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The United States is made up of 3.5 million square miles, with 84 people per square mile. The United Kingdom has 650 people per square mile. If we let in 2 billion people, we’ll have no more population density than the UK.
Stanford University’s Hoover Institution asked me to write an essay for its immigration journal, Peregrine , with the title, “What is the optimal number of immigrants to the US?”
My answer: 2,002,052,035. Seriously.
The economic case for accepting refugees.
Refugees may be the secret to long-term economic growth.
Immigrants bring with them increased likelihood of foreign direct investment from their native countries.
Why the UK? Well, it seems like a really pretty country and none too crowded on Masterpiece Theater. The Netherlands is also attractive with 1,250 people per square mile, so maybe 4 billion. Okay, maybe more of the US is uninhabitable desert or tundra, so maybe only 1 billion. However you cut it, the US still looks severely underpopulated relative to many other pleasant, advanced countries.
As you can see by my playful calculation, asking what is the optimal number of immigrants is the wrong question.
What is the optimal number of imported tomatoes? Soviet central-planners tried to figure things out this way. Americans shouldn’t. We should decide on the optimal terms on which tomatoes can be imported, and then let the market decide the number. Similarly, we should debate what the optimal terms for immigration are—How will we let people immigrate? What kind of people?—so that the vast majority of such immigrants are a net benefit to the US. Then, let as many come as want to. On the right terms, the number will self-regulate.
Econ 101: figure out the price, then set the rules of the game; don’t decide the quantity, or determine the outcome. When a society sets target quantities, or sets quotas, as the US does now with immigration, the result is generally a calamitous waste. With an immigrant quota, an entrepreneur who could come to the US and start a billion-dollar business faces the same restriction as everyone else. The potential Albert Einstein or Sergey Brin has no way to signal just how much his contribution to our society would be.
Why fear immigrants? You might fear they will overuse social services. Morally, just why your taxes should support an unfortunate who happened to be born in Maine and not one who happened to be born in Guadalajara is an interesting question, but leave that aside for now. It’s easy enough to structure a deal that protects the finances of the welfare state. Immigrants would pay a bond at the border, say $5,000. If they run out of money, are convicted of a crime, don’t have health insurance, or whatever, the bond pays for their ticket home. Alternatively, the government could establish an asset and income test: immigrants must show $10,000 in assets and either a job within six months or visible business or asset income.
In any case, welfare is a red herring. Immigrants might go to France for a welfare state. The vast majority of immigrants to the US come to work, and pay taxes. Overuse of social services is simply not a problem. But if you worry about it, it’s easy to structure the deal.
You might fear that immigrants will compete for jobs, and drive down American wages. Again, this is not demonstrably a serious problem. If labor does not move in, capital—factories and farms—moves out and wages go down anyway. Immigrants come to work in wide-open industries with lots of jobs, not those where there are few jobs and many workers. Thus, restrictions on immigration do little, in the long run of an open economy such as the US, to “protect” wages.
To the extent wage-boosting immigration restrictions can work, the higher wages translate into higher prices to American consumers. The country as a whole—especially low-income consumers who tend to shop at Walmart and benefit the most from low-priced goods—is not better off.
As a concrete example, we keep doctors and nurses out. And we bemoan how expensive health care has become. Well, immigration restrictions are designed to keep American wages up, and there they are, working as promised. But keeping doctor wages up means keeping your health costs up.
Wage-boosting arguments are particularly hypocritical for conservatives. If you recognize the failure of minimum wages, unions, occupational licensing, hours limitations, protectionism against imported goods, and other misguided policies to try to raise the well-being of American workers, then you have no business supporting immigration limits to the same end.
And finally, if it did work, restricting immigration benefits some American workers by hurting Mexican workers. Is it really America’s place in the world to take opportunities from poor Mexicans to subsidize our workers’ standard of living? We are a strange country that, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, rigorously prohibits employment discrimination “because of birthplace, ancestry, culture, linguistic characteristics common to a specific ethnic group, or accent . . .” and then requires such discrimination because of, well, birthplace.
But if that’s a worry, fine. The government could license protected occupations such that only US citizens can hold the protected occupational licenses. Too intrusive? Well, that’s what we’re trying to do by keeping people out, and good policy is not produced by putting nice appearances on nasty policies.
More seriously, one can worry that our society quickly absorbs educated people: engineers, programmers, venture capitalists, MBAs, and professors, but does not quickly absorb people with less education. If the low-skill, low-assimilation objection has merit, let in anyone with specific skills and credentials. Let’s talk about the terms, not the numbers.
Maybe you worry about social values. One can easily demand that immigrants speak English, and have a vague understanding of American institutions, history, and law, though we don’t require this of our native citizens. Fine. Let’s talk about the deal, not the numbers.
Maybe you worry, how will we build homes and find jobs for all these people? “We” don’t. They will. Markets, not the government, already provide homes and jobs for citizens. And anyway, aren’t we supposed to be worried about our stagnant economy? Everyone wants more housing construction in the US, yet there are only so many people who need only so many houses. Imagine the construction boom from millions of additional immigrants each year. Our ancestors did not need the American Indian federal government to provide them jobs or build them houses. Neither do new immigrants.
A ridiculous number of talented people are forced to leave after coming to the US to get engineering or business-school diplomas from US universities. Anyone who gets a degree here should be able to stay. Instead, we kick them out.
Another 11 million people are here, working hard, paying taxes, owning property, but scurrying around in semilegal status. They can’t really sue if swindled. They certainly can’t vote on how the society they live in works. They can’t get a driver’s license. They live in constant fear. This is a national embarrassment. We criticize other nations for “apartheid” when they deny legal status to people who have been living there for decades, or even generations. Yet one in 20 people living within US borders suffers the same fate.
OK, they are “illegal.” But Jim Crow had the full force of law too. Does, “They should respect the law,” apply to segregation laws? Not all laws are good. And, “They should get in line and follow the law,” is empty—it is simply impossible for the average migrant from Mexico, China, or India to come legally to the US.
If you’ve been here x years, have a job, and have stayed out of trouble, then you should get to stay. If we let everyone else who wants to migrate on these same terms, then we don’t have to worry about the unfairness of letting illegals “jump the line.” Get the terms right, and there will be no lines and no unfairness.
Let’s talk about the deal, not the numbers. For every objection to open immigration, it’s easy enough to find terms of the deal to resolve the matter. The right terms will allow the optimal amount of immigration to settle itself, so that no apparatchik in Washington has to come up with a number. Once we get the terms right, every person who can benefit our society will come, and America will truly be a great nation of great immigrants again.
John H. Cochrane is AQR Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor of Finance and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution. Previous versions of this essay appeared in Peregrine, and on Cochrane’s blog, The Grumpy Economist .
Works Cited
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Chicago Booth’s Sam Peltzman talks about his research on political ideology.
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Immigration challenges, values, and pragmatic solutions, popular essay topics.
Directions: Read the background essay and answer the critical thinking questions at the end. In addition, formulate your own questions about the content discussed.
In the modern era, nation-states are defined by their unique laws, forms of government, and distinct national cultures within the borders that make them sovereign nations. Since the early years of the United States’ history, the federal government has sought, with varying degrees of success, to control and define the nature and scale of immigration into the country. In the first seventy years of the nation’s history, immigration was left largely unrestricted. Congress focused its attention on defining the terms by which immigrants could gain the full legal rights of citizenship. Beginning in the 1880s, however, Congress began to legislate on the national and ethnic makeup of immigrants. Lawmakers passed laws forbidding certain groups from entering the country, and restricted the number of people who could enter from particular nations. In the 1920s, Congress enacted quotas based upon immigrants’ national origin, limiting the number of immigrants who could enter from non-Western European countries. In the 1960s, immigration policy was radically transformed , and the policies of the preceding generations were abolished.
Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution empowers the Congress to “Establish a Uniform Rule of Naturalization.” This means that Congress has the power to determine the rules and processes under which people from other countries may become citizens of the United States. The first national law concerning immigration was the Naturalization Act of 1790, which stated that any free white person who had resided in the U.S. for at least two years could apply for full citizenship. Congress also required applicants to demonstrate “good character” and swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. Enslaved Blacks forcibly brought to the country in the international slave trade were ineligible for citizenship.
In 1795, naturalization standards were changed to require five years’ prior residence in the U.S., and again in 1798 to require 14 years’ residence. The 1798 revision was passed amidst the anti-French fervor of the Quasi-War and sought to limit the influence of foreign-born citizens in federal elections. During Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, the 1798 standards were repealed to require five years’ residence once more. As immigration patterns changed over time, especially in the late 1840s and early 1850s when Irish and Germans replaced the British as the primary immigrant groups, federal immigration law remained largely unchanged. Despite anti-immigrant agitation in the 1850s and the rise of nativist political groups, no limits or quotas were imposed on immigration.
Questions still lingered about the nature of citizenship for Black Americans. In December 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery in all of the states. Were emancipated slaves citizens, or not? Through the end of the Civil War, enslaved people had not been considered citizens and possessed none of the rights of their white countrymen. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 established that freedmen were indeed citizens. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution confirmed the position set forth in the Civil Rights Act. The amendment stated that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The amendment prohibited the states from curtailing the privileges of federal citizenship. The construction of the citizenship clause indicates that anyone born in the U.S. is automatically a citizen, and this is what federal law has maintained ever since. However, some disagreement simmered as to the meaning of the citizenship clause, and whether it was intended to clarify the status of emancipated slaves, or whether it was written to apply to all peoples regardless of context.
During the congressional ratification debates, members made clear the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment. Senator and Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens argued in 1866 that the Fourteenth Amendment was the final fulfillment of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, a law designed to ensure equal rights for all Americans no matter their race or prior status under the law. Senator Jacob Howard, one of the chief authors of the citizenship clause, reassured Congress by saying the amendment “will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens” or had been born to foreign diplomats. Senator John Bingham echoed his colleague’s remarks and said the citizenship clause reasserts “that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of our Constitution itself, a natural-born citizen.” In 1868, the amendment was ratified, and the interpretation that favors the interpretation that all individuals born in the United States are naturalized citizens has prevailed.
After the Civil War, the American economy boomed as industry grew and the American West was settled and organized into new states. On the Pacific coast, the high demand for labor drew thousands of Chinese immigrants into the country to work in a variety of capacities. Most often, they worked building railroads or in mines. Others farmed or ran businesses in California’s growing cities. By the late 1870s, opposition to Chinese laborers had grown substantially, stemming from a combination of racism and the belief that Chinese laborers unfairly competed with white American laborers and stole their economic opportunities. Eventually, Congress passed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act barring virtually all new immigration from China. The act was extended in 1892 and on a permanent basis beginning in 1902. Other laws further restricted the rights and privileges of Chinese immigrants already in the United States. The Scott Act of 1888, for example, forbade Chinese immigrants who left the United States from returning, even if they were gone for a short period of time. It was not until World War II, when China was a military ally of the United States, that the ban on Chinese immigration was lifted.
For most of the 1800s, the main sources of immigrants to the United States were British, Irish, German, Scandinavian, and Central European peoples. By the 1880s, immigration patterns shifted toward Eastern and Southern European groups, especially Italians, Poles, Russians, and other Slavic peoples. Most were pulled to the United States by the promise of better opportunities and improved quality of life. The dramatic change in the ethnic makeup of this “new wave” of immigrants caused alarm among nativists who saw the new immigrants as inferior, criminals, and Catholics with little allegiance to republican ideals.
This same latent anti-immigrant hostility also erupted during both World Wars. Anti-immigrant antagonism has not always been racially motivated. In World War I, German-Americans (even those born in the United States) were subjected to discrimination and harassment for their national background. In some communities, German-Americans were lynched by mobs while others had their businesses boycotted or closed. Americans born in Germany were forced to register with the government as “enemy aliens,” and some states prohibited the use of the German language in school instruction. Most Lutheran churches ceased conducting services in the German language and adopted English instead.
One piece of legislation that emerged from this period was the Immigration Act of 1917 which created the Asiatic Barred Zone, a vast area of Asia from which no person could immigrate to the U.S. The prohibited areas included most of the Middle East, South Asian countries like Persia and British-ruled India, as well as central Asia and Southeastern Asia.
Nativist fears of the growing number of immigrants arriving from Eastern and Southern European countries also led Congress to pass the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, which placed limits on the number of people entering the country based upon prescribed quotas. The law used the 1910 Federal Census to determine existing numbers of foreign-born citizens already living in the U.S. It then required that a number equivalent to only 3% of the already resident population from a certain country could be admitted. Therefore, for example, if 100,000 Bulgarians already lived in the U.S., only 3,000 Bulgarian immigrants could enter annually thereafter. This scheme became known as the National Origins Formula. While the stated goal of federal policy sought to ensure that new waves of immigrants from outside western and central Europe could slowly integrate into American society and so could better embrace American notions of civic virtue, self-government, and productivity, its roots in nativism and insularism mark it as a dark moment in American history.
The Immigration Act of 1921 was followed a few years later by the Immigration Act of 1924 which decreased the quota from 3% to 2% and used the 1890 census instead of the 1910 census as the reference point for its quotas. Because Congress chose to utilize the 1890 census, which showed a higher proportion of residents from what were seen as more desirable European countries like Germany and Great Britain, the law created artificially low quotas for the new immigrants. Furthermore, it placed low caps on arrivals from majority non-white nations, like those in Africa and the Middle East. In the first year of its enactment, the law permitted 51,000 German immigrants, for example, but only 100 from the Arabian Peninsula.
During World War II, JapaneseAmericans were subjected to even worse treatment and were forced into internment camps for the duration of the war. In February 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which forced Japanese Americans to move away from the Pacific coast because of the fear they would support a Japanese invasion or engage in acts of sabotage. Fred Korematsu challenged the legality of Roosevelt’s directive, but in Korematsu v. U.S. (1944) the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the internment of Japanese Americans was constitutional.
The quotas and restrictions of the 1920s remained largely in place until the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, when he and Congress undertook a sweeping reform project of many of the most important public policy sectors. As part of his reform agenda, Johnson signed into law the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended use of the National Origins Formula. Under the new law, 120,000 immigrants were to be admitted annually from Western Hemisphere nations in Latin and South America. 170,000 people per year would be admitted from Asia, Africa, and Europe combined. The reforms of 1965 initiated a substantial change in the ethnic and national origin of immigrants with immigration today being dominated by non-European peoples from all parts of the world. Further, the 1965 reform provided an avenue for immigrants’ families to come to the United States after them, as family immigration is usually not counted in the overall quota. With minor revisions, the standards set forth in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 remain in effect today and still determines from which countries the United States draws its new citizens.
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Unmasking the boston police department’s gang database: how an arbitrary system criminalizes innocent conduct, a.b. 1766, 2021-2022 leg., reg. sess. (cal. 2022) (enacted).
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Since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, his administration has acted on a number of fronts to reverse Trump-era restrictions on immigration to the United States. The steps include plans to boost refugee admissions , preserving deportation relief for unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and not enforcing the “ public charge ” rule that denies green cards to immigrants who might use public benefits like Medicaid.
Biden has also lifted restrictions established early in the coronavirus pandemic that drastically reduced the number of visas issued to immigrants. The number of people who received a green card declined from about 240,000 in the second quarter of the 2020 fiscal year (January to March) to about 79,000 in the third quarter (April to June). By comparison, in the third quarter of fiscal 2019, nearly 266,000 people received a green card.
Biden’s biggest immigration proposal to date would allow more new immigrants into the U.S. while giving millions of unauthorized immigrants who are already in the country a pathway to legal status. The expansive legislation would create an eight-year path to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants , update the existing family-based immigration system, revise employment-based visa rules and increase the number of diversity visas . By contrast, President Donald Trump’s administration sought to restrict legal immigration in a variety of ways, including through legislation that would have overhauled the nation’s legal immigration system by sharply reducing family-based immigration.
The Biden administration has proposed legislation that would create new ways for immigrants to legally enter the United States. The bill would also create a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants living in the country.
To better understand the existing U.S. immigration system, we analyzed the most recent data available on federal immigration programs. This includes admission categories for green card recipients and the types of temporary employment visas available to immigrant workers. We also examined temporary permissions granted to some immigrants to live and work in the country through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status programs.
This analysis relies on data from various sources within the U.S. government, including the Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Department of State, Federal Register announcements and public statements from the White House.
The Senate is considering several immigration provisions in a spending bill, the Build Back Better Act , that the House passed in November 2021. While passage of the bill is uncertain – as is the inclusion of immigration reforms in the bill’s final version – the legislation would make about 7 million unauthorized immigrants eligible to apply for protection from deportation, work permits and driver’s licenses.
Amid a record number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border, Biden reinstated in December 2021 a Trump-era policy that requires those who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border and seek asylum to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed. Biden had earlier ended the Migration Protection Protocols , or “Remain in Mexico” policy, and then restarted it after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lawsuit by Texas and Missouri that challenged the program’s closure. Asylum seekers do not receive a legal status that allows them to live and work in the U.S. until the claim is approved.
Overall, more than 35 million lawful immigrants live in the U.S.; most are American citizens. Many live and work in the country after being granted lawful permanent residence, while others receive temporary visas available to students and workers. In addition, roughly 1 million unauthorized immigrants have temporary permission to live and work in the U.S. through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status programs.
Here are key details about existing U.S. immigration programs, as well as Biden’s proposed changes to them:
In fiscal 2019, nearly 710,000 people received lawful permanent residence in the U.S. through family sponsorship. The program allows someone to receive a green card if they already have a spouse, child, sibling or parent living in the country with U.S. citizenship or, in some cases, a green card. Immigrants from countries with large numbers of applicants often wait for years to receive a green card because a single country can account for no more than 7% of all green cards issued annually.
Biden’s proposal would expand access to family-based green cards in a variety of ways, such as by increasing per-country caps and clearing application backlogs. Today, family-based immigration – referred to by some as “ chain migration ” – is the most common way people gain green cards, in recent years accounting for about two-thirds of the more than 1 million people who receive green cards annually.
The U.S. admitted only 11,411 refugees in fiscal year 2021, the lowest number since Congress passed the 1980 Refugee Act for those fleeing persecution in their home countries. The low number of admissions came even after the Biden administration raised the maximum number of refugees the nation could admit to 62,500 in fiscal 2021 . Biden has increased the refugee cap to 125,000 for fiscal 2022, which started on Oct. 1, 2021.
The low number of admissions in recent years is due in part to the ongoing pandemic. The U.S. admitted only about 12,000 refugees in fiscal 2020 after the country suspended admissions during the coronavirus outbreak . This was down from nearly 54,000 in fiscal 2017 and far below the nearly 85,000 refugees admitted in fiscal 2016, the last full fiscal year of the Obama administration.
The recent decline in refugee admissions also reflects policy decisions made by the Trump administration before the pandemic. Trump capped refugee admissions in fiscal 2020 at 18,000 , the lowest total since Congress created the modern refugee program in 1980.
In fiscal 2019, the U.S. government awarded more than 139,000 employment-based green cards to foreign workers and their families. The Biden administration’s proposed legislation could boost the number of employment-based green cards, which are capped at about 140,000 per year . The proposal would allow the use of unused visa slots from previous years and allow spouses and children of employment-based visa holders to receive green cards without counting them against the annual cap. These measures could help clear the large backlog of applicants. The proposed legislation also would eliminate the per-country cap that prevents immigrants from any single country to account for more than 7% of green cards issued each year.
Each year, about 50,000 people receive green cards through the U.S. diversity visa program , also known as the visa lottery. Since the program began in 1995, more than 1 million immigrants have received green cards through the lottery, which seeks to diversify the U.S. immigrant population by granting visas to underrepresented nations. Citizens of countries with the most legal immigrant arrivals in recent years – such as Mexico, Canada, China and India – are not eligible to apply.
The Biden administration has proposed legislation to increase the annual total to 80,000 diversity visas. Trump had sought to eliminate the program .
In fiscal 2019, more than 188,000 high-skilled foreign workers received H-1B visas . H-1B visas accounted for 22% of all temporary visas for employment issued in 2019. This trailed only the H-2A visa for agricultural workers, which accounted for nearly a quarter (24%) of temporary visas. In all, nearly 2 million H-1B visas were issued from fiscal years 2007 to 2019.
The Biden administration is expected to review policies that led to increased denial rate s of H-1B visa applications under the Trump administration. In addition, Biden has delayed implementing a rule put in place by Trump that sought to prioritize the H-1B visa selection process based on wages, which would have raised the wages of H-1B recipients overall. Biden also proposed legislation to provide permanent work permits to spouses of H-1B visa holders. By contrast, the Trump administration had sought to restrict these permits. The Trump administration also created an electronic registration system that led to a record number of applicants for fiscal 2021.
A relatively small number of unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. under unusual circumstances have received temporary legal permission to stay in the country. One key distinction for this group of immigrants is that, despite having received permission to live in the U.S., most don’t have a path to gain lawful permanent residence. The following two programs are examples of this:
About 636,000 unauthorized immigrants had temporary work permits and protection from deportation through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, as of Dec. 31, 2020. One of Biden’s first actions as president was to direct the federal government to take steps to preserve the program , which Trump had tried to end before the Supreme Court allowed it to remain in place . DACA recipients, sometimes called “Dreamers,” would be among the undocumented immigrants to have a path to U.S. citizenship under Biden’s immigration bill. Senators have also proposed separate legislation that would do the same.
Overall, it is estimated that more than 700,000 immigrants from 12 countries currently have or are eligible for a reprieve from deportation under Temporary Protected Status, or TPS , a federal program that gives time-limited permission for some immigrants from certain countries to work and live in the U.S. The program covers those who fled designated nations because of war, hurricanes, earthquakes or other extraordinary conditions that could make it dangerous for them to live there.
The estimated total number of immigrants is based on those currently registered, in addition to those estimated to be eligible from Myanmar – also called Burma – and Venezuela.
Immigrants from Venezuela and Myanmar are newly eligible for TPS under changes made after Biden took office in January 2021 by the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the program. The government must periodically renew TPS benefits or they will expire. The department extended benefits into 2022 and beyond for eligible immigrants from nine nations: El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. In addition, the Biden administration expanded eligibility for immigrants from Haiti based on recent turmoil.
Biden and congressional Democrats have proposed granting citizenship to certain immigrants who receive TPS benefits. Under Biden’s large immigration bill, TPS recipients who meet certain conditions could apply immediately for green cards that let them become lawful permanent residents. The proposal would allow TPS holders who meet certain conditions to apply for citizenship three years after receiving a green card, which is two years earlier than usual for green-card holders. By contrast, the Trump administration had sought to end TPS for nearly all beneficiaries, but was blocked from doing so by a series of lawsuits.
Note: This is an update of a post originally published March 22, 2021.
Jens Manuel Krogstad is a senior writer and editor at Pew Research Center .
Ana Gonzalez-Barrera is a former senior researcher focusing on Hispanics, immigration and demographics at Pew Research Center .
After declining early in the covid-19 outbreak, immigrant naturalizations in the u.s. are rising again, most americans are critical of government’s handling of situation at u.s.-mexico border, most latinos say u.s. immigration system needs big changes, naturalized citizens make up record one-in-ten u.s. eligible voters in 2020, most popular.
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Immigration has been a touchstone of the U.S. political debate for decades, as policymakers have weighed economic, security, and humanitarian concerns. However, Congress has continued to disagree on comprehensive immigration reform, effectively moving some major policy decisions into the executive and judicial branches of government and fueling debate in the halls of state and municipal governments.
Former President Donald Trump has put efforts to reshape asylum, border, and deportation policy at the center of his political movement. President Joe Biden had pledged to reverse Trump’s first-term actions and reform the system, but the end of pandemic-related border restrictions and a historic surge in migration have complicated his plans.
Immigrants composed an estimated 13.9 percent of the U.S. population in 2022, amounting to roughly 46 million people out of a total of almost 335 million, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released in April 2024. Together, immigrants and their U.S.-born children made up about 27 percent of U.S. inhabitants, per the Current Population Survey. Though the share of the population that is foreign born has steadily risen since 1970, when there were fewer than ten million immigrants in the country, recent figures still fall below the record high of 14.8 percent in 1890.
As of 2022, Mexico was the top country of origin for U.S. immigrants, with Mexicans constituting 23 percent of the total immigrant population. Other major countries of origin include India (6 percent); China, including Hong Kong and Macau (5 percent); and the Philippines (4 percent).
Undocumented immigration. The U.S. government estimated the undocumented population to be some eleven million people in 2022. This total represents a slight decrease from 11.8 million before the 2008 economic crisis [PDF], which led some immigrants to return to their home countries and discouraged others from coming to the United States. In fiscal year 2023 (FY 2023), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended nearly 2.5 million people trying to illegally cross the southern U.S. border, a record high.
Until 2013, almost all of those trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border were Mexican citizens, and most were individuals seeking work. Between 2013 and 2021, most immigrants came from Asia, particularly China and India. Mexico has since regained its status as the top country of origin, and Central Americans have made up an increasingly larger share of migrants at the southern U.S. border. Generally, they are coming not for work but to make asylum claims, and many of them are unaccompanied children. Some of these immigrants have different legal rights from Mexican nationals in the United States: Under a 2008 anti–human trafficking law, unaccompanied minors from noncontiguous countries have a right to a hearing before being deported to their home countries. The increase in Central American migration has strained the U.S. immigration system. At the end of FY 2023, there were nearly 2.8 million cases pending in immigration courts, the most on record.
Though many of the policies that aim to reduce unlawful immigration focus on enforcement at the border, individuals who arrive in the United States legally and overstay their visas comprise a significant portion of the undocumented population. A Center for Migration Studies report found that, between 2010 and 2018, individuals who overstayed their visas far outnumbered those who arrived by crossing the border illegally.
Legal immigration. The United States granted more than one million individuals [PDF] legal permanent residency in FY 2022, close to pre-pandemic levels. Some 58 percent of them were admitted on the basis of family reunification. Other categories included: employment-based preferences (27 percent), refugees (3 percent), diversity (4 percent), and asylees (5 percent). As of late 2023, more than four million applicants were on the State Department’s waiting list [PDF] for family- and employer-related immigrant visas, nearly a third of whom were from Mexico.
Hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals work legally in the United States under various types of nonimmigrant visas. In FY 2023, the United States granted more than 265,000 visas for high-skilled workers [PDF], known as H1B visas, and over 310,000 visas for temporary workers in agriculture and other industries, or H2A visas. H1B visas are capped at 85,000 per fiscal year, with exceptions for certain fields .
Immigrants made up 18.6 percent of the U.S. civilian workforce [PDF] in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 18.1 percent the previous year. Compared to those born in the United States, greater shares of immigrants worked in service fields (21.8 percent of all foreign-born people); production, transportation, and material moving (15.2 percent); and natural resources, construction, and maintenance (13.8 percent).
A February 2024 poll by Gallup showed that 28 percent of surveyed Americans considered immigration to be the top problem facing the United States. In a separate Gallup poll conducted that same month, the majority of respondents felt that illegal immigration was a “critical” threat to U.S. national security.
A Pew Research Center poll conducted in April found that some 60 percent of the registered voters surveyed believed that undocumented immigrants currently in the United States should be allowed to stay, with 36 percent of respondents saying that undocumented immigrants should have the opportunity to apply for citizenship. In addition, a large majority of Americans still consider immigration to be overall good for the country.
The most recent push for an immigration policy overhaul was in 2013, following a decade in which Congress debated numerous immigration reforms, some considered comprehensive and others piecemeal. (Comprehensive immigration reform refers to omnibus legislation that attempts to address the following issues: demand for high- and low-skilled labor, the legal status of the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the country, border security, and interior enforcement.) The last major legislation to make it through Congress was under President Ronald Reagan in 1986, when his administration granted legal amnesty to some three million undocumented residents; in 1990, President George H.W. Bush further expanded legal immigration by increasing the cap for immigrant visas from 270,000 to 700,000, though he lowered the quota to 675,000 after several years. In 2007, President George W. Bush worked with congressional Democrats to reach a compromise on a new comprehensive bill, but it ultimately failed to win enough support in the Senate.
President Barack Obama pressed hard for a comprehensive bill that would pair a path to legalization for undocumented residents with stronger border security provisions. The Democrat-led Senate passed this legislation in 2013, but the bill stalled in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Both Presidents Trump and Biden put forward their own plans, which were not seriously considered by Congress.
With legislation thwarted, Obama focused on executive action, a tactic that his successors continued. In 2012, his administration began a program known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals , which offered renewable, two-year deportation deferrals and work permits to undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the United States as children and had no criminal records.
Obama characterized the move as a “ stopgap measure ” and urged Congress to pass the DREAM Act , or Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors—legislation first introduced in 2001 that would have benefited many of the same people. Since then, more than 830,000 people have participated in DACA, and it’s estimated that almost 1.2 million more were eligible as of 2023. Obama attempted to extend similar benefits to undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents through a program known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), but the Supreme Court effectively killed it in 2016.
In 2014, Obama also grappled with a surge of more than sixty thousand unaccompanied minors at the southern border, mostly from Central America. He directed $750 million in aid to the region to improve conditions there. Meanwhile, his administration faced criticism for its enforcement policies, including detaining children in poor conditions and overseeing the deportation of more people— approximately three million —than either the Bill Clinton or George W. Bush administrations had.
Immigration remains a signature issue for Trump. He blames previous administrations for failing to secure the southern border, and in his first term, he advocated for sharply reducing both legal and illegal immigration. He repeatedly used executive action to reshape asylum, deportation, and border policy.
Border security and enforcement . Trump vowed to expand the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, which he claimed would stop drugs and gangs from entering the country. He was unsuccessful in securing funding from Congress, leading to a federal government shutdown in 2019 and a subsequent declaration of a national emergency , which allowed him to divert funds to build the wall.
Other enforcement measures under Trump included increasing border personnel; sending thousands of active-duty troops to the border; threatening Mexico with tariffs if it did not increase its own border enforcement; and attempting to cut federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities, or jurisdictions that refuse to enforce federal immigration directives.
Trump also ratcheted up previous administrations’ deterrence efforts. He implemented a zero-tolerance policy, under which authorities arrested and prosecuted everyone caught crossing the southern border without authorization. This caused thousands of family separations , since by law children must be held apart from parents facing criminal prosecution. (Presidents Bush and Obama likewise faced criticism for child detention, but they did not make separations a matter of policy.)
DACA . Trump sought to end DACA, calling it unconstitutional. The move spurred multiple legal challenges and, in June 2020, the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s plan . A December 2020 federal court ruling forced the Trump administration to resume accepting new applicants.
Travel bans and refugee cap . Trump aimed to sharply reduce the number of refugees and other immigrants granted legal entry into the United States. In 2017, he instituted a ban on immigration and travel from several Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, Somalia, and Yemen. The original order was rejected by the courts, but the Supreme Court upheld a more limited version. Trump also lowered the cap on the number of refugees the United States accepts each year to less than fifteen thousand for FY 2021—the lowest figure in the history of the U.S. refugee program . Additionally, he ended temporary protected status (TPS)—a program that allows migrants from certain crisis-stricken nations to live and work in the United States for a limited period—for several countries.
Asylum policy . Trump implemented new restrictions on asylum seekers. In 2018, the administration began “metering” asylum applications, or only accepting a limited number [PDF] each day. The next year, it launched the Migrant Protection Protocols , also known as the “Remain in Mexico” program, which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases were processed in U.S. courts. At the same time, it sought “safe third country” agreements with several Latin American countries, which would have allowed U.S. authorities to send asylum seekers who traveled through those countries back there. Only an agreement with Guatemala was implemented before that country terminated it in 2021. Additionally, the Trump administration invoked Title 42, previously a rarely used public health law, to deny asylum on health-related grounds amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Comprehensive reform effort . Like his immediate predecessors, Trump proposed broad immigration reform . His would have created a merit-based system to replace the current one, which prioritizes family reunification. It also included an expansion of the border wall and an employment verification system known as E-Verify, but it did not address the status of current undocumented residents. Congress ultimately did not take up the proposal.
Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, Biden campaigned on overturning almost all of Trump’s immigration policies. Since then, the Biden administration has reduced immigration enforcement within the United States, ended the travel bans, expanded green-card access for certain undocumented immigrants, and ended the controversial Title 42 policy, though it did initially maintain many pandemic-related restrictions. The administration also initially halted construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, though it has since moved forward with plans to build additional sections; expanded TPS protections; terminated the Remain in Mexico program (with Supreme Court approval); and raised the refugee cap to 125,000 for fiscal years 2022–24.
However, Biden’s efforts to undo Trump-era policies have been challenged by a historic influx of migrants at the southern border. The record surge in border crossings has prompted the administration to implement several new restrictions since 2023, including a so-called transit ban allowing the government to deny asylum to migrants who did not previously apply for protection in a third country. In addition, the administration can temporarily bar asylum requests when the number of illegal crossings exceeds a certain threshold; since the start of 2024, illegal crossings have slowed .
Meanwhile, Biden has worked with Latin American leaders to increase aid to refugee populations, improve border management, and better coordinate emergency responses, even as his own comprehensive immigration reform bill and other border security legislation have failed in Congress. His administration has also launched efforts to accelerate the reunification of migrant families, including by reinstating the Central American Minors (CAM) program, which reunites children in the so-called Northern Triangle countries with their parents in the United States, and by creating a family-reunification task force. Additionally, Biden has pledged to invest $4 billion to address the drivers of migration from Central America, and he has sought to revive DACA; the Department of Homeland Security continues to accept and process renewal requests amid ongoing legal challenges to the program.
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States vary widely in how they treat unauthorized immigrants. Some, including California and Massachusetts, allow undocumented immigrants to apply for drivers’ licenses, receive in-state tuition at universities, and obtain other benefits. At the other end of the spectrum are states such as Texas, where the legislature passed a law [PDF] mandating that local governments and law enforcement agencies cooperate with federal immigration officers.
The federal government is generally responsible for enforcing immigration laws, but it delegates some immigration-related duties to state and local law enforcement. However, the degree to which local officials are obliged to cooperate with federal authorities is a subject of intense debate: dozens of counties across thirteen states are home to so-called sanctuary cities that limit cooperation with immigration enforcement.
The degree to which local officials are obliged to cooperate with federal authorities is a subject of intense debate.
President Trump decried these sanctuary jurisdictions and reinstated a controversial Obama-era program known as Secure Communities, in which the FBI shares fingerprints of suspects collected by state and local law enforcement with federal immigration authorities. Under the program, state and local agencies also hand over individuals presumed to be in the country illegally. Biden terminated the program shortly after taking office.
A range of court rulings during the Trump era increased pressure on states. In 2018, the Justice Department launched a lawsuit against California over sanctuary jurisdictions, which was ultimately dismissed by the Supreme Court. It filed similar suits against New Jersey and Washington, and a federal court ruled in 2020 that the Trump administration could withhold federal funding from sanctuary jurisdictions, including New York City. Under Biden, the Justice Department reversed this stance, leading the Supreme Court to dismiss several pending cases .
The ongoing border crisis has driven increasing controversy over local responses. After Trump called on states to deploy National Guard contingents to the southern border, several governors refused. Others, including Texas’s Greg Abbott, embraced Trump’s views, continuing to expand the border wall and seeking to boost the role of state and local law enforcement in carrying out federal immigration policy. In the Biden era, Abbott has sought to impose stronger enforcement at the Texas-Mexico border despite federal opposition. The governor signed a law in December 2023 making it a state crime to cross the border into Texas illegally and authorizing law enforcement to arrest and deport migrants. The bill remains on hold amid legal challenges; several other states are attempting to enact similar legislation.
This CFR Backgrounder explains who is responsible for securing the U.S. border.
This timeline traces changes to U.S. postwar immigration policy.
The Washington Post ’s Eduardo Porter and Youyou Zhou argue that the United States’ efforts to limit immigration a century ago actually helped diversify the country .
In this CFR webinar, experts discuss how immigration is shaping political conversations ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
On this episode of The President’s Inbox , the American Immigration Council’s Dara Lind breaks down the situation at the southern border .
The Migration Policy Institute’s Muzaffar Chishti, Kathleen Bush-Joseph, and Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh look at Biden’s immigration record at his term’s three-year mark.
Emily Lieberman, Nathalie Bussemaker, Samuel Parmer, and Danielle Renwick contributed to this Backgrounder. Will Merrow created the graphics.
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tags: AVEF , Immigration 101 , AVEF , Blog
by Americas's Voice on July 25, 2017
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Here’s a basic question we often come across: why can’t undocumented immigrants just “get in line”, “get legal”, “get right with the law” — i.e. obtain the legalization and citizenship that would allow them to become full-fledged Americans and protect them from deportation?
The short answer is: they can’t.
One misconception about undocumented immigration is that obtaining legal papers is as simple as, say, changing your address at the post office, and that immigrants remain undocumented due to a lack of trying. But nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, there are millions of immigrants who have lived in the US for decades, who have worked hard and paid taxes and bought homes, who have US-citizen children, who make valuable community contributions — who have been deported, and forcibly separated from their whole lives in America, because they weren’t able to “get legal”. Many of them have spent years and tens of thousands or more in legal fees trying to find pathways to legalization and citizenship for themselves. If there were a way to “get right with the law”, they would have done it. There isn’t.
As immigration attorney David Leopold wrote at Medium recently:
Immigration law generally requires that for an immigrant to adjust or change status to temporary worker or green card holder, he or she must have lawfully entered the United States…immigrants who entered the country without inspection — even as young children — generally cannot apply for a green card [while] inside the United States under any circumstances, including if they marry a U.S. citizen.
The question of why immigrants come to the US without papers, from a logistical standpoint, boils down to two things: the fact that there’s no “line” for the vast majority of people around the world to get into, and the fact that there’s no way to correct undocumented status.
As the American Immigration Council explained , there is no single “line” for would-be immigrants to come into the United States. People can visit, of course, using tourist or student visas. But immigration , the process that leads to a green card, legal permanent residency, and/or American citizenship, is not an option for the vast majority of people living around the world.
Generally speaking, there are only three paths through which people can immigrate*:
For an employer to sponsor a foreign worker to come to the US, the worker must generally have a job lined up with an eligible employer who will sponsor them. This typically requires advanced skills and longtime professional experience, and is used to bring in scientists, professors, and multinational executives. This type of visa can only be used for a limited number of foreign workers, and the worker must stay with the employer who sponsored them — which has led to many reports of exploitation and abuse by employers. There are also temporary, seasonal visas for agricultural workers — but there are also very limited in number, onerous to obtain, and costly for employers.
US citizens can petition for their spouses, parents, children, and siblings to join them in the United States. (Legal permanent residents can petition for spouses and unmarried children.) But there are lines for each of these. According to the American Immigration Council, the unmarried children of US citizens must wait more than 5 years to be able to come to the US, while siblings of US citizens must wait more than ten years. The website continues:
People from countries with high levels of immigration to the United States–Mexico, China, India, and the Philippines — generally have longer waiting times. For example, married children of US citizens from Mexico must wait more than 20 years for a visa to become available, and Filipino siblings of US citizens currently wait about 25 years.
And if a person seeking to immigrate does not have a close family tie in the US in the first place, they are ineligible for this route.
Each year, the US sets a limit on how many refugees will be admitted for humanitarian reasons. This year, the cap was a mere 50,000 , and was reached in June. To be admitted as refugees, individuals must be screened by multiple international and U.S. agencies and prove that they have a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their home country “based on race, religion, membership in a particular social group, political opinion, or national origin.” An immigrant does not qualify as a refugee or an asylee because of poverty or difficult economic conditions in their home country. This is also a very difficult path to entry — untold numbers of immigrants have been deported because they came to the US seeking asylum and had their cases denied, in many cases because it is almost impossible to prove that one’s life is in direct danger. Furthermore, the Trump Administration is now reportedly turning away asylum applicants at the border , in violation of international law.
All of the above explains why would-be immigrants to the US generally have no legal way to come. For undocumented immigrants already in the US, the situation is not much different. Even in the many, many cases where undocumented immigrants have been in the US for decades, married, had US citizen children, worked and paid taxes, started businesses and bought homes, there is no way to obtain legal status.
An undocumented person already in the US could be sponsored by a US-citizen child — but the child must first be 21 years of age or older, and the undocumented parent would still have to get into the long family-based immigration lines mentioned above, resulting in a wait of 20 years or longer.
A person could marry a US citizen, but this does not necessarily lead to legal status either. As we explained here , an undocumented person who seeks legalization by marriage must leave the US first and return to their country of origin. But once they identify themselves as undocumented and leave, they trigger a ban — that can last up to 10 years — during which they cannot reenter the country. There are ways around this ban, but only for a select group of people.
To underscore everything we’ve talked about in this article, let’s talk about Jesus Lara Lopez , an Ohio father of four who was deported and separated from his family last week. Jesus came to the US from Mexico 16 years ago and was discovered to be undocumented when officials caught him driving without a license. As a Mexican national, there was no way — zero — for Jesus to come to the US legally. He would not have been sponsored by an employer, he didn’t have immediate family in the US who could sponsor him, and Mexican nationals generally do not qualify for asylum .
Once Jesus made it to the US, there was no way for him to obtain legal status. None of his children are over the age of 21, and so would not be able to sponsor him. Jesus’ wife is undocumented, but even if he had been married to a US citizen, this likely would not have been a path to legal status for him. To gain legal status through a US citizen wife, Jesus would have likely had to leave the country for ten years before being able to return. At no point in his immigration history have the doors of US legal status been open to someone like Jesus.
In short, it is very difficult for people outside of the US to immigrate here, and impossible for most undocumented immigrants already in the US to become documented. As David Leopold wrote:
The outdated, rigid, and poorly structured immigration law makes it nearly impossible for most undocumented immigrants to fix their status in the United States. This is true regardless of whether a person arrived in the country on a lawful visa and later fell out of status, or whether they entered the country without lawful inspection by US. immigration officers. That’s because once someone enters the country illegally or overstays their visa, the law prohibits them from applying for legal immigration status from inside the United States. Of course, there are important exceptions to this for victims of crime, persecution, human trafficking, and domestic violence. But for most undocumented immigrants, these outdated and rigid immigration laws offer few options and little forgiveness.
For a visualization of what the US immigration system is like today — and how hard it can be to get admitted — visit Bend the Arc’s website at EntryDenied.org .
* There are few other very limited channels, such as the diversity lottery; please read about them at the American Immigration Council .
Note: The preference categories listed above have annual caps, as is explained below. Source: Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics , Yearbook of Immigration Statistics , “Lawful Permanent Residents,” multiple years, available online .
There are both numerically limited and unlimited categories that U.S. citizens and green-card holders can access to petition to bring in a relative.
Immediate family of U.S. citizens. U.S. citizens can sponsor their spouses, unmarried children under age 21, and parents for a green card. This category does not have annual numerical limits.
Family-sponsored preference visas. There are 226,000 green cards reserved each year for other categories of relatives. U.S. citizens can sponsor adult children and siblings, while green-card holders can sponsor their spouses and unmarried minor or adult children.
There are 140,000 green cards available each year for immigrants in five employment-based categories (formally known as “preferences”). The categories were created as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, and the numerical caps were set then and have not been adjusted since, as is also the case with the family preferences.
Almost all employment-based immigrants, except some very high-skilled immigrants and investors, must have an employer who will sponsor them for a visa.
Spouses and children of immigrants who get an employment-based green card count against the 140,000 cap. This means in reality that less than half of employment green cards given out annually go to people selected for employment reasons.
While about 80 percent of green cards annually are issued via the family and employment routes, the U.S. immigration system has a few other channels for entry for permanent residence.
Diversity visa. Nationals from countries that send few immigrants to the United States can enter the Diversity Visa program, which allocates up to 50,000 visas annually. After all lottery applications are submitted in a given year, a number that spanned more than 14 million in fiscal year (FY) 2018, the U.S. government conducts a virtual lottery of qualified applicants, randomly selecting winners who will be invited to apply for a green card if they meet some basic criteria.
Refugees and asylees. People may be granted refugee status or asylum, and given the right to live in the United States permanently, if they can demonstrate they have experienced persecution or have a well-founded fear that they will be persecuted “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Asylum is granted to people who are already in the United States, while refugee status is provided to people who are vetted abroad and approved for resettlement. Resettled refugees and those granted asylum are eligible to apply for a green card after one year.
There are a number of other small categories of green cards available. Some are paths created to respond to particular situations, such as visas made available to people who worked as interpreters or translators for the U.S. military in Iraq or Afghanistan. Other green cards are available to people who it is in the national interest to help, such as victims of crimes or human trafficking who aid in the investigation and/or prosecution of their perpetrators.
While a small number of countries predominate—Mexico, China, Cuba, India, the Dominican Republic, and the Philippines at the top of the list—the diversity of origins is such that no individual country has a sizeable share of the overall number of green cards issued in a particular year.
Note: On an annualized basis for fiscal years 2013-17, the United States issued a total of 1,073,755 green cards. Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Lawful Permanent Residents,” available online .
Limitations on Green Cards
For the capped preference categories in the family and employment streams, U.S. law imposes a limit on how many immigrants from any particular country can receive green cards in a given year. Under the per-country cap set in the Immigration Act of 1990, no country can receive more than 7 percent of the total number of employment-based and family-sponsored preference visas in a given year. There are no per-country limits for uncapped categories, such as immediate relatives of U.S. citizens.
Because of the numerical caps and per-country caps on certain green-card categories, there are significant waits for some categories, with sharper effects on a few countries. For example, as of April 2019, the wait for U.S. citizens to sponsor adult, unmarried children was more than seven years for most parts of the world, but was 12 years for relatives from the Philippines—and more than 21 years for those from Mexico. As of November 2018, there were 3.7 million people waiting in line abroad for a family-sponsored green card, and 121,000 awaiting an employment-sponsored green card.
Source : State Department, “Annual Report of Immigrant Visa Applicants in the Family-Sponsored and Employment-Based Preferences Registered at the National Visa Center as of November 1, 2018,” available online .
Beyond permanent admissions, the United States also admits hundreds of thousands of workers, foreign students, and exchange visitors annually for temporary residence through a broad swath of visa categories, assigned letters of the alphabet from A through V. While temporary visas do not lead directly to a green card, temporary visa holders in some cases can get one if they are able to find a family member or employer to sponsor them.
Some temporary visas (B, C, and D) allow foreigners to enter for tourism or short business trips. Others allow students to study at U.S. colleges and universities or to participate in cultural exchange programs (F, J, and M visas). And there are many other temporary visa classes, including for temporary workers.
In most cases, temporary workers can bring spouses and minor children with them, but those family members do not have the right to work. Temporary workers usually have to remain with their sponsoring employer in order to maintain the right to stay in the United States, unless they can find another employer to sponsor them.
Below are some examples of temporary worker visas:
H-1B: The H-1B visa for “specialty occupations” allows workers to stay for up to two three-year work periods, or longer if they are in line for a green card. H-1B visas are capped at 85,000 visas per year, but renewals do not count against the cap, nor do H-1Bs sponsored by a college, university, or certain nonprofit organizations. Employers wishing to sponsor an H-1B worker must attest to the Labor Department about the wages and working conditions they will offer H-1B workers.
H-2A : The H-2A visa is for foreign agricultural workers, who can stay in the United States for up to three years. There is no numerical limit on H-2A visas. Employers sponsoring H-2A workers must demonstrate that they have tried and failed to hire U.S. workers, must be certified by the Labor Department, and must provide housing and pay at least a specified wage, which is set above the local minimum wage.
H-2B: The H-2B visa, which is usually granted for short periods but can be extended for up to three years, is available for workers filling nonagricultural seasonal or temporary jobs, such as landscapers, crab pickers, life guards, or resort workers. There are currently 66,000 visas available per year. In recent years, Congress has authorized the Homeland Security Secretary to increase the cap if the determination is made that there is sufficient need for additional workers.
L: The L visa allows entry for workers transferring from a foreign branch of a company to a U.S. branch. There is no numerical limit on L visas. L visa holders can stay for seven years if they are a manager or executive in the company, and for five years if they are a “specialized knowledge” employee. Spouses of L visa holders are allowed to work in the United States.
O: The O visa is for people with extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, business, or athletics. There is no numerical limit on O visas, and holders can stay for up to three years.
TN: The TN classification, established by the North American Free Trade Agreement, allows professional workers from Mexico and Canada to live and work in the United States. There are no numerical caps for TN workers, and their period of stay is not limited.
To learn more about the U.S. immigration system, here are some useful resources:
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Looking for illegal immigration essay topics? The issue of undocumented immigration is hot, controversial, and worth exploring.
🔍 research paper topics & examples, ❓ questions about illegal immigration for research paper.
Illegal immigration refers to undocumented migration of people into a county in violation of the according immigration laws of that country. Illegal immigrants face a number of problems, like the risk of being enslaved, health problems due to the lack of access to public health systems, and many more. Whether you’re planning to write a 5-paragraph essay or a thesis about illegal immigration, the article below will be helpful. Here you’ll find everything all you might need to write an A+ immigration essay. There are research paper ideas, tips, & illegal immigration essay examples.
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Tip 3: Collect ideas. While you may have studied illegal immigration already, don’t write down any points until you’ve done your research. Be sure to check a variety of sources, including scholarly articles, government reports, newspaper articles, and editorial pieces. This will ensure that your overview of the chosen theme is comprehensive. Try to avoid sites such as Wikipedia, online encyclopedias, and blogs. While there may be some good points there, your tutor will most likely reject sources that are not academic quality. Hence, you should stick to publications from reputable sources to avoid losing marks! Write down all the key statements, information, and arguments that you can find online.
Tip 4: Prepare an outline. An outline is the backbone of your paper on illegal immigration. Argumentative essay outline examples would usually include an introduction, two points supporting your position, one point against it, a rebuttal, and a conclusion. A persuasive paper would have a different outline, with more supporting points and no opposing opinions. An informative essay will have an introduction, background, three to five main points, and a conclusion. Create a basic outline for the chosen essay type and don’t worry about adding information to each section yet.
Tip 5: Organize your points in a sequence. Now, return to the list of points you’ve already made and see which ones fit into the outline nicely. The most general information should go into the introduction, where you describe the problem and your approach. You should finish your introduction with an illegal immigration essay thesis to show the focus of the paper. In the next sections, your points should escalate in complexity. For example, you can start with the history of immigration, then consider recent data on undocumented immigrants, and then discuss the opportunities for immigration reform. Write each point as a topic sentence and ensure that they follow in a logical sequence. Delete any information that doesn’t fit – you won’t regret it later!
A paper structured based on these tips will be interesting to read and earn your tutor’s approval. If you need to write an essay about immigration in the United States, don’t forget to check our free sample papers!
IvyPanda. (2023, February 4). 71 Illegal Immigration Essay Topics & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/illegal-immigration-essay-examples/
"71 Illegal Immigration Essay Topics & Examples." IvyPanda , 4 Feb. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/illegal-immigration-essay-examples/.
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IvyPanda . 2023. "71 Illegal Immigration Essay Topics & Examples." February 4, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/illegal-immigration-essay-examples/.
1. IvyPanda . "71 Illegal Immigration Essay Topics & Examples." February 4, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/illegal-immigration-essay-examples/.
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IvyPanda . "71 Illegal Immigration Essay Topics & Examples." February 4, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/illegal-immigration-essay-examples/.
The labels we use to refer to different classes of individuals are not merely neutral descriptors but often implicitly come with various associations or value judgments, which can, in turn, frame and influence political debates.
Immigration protest signs saying "Stop the Raids" and "No one is illegel"
"No One is Illegal! May Day of Action" by Tania Liu is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
Jonathan Kwan ( @migrationethics ) is the Inclusive Excellence Postdoctoral Fellow in Immigration Ethics with the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Views are his own.
What term should we use to describe the 11 million or so people who have entered or reside within the U.S. without official government authorization? “Illegal immigrants,” “undocumented immigrants,” “unauthorized immigrants,” or something else entirely? The labels we use to refer to different classes of individuals are not merely neutral descriptors but often implicitly come with various associations or value judgments, which can, in turn, frame and influence political debates.
Conservatives tend to favor the term “illegal immigrant” and argue that it is the most precise because, unlike other terms such as “undocumented immigrant,” it underscores the legal violation that took place. However, critics of the phrase “illegal immigrant,” such as the Drop the I-Word campaign contend that “illegal immigrant” is actually imprecise or, at the very least, misleading. “Illegal” blankets all cases with connotations of criminality but different cases are treated differently under the law. For instance, living in the U.S. without authorization, such as overstaying a visa but entering the country legally, is a civil but not a criminal offense. “Illegal” also carries with it a finality that obscures the fluidity of immigration status, which can be adjusted based on different individual circumstances.
In 2013, the Associated Press (AP) changed its stylebook to no longer sanction the use of “illegal immigrant” on the ground that “illegal” should only describe an action but not a person. This represented an important shift due to the many newspapers that follow the AP’s style recommendations. Activists and immigrant advocates, of course, have long proclaimed, “No person is illegal.” The AP saw this change as consistent with its general practice of rejecting labels (for instance, saying someone is “diagnosed with schizophrenia” rather than “schizophrenic”). Instead of “illegal immigrant,” the AP suggests “living in or entering a country illegally” or “without legal permission.” But “illegal immigration” is still accepted by the AP insofar as this phrase does not describe people as “illegal.”
More recently, in April 2021, the Biden administration instructed U.S. immigration enforcement agencies to replace the term "illegal alien" (which is used throughout U.S. immigration law) with "undocumented noncitizen."
Even more damning is the critique that the term “illegal immigrant” functions as a racist dog whistle that buoys the idea that America is or should be a white nation. U.S. immigration law, from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the national origins quota system, has historically played a role in constructing categories of racial difference that have served to exclude those not considered white or white enough from the U.S. polis. As José Mendoza put it, “the notion of illegality plays a large role in constructing, perpetuating, and solidifying whiteness … illegality , like race, has historically functioned as a signifier of nonwhiteness and thereby marks entire communities (e.g., Latino and Asian communities) as nonwhite.” The ways in which racist ideologies are bound up with U.S. immigration policies are unfortunately not just historical artifacts but continue to this day, as is evidenced by former President Trump’s comments referring to Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries as “shithole countries.”
If “illegal immigrant” is imprecise and racially problematic, what term should be used instead? Pro-immigrant liberals often prefer the term “undocumented immigrant.” The nonprofit Define American , in its criticism of phrases such as “illegal immigrant” and “illegal alien,” recommends “undocumented American.” But “undocumented immigrant” has its shortcomings too. For many conservatives, “undocumented immigrant” smacks of euphemism, which makes it seem as though the matter were simply a clerical or administrative error—as if some document was misplaced or not properly issued. And “undocumented immigrant” is itself imprecise since an individual may have many documents even if they did not enter the country legally or do not have federal authorization to continue residing in the country. New York City residents, for instance, can be issued an identification card regardless of their immigration status. And “undocumented American,” which presumably is meant to challenge the idea that only citizens are Americans, could also be problematically imposing a label on people that they do not necessarily endorse themselves—after all, not everyone identifies or wants to be seen as an American.
Perhaps better than “undocumented immigrant” is “unauthorized immigrant,” which makes it clear that the issue is not merely the lack of documentation (even if not having the right papers can indeed be a serious problem for many people in different situations) but the lack of government authorization to enter or reside in the country. Though “unauthorized” does not carry with it the negative connotations of criminality associated with “illegal,” “unauthorized” is not necessarily neutral or free from value judgments itself.
The word “authority,” for instance, is ambiguous between an entity who in fact has the power to make some determination and an entity who should have (i.e. is legitimately entitled to or has the right to) such power. When we say, “The DMV is the authority that decides who is issued a driver’s license,” we mean authority in the first descriptive sense. If we say, “Women should be the authorities on whether or not abortions are legal,” we mean authority in the second value-laden sense. Oftentimes we use “authority” in both senses. If we say, “Parents are the authorities when it comes to the well-being of their children,” we might mean both that parents do in fact have the power to decide the well-being of their children and that they should have this power. Sometimes it may not be clear what sense of “authority” is being used, or “authority” may be used in one sense but carry with it connotations of the other sense or be (mis) interpreted in that way.
The ambiguities and value-laden connotations of authority can consequently import into the term “unauthorized immigrant.” If there are unauthorized immigrants, then are there authorized immigrants as well? Does “unauthorized immigrant” imply that those immigrants should be unauthorized? What kind of authorization do they lack? Who decided they are unauthorized? Who has the right to decide this and why? Perhaps there should be no unauthorized immigrants at all! Or perhaps more deeply, there should not even be a distinction between immigrants who are authorized and immigrants who are unauthorized.
The broader lesson that I think should be drawn from this discussion is that the terms we use to refer to different groups of people are not merely neutral or impartial descriptions. Instead, the very words we use to understand our social and political world can not only influence political debates and opinions but may already carry with them implicit ethical judgments about how to structure and change our world. But this doesn’t mean that we should just give up on describing our world accurately or abandon critical investigation of the words we use as just overblown and overly sensitive “political correctness.” Rather it means that how we see our world goes hand in hand with what our values are. How we should describe different classes of immigrants will depend partly and more broadly on what we envision justice in immigration to be.
Originally published February, 2021. Updated January, 2022 to include terminology changes by the Biden Administration.
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Susan Pozo Editor , Western Michigan University Follow
10.17848/9780880995559
Immigration is an issue drawing increased attention among policymakers and citizens. These essays provide an economic perspective to the effects of immigration on the labor markets in the United States.
Download Full Text (11.3 MB)
Download 1. The Many Guises of Immigration Reform / Susan Pozo (2.7 MB)
Download 2. Immigrants and the U.S. Labor Market / George J. Borjas (3.1 MB)
Download 3. Can International Migration be Controlled? / Michael J. Piore (3.6 MB)
Download 4. The Imperative of Immigration Reform / Vernon M. Briggs, Jr. (4.0 MB)
Download 5. The Illegal Alien Policy Dilemma / Barry R. Chiswick (3.2 MB)
Download 6. Immigration and the U.S. Taxpayer / Francine D. Blau (3.6 MB)
Download 7. U.S. Immigration Policy, What Next? / Jagdish N. Bhagwati (3.4 MB)
Papers presented in a seminar series conducted by the Department of Economics at Western Michigan University
Financial support from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and the Collge of Arts and Sciences of Western Michigan University
9780880990400 (pbk.) ; 9780880995559 (ebook)
INTERNATIONAL ISSUES; Immigration
The Human and Economic Implications of Twenty-First Century Immigration Policy.
Book. 2018.
Since July 07, 2010
Immigration Law Commons , Labor Economics Commons
Pozo, Susan, ed. 1986. Essays on Legal and Illegal Immigration. Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. https://doi.org/10.17848/9780880995559
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122 Yale L.J. 2282 (2013). For the past fifty years, immigration law has resisted integration of Gideon v. Wainwright ’s legacy of appointed counsel for the poor. Today, however, this resistance has given way to Gideon ’s migration. At the level of everyday practice, criminal defense attorneys appointe…
122 Yale L.J. 2316 (2013). As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Gideon v. Wainwright decision, the nearly universal assessment is that our indigent defense system remains too under-resourced and overwhelmed to fulfill the promise of the landmark decision, and needs to be reformed. At the same t…
122 Yale L.J. 2336 (2013). In Gideon v. Wainwright , twenty-three state attorneys general, led by Walter F. Mondale and Edward McCormack, joined an amicus brief on the side of the criminal accused, urging the Supreme Court to recognize indigent defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to appointed counsel in…
122 Yale L.J. 2358 (2013). In this Essay, we explore Gideon ’s impact in our community, El Paso, Texas, which has the will to try to meet Gideon ’s challenge, but lacks the resources to deliver fully Gideon ’s promise. We look at the origins of our community’s indigent defense reform and examine our off…
122 Yale L.J. 2376 (2013). This Essay investigates the legacy of Gideon by examining the de facto courts of last resort for convicted offenders: the federal courts of appeals. Part I focuses on the U.S. courts of appeals’ judges and caseloads, revealing that very few federal appellate judges have pri…
122 Yale L.J. 2394 (2013). In evaluating the legacy of Gideon v. Wainwright , it is critical to remember that the Supreme Court’s decision rested on the Sixth Amendment right to counsel for the accused in criminal cases. American law sharply demarcates between the many rights available to criminal def…
122 Yale L.J. 2416 (2013). The right to counsel maintains an uneasy relationship with the demands of trials for war crimes. Drawing on the author’s personal experiences from defending a Guantánamo detainee, the Author explains how Gideon set a baseline for the right to counsel at Guantánamo. Whether …
122 Yale L.J. 2428 (2013). This Essay argues that the Court’s effort to expand habeas review of ineffective assistance of counsel claims in Martinez v. Ryan will make little difference in either the enforcement of the right to the effective assistance of counsel or the provision of competent represen…
122 Yale L.J. 2460 (2013). Gideon v. Wainwright dramatically affects the rights of indigent defendants by entitling them to representation. But Gideon has another systemic consequence as well. In addition to protecting the rights of individual defendants in particular trials, Gideon also protects the…
122 Yale L.J. 2482 (2013). The right to counsel is regarded as a right without peer, even in a field of litigation saturated with constitutional protections. But from this elevated, elite-right status, the right to counsel casts a shadow over the other, less prominent criminal procedure rights. Elabo…
122 Yale L.J. 2504 (2013). One measure of Gideon v. Wainwright is that it made the U.S. government’s efforts to isolate 9/11 detainees from all outsiders at Guantánamo Bay conceptually and legally unsustainable. Gideon , along with Miranda v. Arizona , is part of a democratic narrative shaped over dec…
122 Yale L.J. 2550 (2013). Fifty years ago Gideon promised that an attorney would vindicate the constitutional rights of any accused too poor to afford an attorney. But Gideon also promised more. Writ small, Gideon promised to protect individual defendants; writ large, Gideon promised to protect our …
122 Yale L.J. 2578 (2013). This Essay asks whether federal criminal defendants receive fairer process today than they did in 1963, when Gideon v. Wainwright was decided. It concludes that in many situations they do not; indeed, they often receive far worse. Although Gideon and the Criminal Justice Ac…
122 Yale L.J. 2604 (2013). Everyone knows that excessive caseloads, poor funding, and a lack of training plague indigent defense delivery systems throughout the states, such that the promise of Gideon v. Wainwright is largely unfulfilled. Commentators have disagreed about how best to breathe life int…
122 Yale L.J. 2626 (2013). Despite the promise of Gideon , providing “the guiding hand of counsel” to indigent defendants remains unmanageable, largely because the nation’s public defender offices are overworked and underfunded. Faced with overwhelming caseloads and inadequate resources, public defend…
122 Yale L.J. 2650 (2013). Fifty years ago, Clarence Earl Gideon needed an effective trial attorney. The Supreme Court agreed with Gideon that the Sixth Amendment guaranteed him the right to counsel at trial. Recently, Galin Frye and Anthony Cooper also needed effective representation. These two men,…
122 Yale L.J. 1900 (2013). In IP scholarship, patents are commonly understood as more efficient than other approaches to innovation policy. Their primary ostensible advantage is allocative: as a form of property rights, patents act as a conduit between market signals and potential innovators, ostensi…
122 Yale L.J. 1444 (2013). This Essay puts forward the conceptual and normative underpinnings of a principle of abuse of property right. Owners abuse their right, I argue, when their decisions about a thing are designed just to produce harm. This is so whether that harm is an end in itself (spite) or…
122 Yale L.J. 1254 (2013). The preponderance standard is conventionally described as an absolute probability threshold of 0.5. This Essay argues that this absolute characterization of the burden of proof is wrong. Rather than focusing on an absolute threshold, the Essay reconceptualizes the preponder…
122 Yale L.J. 940 (2013). It is generally assumed that the Constitution requires the Senate to vote to confirm the President’s nominees to principal federal offices. This Essay argues, to the contrary, that when the President nominates an individual to a principal executive branch position, the Senat…
122 Yale L.J. 690 (2012). Legal rules severely restrict payments to fact witnesses, though the government can often offer plea bargains or other nonmonetary inducements to encourage testimony. This asymmetry is something of a puzzle, for most asymmetries in criminal law favor the defendant. The asymm…
122 Yale L.J. 384 (2012).
Regularly invoked by the Supreme Court in diverse contexts, the maxim nemo iudex in sua causa —no man should be judge in his own case—is widely thought to capture a bedrock principle of natural justice and constitutionalism. I will argue that the nemo iudex principle is a m…
122 Yale L.J. 422 (2012). Courts can decide only a small fraction of constitutional issues generated by the American government. This is widely acknowledged. But why do courts have such limited capacity? And how does this limitation affect the substance of constitutional law? This Essay advances a tw…
122 Yale L.J. 154 (2012). One in five indigent murder defendants in Philadelphia is randomly assigned representation by public defenders while the remainder receive court-appointed private attorneys. We exploit this random assignment to measure how defense counsel affect murder case outcomes. Compare…
One in five indigent murder defendants in Philadelphia is randomly assigned representation by public defenders while the remainder receive court-appointed private attorneys. We exploit this random assignment to measure how defense counsel affect murder case outcomes. Comp…
121 Yale L.J. 2216 (2012) . The potential complementarities between antitrust and consumer protection law—collectively, “consumer law”—are well known. The rise of the newly established Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) portends a deep rift in the intellectual infrastructure of consumer law …
121 Yale L.J. 1672 (2012) . From its conceptual origin in Magna Charta, due process of law has required that government can deprive persons of rights only pursuant to a coordinated effort of separate institutions that make, execute, and adjudicate claims under the law. Originalist debates about whether t…
121 Yale L.J. 1118 (2012).
In previous articles, we have argued that the European Court of Justice’s reliance on nondiscrimination as the basis for its decisions did not (and could not) satisfy commonly accepted tax policy norms, such as fairness, administrability, economic efficiency, production o…
121 Yale L.J. 534 (2011).
State implementation of federal law is commonplace, but has been largely ignored by the interpretive doctrines of legislation and administrative law. We have no Chevron , federalism canon, or anything else for state implementation, nor any doctrines that ask how Congress’s…
121 Yale L.J. 142 (2011). When a tort rule is fully aligned, harms are valued equally across the elements. Because the valuation of harm within duty equals the valuation within the damages remedy, a fully aligned rule gives dutyholders the option to fully comply with the duty with respect to any harm by…
117 Yale L.J. 1070 (2008).
Criminal law theory made a significant advance roughly thirty years ago when George Fletcher popularized the important conceptual distinction between justifications and excuses. In the intervening years, however, very little progress has been made in exploring the structu…
116 Yale L.J. 1284 (2007)
The conventional approach to preliminary relief focuses on irreparable harm but entirely neglects irreparable benefits. That is hard to understand. Errant irreversible harms are important because they distort incentives and have lasting distributional consequences. But the…
116 Yale L.J. 568 (2006) Notable American jurists and scholars have advanced an approach to contract enforcement that would render breach legally and morally uncontestable, assuming compensation follows. Much of the justification for this endeavor has rested upon claims of judicial and economic effic…
115 Yale L.J. 2416 (2006) Agencies in the executive branch are better situated than other political institutions to take advantage of opportunities to expand their power base by responding quickly and decisively to real or imagined crises. The executive has structural advantages over the other branch…
115 Yale L.J. 2580 (2006) Under Marbury v. Madison , it is "emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." But in the last quarter-century, the Supreme Court has legitimated the executive's power of interpretation, above all in Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural R…
This Essay considers the historic weakness of the American mayoralty and recent reform efforts designed to strengthen it. I argue that the strong mayoralty is a potential instrument for democratic self-government to the extent that it is able to amass power on behalf of the city.
115 Yale L.J. 2512 (2006) Contemporary accounts of the allocation of war powers authority often focus on textual or historical debates as to whether the President or Congress holds the power to initiate military hostilities. In this Essay, we move beyond such debates and instead pursue a comparative …
115 Yale L.J. 2446 (2006) Proponents of the unitary executive have contended that its adoption by the framers "swept plural executive forms into the ash bin of history." Virtually every state government, however, has a divided executive in which executive power is apportioned among different executiv…
115 Yale L.J. 2380 (2006) In a variety of circumstances, state governors exercise independent decision-making power over matters affecting the foreign policy of the United States. This Essay describes and defends this emerging system of gubernatorial foreign policy on both legal and functional ground…
115 Yale L.J. 2350 (2006) Five years after September 11, 2001, America's response to that traumatic day has effectively turned the world of American public law upside down. Claiming that a global war on terror calls for an entirely new legal paradigm, the Bush Administration and its supporters have p…
115 Yale L.J. 2280 (2006) This Essay identifies and analyzes the President's completion power: the President's authority to prescribe incidental details needed to carry into execution a legislative scheme, even in the absence of congressional authorization to complete that scheme. The Essay shows tha…
115 Yale L.J. 2254 (2006) In this Essay, we first observe the rise of what we call "quasipublic executives": both "nominally private executives," that is, private executives in charge of public functions such as corrections, education, and national defense; and "nominally public executives," that is,…
115 Yale L.J. 2218 (2006) This Essay examines independent constitutional interpretation from the bottom up. It focuses on San Francisco's recent challenge to the California ban against same-sex marriage and the judicial response it provoked in Lockyer v. City & County of San Francisco . The Essay argu…
115 Yale L.J. 2480 (2006) In light of recent debates regarding the scope and basis of inherent executive power, particularly with regard to foreign affairs and national security, this Essay examines different conceptions of executive power in five modern democracies. The Essay's study of British and …
115 Yale L.J. 2314 (2006) The standard conception of separation of powers presumes three branches with equivalent ambitions of maximizing their powers. Today, however, legislative abdication is the reigning modus operandi. Instead of bemoaning this state of affairs, this Essay asks how separation of …
115 Yale L.J. 1930 (2006) In a Chapter 11 reorganization, senior creditors can insist on being paid in full before anyone junior to them receives anything. In practice, however, departures from "absolute priority" treatment are commonplace. Explaining these deviations has been a central preoccupation…
115 Yale L.J. 996 (2006) According to conventional law-and-economics theory, private property rights tend to evolve as resource values rise. This optimistic assessment fails to explain the development of open access in many Third World property systems. Indeed, while the evolution of property has bee…
115 Yale L.J. 72 (2005) This Essay proposes a mechanism for expanding competition in state property law, while sketching out the limitations necessary to protect third parties. The fact that property law is produced by the states creates a unique opportunity for experimentation with such property and…
114 Yale L.J. 1897 (2005) Traditional justifications for civil disobedience emphasize the limits of legitimate political authority and defend civil disobedience as a just response when governments overstep these limits. Such liberal justifications are well suited to certain classes of civil disobedie…
114 Yale L.J. 1613 (2005) Many studies have documented seller discrimination against consumers, but this Essay tests and finds that consumers discriminate based on the seller's race. The authors collected data on more than 1000 taxicab rides in New Haven, Connecticut in 2001. After controlling for a …
114 Yale L.J. 535 (2004) Recent cases and scholarship have debated whether copyright law is consistent with the First Amendment. Much of the discussion has centered on copyright law's ability to suppress transformative, creative reuses of copyrighted works and on copyright's fair use doctrine as a m…
114 Yale L.J. 273 (2004) This Essay offers a framework to explain large-scale effective practices of sharing private, excludable goods. It starts with case studies of carpooling and distributed computing as motivating problems. It then suggests a definition for shareable goods as goods that are "lump…
114 Yale L.J. 85 (2004) Criminal procedure largely ignores remorse and apology or, at most, uses them as proxies for an individual defendant's badness. The field is preoccupied with procedural values such as efficiency, accuracy, and procedural fairness, to the exclusion of the criminal law's substan…
113 Yale L.J. 1753 (2004) INTRODUCTION In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a campaign of aggressive preventive detention. Invoking Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General announced that just as Kennedy would arrest a mobster for "spitting on the…
113 Yale L.J. 1751 (2004) Earlier in this Volume of The Yale Law Journal, Professor Bruce Ackerman published his essay The Emergency Constitution, in which he advocated a new constitutional regime to confront the potential for recurring terrorist attacks among modern nations--and the United States in…
113 Yale L.J. 1801 (2004) INTRODUCTION The season for talk of leaving the Constitution behind, while we grit our teeth and do what must be done in times of grave peril--the season for talk of saving the Constitution from the distortions wrought by sheer necessity, while we save ourselves from the d…
113 Yale L.J. 1223 (2004) The phrase "adverse selection" was originally coined by insurers to describe the process by which insureds utilize private knowledge of their own riskiness when deciding to buy or forgo insurance. If A knows he will die tomorrow (but his insurer does not), life insurance th…
113 Yale L.J. 1029 (2004) Terrorist attacks will be a recurring part of our future. The balance of technology has shifted, making it possible for a small band of zealots to wreak devastation where we least expect it--not on a plane next time, but with poison gas in the subway or a biotoxin in the wat…
113 Yale L.J. 895 (2004) The Supreme Court's jurisprudence on criminal juries has overlooked an important piece of history. This is most notable in the context of its jury discrimination jurisprudence over the past twenty years. In Batson v. Kentucky, the Court held that the Equal Protection Clause p…
113 Yale L.J. 621 (2003) For decades, practitioners and academic commentators who believe that target boards should have broad discretion to resist hostile takeover attempts have put forward the "bargaining power hypothesis" to support their view. This hypothesis states that a target with strong tak…
113 Yale L.J. 455 (2003) Scholars writing on insider trading have long believed that insiders can beat the market simply by using nonpublic information to decide when not to trade. Using a simple model, this Essay has shown that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Insiders prevented from trading while …
113 Yale L.J. 119 (2003) "[M]en are described as I think they are," Adolf Berle writes of his work, "rather than as they think they are." He continues: "Some will be shocked. The businessman will find that he is a politician and a commissar--perhaps even a revolutionary one. The liberal finds himsel…
112 Yale L.J. 2261 (2003) The first generation of cyberlaw was about what regulates cyberspace. Led by Larry Lessig's path-breaking scholarship isolating architecture as a constraint on behavior online, a wide body of work has flourished. In a recent article, I took those insights and reverse-engine…
112 Yale L.J. 2291 (2003) Egalitarianism ties people's fortunes together. It takes the good and bad things in people's lives--their blessings and their afflictions--and shares them out, or redistributes them, among their fellows. Where egalitarianism operates, each person's fortunes and misfortunes c…
112 Yale L.J. 2331 (2003) As intellectual property has become increasingly important to the national economy, a consensus has emerged among academics that courts should scrutinize congressional legislation closely under the Constitution's Copyright Clause. This Essay has challenged the academic conse…
112 Yale L.J. 1717 (2003) Why do we care about the Framers of the Constitution? After all, they lived long ago, in a world that was different in countless ways from ours. Why does it matter what their views were, for any reasons other than purely historical ones? And if we don't care about the Framer…
112 Yale L.J. 1473 (2003) In the beginning, there was a man named Looney. George Looney's world was Buchanan County, Virginia, a pocket of Appalachian hills and hollows that juts into Kentucky and West Virginia. In 1911, his place in this world was secure. Where lumber was the only industry in town, …
112 Yale L.J. 829 (2003) Modern economic analysis of contract law began about thirty years ago and, many scholars would agree, has become the dominant academic style of contract theory. Traditional doctrinal analysis exerts less influence than it did prior to 1970 and enjoys little prestige. Philosop…
112 Yale L.J. 553 (2002) Does American corporate law work effectively to enhance shareholder value? The recent corporate governance crisis makes this time as good as any for reexamining the basic structure of this body of law. This Essay provides such a reconsideration of a defining feature of U.S. c…
112 Yale L.J. 261 (2002) We are now in a quiet interlude awaiting the next serious political debate over the nation's tax system. No fundamental tax policy concerns were at stake in the 2002 disputes over economic stimulus or the political huffing and puffing about postponing or accelerating the inco…
112 Yale L.J. 61 (2002) In this Essay, my central claim has been that the probability of harm is often neglected when people's emotions are activated, especially if people are thinking about the worst-case scenario. If that scenario is vivid and easy to visualize, large-scale changes in thought and b…
111 Yale L.J. 2137 (2002) Crime waves always carry with them calls for more law enforcement authority. What happened on September 11, 2001 was, among other things, a crime wave--because of that one day, the number of homicides in America in 2001 will be twenty percent higher than the year before. It…
111 Yale L.J. 1665 (2002) There is a principle of constitutional law holding that "one legislature may not bind the legislative authority of its successors." The Supreme Court recently discussed that principle at length in United States v. Winstar, and although the case was decided on other grounds,…
111 Yale L.J. 1707 (2002) Following the lead of Alexander Bickel's The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics, legal scholars have been obsessed with the countermajoritarian aspects of judicial review. Much of the literature is normative--how can the dilemma of judicial re…
111 Yale L.J. 941 (2002) This Essay has refocused the predatory pricing debate on ex ante incentives--i.e., the incentives for entry and limit pricing before the predatory period--instead of the traditional focus of high prices after the predatory period. Ideally, a monopoly incumbent should price re…
111 Yale L.J. 619 (2001) An absence of bounded categories may be unsettling but, in lieu of (false) comfort, multi-faceted federalism offers something else, hopefully more useful if less supportive. Under the rubric of multi-faceted federalism, the deployment of categories is accompanied by a sense t…
111 Yale L.J. 399 (2001) A veil of ignorance rule (more briefly a "veil rule") is a rule that suppresses self-interested behavior on the part of decisionmakers; it does so by subjecting the decisionmakers to uncertainty about the distribution of benefits and burdens that will result from a decision. …
111 Yale L.J. 357 (2001) Property has fallen out of fashion. Although people are as concerned as ever with acquiring and defending their material possessions, in the academic world there is little interest in understanding property. To some extent, this indifference reflects a more general skepticism…
111 Yale L.J. 151 (2001) In an essay published in this Journal entitled Is There a Design Defect in the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability?, George Conk criticizes the American Law Institute and the Reporters of the new Restatement for immunizing prescription drug manufacturers from lia…
110 Yale L.J. 1407 (2001) Shortly after the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore, one member of the majority, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, addressed a group of students in the Washington, D.C., area. He told them that he believed that the work of the Court was not in any way influenced…
110 Yale L.J. 1187 (2001) Narrowly construed, Pennhurst is a sensible (even if not necessary) process-based limitation on Congress's power to bind states to costly burdens. If read to mean that a state can never be bound by a grant condition when the statute itself does not unmistakably speak to a pa…
110 Yale L.J. 785 (2001)
110 Yale L.J. 441 (2000) Last Term, the Supreme Court sent ominous signals about the future of federal antidiscrimination law. The Court twice ruled that Congress lacked power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to enact laws prohibiting discrimination. In Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, …
110 Yale L.J. 259 (2000) This Essay has attempted to clarify and reconceptualize constitutional tort law. Current doctrine severs remedies from rights and authorizes money damages on terms that apply indifferently to all constitutional violations. This remedial uniformity is faithful to the Monroe mo…
110 Yale L.J. 71 (2000) In this Essay, I have discussed the phenomenon of group polarization and explored some of its implications for deliberation generally and deliberative democracy in particular. The central empirical finding is that group discussion is likely to shift judgments toward a more ext…
Announcing the eighth annual student essay competition, announcing the ylj academic summer grants program, featured content, lock them™ up: holding transnational corporate human-rights abusers accountable, administrative law at a turning point, law and movements: clinical perspectives.
Home » Blog » Immigration Papers: Your Proof of Immigration Status
April 9, 2024 Citizenship Humanitarian Immigration News Replace/Renew Green Card Working in the U.S.
It is becoming increasingly important to have proof of your immigration status in the United States. Maintaining immigration papers, documentation, or proof of your legal status is essential if you have contact with law enforcement or immigration officials. In the current environment, even natural-born U.S. citizens can run into problems with identification. What’s more, immigration paperwork is generally necessary to obtain employment, gain access to many government benefits, secure housing, request driving privileges, just to name a few.
Immigration Documents for Employment in the U.S. Immigration Documents for Driving Immigration Documents for Health Insurance Replacing Immigration Papers:
Employment authorization card.
How CitizenPath Can Help
Foreign nationals who wish to work, get a driver’s license, or obtain other benefits must have the appropriate immigration papers to prove a lawful status. These papers come in a variety of types and can be confusing. Additionally, immigration documents must be valid and unexpired in most situations. If you have an expired or missing document, you’ll need to renew or replace it.
In 1986, Congress enacted the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in an effort to address the problem of people unlawfully immigrating to the United States without immigration papers and becoming employed by U.S. employers. IRCA requires all employers, regardless of number of employees, to verify the identity of new employees and their eligibility for employment in the United States.
As a result, all employers, regardless of size, must complete a Form I-9 upon hiring a new employee to work in the United States. Re-verification of eligibility for employment in the United States may also be required under certain circumstances.
To verify identity and prove employment authorization, foreign nationals may use a variety of documents . Employees can show a List A Document that proves identity and employment authorization. Alternatively, employees can show a List B Document to prove identity and a List C Document to prove employment authorization.
The lists of examples above are not inclusive of all possible immigration papers for use in employment. Additional documents and some restrictions may apply. Please refer to USCIS I-9 Central for details.
In the United States, the federal government does not issue driver's licenses. Each state issues their own driver's license. Consequently, there may be slightly different requirements in each state that affect foreign nationals.
Resident non-citizens who wish to drive a vehicle must obtain a driver's license from the state where they live. Again, each state may have different requirements. Generally, the following immigration papers may be used to apply for a driver's license:
For the specific driver's license requirements for your state, check your state's department of motor vehicles .
Like natural-born U.S. citizens, foreign-born U.S. citizens are also generally eligible for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – also known as Obamacare. Additionally, permanent residents and many other lawfully present immigrants are eligible. To qualify, applicants will be required to submit immigration papers that prove their status such as:
For a complete list of acceptable immigration document types, please visit Healthcare.gov .
If your immigration papers are lost, stolen or damaged, you likely need to replace them. Depending on the type of immigration document, there is generally a way to replace it.
Foreign-born persons who become U.S. citizens may prove their immigration status with a variety of documents including: Certificate of Citizenship, Certificate of Naturalization, or U.S. passport.
To replace a Certificate of Naturalization or Certificate of Citizenship, you may file Form N-565, Application for Replacement Naturalization/Citizenship Document .
To replace a U.S. passport, you can submit an application directly on the U.S. Department of State website.
Also known as a green card or resident alien card, the permanent resident card if proof of a foreign national's right to permanently live and work in the United States.
To replace or renew a 10-year permanent resident card, you may file Form I-90, Application to Replace Permanent Resident Card . Conditional residents with a 2-year green card may replace a lost/stolen green card with Form I-90 but should not a renew a card with Form I-90. Instead, conditional residents file Form I-751, Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence , in the 90-day period before the 2-year card expires.
It can take several months to obtain a new green card. There is a way to get a "temporary green card." The method varies depending on the purpose of your application. If applying to renew your green card, USCIS will automatically extend the validity of your green card . On the other hand, applicants replacing a green card will need to request an ADIT stamp as temporary proof of permanent resident status .
A variety of foreign nationals with a nonimmigrant status may be eligible for an employment authorization document. Also known as a work permit, the card is proof of employment authorization for several visa types and other status. Some common immigration statuses eligible for an EAD include: adjustment of status applicant, DACA, TPS, and asylum/refugee grantees.
To replace or renew an employment authorization card, you may file Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization . You must continue to qualify for employment authorization within the eligibility category for which you are applying. If your status has expired, you may also need to submit forms related to renewing your status.
I-94 arrival departure record.
The I-94 Arrival/Departure Record, also known as Form I-94, confirms that a foreign visitor has been lawfully admitted (or paroled) into the United States. It also includes information about the visitor’s visa status and permitted duration of stay.
Most people are issued an electronic I-94 and can replace it by simply visiting the I-94 website . Enter your information to get an instant copy. Read more for information about how to find an electronic I-94 record .
If CBP issued you a paper I-94, you may file Form I-102, Application for Replacement/Initial Nonimmigrant Arrival/Departure Document .
Foreign passport.
Foreign passports are not under the purview of the United States government. In other words, you will need to contact your country's embassy here in the United States. Each country has its own rules on replacing or renewing a passport.
CitizenPath provides simple, affordable, step-by-step guidance through USCIS immigration applications. Individuals, attorneys and non-profits use the service on desktop or mobile device to prepare immigration forms accurately, avoiding costly delays. CitizenPath allows users to try the service for free and provides a 100% money-back guarantee that USCIS will approve the application or petition. We provide support for the Citizenship Document Replacement Package (Form N-565) , Green Card Replacement Package (Form I-90) , Employment Authorization Package (Form I-765) ,and several other immigration services .
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If your application is taking an unreasonably long time or you cannot afford to wait for the normal processing time, you may be able to expedite your USCIS request. Do a USCIS expedite request or use alternative strategies to speed it up.… Continue Reading →
The USCIS fee increase affects many family-based immigration applications. Find out which forms are affected and what you may be able to do to beat the fee hike.… Continue Reading →
As a general rule, U.S. tax law applies to you if you live in the United States or spend a significant amount of time here. And income taxes can affect immigration status.… Continue Reading →
Immigration Form Guides Form I-90 Form I-129F Form I-130 Form I-131 Form I-131A Form I-131F Form I-134 Form I-485 Form I-751 Form I-765 Form I-821D Form I-864 Form N-400 Form N-565 Form N-600
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Students had a choice between two writing prompts for this contest on immigration policies at the border and in the "Constitution-free zone," a 100-mile perimeter from land and sea borders where U.S. Border Patrol can search any vehicle, bus, or vessel without a warrant. They could state their positions on the impact of immigration policies ...
Writing an essay on how to write an essay about immigration requires a deep understanding of the multifaceted nature of immigration itself. Immigration is a complex topic, encompassing legal, economic, cultural, and humanitarian aspects.
Immigration essay is a popular type of assignment in various topics, including politics and social sciences. In a globalized world, people can migrate from one country to another for work, study, and other reasons. This post will discuss some points that you could include in your essay on immigration to earn a high mark!
The President and Immigration Law makes two substantial contributions to scholarship and policy analysis. One contribution is its nuanced and persuasive historical account of the rise of presidential power over immigration. The other is its analysis of the current relationship between Congress and the President as "co-principals" in making immigration law (p. 193). Grounded in exhaustive ...
These essays examine economic, political, social, and legal issues related to immigration into the United States—from compelling arguments for limited immigration to forceful arguments for open borders. They assess the benefits and costs of immigration and its impact on education, social welfare, and health care.
The U.S. immigration system is a complex network of visas, humanitarian relief, pathways to permanent residency and citizenship, as well as temporary status for people facing specific crises in their home country. U.S. immigration law is very complex, and there is much confusion as to how it works. This fact sheet provides basic information ...
Stanford University's Hoover Institution asked me to write an essay for its immigration journal, Peregrine, with the title, "What is the optimal number of immigrants to the US?" My answer: 2,002,052,035. Seriously.
Two deep-seated tendencies in U.S. immigration law are obstructing the expansive reforms long sought by movement actors: incrementalism and path dependence. This Essay recommends that law clinics counter these forces by setting ambitious goals for structural change and by equipping students with kno… Essay
Introduction Immigration throughout the history of the United States has been critical in forging its cultural, economic, and demographic profile. The story written by the nation features periods of open reception and others characterized by restriction, a fact that points to the complexity of the issue at hand, generation by generation.
Background Essay—The History of Immigration Law in the United States Directions: Read the background essay and answer the critical thinking questions at the end. In addition, formulate your own questions about the content discussed.
You can explore this topic when writing the immigration essay or paper on terrorism. Relatively easy way of illegal immigration leads to reduced motivation for legal immigration.
Argumentative Essay on Immigration. Immigration has been a hotly debated topic for decades, with strong opinions on both sides of the argument. The purpose of this essay is to examine the history of immigration, explore the key debates surrounding the topic, and discuss how these debates have evolved over time.
The Unpragmatic Family Law of Marginalized Families Response to Pragmatic Family Law Vol. 136 No. 6 April 2023 Introduction In her excellent article Pragmatic Family Law, Professor Clare Huntington argues that divisive issues roiling U.S. politics, law, and society — such as abortion rights,... Mariela Olivares Immigration Blog Essay NIMBYism at the Border March 6, 2023 Asylum law has a ...
Biden's biggest immigration proposal to date would allow more new immigrants into the U.S. while giving millions of unauthorized immigrants who are already in the country a pathway to legal status. The expansive legislation would create an eight-year path to citizenship for the nation's estimated 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants, update the existing family-based immigration system ...
The U.S. Immigration Debate Comprehensive immigration reform has eluded Congress for decades. Presidents have increasingly turned to executive action to reshape asylum and border policy.
In this Immigration 101 explainer, we explain why immigrants can't just "get legal", immigrants get in line, and get their papers. It's way harder than you think.
Legal immigration to the United States occurs through an alphabet soup of visa categories, but a small number of pathways. Family relationships, ties to employers, or the need for humanitarian protection are the top channels for immigrants seeking temporary or permanent U.S. residence. And to a lesser extent, people can come if they possess sought-after skills or are selected in the green-card ...
First, as alluded to above, the issue of illegal immigration was central to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. He famously launched his candidacy with a speech in which he stated that Mexico wasn't "sending us their best" and that while some were presumably good people, others were rapists and were bringing drugs and crime.
Looking for illegal immigration essay topics? 🔫 Find here all you might need to write an 🅰️ paper. Research paper ideas, tips, & illegal immigration essay examples.
Conservatives tend to favor the term "illegal immigrant" and argue that it is the most precise because, unlike other terms such as "undocumented immigrant," it underscores the legal violation that took place. However, critics of the phrase "illegal immigrant," such as the Drop the I-Word campaign contend that "illegal immigrant" is actually imprecise or, at the very least ...
Immigration is an issue drawing increased attention among policymakers and citizens. These essays provide an economic perspective to the effects of immigration on the labor markets in the United States.
Interior immigration enforcement reaches well beyond deportation. In practice, it also offers a rationale for policing U.S. residents stereotyped as foreign. This Essay shows how a "deportation-centric" approach limits the ability of courts to recognize and redress unjustified surveillance, and it a… Essay
Having immigration papers, documentation or proof of your legal status is essential if contacted by law enforcement or immigration officials.