Now, I do realize I kind of contradicted myself here by saying immigrants have grit, but then criticized some of them for lack of value. So I obviously do not have the complete answer to this, but do think some form of merit based system would be beneficial, along with 58% of the rest of the country. The policy needs to be formed in a way to not discourage those with value from coming here.
"Nobody knew immigration reform could be so complicated!"
— Donald J. Trump, sometime in the near future.
The idea of changing the balance between family-based immigration and employment-based immigration was considered and supported by the Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations as part of what is known within the federal government as "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" (CIR). The Obama Administration also approved of this change, but gave up on trying to push new legislation because it concluded—almost certainly correctly—that given the increase in right-wing influence within the Republican majority in the House of Representatives there was no possibility of passing CIR.
Aside from the technical issues, putting together an immigration reform program is politically complicated because there is no way either the Democrats or the Republicans can pass it without support from the other party. The Bush Administration developed an expertly-crafted bill in consultation with Congressional immigration experts representing both parties and both chambers of Congress, only to have it go down in flames because influential Hispanic organizations were disappointed with its treatment of undocumented aliens.
The fundamental problem is that there is a limited constituency for moving toward an employment-based immigration scheme: mainly, immigration specialists inside the government, and private and government economists. The business community is far more concerned with non-immigrant visa policy because sponsorship of non-immigrant visa applicants is essential in many industries, from high-tech to agriculture, for acquiring workers to do jobs for which U.S. citizens and permanent residents don't qualify or aren't interested in doing.
The constituency that really cares about immigrant visa policy is composed of U.S. citizens and current permanent residents who want to sponsor relatives. The citizens, of course, are voters, and in some states they are sufficiently concentrated that members of Congress, of either party, feel compelled to take their concerns very seriously.
That's where CIR comes in. Recent national administrations have assembled proposals that were intended to move toward an employment-based immigrant policy, restrict to close relatives the availability of family-based immigrant visas, provide businesses with an enlarged pool of non-immigrant visa applicants where there are genuine shortages of domestic workers, reduce the abuse of some non-immigrant visa categories (for example by foreign "job shops" that exploit the H-1B skilled worker category), and normalize the status of undocumented ("illegal") aliens. Aside from the fact that all these policies have strong support among immigration experts, the idea is that by tackling a series of known issues simultaneously it may be possible to assemble a bipartisan political coalition broad enough to get legislation through both chambers of Congress and onto the desk of the president.
It hasn't happened yet. I haven't seen the language of the latest bill, but I wouldn't hold my breath that it will fare any better than the other proposals that have been offered over the last 20 or so years.
