Immigrants to America are better educated than ever before

JOSÉ ROMMEL UMANO, who is originally from the Philippines, moved to New York last autumn. He came on a family-reunification visa and joined his wife, who had been living in America for some time. This is a typical tale: America gives more weight to close family members when considering immigration applications than some other rich countries do. More surprising is that Mr Rommel Umano arrived with a master’s degree from the University of Tokyo and 20 years of experience as an architect in Japan. Yet this, it turns out, is typical too. Nearly half of all immigrants who arrived between 2011 and 2015 were college-educated. This is a level “unheard of” in America, says Jeanne Batalova, co-author of the paper containing the finding published by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a think-tank.

One of Donald Trump’s many executive orders instructed the Departments of Labour, Justice and Homeland Security to examine immigration rules. The president, whose hostility to illegal migrants is well-known, has also said that he would like to change the criteria for choosing legal ones, pointing to Canada or Australia as models for America to copy. In 1967 Canada became the first country to introduce a points system for immigration; Canada and Australia now both give priority to would-be migrants with degrees, work experience and fluent English (and, in Canada, French). Some of the president’s advisers think this more hard-headed system is better than America’s family-centred approach. The doomed immigration bill from 2013 that died in the House of Representatives also reflected widespread enthusiasm for a points-based system.