Throwback Thursday: Stephen Yale-Loehr

SYL Then & Now

You likely know immprof Stephen Yale-Loehr from his textbook Immigration and Nationality Laws: Problems and Strategies (with Lenni Benson, Lindsay Curcio and Veronica Jeffers). Or maybe you know him as the congenial fellow who organizes immprofs attending AILA. Then again, you might be familiar with one of his over 200 (that’s not a typo) publications.

Throwback Thursday today is reminding you of just one of those works, co-authored with Christoph Hoashi-Erhardt, A Comparative Look at Immigration and Human Capital Assessment, 16 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 99 (2001). (And sure, this is posting on Friday and not Thursday but we had to dot some i’s and cross some t’s to make that hyperlink work).

The article looks at the process of selecting “economic-stream migrants,” which is to say migrants entering a country primarily to fill labor market demand for  highly-skilled workers. It takes a comparative approach, looking at the point-based schemes utilized by Canada and Australia. And it proposes a points-based system for the United States.

The article provides helpful charts that walk you through the math of points-based migration. And it explains how these programs fit within migration systems that do not have a single-minded focus on “economic-stream migrants” but rather also have a place for family-based migration and humanitarian streams.

“No government is an economic island – not even Australia,” the authors conclude. “As global economic integration increases at an ever-quickening pace, so does the competition for talented economic immigrants.” And while “Economic enhancement is just one of many worthy goals” of immigration policy, “a point system makes sense conceptually, practically, and procedurally.”

-KitJ