Updating and modernizing America’s clunky legal immigration system has been the goal of reformers in both parties for decades. But getting the details right has proved unwieldy: How do you build a system that is responsive to voters’ demands, isn’t easily gamed, and effectively selects the best applicants?
The SMARTER Act, introduced earlier this month by Rep. David Schweikert of Arizona, may provide a path forward. The bill would overhaul the country’s permanent-residency pathways, end the “diversity” visa, reduce large parts of the family-based system, and establish America’s first points-based categories for high-skilled immigrants. Most notably, the proposal avoids some of the common pitfalls of points-based immigration systems.
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Immigration reformers across the world favor points-based selection—in which immigration applicants are scored and ranked based on qualifications like education, salary, job type, extraordinary achievement, and language ability—for the transparency it provides to both the voting public and potential applicants. And in contrast to employer-driven systems, visa holders under the points-based system are typically not tethered to a particular job or company. Because worker mobility boosts wages, productivity, and innovation, allowing visa recipients to change jobs freely is key to capturing the benefits of high-skilled immigration.
Poorly implemented points-based systems have serious downsides, but Schweikert’s SMARTER Act anticipates and designs around these risks.
First, assigning point values to specific categories can easily go off the rails. Systems that award points primarily based on educational attainment risk incentivizing “degree mill” programs that effectively sell immigration credentials. Further, it is unclear how much some categories of points should be weighed against others. The RAISE Act, introduced in President Trump’s first term by Sen. Tom Cotton, for example, set the same number of maximum points for both salary offers and education levels. But while points for degree credentials may be useful for their power to predict future success, they become redundant once salary is included as a points category.
The SMARTER Act’s solution is to keep its points system focused on the outcome we actually care about: earnings. The bill’s selection scheme awards points overwhelmingly based on an applicant’s salary offer from a U.S. employer, deemphasizing education. This wage-based selection is less prone to abuse and does not motivate visa applicants to stack dubious degrees to get more points. It also maximizes the fiscal benefits of skilled immigration for Americans, as the highest-earning workers will contribute more tax revenue.
Second, points systems sometimes include carveouts or boosts for “labor shortage” occupations, meaning that applicants for jobs that employers are having a particularly hard time filling get prioritized above other workers for visas. These seemingly benign provisions are meant to soothe employer complaints. But the definition of a “labor shortage” is politically contentious and implies that wage growth is a problem to be solved rather than something to celebrate. SMARTER does not fall into this trap; it includes no special carveouts or bonuses to fill occupational shortages.
Third, points-based systems often require technocratic bodies to set and adjust overall immigration levels. But as with labor shortages, the optimal rate of immigration for a country has no observable, technical answer. Immigration levels and composition are fundamentally political questions that require democratic legitimacy.
To set the size of the points-based immigration system, the SMARTER Act would create a five-member board of the Department of Commerce, with each member nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The board could adjust immigration levels up or down with a quorum of Senate-confirmed members. Rather than empower unaccountable technocrats to set immigration levels, the board would require regular negotiations between the president and Congress.
While the above reforms are specific to green cards, SMARTER also proposes two long-overdue updates to the H-1B visa program, the country’s largest high-skilled temporary visa category. The bill would replace the lottery system, which has rewarded IT outsourcing companies that flood applications into the system, with a wage-based ranking that selects applicants who will contribute the most to federal tax revenue. And it would require that employers sponsoring foreign workers pay at least the median wage of what similarly qualified U.S. workers earn in the same occupation, barring employers from engaging in “wage arbitrage” that undercuts Americans.
The reforms proposed by the SMARTER Act can move the U.S. toward a legal immigration system that prioritizes workers, researchers, and entrepreneurs offering in-demand skills. The bill would help preserve America’s lead in critical and emerging technologies while reducing the federal budget deficit by bringing in more tax revenue. While the bill is by no means the final word on merit-based immigration reform, it offers valuable ideas that will help Congress deliver a more transparent immigration system that better serves the national interest.