Merit Based Immigration - Good or Bad

Good. Very Good. If we lose this fight to change the current system and to finally secure the border this country is in trouble.

Excellent! Must benefit host country as well as incoming individuals.

of course it's good, necessary and common sense

Absolutely should. Most countries require it.

Of course it’s fricking good

It's bad. We have 320 million people in this country. Time to close the gates.

That is at least partially a result of articifial restrictions on the amount of medical students allowed to enroll.

Good.

Important borderline retards by the bushel since 1965 has not helped this country.

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That is at least partially a result of articifial restrictions on the amount of medical students allowed to enroll.

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True, but it doesn't hurt to have American educated and trained doctors, or other well trained and qualified doctors, from other countries to fill the void, particularly if they're willing to work in the rural areas that a lot of American doctors have no desire to live or work in.

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What are your thoughts on Merit Based Immigration?

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It's time for it. When the US was in its infancy and even up until WW2 we had far more of a manual labor-based society. Whether it was a service industry (like restaurants) or something more blue collar (farm or factory work), the main things needed were a desire to work and a willingness to learn a trade. You weren't going to make the Rockefellers jealous but you could afford shelter, clothing, food and to raise a small family.

Today we're far more of a higher-level service society. While we still have plenty of manual labor jobs, it's nothing close to the levels of previous decades due to technological advancements.

When I was a child my extended family farmed 1,100 acres. To do that we needed a crew of at least a half-dozen people for hoeing, stomping cotton, keeping up the property (mowing, fence rows, drainage, etc) and maintaining equipment. Today, it's being done with two people total.

That story is to illustrate the change in farming needs but that change goes well beyond just farming. Those low-to-no-skill jobs are what a lot of immigrants have traditionally started on (or stayed on while putting money back for their kids to go to school and hopefully do better). With the massive levels of illegal immigration we've seen for the past two decades, we have far more than enough low-to-no-skill potential workers to fill such positions.

What we need (as mentioned by another poster) are higher-end workers. Doctors, nurses, coders, etc. and a simple lottery doesn't guarantee those.

It's like going to a grocery store and getting an assload of M&M's because they're cheap and plentiful when what you really need are vitamins.