Editorial Board

Trump's Immigration Dead End

The new plan doesn't really reward skills. It just sabotages the economy.

We're with her.

Photographer: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

Leave aside the other features of the immigration-reform proposal President Donald Trump endorsed on Wednesday and focus on its main idea: Reducing immigration by half over a decade. It's the wrong goal, and it subverts the rest of the plan.

There's no doubt the U.S. immigration system is broken -- or that a shift to a merit-based immigration system, which the proposal advocates, is long overdue. But admitting far fewer immigrants would do enormous damage to the U.S. economy and the federal government's fiscal stability.