA Right tends to be more comprehensively restrictionist).

On the narrow issue of getting geniuses into the United States, though, there should be agreement — it’s possible to do it without expanding H1Bs or legal immigration, as Mark Krikorian points out in this piece. When we are letting more than a million legal immigrants into the country every year, largely without regard to skills, there’s lots of give in the system to take in people who are exceptionally talented without expanding immigration or even while reducing it.

That should be the Trump administration approach.