That's what we are hearing about the Bangladeshi immigrant who tried to bomb the New York subway yesterday. Both of these concepts are new to me. I never heard of either of them before yesterday. Apparently we are issuing green cards just cause someone has a relative already in the US. And the lottery who knows how that works.
Both of these programs are unfair and wrong.
Immigration to the US is highly prized all over the world. Everyone would like to move to the US. Nobody wants to move to Venezuela, Cuba, or Russia. We ought to take advantage of this and accept immigrants who will become loyal and valuable citizens.
We can only accept so many immigrants per year, lest they swamp the country. I submit that we can handle immigration equal to say 1% of the present population. Since US population is about 330 million, that allows 3.3 million immigrants per year. I'm thinking we have ten times that many applicants.
So, we set up a point system, each applicant gets so many points for qualities we deem desirable. Like points for holding a doctorate in the hard sciences, points for speaking, reading, and writing English. points for being of working age. Points for assisting the US armed forces. Points for knowing a trade, publishing a book, points for engineering degrees, points for knowing how to program computers, points for being married, points for having children, plus a whole bunch more desirable and useful skills and accomplishments. Subtract points for a criminal record, or membership in ISIS and the like. Some appointed committee can have a wonderful time setting up the point system.
Then we assign a score to every applicant, and admit the top scoring 3.3 million applicants. We tell the rest of them to try again next year.
That's fair. And it will give us a lot of good decent citizens and fewer subway bombers.
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