America's incoherent immigration system.

• Author: Anderson, Stuart

If the U.S. Congress and executive branch agencies formulated coherent policies, then here is what our immigration system would look like: highly skilled foreign nationals could be hired quickly and gain permanent residence, employers could hire foreign workers to fill niches in lower-skilled jobs, foreign entrepreneurs could easily start businesses in the United States, and close relatives of American citizens could immigrate in a short period of time. If all those things were true, then we wouldn't be talking about America's immigration system.

Many myths dominate perceptions about immigration. Perhaps the most common myth is that it's easy to immigrate to America. Often when discussing illegal immigration, a TV commentator will say, '"Well, they should just leave the country and come back in legally." An astute viewer would ask themselves: "If it was that easy, then why would they have risked their lives crossing that desert in the first place?" In fact, as will be discussed, while immigrating legally in high-skilled fields, as an entrepreneur, or as a family member is not easy, it is particularly difficult to obtain a legal visa for "lower-skilled" jobs.

Lower-Skilled Immigrant Workers

Members of Congress and the executive branch exhort U.S. employers to hire only individuals authorized to work in America, yet fail to provide the legal and regulatory structure to make tiffs a realistic option. It remains difficult, if not impossible, for employers to hire foreign nationals to fill lower-skilled jobs legally in America on a long-term basis.

Few legal avenues exist for lesser-skilled workers to enter America, which is a prime reason for illegal immigration. The underutilized H-2A visa for seasonal agricultural workers is considered burdensome and litigation-prone by growers. "Employers must wade through a regulatory maze in order to achieve some sort of basic understanding of what is required of them," testified John R. Hancock, formerly the Department of Labor's chief of the agricultural certification unit responsible for administration of the H-2 program, before a 1997 House Immigration Subcommittee hearing. "The H-2A program is not currently a reliable mechanism to meet labor needs in situations where domestic workers are not available" (U.S. Congress, House 1997).

Employers have often used up the annual quota of H-2B temporary visas for non-agricultural workers. Such visas are limited to use by seasonal workers in places such as resorts, or in industries such as crab fishing and nurseries. Employers also consider these highly regulated visas difficult to use. Based on the U.S. Department of Labor's interpretation of the statute, H-2B visas cannot be used for long-term or permanent jobs, such as an in-home caregiver or maid in a hotel full-year round. Employers generally cannot sponsor such H-2B or H-2A workers for permanent residence (green cards) and, in any ease, such immigrant visas in the "Other Workers" category are currently limited to only 5,000 a year (U.S. Department of State 2010). (1)

Most discussion of immigration these days focuses on illegal immigrants and the federal government's latest plan to stop them from working in America. Over the past two decades, these plans have been both ineffective and counterproductive. After years of legislation and increased enforcement, the illegal immigrant population in the United States increased from 3.5 million in 1990 (INS 2001: 10) to approximately 11 million today (Baker, Hoefer, and Rytina 2011: 4).

This current state of affairs is unfortunate because expanded use of temporary visas represents far and away the best way to reduce illegal immigration and also prevent the deaths at the border of those seeking economic opportunity in America. The inability of foreign nationals to enter the United States legally to work in lower-skilled jobs has contributed to more than 4,000 men, women, and children dying while attempting to cross the border into America since 1998 (Anderson 2010a).

The actions of Mexican farm workers between 1953 and 1959 illustrate that allowing legal paths to work will reduce illegal immigration and save lives. "Without question, the Bracero program was ... instrumental in ending the illegal alien problem of the mid-1940s and 1950s," wrote the Congressional Research Service (1980: 41). In short, history shows that combining sufficient legal avenues for work and immigration enforcement can dramatically reduce illegal immigration.

After enforcement actions by the INS in 1954 were combined with an increase in the use of the Bracero program, illegal entry, as measured by INS apprehensions at the border, fell by an astonishing 95 percent between 1953 and 1959. This demonstrated how access to legal means of entry could affect the decisionmaking of migrant workers.

One of the unintended consequences of U.S. immigration policies is that they have encouraged illegal migrants to set down roots. Increasing the chances of being apprehended has made entering the U.S. more hazardous. That means individuals who enter successfully stay in America rather than travel back and forth to Mexico or Central America. "Not only have U.S. policies failed to reduce the inflow of people from Mexico, they have perversely reduced the outflow to produce an unprecedented increase in the undocumented population of the United States," writes Princeton University's Douglas Massey (2005: 8). "America's unilateral effort to prevent a decades-old flow from continuing has paradoxically transformed a circular flow of Mexican workers into a settled population of families and dependents."

While many members of Congress state publicly they wish to reduce the overall population of illegal immigrants in the United States, these same elected officials have refused to pursue the policies that would be most effective in accomplishing that goal. While the recent lackluster economic performance of the U.S. economy has tempered the growth in illegal immigration, policymakers need to recognize that a significant expansion in the ability of low-skilled foreign workers to obtain jobs legally in the United States must be part of any long-term solution to reducing illegal immigration.

Highly Skilled Immigrant Professionals and Researchers

If the U.S. government does not make it easy for employers to hire lower-skilled workers legally, then one might assume that must be because the emphasis in America's immigration system is on facilitating the entry of highly...