The Broadway musical Hamilton has a line that elicits thunderous applause every night—“Immigrants, we get the job done.” Recent research shows us that the line could just as accurately state, “Immigrants, we create jobs.”
One recent study shows that immigrant-founded and owned companies employ nearly 6 million people. And even Mary Meeker’s 2017 report, which analyzes and predicts the latest Internet and technology trends, emphasizes the importance of immigrants in the tech sector and as entrepreneurs.
Sixty percent of America’s most highly valued tech companies were co-founded by first- or second-generation immigrants. These include Steve Jobs, a second-generation Syrian immigrant, and Sergey Brin, the Russian immigrant who co-founded Google.
The United States immigration law operates on a set of principles aimed at facilitating family reunification, attracting skilled individuals beneficial to the economy, providing refuge to those fleeing persecution, and fostering diversity within its borders. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) serves as the cornerstone of this legal framework, dictating the annual allocation of immigrant visas and guiding the processes of admission and naturalization.
The INA allows for the issuance of up to 675,000 permanent immigrant visas annually across various categories, with additional allowances for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens and certain refugees. Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs), also known as green card holders, enjoy the privilege of living and working in the U.S. indefinitely, with eligibility to apply for citizenship after a specified period.
Family-based immigration forms a crucial component of the U.S. immigration system, prioritizing the reunion of immediate relatives and certain family preferences. In 2015, Republican Jeb Bush called for border enforcement to prevent pregnant mothers from coming to the United States to deliver “anchor babies,” an offensive term for children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants.
Immediate relatives, including spouses, unmarried children under 21, and parents of U.S. citizens, benefit from unlimited visa availability, while family preference visas are subject to numerical limitations and include categories such as adult children and siblings of U.S. citizens, as well as spouses and unmarried children of LPRs.
The allocation of family preference visas is subject to a complex formula aimed at maintaining balance and fairness across categories.
The dehumanizing myth of the “anchor baby” perpetuates the false notion that having a U.S. citizen child is an effective means for unauthorized parents to stay in the United States. Children who are U.S. citizens rarely factor into such decisions and the U.S. routinely rips immigrant families apart.
President Barack Obama, who deported more than 2½ million immigrants, has often been called the “Deporter in Chief.” Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that U.S. immigration agents deported more than 100,000 parents of more than 200,000 U.S. citizen children in Obama’s first two years alone.
The Trump administration embraced bigotry and sought to cut legal immigration to the United States by half. Trump’s hardline policies resonate with ill-informed Republican voters who subscribe to xenophobic ideas and lies about immigrants purportedly taking jobs or abusing economic benefits.
He temporarily stopped immigrants from seven Muslim countries from entering the US before that unconstitutional ban was struck down by the courts.
When Trump returns to the Oval Office, families will be torn apart at the border and within the United States. Using rhetoric that echoes Nazis, Trump made incendiary and racist comments asserting that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” coming from “mental institutions,” and planning to vote for President Joe Biden, all of which are discriminatory and unfounded lies.
Employment-based immigration avenues offer opportunities for individuals with valuable skills or specialized talents to come to the U.S., either temporarily or permanently. Temporary employment-based visas cater to diverse professions and industries, ranging from intracompany transfers to skilled performers, while permanent employment-based immigrant visas are allocated across five preference categories based on factors like extraordinary ability, advanced degrees, and skilled or unskilled labor needs.
Per-country ceilings further regulate immigration flows, ensuring a level playing field by limiting the dominance of any single nationality in the immigration pool. Additionally, the U.S. provides humanitarian relief through refugee admissions and asylum protections, offering refuge to individuals facing persecution or unsafe conditions in their home countries. The admission of refugees is subject to an annual cap determined by the president, with regional allocations reflecting geopolitical considerations and humanitarian needs.
The Diversity Visa Program aims to enhance cultural diversity by granting visas through a random lottery system to nationals of countries with historically low rates of immigration to the U.S. Although intended to foster inclusivity, the program faced challenges and disruptions, including immigration bans that temporarily halted its operations and left lottery winners in limbo.
Beyond traditional immigration pathways, various forms of humanitarian relief, such as Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and humanitarian parole, provide temporary reprieve or legal status to individuals facing extraordinary circumstances or hardship.
Nothing underscore the complexity and dysfunction at work today that the GOP’s rejection of immigration reform legislation written by Republicans and agreed to by the Biden admnistration and enough Democrats to get the measure through Congress.
At the end of the debate, Republicans—particilarly Donald Trump—wanted to keep a campaign issue alive rather than accept a policy victory that comes with near total surrender.
Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío recently said officials in his country are willing to accommodate more deportation flights from the United States, while some Americans are hoping to derail any normalization of diplomacy with the tiny island.
U.S. citizenship represents the ultimate goal for many immigrants, requiring fulfillment of residency, character, language, and civics requirements, among others. Naturalization offers a pathway to full participation in American society and civic life, symbolizing the culmination of the immigration journey.
Nobody is working harder to prevent people from reaching that goal than those who should—by any standard of reason—be dedicated to serving our national aspirations and values.
U.S. immigration law and policy are multifaceted, reflecting a blend of humanitarian values, economic imperatives, and cultural aspirations but the political system strives to advance competing interests rather than uphold principles of fairness and equity.