Merit-based Immigration: The Value of Workers from All Countries

Guest post by Jacob Love, 3L at The University of North Dakota School of Law School.

Much has been made about the vulgar comments recently made by President Trump in which he referred to Haiti, El Salvador and African nations as “shithole countries.” Lost in the rush to condemn the President for his awful remarks, however, was the reference by Trump Administration officials to Canada’s “merit-based” system of immigration as something the United States should strive for in order to admit “better” immigrants. President Trump himself expressed a strong desire for a merit system through his Twitter account.

President Trump may be surprised to learn that Canada’s “merit” system has admitted lots of immigrants from the same countries that Trump deemed undesirable. Data has shown that many of these immigrants are skilled, highly-likely to be employed, and do not rely on welfare payments or any other state-sponsored benefits any more than longtime citizens of Canada do. Although it’s dangerous to make sweeping conclusions about data like these, these data at least suggest that Canada’s merit-based immigration system allows immigrants from all over the world into Canada, many of them coming from the same developing countries that President Trump derided.

The lesson to be taken from these facts is not that one country’s policy on immigration is better than the other’s, but rather that the immigrants that come from so-called developing countries are often just as skilled and suitable as immigrants coming from places like Norway, the nation singled out by Trump as desirable.

Many commentators have suggested that President Trump’s comments were based on nothing more than racism. Even so, if President Trump is serious about making positive impacts on the U.S. economy through immigration reform, he should be looking to merit-based systems for admitting skilled immigrants to contribute positively to the economy. Though Trump may just find that the skilled immigrants he desires for a stronger economy come from the exact same nations that he so ineloquently slandered.

-posted by KitJ on behalf of Jacob Love