Put Aside Musk’s H1-B Controversy — Let’s Evaluate Immigrants Based on Merit

During the Christmas season, Elon Musk and his tech colleagues ignited a lively debate within the MAGA community regarding the recruitment of elite immigrant talent to the U.S. and the implications of the H1-B visa program.

Musk makes a valid point about the need to attract extraordinary individuals to our shores; similarly, immigration advocates are correct in stating that the H1-B program, which provides temporary visas to skilled foreigners, is fundamentally flawed and poorly structured.

This ideological dispute was intriguing, albeit focused on a limited program that grants only 85,000 visas annually.

Significantly overlooked was the broader scope of our poorly conceived immigration system as a whole.

Each year, approximately 1.1 million green cards are issued, yet only a fraction are granted based on skills or job prospects — roughly 16%.

This leaves us in a position where the leading, most vibrant, and most liberated country globally — where so many aspire to reside — does not construct a system that effectively welcomes the immigrants who have the greatest potential to act as net contributors to our economy, instead favoring family ties and arbitrary chance.

This represents a monumental missed opportunity, if not an act of self-defeat.

A Pew Research study from a few years ago highlighted that only 36% of immigrants in the U.S. hold college degrees, placing us in the middle tier among advanced, high-immigration nations.

In contrast, Canada and Australia lead the way, with 65% and 63% of their immigrants holding degrees, respectively.

This discrepancy can be attributed to their merit-based immigration systems.

Canada, for instance, saw a rise from 13% of immigrants with degrees in 1971, shortly after adopting its merit-based model, to 44% in 1981, with continued growth thereafter.

Current Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — who may not hold office for much longer — disappointingly dismissed this traditional strategy as he opened the floodgates to more immigrants, but that’s a tale for another time.

The relevance of educational achievement cannot be overstated, as it is a strong predictor of an individual’s economic success in the U.S.

Research by Daniel Di Martino from the Manhattan Institute indicates that the average new immigrant with a college degree will contribute over $300,000 to reducing the national budget deficit throughout their lifetime, while those without college degrees will typically impose a fiscal burden.

In stark contrast to this reasoning, our immigration system primarily prioritizes family connections for admissions.

(Mass illegal immigration compounds the situation: about 70% of undocumented immigrants lack education beyond high school, and around 60% of households led by undocumented immigrants rely on welfare programs, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.)

It is sensible for our system to consider family ties to a certain extent; clearly, spouses and minor children deserve priority.

However, if we curtailed other family-based categories, we could free up hundreds of thousands of visas that, while maintaining overall immigration levels, could be assigned based on criteria indicative of future success, like educational background and English proficiency.

Furthermore, the diversity lottery should also be eliminated: this program offers 50,000 green cards annually to randomly selected applicants from countries that do not already send a sizable number of immigrants.

The selection is devoid of merit, humanitarian concerns, or connections to the U.S. — we might as well release green cards from helicopters over foreign lands.

Aside from the recent discussion surrounding H1-B visas stirred by Musk, a fundamental flaw in our immigration dialogue is the tendency to accept the status quo without question.

Many treat the ideals represented by the Statue of Liberty and Emma Lazarus as barriers to any rational re-evaluation of legal immigration.

In reality, the selection process for immigrants and the reasons behind it are critical national policy issues that ought to be resolved based on the national interest rather than nostalgia or complacency.

Twitter: @RichLowry