THOSE keen to avoid hearing any more about the 45th president can download a filter that, for a fee, will scrub any mention of him from electronic devices. But for anyone interested in the long-term effects this president will have on America, the problem is the opposite. Donald Trump is so ubiquitous that it is hard to distinguish what really matters from what merely infuriates, and quieter changes can go unnoticed. One such was the unveiling on August 2nd of an immigration bill proposed by two Republican senators, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, and praised by the president. Even if the bill never becomes law, it could achieve something profound. Republicans have long denounced illegal immigration while sounding more upbeat about the legal sort. Under Mr Trump, the party is on the point of abandoning its optimism about legal migration, too.

America’s system for allowing people into the country to live and work functions fairly well despite, rather than because of, its messy design. About 1m people were granted green cards, which confer permanent residency, last year. Although a detailed breakdown for 2016 is not yet available, in 2015 two-thirds of green cards were handed out to family members of migrants, a share that is unlikely to have changed much. This makes America unusual. Other wealthy English-speaking democracies, including Britain, Australia and Canada, have already moved away from a system granting family members preferential treatment. Then there are the 140,000 green cards issued each year to people sponsored by their employers. Add in the 50,000 green cards issued by lottery to people from countries under-represented in the immigration numbers for the five previous years, sprinkle on refugee admissions, which fluctuate according to how much tumult there is abroad in any given year, and you reach the annual total.

This might sound like a recipe for recruiting low-skilled immigrants, a point often made by the system’s critics. In fact, nearly half of immigrants who arrived between 2011 and 2015 had college degrees. How educated immigrants are matters because, although the economic gains for low-skilled migrants of moving to America are great, the benefits to the American economy are not clear (see chart). Highly skilled immigrants, by contrast, offer a lot to their adopted country. Education seems to matter much more than where people come from. Two-thirds of Nigerian immigrants have college degrees, for example, and Nigerian-Americans consequently have household incomes that are well above the average. Under the Cotton-Perdue bill the green card lottery would end and the family preference system would be limited to spouses or dependent children. This makes sense. But the bill also aims to cut by half the number of green cards issued each year, in an effort to restore immigration to “historic norms”, which does not. What counts as a historic norm depends on the figures you choose. Adjusted for population, current levels of immigration are abnormally low. In the 196 years for which data exist, America has issued green cards at an average rate of 4,500 per 1m Americans. Over the past 50 years the rate has been 2,900 per 1m. The proposed bill would reduce immigration as a proportion of the population to levels last seen in 1964, the year before a new federal law led to a rapid, largely unforeseen, increase in the absolute number of immigrants. Some conservatives see liberal soft-headedness in today’s policy, with its bias towards admitting family groups. But at the time, the law of 1965 was defended as a way to let in more migrants from places like Italy or Greece (who had been kept out by discriminatory national quotas imposed in 1924), without risking an influx from much poorer nations. As a co-sponsor of the bill, the New York congressman Emanuel Celler, told colleagues: “Since the people of Africa and Asia have very few relatives here, comparatively few could immigrate from those countries.”

Jump forward 52 years, and in addition to reducing the number of green cards, the new bill seeks to reduce the number of refugees America admits each year. The intention is to cut admissions to 50,000 a year, “in line with a 13-year average”. If that sounds like a period cherry-picked to give a number that is politically desirable, then that is because it is. Refugee admissions have been below 50,000 in only four of the past 30 years. If the bill’s authors had taken a 30-year average, the annual level would have come out at 75,000.

To replace this system, the bill proposes that green cards should be awarded on a points-based system, like those in Australia and Canada, with extra credit according to youth, wealth, ability to speak English, educational attainment, possession of an extraordinary talent and whether the applicant has a high-paying job offer. Evidence from Australia and Canada suggests that government-run points systems do not necessarily do a better job of connecting immigrants with jobs (the optimal system for that is one that gives employers more say). But they are popular with voters, who seem to like the flattering notion that their countries resemble a country club with stringent admission criteria.

When presenting the White House’s case, Stephen Miller, an adviser to the president, challenged news outlets to do polling on the proposals, implying that they reflect the public’s wishes. Ever keen to help, The Economist asked YouGov to do so. The results were not what Mr Miller may have expected. Only 27% of respondents favoured decreasing the level of legal immigration. When asked the question in a less stark way, a slightly higher share either strongly or somewhat supported halving legal immigration, but the combined total of support was still only 37%.

Other details in the proposed bill jarred. A plurality of respondents liked the idea of giving higher priority to potential migrants who already speak English. But they preferred the idea of giving priority to those with a close family member living in the country, suggesting continued support for family preference. Giving shelter to those trying to escape from war was more popular still. For good measure, we also poll-tested the inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...”), which is perhaps the antithesis of the White House’s approach to immigration. A case can be made that the poem unhelpfully conflates immigration with asylum, and casts the admission of hard-working newcomers as an act of charity, rather than a source of growth over the centuries. Still, it resonates. The vast majority (72%) thought the poem’s sentiment applied in the past, a plurality (43%) thought it applied now and a majority (55%) thought it should apply in the future.