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.

Two things ought to temper this enthusiasm. First, Canada and Australia have concluded that pure points systems do not work well. A surprisingly high share of the people admitted this way ended up unemployed. Both countries have since changed their immigration criteria so that applicants who have job offers in their pockets may jump the queue. Second, migrants who move to America to join family members have become much better educated.

Of the more than 1m new green-card holders (or permanent residents) in 2015, the most recent year with numbers available, almost half were immediate relatives of citizens. A further 20% entered through preferences given to other family members. That left just 14% who were sponsored by companies, about the same share who first entered the country as refugees or asylum-seekers (a further 5% were lottery winners). Despite this bias towards families, the share of immigrants who arrived with degrees has risen from 27%, for those who arrived between and 1986 and 1990, to almost half now.

America is not the only rich country to have seen such an increase. According to the OECD (a club of mostly wealthy countries), the number of college-educated migrants heading to member countries grew by 70% between 2001 and 2011. Recent migrants to America are as likely to be highly educated as those who move to Europe are. They still lag some way behind Australia and Canada, though.