A New Way Forward for Employment-Based Immigration: The Bridge Visa
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Highlights
With the United States facing growing demographic pressures and labor needs, MPI is proposing creation of a bridge visa as a means of bringing flexibility to an employment system last overhauled by Congress in 1990.
- The U.S. employment-based system issues about 70,000 green cards to sponsored workers annually, far below the more than 350,000 immigrant workers absorbed by the economy each year.
- MPI proposes a bridge visa for workers at all skill levels: employers would sponsor a three-year stay, renewable once; after renewal, workers could self-sponsor for permanent residence instead of remaining tied to one employer.
- An independent expert body would set and adjust the annual cap for bridge visas—initially 350,000—based on labor demand, demographic trends, and usage data.
- Built-in worker safeguards would include visa portability, random employer audits, access to courts for wage violations, and a requirement that employers use only federally registered recruiters.
Immigration is expected to be the only driver of U.S. population increases 20 years from now, and already, immigrants and their U.S.-born children are sustaining labor force growth. Yet, U.S. employment-based visa policies—which were last revised in 1990, before most Americans had access to the internet and when manufacturing was the top industry of employment in most states—are significantly out of sync with the country’s economic needs and demographic realities.
This policy brief outlines MPI’s proposal for a new employment-based visa pathway, the bridge visa, that would enable the United States to better leverage immigration to meet its labor market needs. The proposed visa would help meet employers’ demand for workers in a wide range of industries and across skill levels, be flexible enough to accommodate both circular migrants and those wishing to stay in the United States permanently, ensure protections for both U.S. and foreign workers, and grow and shrink in scale over time, as needed to meet economic and other imperatives.
As the authors write, “The overarching goal would be to generate a lasting framework that is flexible enough to adapt over time to changing economic and demographic realities and to the shifting push and pull factors shaping migration to the United States—and, crucially, that does not force the country to wait several decades for Congress to find supermajority support for future reforms.”
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Current and Future Labor Market Needs
3 Shortcomings of the Employment-Based Immigration System
4 A New, More Responsive Approach: The Bridge Visa
5 How the Bridge Visa Fits within the Overall Employment-Based Immigration System
6 Protecting U.S. Workers
A. Labor Market Testing
B. Other Steps to Ensure the Bridge Visa Does Not Undermine Wages or Working Conditions
7 Recruiting Bridge Visa Workers
8 Streamlining Processing and Providing Greater Certainty
9 Conclusion
About the Global Skills and Talent Initiative
Anchored in the premise that immigration policy must be part of a broader skills and talent strategy, the Initiative has a particular focus on employment-based immigration and the supports that can help immigrants apply their full range of educational and professional skills.
Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy Initiative
This Initiative is generating a big-picture, evidence-driven vision of the role immigration can and should play in America’s future by providing policy ideas that reflect new realities.
About the U.S. Immigration Policy Program
The U.S. Immigration Policy Program provides analysis of U.S. immigration pathways, the impacts of enforcement and other policies, and the characteristics of immigrant populations.
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