Examining Point Systems as a Method for Selecting Immigrants

Testimony of MPI President Demetrios G. Papademetriou before the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law.

"Madame Chairwoman, Members of the Subcommittee: 

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss point and point-like immigrant selection systems. I have studied and written about such systems across the advanced industrial world for nearly two decades now and, at your invitation, I am here to share with you my reflections on whether and how such point systems might be usefully incorporated into the way that the US conducts parts of its immigration business. 

While the observations below are my own, they rely on studies that I have undertaken by myself and with others, most notably, with Stephen Yale-Loehr, Kevin O’Neil, and, most recently, Will Somerville and Jeanne Batalova. The results of the collaboration with the last two authors were completed in February of 2007 and I would like to respectfully submit that product for the record. 

Today, I will focus my remarks on four areas. 

• The first will be a few general remarks about the nature of point systems—why and how they were created and why they seem to be so popular. 
• The second will be a series of observations about whether reliance on point systems for selecting certain US-bound immigrants makes sense. 
• The third area will focus on the value of point system-like procedures for conducting certain parts of our country’s immigration business. 
• The fourth and final area draws on my experience to suggest the proper place of point systems in the overall immigration policy toolkit of our country.[...]"