Back in May 2019, then US president Donald Trump approached the podium in the Rose Garden at the White House and delivered what would turn out to be one of his more weirdly normal speeches. The topic was immigration reform, and it was weird precisely because it didn’t veer off into Trump’s usual race baiting—no rapist Mexicans or terrorist Arabs—though there was still plenty of fear mongering.
Trump railed against an immigration system that he said was too random, relying almost entirely on family-sponsored immigration—so-called chain migration—and visa lotteries, robbing America of the chance to recruit the world’s top talent. He noted with atypical accuracy that of the more than 1 million people who received lawful permanent resident status in the US, only 12 percent were “selected based on skill or based on merit” (according to the Office of Homeland Security, the figure was in fact 12.6 percent in 2018). In other countries, he added, specifically calling out Canada, the percentages were “closer to 60 and even 70 and 75 percent.”
