Donald Trump caused an uproar last week when he labeled Haiti and African countries “shitholes”. This overt racism appalled people across the globe. But without using profanities, some of the world’s most well-regarded admission systems – which have informed Republican proposals here – quietly ensure few people from Haiti, Africa and countries subject to the “Muslim ban” ever immigrate.



Following the abolition of admission policies that evaluated applicants on the basis of their race and origin until the 1960s and 1970s, Australia, Canada and some countries in western Europe shifted to points-based systems that prioritized immigrants with desirable skills and regional free movement agreements with their neighbors.



Points-based systems – which select immigrants based on their language proficiency, educational credentials, age, work experience and skills, among other criteria – have previously been supported by many Democrats and Republicans, including more recently President Trump.

However, while these innovations were designed to reduce racial bias in the ways governments select newcomers, they reproduce this bias in more subtle ways.

In 2011, Laura Hill and Joseph Hayes simulated the effect on immigrants’ origins were the United States to adopt the points-based tests considered by Congress as part of proposed comprehensive immigration reforms in 2007. Only 1% of Latin Americans would pass. Meanwhile, the pass rate would be 6% for Europeans and central Asians, 12% for people from east Asia, south Asia, and 14% of Canadians.

Without using any simulations, a 2012 study led by economist Tito Boeri found that the population of immigrants admitted on visas for “highly skilled” workers across highly developed countries is heavily skewed toward migrants from other highly developed countries – nearly all of which are predominantly European or Anglo-origin.

There is also evidence that points-based systems disadvantage women too. Governments tend to devalue skills typically associated with women such as caregiving, hospitality and those relevant to the service sector. And because of social norms and family dynamics, men are more likely to have longer periods of uninterrupted work experience, higher education credentials, and networking opportunities.

This is bias.

With regional free movement agreements like those under the European Union and the trans-Tasman agreement between Australia and New Zealand, the mobility given to member state citizens reduces demand for low- and high-skilled labor that might otherwise come from non-white majority countries. Entry data show that many of these countries have relied more and more on free movement migrants to fill labor gaps, rather than recruit immigrants from outside the region.

To be clear, these policies do not deny Haitians or Africans entry because they are Haitian or African; indeed, Canada admits a significant number of Caribbeans and Africans. Rather, they set standards that very few Haitians or Africans are likely to meet due to the less developed state of their economies and education systems. They may also reinforce racialized inequalities in the countries of origin, impede the reunification of families, and hurt the development potential of migration.

These so-called “merit-based” systems can also assign points for bona fide family relationships and humanitarian need. President Trump and his Republican colleagues simply do not believe that family bonds and human vulnerability have any “merit”.

Further questions arise because it is not clear that points-based systems are any better at promoting immigrants’ economic integration than other types of visas. Some observers argue that migrants who enter via points-based systems are more likely to have difficulty finding jobs and building social networks than migrants who enter on family visas or perhaps even humanitarian visas.

Family migrants benefit from the immediate embrace offered by spouses, parents, and other relatives, who help them adapt and succeed in their new environment. The arrival of humanitarian migrants is facilitated by refugee resettlement agencies, which provide language classes, job training and cultural orientation.

These admissions programs – particularly family reunification, humanitarian migration, and the diversity lottery, which have collectively made up the vast majority of America’s permanent visas recently – are precisely those that have driven the United States’ ethnic diversification since 1965. And they are precisely those which would be cut by the immigration admissions programs that the president and his Republican colleagues are currently proposing.

In this light, President Trump’s comments are less significant for the severe prejudice they reveal in his personal worldview. This much we knew.

Rather, they are significant in that they help us connect this worldview to the subtleties of immigration policymaking. In the revolutionary changes he and Republicans are proposing to immigrant admissions, they will effectively create a government that favors people from Norway over Haiti under the guise of promoting immigrants’ economic integration.

Unlike the president’s Muslim ban, his cuts in refugee admissions, and his assaults on undocumented people and their families – all of which a future White House can swiftly reverse – admissions criteria can last generations.



Such policy proposals represent the first shots in a battle to remake the ethnic composition of American society and should be scrutinized very carefully for the promises they make and the motivations they veil.