(Bloomberg Opinion) -- U.S. immigration policies should be guided by two basic principles. The first is that immigrants are indispensable to American innovation and long-term economic growth. The second is that laws to secure the country’s borders must be rigorously enforced.
A system built on these commonsense ideas would promote economic dynamism, boost tax revenue, prevent population decline, and protect national security. It would also command support among a majority of Americans. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s approach to immigration — both legal and otherwise — has so far been hopelessly muddled. Fixing it should be a top priority in what remains of the president’s term.
Start with the legal immigration system. Current law is heavily weighted toward immigrants with family ties, who make up nearly 70% of those who receive legal permanent residence. Another 4% come in through the “diversity lottery,” which awards visas to residents of countries with historically low rates of immigration to the U.S. Of the 1 million green cards awarded in the last year before the pandemic, fewer than 15% were for work-based reasons.
To correct this imbalance, the U.S. should adopt a points-based immigration system, similar to those in Canada and Australia, and give preferences to high-skilled immigrants. Those with specialized knowledge, outstanding language skills, and entrepreneurial promise, as well as foreign students who earn advanced degrees in the U.S., should receive highest priority.
Few government policies would do more to bolster American leadership in science and technology. And there’s reason to believe that such an overhaul could attract bipartisan support. (Even former President Donald Trump once expressed enthusiasm for the idea.) Yet Biden has shown no urgency. Legislation introduced by Democrats and backed by the White House would give a small boost to the number of employment-based green cards the U.S. issues, currently capped at 140,000 a year — but it doesn’t go nearly far enough toward establishing a workable skills-based system.
Of course, any expansion of legal immigration will be impossible without improvements in border security. Here, too, the Biden administration’s approach has been haphazard at best.
Attempted border crossings have reached record highs under Biden’s watch. To deal with the crisis, the administration has relied on a World War II-era provision called Title 42, which allows the government to curb immigration during a public-health emergency. Since the spring of 2020, when the Trump administration introduced this practice, the U.S. has expelled more than 1 million migrants from the border without allowing them to claim asylum, a callous practice that violates longtime U.S. policy.
This approach might’ve made sense earlier in the pandemic, when overcrowded border facilities seemed like a significant public-health threat. Now it’s unnecessary and inhumane, given that many of those deported could be in danger in their home countries. Simply expelling migrants, moreover, does little to deter them from trying again: More than a quarter of those encountered at the border are repeat crossers.
As it happens, the administration has a more effective tool for managing this problem. A Trump-era policy called the Migrant Protection Protocols requires those apprehended at the border to remain in Mexico as they go through the asylum process. The program is flawed, with some applicants having to endure unsafe conditions while waiting for hearings. But it grants migrants legal representation and an opportunity to make their case in front of a U.S. immigration official. Bizarrely, rather than fixing this system and expanding it, the administration is trying to rescind it in court while continuing to enforce Title 42. It should be doing the opposite.
Such incoherence has unfortunately afflicted the administration’s immigration policy from the start. Ending it is a necessary step toward a more orderly system — one that upholds American values and brings in the immigrants the country needs.
Editorials are written by the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board.
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