Should the U.S. Continue Its Family-Friendly Immigration Policy?
Author | : Harriet Orcutt Duleep |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 34 |
Release | : 2014 |
ISBN-10 | : OCLC:1308848414 |
ISBN-13 | : |
Rating | : 4/5 (14 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: An ongoing debate is whether the U.S. should continue its family-based admission system, which favors visas for family members of U.S. citizens and residents, or adopt a more skills-based system, replacing family visas with employment-based visas. In many ways this is a false dichotomy: family-friendly policies attract highly-skilled immigrants regardless of their own visa path, and there are not strong reasons why a loosening of restrictions on employment migrants need be accompanied by new restrictions on family-based immigration. Moreover, it is misleading to think that only employment-based immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy. Recent immigrants, who have mostly entered via kinship ties, are economically productive, a fact hidden by a flawed methodology that underlies most economic analyses of immigrant economic assimilation.