We do need reform so that immigration is less of a fiscal burden.

President Trump has launched an overdue discussion of the need to update our legal immigration system, in addition to addressing the problem of illegal immigration. The president pointed out the benefits of a merit-based system, saying it would reduce government spending, raise wages and help families move into the middle class. He’s right; we do need to reform our admissions criteria so that immigration is less of a fiscal burden and more of an economic benefit to the country. Each year, the U.S. gives out about 1 million new green cards, the photo identification that shows the holder is a permanent legal resident. Two-thirds of these people are admitted through chain migration categories, that is, the new immigrants are sponsored by family members who were prior immigrants. We also have a green-card lottery, admitting 50,000 winners with few requirements. Only 15 percent of immigrants were sponsored by an employer, and that number includes the employee’s family as well. Immigrants admitted in the family-based category are asked to show that they will have a job and a sponsor to support them when they arrive, but these rules are not enforced. The outcome of our family-oriented system is that we admit many immigrants who lack the education and skills to be self-sufficient. The employment rates of immigrants are similar to native Americans, but a significantly larger share of immigrants have low educational levels and thus they end up in jobs paying less, and are more reliant on welfare. Our research shows more than 40 percent of immigrant-headed households are using at least one welfare program (compared with 27 percent of native-born households). The National Academy of Sciences found that, while our system benefits immigrants and their employers, it also creates a net fiscal deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars a year and depresses the wages of workers competing for the same jobs as new immigrants. If Congress were to limit the number of relatives that immigrants can sponsor and prune the pointless visa lottery, as proposed in the RAISE Act bill from Sens. Tom Cotton and David Perdue, and also scale back the number of refugees, asylees, and special category admissions, then that would create space — even within smaller overall caps on immigration — for more green cards to go to particularly talented people who are not tied to an employer, but who meet the merit-based criteria we set. We admit fewer than 10,000 independent merit-based applicants a year. Quadrupling that to 40,000 per year, with the other changes, would realign our system according to Trump’s vision, and without entirely abandoning family-based green cards.