It’s Time America Adopts a Merit-Based Immigration System

Originally published by Washington Examiner.

For decades, the United States has been under the chokehold of an outdated immigration system, one that prioritizes everyone but average people.

While illegal immigration is typically faulted, our legal immigration system is equally to blame. Under our system, immigrants are not chosen based on a universal set of criteria that advances the national interest. Instead, due to the Immigration Act of 1965 (which created our current system), most immigrants are sponsored by family members.

That means personal interests take priority over national interests. While keeping nuclear families together is important, it should not be America’s responsibility to take in the extended family members of every immigrant. Yet that’s just what we do. Each year, hundreds of thousands of extended family members from across the globe, adults and their families, are granted green cards simply because of their relationship to someone in the U.S. Skills, jobs, education, the ability to be self-sufficient, or even the desire to be an American, are simply irrelevant.

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