Immigration - Part One of Part One
The Background Explainer That Won’t Make Anyone Mad (Part One)
Last Thursday, the United States beat Pakistan in match play in the International Cricket Council Men’s T20 World Cup. The win was one of the biggest upsets in cricket history.
Cricket is the most popular sport in Pakistan. It is not the most popular sport here—I’ve watched a whole lot of sports for a whole lot of minutes, and I think I’ve watched a grand total of 20 minutes of cricket in 34 years (Australia vs. somebody. I was in law school. It looked awesome—I had no idea what was happening). The match, which was not televised, was held in Dallas in a former minor league baseball stadium that seats 7,000. For comparison, AT&T Stadium, where the Cowboys play, seats 80,000. The Rangers’ Globe Life Field seats 40,300. The Mavericks play in the American Airlines Center, which seats 20,000. Heck, there’s a high school football stadium—Memorial Stadium—in Mesquite, Texas that seats 19,400.
Pakistan’s players are celebrities. The American players have day jobs—one of the team’s stars works full-time as an engineer for Oracle.
So how did we win? Beyond “the Americans played better than the Pakistanis,” the answer isn’t surprising: Team USA consists entirely of first or second generation Americans who hail from countries like India where cricket is the main event.
We’ll get back to that.
A Word of Caution
I feel it my duty to inform you that this is a boring post. It might be very boring. I’m trying to summarize a bunch of US laws. Here’s the thing: actual laws are boring. Trust me—I’m a lawyer. The stories behind laws? Pretty interesting! Fighting about laws? Pretty fun! Political fights might be even more fun—you don’t even need to know what you’re fighting about.
But one of the main points of this whole project is understanding your fellow Americans and where they’re coming from, and, sadly, I think that means having a working understanding of the actual laws. That’s going to mean a couple of background articles to bring everyone up to speed—I promise we’ll get to the good stuff.
Setting the Stage
However you want to slice it, this is a country of immigrants. Approximately 1.1% of the American population self-identifies as entirely of indigenous descent—2.9% as of partial indigenous descent. For the remaining 97.1% of us, all of our ancestors came from somewhere else, either willingly or unwillingly.
But what if you want to come now? Indulge me for a moment and imagine that you aren’t already here.
Let’s say that you’re a citizen and resident of Germany, Nigeria, Japan, Turkey, Chile, or [insert your country or territory of choice]. As you sit in your home at night, you watch a documentary about Arnold Schwarzenegger on your laptop. You see the Austrian Oak leave his home country, first to England, then to Germany, then to England again, and, finally, in 1968, to America. You see him become the most famous bodybuilder on the planet; a massive financial success as an actor; and the governor of a state whose GDP eclipses that of every country but the U.S., China, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom. You look up from your computer and catch your reflection in a window. You mutter to yourself, like the woman in Napoleon Dynamite huskily whispering to her husband about the model ship, “I want that.”
So, what are your options? Today, we’re covering the biggest of the big guns: permanent legal options for people currently living outside the United States.
Advance to Go, Collect a Green Card
Immigration into the US is governed by the Immigration and Nationality Act, first passed in 1952 and amended multiple times since, most notably by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. We’ll call the whole body of law the “INA.”
Under the INA, the US can grant up to 675,000 permanent immigrant visas each year across various categories. When we say “US” in this context, we mean U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”). USCIS, along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) and Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”), is a successor to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. USCIS, ICE, and CBP came into being in 2003 shortly after the creation of the DHS.
Once a person obtains a permanent immigrant visa and comes to the United States, they become a lawful permanent resident (“LPR”), or “green card” holder—a non-citizen who is lawfully authorized to live permanently in the US.
Green card holders are immediately eligible to apply for all jobs not legitimately restricted to US citizens. Typically, a green card holder must reside in the US for five years before applying for US citizenship.
So, permanent immigrant visa (let’s call them “PIVs”) → green card → citizenship. Got it.
This is where it gets complicated (this is the start—the start is where it gets complicated):
Family-Based Immigration
480,000 of each year’s 675,000 total PIVs are allotted to family members of American sponsors (citizens or LPRs).
In most years, 254,000 PIVs are supposed to go to immediate relatives of US citizens: spouses, unmarried minor children (i.e., under 21), and parents.
Big caveat: there actually isn’t a cap on this group of possible visa recipients, so, technically, if all 18 and older single adults in the US (there are…approximately 127 million of them) decided that love awaited them not in America but abroad, and they were all very quickly and decisively successful in finding that love (as in, they all got married), we could have 127 million new LPRs on our hands. Five years down the road, those LPRs could become citizens, which could lead to a bunch more LPRs with all the in-laws coming in. Realistically, we’d need to annex Canada.
The remaining 226,000 family PIVs go to (1) unmarried adult children of US citizens (23,400); (2A) spouses and minor children of LPRs (87,900); (2B) unmarried adult children of LPRs (26,300); (3) married adult children of U.S. citizens (23,400); and (4) siblings of US citizens (65,000).
Generally speaking, visas that aren’t used in one category can be used in another.
“Derivative” immigrants count toward the numerical caps. For example, in fiscal year 2019, 61,031 were admitted as siblings of US citizens, but only 22,179 were the actual siblings—the remainder were the siblings’ spouses (14,956) and children (23,896).
Employment-Based Immigration
There more than 20 types of visas for temporary nonimmigrant workers—we’ll get into those next time. The overall numerical limit for employment-based PIVs is 140,000 per year. This number includes spouses and minor unmarried children, so the actual number of employment-based immigrants typically falls well short of the PIVs cap.
The following comes from the USCIS website:
40,040 of employment PIVs are allotted to “priority workers”:
Aliens with extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics;
Outstanding professors and researchers; or
Certain multinational managers and executives.
Another 40,040 go to aliens who are members of the professions holding advanced degrees or who have exceptional ability.
A third chunk of 40,040 go to skilled workers, professionals, or other workers.
9,940 are available to certain “special immigrants,” including religious workers or employees of US foreign service posts, among others.
Finally, 9,940 go to immigrant investors—persons who will invest at least $1,050,000 in a new commercial enterprise that will benefit the US economy and create at least 10 full-time positions for US workers.
Diversity Visas
In case you haven’t been counting, we’ve whittled our 675,000 total down to 55,000. The Diversity Visa Program was created in 1990 for immigrants from countries with low rates of immigration to the US. Each year, 55,000 visas are allocated randomly through a computer-generated lottery to applicants from countries that have sent fewer than 50,000 immigrants to the US in the previous five years.
To be eligible for a diversity visa, applicants must have a high-school education (or equivalent) or, within the past five years, a minimum of two years working in a profession requiring at least two years of training or experience.
In part because of Trump administration immigration bans and in part because of Covid, far fewer diversity visas were issued in fiscal year 2020 (19,125), the last year of President Trump’s administration, and fiscal year 2021 (18,912), over eight months of which came during President Biden’s administration. The number of diversity visas issued since has been at or around the cap.
Big Caveat Number 1 - There’s a Per-Country Cap That Governs All of the 675,000 PIVs
Under the INA, no group of permanent immigrants from a single country, including both family and employment-based immigrants, can exceed seven percent of the total number of people immigrating to the United States in a single fiscal year. In practical terms, that means that some countries may use up their visas quickly and not have access to any more until the next year. It also means that you can’t just import everyone from your favorite country and use up all 675,000 visas.
Refugees (And Then We’ll Get to Big Caveat Number 2)
Refugees can be admitted to the United States based upon an inability to return to their home countries because of a “well-founded fear of persecution” due to their race, membership in a particular social group, political opinion, religion, or national origin. Refugees apply for admission from outside the United States, typically from a “transition country.” Asylum applicants are subject to the same legal standard, but typically apply from inside the United States. We’ll cover asylum next time.
The president, in consultation with Congress, determines the numerical ceiling for refugee admissions. In the below chart, you can see how the ceiling and actual number admitted have changed over the years—starting high under Carter, dropping (but remaining high) during Reagan’s first term before surging during his second term and Bush I’s presidency, dropping steadily under Clinton, dropping as the United States went to war under Bush II then increasing during his second term, staying largely static under Obama, dropping to an all-time low under Trump, and now increasing again under Biden (although the actual number admitted far trails the cap).
Big Caveat Number 2
Keep in mind that all of the above only covers PIVs—permanent immigrant visas, which by definition only go to people currently outside the United States—and refugees. So, despite the 675,000 cap on PIVs (plus, potentially, more for immediate family members) and the 60,000ish refugees coming in (against the 125,000 cap), the actual number of green cards issued in a single year may eclipse a million (as it did in fiscal year 2022). We’ll get into why in the next issue.
For Next Time
Man, there’s a lot to get through. Next time, we’ll cover lawful permanent residence for people already in the United States and get started on illegal immigration. Then, to recent events (including Biden’s executive order), historical context, arguments on both sides, and where we go from here.
Some Stuff to Consider in Closing
Let’s go back to the US cricket team. Everyone likes winning—Americans tend to be good at it. We win, historically, because we, to a far greater degree than other countries, attract others’ best. There are plenty of recent examples of relatively little import, like beating Pakistan at cricket with almost all of the country (i) not realizing the cricket was happening and (ii) not really knowing what cricket is at all, and Joel Embiid becoming a citizen and joining USA basketball in time for the Paris Olympics. There are others of much greater import—a disproportionate share of the scientists that worked on the Manhattan Project were immigrants or the children of immigrants.
Gallup surveys in 2021 showed that 16% of adults worldwide—approximately 900 million people—would like to leave their own country permanently given the opportunity. 18% of those, or 160 million, named the US as their desired future residence.
The supply of people wanting to come to the United States vastly outstrips the American people’s demand for immigrants. It’s a good reminder that life, writ large, isn’t fair, and is often unkind. It’s also a good reminder that, while the US is a darn sight shy of perfection, there are millions upon millions upon millions of people that would give up a whole lot to get here—that would trade their imperfections for ours.
Once we get through the additional background and a bunch of fighting, we’ll get into this idea of attracting other countries’ best—whether we’re doing enough, whether we’re doing too much, whether we’re prioritizing one thing when we should prioritize another, and so forth.
In closing, some wise words from Creed Bratton: “I already won the lottery—I was born in the US of A, baby.”
Today’s Random Fact
Woodpeckers have shockingly long tongues—depending on the species, the tongue can be up to a third of the bird’s total body length.
You might look at a bird like the Northern flicker below and wonder where the tongue is hiding—it’s not like the beak is all that big.
Turns, out the tongue is wrapped all the way around the back of the skull.
Illustration by Denise Takahashi.
Not really sure what to do with that, but wow.
Today’s Random Recommendation
If you haven’t seen the Great British Baking Show on Netflix, you are in for an absolute treat (maybe a pun?). If you have, but not in a while, maybe it’s time for a rewatch. There’s a certain purity and joyful curiosity with which the show treats its contestants—there is no artificial conflict, no choosing of good guys and bad guys, and no trying to make anyone be someone other than who they are. Everyone there is loved. Each episode is an hour free of artifice and full of great people in a great setting making great (and some very not great) bakes.
Subscriber Update
Well, since the last post, we have added one subscriber. God bless you, my beloved single digit.
Truthfully, as cool as it would be to get 50,000 subscribers overnight (if anyone knows how to do a bot farm—I believe that’s the term—let me know), it’s not going to work like that. This is my fourth post, and the first in a substantive series on immigration that will take weeks. What I would ask of all of you is that, as we get deeper and deeper into this and there’s more to share, that you do just that. If you like what you read and feel like you’re learning something new, thinking in a way you haven’t thought before, looking at ideological opponents in a way you haven’t before, or, heck, just passing a reasonably pleasant ten minutes, please invite other people to pass those reasonably pleasant minutes too.
These are going to keep coming, and, although I reserve the right to publish the occasional dud, they’re going to get better and better.
A woodpecker's tongue is one anatomical feature, of several, that helps protect the bird's brain and enables the repeated hammering of hard wood with the head. Perhaps in several thousand generations a subspecies of human beings--those whose ancestors primarily worked in law and/or in the non-profit space, or simply people who are masochistic enough to engage in earnest discussions about politics and immigration in the U.S.--will develop retracting, cranial-wrapping tongues to put Gene Simmons to shame. Hat tip to you, sir.