"Immigration in the Twenty-First Century: A Personnel Selection Approach"

This paper makes the case for an immigration policy that is adapted to the current realities of global competition for talent and workplaces that require high technology and highly – skilled employees. We argue that that an immigration policy based on personnel selection would be more effective than the current policy of family reunification or the popular alternatives. Immigrants should be selected using some of the same tools that an organization uses to select employees. We suggest two methods to select immigrants: (1) a point system, where immigrants are assigned points for demographic characteristics and immigrants with higher point values are admitted, and (2) testing individual immigrants using tests such as the Armed Forces Qualifying Test or other tests of individual abilities, with higher scoring individuals being admitted. Both methods would improve the productivity and skill levels of U.S. immigrants, reduce the backlogs of skilled people wishing to immigrate, and enable the U.S. to cope better with future fiscal problems and with increasing foreign competition.