Rethinking the U.S. Legal Immigration System: A Policy Road Map
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Highlights
Last updated in 1990, the U.S. legal immigration system needs deep reforms so employment and family pathways better match today’s economic and demographic realities.
- The U.S. legal immigration system, last meaningfully updated by Congress in 1990, has created an unauthorized population of about 11 million and backlogs exceeding 1 million employer-sponsored workers awaiting a green card.
- Proposed reforms include new bridge visas for workers, expanded temporary pathways, and updates to family-based categories.
- MPI proposes creation of an independent expert body to regularly review labor market data and recommend employment-based immigration levels every two years.
- Additional priorities include reforming per-country caps, strengthening worksite enforcement, and better aligning temporary and permanent pathways to avoid new unauthorized immigration.
The U.S. legal immigration system, built on a scaffolding first established in 1952 and last significantly updated by Congress in 1990, is profoundly misaligned with demographic and other realities—resulting in enormous consequences for the country and for its economy. This misalignment is the principal cause for illegal immigration. It is also responsible for the mounting backlog in legal immigration streams, with some in the green-card queue scheduled to wait 223 years for an employment-based visa.
This road map, part of MPI’s Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy Initiative, sketches the broad contours of some of the most needed reforms in the legal immigration system. Given population aging and changing labor market demands, the need for reform is more urgent than ever.
The policy brief offers a quick tour of the new framework that MPI is advancing. The vision includes:
- Meaningful and responsible reform of the U.S. immigration system that begins with addressing the challenge of the country’s unauthorized immigrant population, 60 percent of which has been in the United States a decade or more.
- Restructuring the employment-based system to better reflect economic and demographic realities and the behavior of employers and workers with three streams: 1) seasonal/short-term workers; 2) direct admission of immigrant workers recognized as the best and brightest in their fields as permanent residents; and 3) a new “bridge” visa as the main route for admission for most foreign workers arriving on employment visas.
- Retaining family-sponsored immigration as a major priority of the U.S. immigrant selection system, but with changes to some backlogged categories.
- Reforming the humanitarian protection system, including U.S. asylum system reform to improve efficient and fair adjudication.
- Injecting much-needed flexibility into immigration levels, with the creation of an independent expert body within government that makes recommendations on annual admissions based on careful, nonpartisan review of labor market, economic, demographic, and immigration trends.
Table of Contents
1 Economic and Demographic Realities
A. An Aging Population
B. Changing Labor Market Demand and U.S. Workers’ Skills
C. Implications for Immigration
D. Dysfunction in the Current Selection System
2 A Fresh Look at Policy Challenges, Old and New
A. Addressing the Unauthorized Immigrant Population
B. Rethinking the Broader System
3 The Elements of a Restructured Employment-Based System
A. Seasonal and Short-Term Workers
B. Direct Admission as Permanent Residents
C. Bridge Visa
D. A Pilot Points System
4 Reforms to Other Legal Immigration Streams
A. Family-Based Immigration
B. Refugee Resettlement and the Asylum System
C. The Diversity Visa Program
5 Key Considerations for Building a Modernized Visa System
6 Bringing Flexibility into the Number of Immigrants Admitted Annually
7 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.
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.
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.
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