I really don't get the whole "merit based" immigration thing. My grandparents came to this country with fucking nothing. No education. Nothing. Their children (my uncles and aunts) were uneducated. One of them is a postman for the USPS, anther is a newspaper delivery driver, and my aunt is a bank teller. None of them had anything higher than a high school degree apart from my dad who came in as a dentist. Now one of my cousins is in a management position at Merrill Lynch and another is a chief of engineering at one of the country's largest aerospace engineering firms. Another of my cousins was an Intel finalist and goes to Harvard.

On my girlfriend's mom's side, all of her aunts came to this country with nearly nothing. Some of them had college educations and some of them came to America for graduate studies. Now, one of my girlfriend's cousins went to Stanford and then went on to work at Tesla. Another of her cousins also went to Stanford and went on to found a successful tech startup that was sold to Google. Another one works for a major marketing firm in Seattle and she herself is getting a PhD in Plasma Physics.

Merit based immigration is totally retarded because the potential of America lies in the Americans it produces... the immigrants themselves might have near 0 economic potential but their children could rise above all the shit.