RAISE Act: Global panel of scholars explains 'merit-based' immigration

This Act would cut annual legal immigrant admissions by one-half, primarily by eliminating family-sponsored immigration visas for those who are not spouses or minor children of US citizens

Editor’s note: In February, U.S. Republican senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue, with President Donald Trump, unveiled an immigration bill called the RAISE Act. It would create a “merit-based” points system for evaluating foreigners applying to come to the U.S. through an employment visa.

The senators said that in drafting it, they had looked to best practices for points-based systems like those in Canada and Australia. As Congress takes up the issue of immigration, we turned to our global network of scholars to get their perspective on how points systems work.

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Kevin Johnson – University of California, Davis, United States

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