MPI Webinar
Family Immigration Policy and Trends: How the United States Compares to Other Countries
Multimedia Tabs
Julia Gelatt, Senior Policy Analyst, Migration Policy Institute
Kate Hooper, Associate Policy Analyst, Migration Policy Institute
Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Distinguished Transatlantic Fellow, Migration Policy Institute
Doris Meissner, Senior Fellow and Director, U.S. Immigration Policy Program, MPI
All immigrant-receiving countries grapple with the rights and requirements surrounding family reunification and how to balance them with other immigration priorities.
Deciding which family members should be eligible to join their relatives in the United States, and under what conditions, has become a hot button political issue. The Trump administration has proposed restricting family-based immigration severely, prompting a wave of responses arguing that family-based immigration should remain at the heart of the U.S. immigration system. In this webinar, MPI analysts compare U.S. policy on family migration to that of other significant immigrant-receiving countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Specifically, do these countries define "family" for the purpose of immigrant admissions and how does the proportion of family admissions compare to the other admission streams, especially to the admissions of the economic/labor market stream? This conversation features findings from an issue brief examining family migration trends in nine countries, and marks the launch of a data tool that models potential U.S. legal immigration cuts, by category and top countries.