I need some help on statstics pertaining to illegal immigrants.
Approximately how many illegal immigrants are in the country right now that are working?
How many legal immigrants are there waiting in line to come in with all of the proper paperwork, etc.
If the illegal immigrants were to be deported, How many out-of-work Americans would there be to fill the empty slots due to deportation?
Here’s one good source of information: http://www.fairus.org
Here’s another: http://www.cis.org
You might also want to check out the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Trust.
Also, my post would be incomplete without stating that FAIR, listed above, has a reputation for being quite anti-immigrant.
http://maldef.org/truthinimmigration/ is another one. Pew is much better for statistics though.
Correction: anti-illegal immigrant.
Excuse my ignorance, but . . .
Why would there be anyone wating in line? If they have the proper paperwork, why can’t they come now? Is there a rule which says, OK, here’s your green card, but you can’t come in until we find an illegal immigrant and deport them to make room for you?
Even if you do everything right, the process almost always takes years – sometimes many years. There are many reasons for this, and I suppose “not leting the immigrant population (legal plus illegal) rise too quickly” could be considered one of them, but, IMHO, the main reason seems to come down to “they take years to process you because they can”. That is, unlike, say, if you are arrested for something (and therefore, constitutionally, you have a right to a speedy due process), for immigrants to the U.S., the authorities don’t feel they owe you a damn thing. They think you should feel immensely lucky just for the privelege of, yes, “getting in line”.
Well, one out of two isn’t bad.
CIS is nonpartisan and does not have an agenda. FAIR is very definitely partisan and has a very clear agenda.
Because legal immigration is restricted by country-of-origin quotas and socioeconomic quotas. Unless you have a specific high-demand postgraduate qualification (engineering, accounting, medicine, etc.) your name goes into a very long list of unskilled and semi-skilled workers or a somewhat shorter list of skilled workers/college graduates.
The first group gets preferential treatment both for non-immigrant work visas (H1-B) or immigrant visas/permanent residency, and can get in relatively quickly. The latter two groups do not, so approval may take years.
If you’re from a country which already sends a lot of immigrants- such as Mexico- the process can take lots of years, since immigration from your country is going to be limited in that regard too. IIRC, a significant majority Mexican applicants never win the visa lottery.
Eva Luna deals with this stuff all day every day so hopefully she’ll be along soon.
I’ve been waiting in line two times.
The first time, I’d been offered a job in the US, and it took nearly a year for my employment visa to be approved. That includes time that my employer’s lawyers put the paperwork together, and time that it took for the US immigration people to approve it.
The second time, I won the Diversity Lottery (the “Green Card Lottery”, and it took about half a year to go through the adjustment-of-status process waiting for paperwork to go through the immigration people. During that “adjustment of status”, there was no problem about my continuing to live and work inside the U.S., but I couldn’t leave the U.S. without “Advance Parole” – and I needed that because during the six months I needed to visit Australia and Canada for work purposes.
I’m sure that Eva Luna will tell you that my case is relatively simple, and was processed relatively quickly.
And also limited by the applicant’s relationship with the US citizen or resident alien. IOW, spouses of citizens have first priority. Siblings have very low priority, and there are a limited number of visas available each year.
Also, IIRC, Mexico does not qualify for the visa lottery, which is for countries under-represented in visa applications.
That’s true – though the official name is the Diversity Lottery, and it’s for green cards (permanent residence) rather than for visas (I’m not a US citizen, but I last entered the US on a visa more than 7 years ago).
No- there’s a separate lottery specifically for Mexican applicants, AIUI.
Also, as you describe it this was simply (hah!) how long the bureaucracy took to process all the paperwork, not an intentional slowdown due to quotas. Many people will get caught up in quotas that in effect put their applications on hold for years, if not making application impossible.
When I was applying for a green card through employment exactly this happened to me - my case was put on hold for a few years due to quotas. It wasn’t clear when this would end, either. When I married a US citizen I could apply through that, with no quotas. That application took a relatively speedy four months.
Kinda sorta. What you “win” is the particular type of visa first to be allowed entry into the country, and then you apply for a green card. It’s not guaranteed you’ll get the green card, as you still have to clear all the requirements (ie - background checks, health requirements. etc).
Huh. I’ve never heard of this, although it’s been several years since I tracked immigration laws/procedures closely. Are you sure that’s not a guest worker program?
Hmmm. Possibly. I’m doing this from memory, so it wouldn’t surprise me if I’m off on the details.
Hi all,
As much as I’d love to spend more time hanging out in this thread, I have other fish to fry; in addition to my full-time job, I am getting married on Saturday. So you might say I’m a tad busy.
But just to clear up misconceptions about the feasibility of waiting one’s turn to immigrate legally, I will once again post the current State Department Visa Bulletin, which lists the quotas for various immigration cateogries and the backlogs for each, which depend not only on category, but on country of birth.
So, for example, if you are a brother or sister of an adult US citizen, and you were born in the Philippines, and your US citizen sibling filed an immigrant petition in October 1986, you will be eligible for an immigrant visa this coming month. In the employment-based categories, if you are immigrating based on an employer’s petition to fill a job that requires a bachelor’s degree at minimum, they aren’t even quoting a processing time, because the entire fiscal year quota has been used up.
If you don’t have an employer to petition for you, or a close relative (spouse, parent, or child, or you’re REALLY patient, a sibling) who is a US citizen or permanent resident, and you aren’t lucky enough to snag one of the 50,000 annual Diversity Lottery slots, you essentially have no change to immigrate legally. So please, let’s not pretend that it’s simply a matter of waiting in line. And even if you do have the opportunity to wait in line, the wait can literally be DECADES. I’ve seen simple cases based on marriage to a U.S. citizen take 2 years. Even longer, now that I think about it; a childhood friend of mine married a Ph.D. candidate from Croatia, who was here legally, and it took 3.5 years, a condo, and a kid for this green card to be approved. And there are plenty of other tales of woe just on this message board.
Anyway, gotta run - the masses are huddling.
Eva Luna, Immigration Paralegal
So, in the interest of ensuring bias-free information you point to FAIR, but you say nothing about MALDEF?!?!?!
Guess your bias about their extreme bias reveals yours.
And, yes, for the record, FAIR has an agenda: here it is:
You seem to bristle at the mention of FAIR. Which of these positions do you find so troubling?
Eva,
Just wanted to say CONGRATULATIONS! Hope your wedding comes off perfectly. Enjoy!!!
I didn’t see the link to MALDEF. I would certainly have noted that it is not an objective source also if I had.
If pointing out that FAIR is partisan and has an agenda is bristling, then color me bristly. However, I simply pointed out that one of your suggested sources is (theoretically) academic in nature and one is not. CIS isn’t wholly objective either, but that’s another story- their numbers, at least, are accurate and their methodology is sound.
I don’t find any of FAIR’s positions particularly “troubling”. I don’t necessarily agree with them, but that’s another thread. The point is that the OP is looking for objectivity and FAIR does not offer- or claim to offer- what he’s looking for.