Today’s immigrants bring serious skills
President Trump has thrown his full weight behind a Senate bill that would make deep cuts to legal immigration and change the country’s priorities for admitting newcomers, on the grounds that too many who come to the U.S. are low-skilled and lack the attributes necessary to contribute significantly to the U.S. economy.
As much as the nation’s immigration laws need to be modernized, the skills recent immigrants are bringing already reflect the “merit-based” immigration system that the White House and the Senate bill’s two sponsors, Republicans Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, are championing. This transformation has come about without major policy intervention, largely as the result of the shifting composition of permanent and temporary immigration flows.
As we recently reported, the educational attainment of recent arrivals is up sharply. Fully 48% of foreign-born adults arriving since 2011 have a college degree, a remarkable increase over the 27% who came 25 years earlier.
Analysis in a landmark National Academies of Science study on the fiscal impacts of immigration shows a steady rise since 1970 in college enrollment and completion for recent immigrants and, importantly, a steep drop in those arriving with less than a high school degree (falling from 51% in 1970 to 26% in 2012).
What’s driving this? Among the key factors: rising migration from Asia, increasing educational attainment globally and the fact that more secondary schools and universities in other countries are offering education in English.
These trends require far greater attention from policymakers in Washington and beyond. Yet because family-based and employment-based immigration are two of the key channels for arrivals (humanitarian representing the third), the debate has artificially coalesced around the idea that those coming to reunite with U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident relatives somehow have less to offer than those who come via employer sponsorship.
Today’s legal immigration system, which dates to the 1965 Immigration Act and amendments in 1990, is ill-suited for our globalized world. But instead of deep cuts that rob the economy of skills and growth (shaving an estimated 0.1% to 0.2% off annual U.S. economic growth), our system needs a larger overall share of visas across the skills spectrum.
The Republican bill takes a page from Canada and other countries by creating a points system that would base admissions on immigrants’ human capital, their knowledge of English and more. But the lesson from these countries is not that points systems are better for selecting desired immigrants, but that they require careful monitoring of skills needs and flexible adjustment of selection criteria.
Instead of a rigid top-down points system, we build in greater flexibility. Two ways to get there are through a new system of provisional visas and a nonpartisan commission charged with monitoring skills needs and regularly recommending adjustments to policymakers.
Provisional visas would enable many more foreign individuals already working in the U.S. to qualify for green cards. These visas would ensure that the most productive high-skilled temporary workers can make an easier, more predictable transition to a green card and to good jobs where their skills are needed.
These workers have proven their labor market attachment and contributions. They represent an already market-tested pathway for permanent immigration.
A professionally staffed standing commission on labor markets and immigration would build flexibility into skills-based immigration by systematically monitoring U.S. and sectoral labor markets and recommending the number and types of visas that employers need.
An essential goal here would be to protect U.S. workers, native and immigrant alike.
Reform of the immigration system is long overdue. But reform that slashes current immigration levels without taking into account the rapidly rising human capital of immigrants and the economy’s future skills and productivity needs will not take the country where it needs to go.