Changes in Law Lead to 27% Hike in Legal Immigration

Legal immigration to the United States, fueled by a decade of changes in immigration law and dominated by Latin American and Asian arrivals, surged 27% in 1996, with 915,900 foreigners receiving visas to come to or remain in the country permanently.

Following a pattern that has lasted 25 years, California was the intended residence cited most often by those who won green cards to remain in the United States last year, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which released the annual statistics Tuesday. At the same time, the state’s share of all legal immigrants appears to be diminishing gradually, from almost 26% in 1994 to 22% in 1996. After California, the states cited most frequently by immigrants as intended residences were New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey and Illinois.

Mexico was, by far, the most common point of origin, with 18% of those getting green cards last year coming from there.

The 1996 hike in legal immigration follows three years in which the ranks of green card-holding newcomers had dropped by a total of 20%. Tuesday’s report set off a storm of debate over the causes and significance of the spurt and the wisdom of the policy changes that have contributed to it.

Clinton administration officials played down the significance of the reported increase, attributing much of it to a speed-up in the processing of visa applications. INS officials cautioned Tuesday that the increase in immigration rates likely will last another two to three years before returning to 1995 levels of about 720,000 people per year.

They also emphasized that many of the “new” legal immigrants reflected in the latest count actually have been in the United States for some time, having come to the country in recent years to await visa approval.

Some of the 1996 increase stems from a 1994 change in immigration law that eased penalties for immigrants who come to the United States illegally pending approval of a green-card application. These newcomers usually come to join family members who will sponsor them. The change prompted a steep increase in applications by such immigrants and it took the INS two years to process the backlog. As a result, experts said, many immigrants whose legal status should have been reflected in the 1994 and 1995 statistics are artificially inflating the 1996 numbers.

In addition, some of the surge in the 1996 numbers appears related to a decision during President Reagan’s 1986 presidency to grant amnesty to individuals living in the United States illegally. Many of those immigrants have been in the country legally long enough to have gained U.S. citizenship and they are now sponsoring the permanent residency of spouses, offspring, parents, brothers and sisters.

Critics of current immigration law charged Tuesday that the new numbers are the “tip of the iceberg,” auguring a new surge of immigration that will bring waves of poorly educated foreigners into the country.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform charged Tuesday that the latest surge is the result of an officially sanctioned “Ponzi” scheme in which most legal immigrants may sponsor the immigration of large numbers of family members. Nearly 98% of the 3.5 million immigrants who have applied for green cards are family members of legal immigrants who have already entered the United States, according to FAIR.

“The existing structure is nepotistic and increases immigrant-related poverty rates,” said Dan Stein of FAIR, which has lobbied for stricter limits on immigration. “It also creates incentives to illegal immigration and generates pressure on Congress to raise immigration levels. Every year, the crisis in high-impact regions gets worse,” he said.

The INS acknowledged in Tuesday’s report that “family-based immigration” increased by 30% over the previous year and accounted for 65% of the new green-card approvals issued in 1996.

Although the INS releases immigration data on a yearly basis, this is the first such report issued since Congress passed a sweeping welfare reform act that would restrict most public assistance, including federal disability payments and food stamps for most non-citizens, even if they are legal immigrants. President Clinton, who contends that such provisions are unfair and have nothing to do with welfare reform, has proposed spending $15 billion over the next six years to restore some assistance to low-income legal immigrants.

While several Republican lawmakers are drafting plans to restore as much as $2 billion in aid to states with large immigrant populations, they maintain that Clinton’s proposal to restore $15 billion in aid--almost 45% of the welfare bill’s projected savings--has no chance of becoming law.

Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Texas), who chairs the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration and claims, said in a statement Tuesday that the new numbers underscore the need for strict new controls on legal immigration.

“Over the next five years, America will admit 2 million immigrants who lack a high school education and are unskilled,” said Smith. “They will compete directly with 2 million citizens who must leave welfare and find jobs.”

The release of the 1996 legal immigration numbers comes two months after the INS unveiled new estimates showing that more than 5 million illegal immigrants reside in the United States, a number that is growing by 275,000 each year. California is home to 40% of the total, the INS said, or about 2 million.

But the fine print of Tuesday’s report reflected an increasing trend among immigrants to disperse beyond the states that have traditionally been their U.S. homes. Both California and New York lost share of newcomers, with more legal immigrants settling in regions of high economic growth and opportunity like the South and the Southwest.

Sean Walsh, a spokesman for California Gov. Pete Wilson, said that the governor welcomed legal immigrants but the continued flow of illicit immigrants was draining state services, posing burdens for legal immigrants and other lawful residents.

“If we don’t do something about the backdoor, then it potentially has an impact on the frontdoor,” Walsh said.

Immigrant advocates heatedly dispute the governor’s assertions, arguing that even illegal immigrants are a net economic gain for California, providing entrepreneurial drive and essential low-wage labor in fields, factories and elsewhere that underpins the state’s economic growth.

Times staff writer Patrick McDonnell contributed to this story.