A New Proposal to Address U.S. Immigration Future Flow Needs

“Future flows” of both temporary and permanent immigrant workers represent a crucial component of any comprehensive immigration reform, and will be key to ensuring both that future U.S. labor market needs can be met and will occur through legal, orderly channels.  Already, the overwhelming majority of permanent labor market immigrants adjust from a temporary employment visa, but the current system makes this path to permanent status complicated, administratively burdensome, and economically inefficient. The result is a great deal of uncertainty and the loss of many talented immigrant workers. 

 

MPI’s report, released at this event, recommends a new visa stream called provisional visas.  The report examines how provisional visas can alleviate employers’ administrative costs and provide them a more predictable workforce, enhance migrant workers' rights and ease immigrant integration, and smooth the transition from temporary to permanent status in a transparent and predictable manner. 

 

Report authors Doris Meissner, MPI Senior Fellow and Director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program, and Madeleine Sumption, MPI Associate Policy Analyst, presented the report’s findings.