Legal Pathways to Getting an Immigrant Visa

H-2B: The H-2B visa, which is usually granted for short periods but can be extended for up to three years, is available to workers who work in seasonal or temporary non-agricultural jobs, such as landscapers, crab gatherers, lifeguards, or resort workers. There are currently 66,000 visas available per year. In recent years, Congress has authorized the Secretary of Homeland Security to raise the cap if he determines there is a sufficient need for additional manpower. The first way, the newcomers, includes the mythical immigrants of yesteryear: those who arrive in the United States without ever having set foot in the country before. At 34%, they make up a clear minority of all immigrants. The remaining two-thirds of the cohort conducted their migration experience in one of five different ways. Illegal frontier workers account for 21 per cent of all adult immigrants; These are people who report an undocumented previous trip to the United States that we believe entered the country secretly. While the vast majority likely arrived from Mexico via the southern border, some had to cross the northern border from Canada. On the other hand, visa abusers are people who have made a previous trip with a valid visa, but who have violated the conditions of that visa; They make up about 10% of the immigrant entry cohort Conceptually, this category includes two basic forms of visa abuse: entry on a short-term visa and longer than expected, or entry with a visa that does not allow work, and then acceptance of a U.S. job. The most abused visa is the tourist visa, which accounts for 52% of visa abuse cases with 5.5% of the total cohort. Although models generally estimated from INS and census data may reveal specification error by omitting powerful variables essential to understanding the process of economic assimilation in the United States, they do not appear to provide substantially biased coefficients for other variables. This result replicates earlier Lindstrom and Massey (1994) results using a completely independent and very different data set.

The main misinterpretations are therefore likely due to our inability to measure the impact of factors critical to the process of economic success in the United States: the path by which immigrants have attained legal status, as well as the amount and nature of their previous experiences in the United States. In addition to permanent admission, the United States also increases hundreds of thousands of workers, international students, and temporary exchange visitors each year through a wide range of visa categories assigned to alphabetical letters from A to V. While temporary visas do not lead directly to a green card, temporary visa holders can obtain one in some cases if they are able to find a family member or employer to sponsor them. In some ways, the most surprising thing is that Mexico is no more dominant among illegal border crossers. Some 39 per cent of illegal border crossers come from elsewhere, mainly from Latin America: 6 per cent from El Salvador, 5 per cent from Peru, 4 per cent from Guatemala and 4 per cent from Ecuador. Thus, Mexico appears to serve as an important platform for the illegal entry of immigrants from all over the hemisphere. Due to its unique geographical location, it serves as Latin America`s main channel for illegal border crossings. Overall, 81 per cent of illegal border crossers are from Latin America or the Caribbean (table not shown). In recent years, the United States has issued about 1 million green cards per year; Although the proportion varies somewhat from year to year, about half is given to immigrants who are already in the United States and adjusting to another status (for example, temporary workers or students). The rest goes to candidates outside the United States. In both cases, the majority of these visas require sponsorship from a parent or employer. The composition of the refugees` national origin is broadly in line with what one would expect given U.S.

foreign policy over the past few decades, with all major contributions coming from the communist or former communist world. The countries of the former USSR alone account for 42% of all immigrants who have ever lived as refugees, followed by Vietnam with 30%, Cuba with 9% and the former Yugoslavia with 8%. Together, these four countries account for 89% of all people who become immigrants through the refugee or asylum pathway. Source: Department of State, «Table XVI(B) Nonimmigrant Visas Issued by Classification (including Border Crossing Cards): Fiscal Years 2014 – 2018,» Visa Office Report 2018, available online. Although there are approximately 650,000 children protected by DACA, it is not legal immigration status. This is a temporary solution that provides beneficiaries with extremely limited options. DACA recipients need pathways to legal status like any other undocumented person. Although not everyone is eligible for these streams, they are worth teaching: among undocumented migrants, those who started as illegal border crossers generally have the lowest level of human capital, with an average of only 10 years of schooling and 25% reported primary education or less; Only a third speak English fluently. In contrast, only 10% of visa shortened have no primary education and 17% are university graduates, resulting in an average degree of nearly 13 years; and 45% are fluent in English. Non-resident visitors have even more beneficial characteristics, suggesting that immigrants who want to spend time with family members while waiting for legalization are oriented in two different directions, depending on their human capital: those who have studied and have language skills receive a visa that they can exceed or renew periodically, while those without these resources resort to illegal border crossings. In general, non-resident workers, students and visitors participating in an exchange program have the highest levels of human capital. Most are university graduates, and at least three-quarters are fluent in English, and more than 80% understand it well.

Immigrants who started out as refugees or refugee claimants generally have a high school education, and relatively few are fluent in English. The fourth and final option in the immigrant visa category is obtaining refugee status. Unlike processing asylum claims, the United States imposes a cap on the acceptance of refugees from any part of the world. Applicants must demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. For Latin America, the annual ceiling is 1,500 refugees; From October 2017 to June 2018, the United States welcomed 571 refugees from Central America, including 31 from Guatemala, 488 from El Salvador and 52 from Honduras. These were the latest submissions from the Obama administration`s Central American Minors (CAM) program, which has allowed high-risk young patients whose parents are in the U.S. to submit asylum claims in the region. A related program allowed minors who were denied refugee status to be considered for parole, an immigration status that allows them to be temporarily admitted to the United States. The Trump administration ended both programs and the CAM program was set to expire in early 2018. Mexico also leads other countries in the visa abuser category, although its 13% share is fairly close to its total share in the immigrant cohort. The second largest contributor to visa abuse is Vietnam, which at 8% is 50% higher than one would expect from its weight in the overall cohort, China (8%), the Philippines (6%) and Colombia (5%). In general, however, no country dominates the category of visa violators, as Mexico dominates illegal border crossers.

While Mexico alone accounts for 41% of all border commuters, the six countries listed in Table 2 together account for only 39% of all visa offenders. The first set of columns provides typical results for immigrant income regressions.