I’ve studied immigration for years, but now that I’m prepping an Economics of Immigration class for the fall, I’ve been learning some new facts.
Today’s question: Who actually gets into the U.S. legally? Here’s what I found in the latest Yearbook of Immigration Statistics.
I’ve long known that family reunification is the heart of U.S. immigration policy, but I didn’t realize the extremity of the pattern. In 2018, 44% of visas went to immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, and another 20% were for family-sponsored visas. Much more strikingly, only 13% of visas were for employment! I knew that the U.S. admits few refugees and asylees, but I wouldn’t have guessed that employment-based immigration is even rarer. And I wasn’t even aware of the Iraqi/Afghan and victim categories, all of which plausibly count as humanitarian as well, for a grand total of 19% humanitarian in 2018.
I know how nativist U.S. public opinion is; while the share of Americans who want more immigration is rising, over 70% still oppose liberalization. Still, I find it hard to believe that either liberals or conservatives would be pleased by the low level of employment-based immigration. Faced with these figures, liberals would probably draw the relatively reasonable conclusion that we should double or triple the number of employment-based visas. Conservatives, for their part, would probably want to “make more room” for employment-based immigrants by cutting family-based and especially humanitarian visas. Never mind the fact that the U.S. has nothing but room!
READER COMMENTS
Mark
Jul 19 2020 at 12:03pm
The largest category of people getting permanent residency is spouses of US citizens, around 1/4th of the total. I’d guess that many or even most of those immigrants initially came to the US as employees or students on temporary visas and then married US citizens and applied for a green card that way because it’s easier than the employment route, so a large number of them might in fact be employment-based even if they are classified as family-based. It’d be interesting to see if there is a breakdown of that.
Kurt Schuler
Jul 19 2020 at 12:31pm
That you have been blogging on immigration for years and are only learning these basic facts now does not inspire confidence.
Garrett
Jul 19 2020 at 3:52pm
I agree. Bryan has written a book on immigration. How can this data be surprising? Feels like this is the most basic US immigration data the government could possibly record.
Alexander Nowrasteh
Jul 19 2020 at 9:20pm
And more than half of those employment-based green cards go to the immediate family members of the workers, so it’s even higher than that.
https://www.cato.org/blog/fewer-half-employment-based-green-cards-are-workers-0
Scott G
Jul 19 2020 at 10:28pm
Would be a great start to send these statistics to some media outlets with commentary.
Jose Pablo
Jul 21 2020 at 4:11pm
Fortunately for the US capacity to produce goods and services, most of the inmigrants eventually work here. No matter on which legal basis they enter the country.
We can only dream about the might of a “one billion residents USA” (well, arguably it could also be a nightmare for the rest of the world).
Andy
Jul 22 2020 at 9:44am
A spousal and employment visa are so different from each other it does not seem appropriate to consider their relative numbers and ask what should that ratio be. Dare I say category error. For those concerned with impact on the job market asking what percent of total workers are foreign born may be relevant.
I get that other forms of family visa do not have near universal support but doesn’t framing the stats in this way commit the same us vs them mentality to which you are so opposed. That the most important feature of these people is that they are immigrants and that asking how many of them should be adult children of us citizens vs detached employees is an appropriate question?
Brandon
Jul 23 2020 at 6:32am
Here’s a good, long essay on legal immigration to the U.S. written by a sociologist (and immigrant):
https://notesonliberty.com/longform-essays/legal-immigration-into-the-united-states/
The money shot:
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