Americans are viewed as being obsessed with money. But when it comes to immigration, the US stands apart as the least money-minded of its peers. From Canada to Australia, the more cash you have the quicker you get your passport. In the UK, the doors were long since flung open to the world’s tired and huddled Russian oligarchs. By contrast, the Byzantine US visa system does its best to deter educated foreigners while in practice accepting an outsized share of the world’s migrant poor. There is every likelihood that contrast is about to get wider.

Sometime in 2013, Congress looks likely to double down on the country’s unmercenary way of doing things. Faced with a choice between slow extinction or the chance of electoral recovery, the Republican party – or enough of it – will probably hold its nose and join Democrats to support a bill that would bring America’s 11m illegal immigrants in from the cold. Lawmakers will lay enough puddles along the “pathway to citizenship” to avoid being accused of granting “amnesty”. But that is what it would be. Such an act would be unique among rich countries (America’s last amnesty was in 1986). It would also be the right thing to do.

No such prospect awaits the hundreds of thousands of highly educated foreigners who would jump at their own US pathway. Last Friday, the Obama administration announced that the quota for this year’s H1B visa – the temporary work permit for skilled foreign workers – had been exhausted within five days. Compared to the 10 weeks it took in 2012, last week’s surge pointed to an improving US economy (and helped to counter the gloom over March’s weak jobs growth).