Immigration Adjustments Ignore the Chain Effect of Family Eligibility

U.S. immigration policy is in a state of flux. Since 1976 there have been four major amendments to U.S. immigration law, and in 1986 Congress passed a new act to control undocumented immigration. The new law imposes penalties on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, but it also offers amnesty and eventual legal residence to undocumented migrants who have been in the country continuously for five years or more. Last month, the Senate approved and sent to the House yet another measure to adjust current policies.

The Senate proposal would raise the annual immigration ceiling to 590,000 by adding a new category of “independent immigrants”--those who lack immediate family connections in the United States but have skills or abilities that would be an asset here. This is bound to generate considerable debate, putting the focus on the often-overlooked social aspects of immigration.

Social connections between immigrants in the United States and their compatriots at home inevitably build a powerful and dynamic momentum into the immigration process. U.S. policy has encouraged this momentum, a fact that does not seem to be widely appreciated.

At present, immigrant visas are allocated by a system that assigns priorities to categories defined by the strength of family ties to U.S. citizens and legal resident aliens. There is an annual ceiling of 20,000 immigrants per country, 270,000 worldwide, entering through these “preference categories.” In order to understand how the system works, consider the case of undocumented immigrants who have been, or will be, granted amnesty under the new immigration reform law.

More than 1 million immigrants have applied for amnesty, and the number may reach 1.5 million before the May 4 cut-off. Easily, 1 million could become permanent resident aliens within two years.

This will have tremendous impact, because the preference system codifies a process of “chain migration,” whereby the admission of one immigrant creates a pool of other potential immigrants--namely, spouses and unmarried children who were not covered by the original amnesty law. The potential for immigration by these relatives of new resident aliens is limited, however, since they are eligible under one preference category, which is numerically restricted.

The additional potential for chain migration lies in the long-run possibility that many of those receiving amnesty and legal resident status will go on to become U.S. citizens, a process that normally takes five years. All adult sons, daughters, brothers and sisters of new citizens then become eligible for entry through other preference categories, along with their spouses and children. These people, in turn, may go on to become citizens and sponsor the immigration of their own relatives.

A more important avenue for chaining occurs through relatives who are exempt from numerical limitations--in particular, minor children, spouses and parents of U.S. citizens. If those granted amnesty become citizens in large numbers, then these relatives will eventually become eligible for immediate entry outside the quotas.

All those entering by virtue of kinship to new citizens will free up numerically restricted visas that can be allocated to others. The chaining, then, is both perpetuated and broadened.

The potential for this depends critically on rates of naturalization. Mexicans make up more than 70% of those who have applied for amnesty, and they traditionally have had low rates of naturalization. Until recently they had little incentive to get involved in the naturalization process. Mexico was not subject to the country quotas until 1976 and was not brought fully under the worldwide ceiling until 1978. Since then the rate of naturalization has steadily risen, and when the new immigration reform law was passed in 1986, the rate suddenly doubled. Recent data suggest that Mexicans are increasingly becoming citizens in order to circumvent the preference quotas. During the 1970s the percentage of Mexicans entering outside restricted quotas fluctuated between 30% and 40%; in 1986 this figure reached 66%.

From the 1.1 million immigrants now registered for amnesty, our present laws will create many more. How many more can’t be predicted. When Congress debated the elimination of barriers to Asian immigration in 1964, Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy testified that immigrants from Asia would initially number 5,000, “after which immigration from that source would virtually disappear.” In 1986 alone, 286,000 Asians entered the United States.