The "Right Way" Doesn't Exist For Most Immigrants
As thugs invade communities, storm job sites, courtrooms, and even elementary schools, and as children are ripped from their parents, a typical response is: "They should have come here the right way."
They can't. America makes it impossible.
Yet our workforce, economy, and population depend on them.
Below is a chart of nations and their percentage of foreign-born population. Looking at America’s legal immigration, we see the US is among the lowest on the list. Even when factoring in the undocumented population, we are still well below the median. America is extremely stingy about how many people we let immigrate here yearly.
The process of applying for legal immigration is also excessively complicated, as this chart from the CATO Institute shows.
~1 million people annually are allowed to immigrate to the US legally. Of that, almost 80% are from family connections, with 65% of those being American family connections. If you do not have a family connection, it is extremely unlikely that you can immigrate legally to the US. Another 5% were employee-sponsored, 3% were refugees, and just a little over 2% were from the diversity lottery, which is limited to specific countries and has numerous requirements to even apply for.
In 2018, 32 million people began the application process to be allowed legal permanent residence in the US, which means 31 million of them did not receive it. And while I’m not advocating for an annual cap of 32 million, America is so far behind in admitting immigrants that if we had accepted all of them that year, it would have raised the percentage of the US population that was foreign-born to the global median shown in the first graph above.
Contrary to the claims that “America is full,” we can easily increase the number of legal immigrants allowed each year.
Legal permanent residence is only half the story. The other half is temporary work visas. There are 11 types of temporary work visas, including categories for athletes, artists, cultural exchange programs, and the most well-known, the H-1B visa, which many tech companies use to hire lower-wage employees to offset costs and boost their exorbitant CEO paychecks.
We will focus on the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Worker and the H-2B Temporary Non-agricultural Worker visa categories. A large portion of agricultural workers are immigrants, particularly farmhands. This chart shows the breakdown of crop workers, and as you will see, we do not give out enough H-2A visas to cover the number of workers needed.
These are not immigrants who are taking American jobs. You can read many reports that interview farmers about how hard they’ve tried to hire American workers, but can’t find enough who want to do the work. And since we aren’t providing enough work visas to cover the number of workers needed, farms have to rely on illegal immigrants.
If you’re wondering why the chart shows a significant decrease in authorized foreign workers in the first few years, that is largely because the last major immigration reform was tackled in 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act.
That bill gave a large portion of long-term unauthorized workers who had been continually in the US working hard for years without causing any problems authorized work status, and over time, those workers left the country or moved into other sectors, while we continued to give out too few work visas.
America gives out hundreds of thousands of H-2A visas yearly, but we have a cap of just 66,000 H-2B visas. 15% of construction workers, 9% of hospitality workers, 6% of manufacturing workers, and 6% of transportation workers are undocumented immigrants.
Again, these are not workers taking American jobs. In 2023, the construction industry had the highest level of unfilled jobs ever recorded, and the hospitality and landscaping industries have also faced significant hiring and retention challenges in recent years. Clearly, the 66,000 cap is far too small to accommodate America’s needs.
Instead of demonizing these immigrants, realize that America relies on them to fill jobs, grow the economy, fund Social Security, and keep our population from shrinking, all while making it impossible for them to come here the “right way.”
Congress has avoided passing major immigration legislation for almost forty years. It is time for them to get to work creating a system that covers America’s needs and is easy for immigrants to understand and navigate.
While they’re at it, Congress should once again do what they did in 1986 and allow unauthorized workers who’ve been working in the US for several years and haven’t committed any major crimes a pathway to be here legally. It is the least we can do when they’ve provided so much for our nation while America refused to create a proper legal path.
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/why-legal-immigration-nearly-impossible
Combating Disinformation: Immigration and the Border
Trump came into office with a big show of force on immigration enforcement. He declared the border an emergency, embedded Fox News camera crews in ICE raids, sent troops to the border, threatened Canada and Mexico with broad tariffs, and used military flights to deport migrants. All of it was made to be one giant spectacle.
Hi Jared, you've produced a thoughtful, intelligent, well-researched column. But as the judge said to Vinny in "My Cousin Vinny", denied. I've replied to a number of Substacks with my compilation of RW disinformation media. Short version. People have been brainwashed- actual physical brainwashing - by the nonstop braying, mostly lies and out of context half-truths from the various RW media outlets. You're completely correct but we're well past the point of no return. And it isn't only immigrants. They are a target that allows the authoritarian government to target anyone. Any dissension will be quelled. We're done. I've been posting about this - I have little agency - for many years.
Still enjoy reading intelligent writing and appreciate your stuff.