More
than 4 million people have approved petitions for legal permanent residence in
the United States but most can’t because their priority dates have not become
current.
The
Migrant Policy Institute (MPI) has published a brief, the first in a series
timed with negotiations on Capitol Hill for a comprehensive immigration reform
bill that explains the “line” for people who want to live and work lawfully in
the United States.
In Going
to the Back of the Line: A Primer on Lines, Visa Categories, and Wait Times
they reveal the various ways of winning Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) status
and eventually, American citizenship.
The Philippines remained the 4th largest
source of immigrants in 2012, according to the latest report from the Department
of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics.
However, Filipinos comprise the 2nd
biggest bloc of immigrants (next only to Mexicans) who acquired US citizenship
last year – suggesting the importance they put on becoming Americans as quickly
as possible.
The DHS said over a million people were granted
legal permanent status in 2012; more than half of them (53 percent) were
already in the US when their applications were approved – refugees, temporary
workers, students, relatives of US citizens and undocumented immigrants, among
others.
The number of new Filipino LPRs grew minimally,
from 57,011 in 2011 to 57,327 last year but still fewer than the 58,173 in
2010. Mexico, China and India topped the list.
While immigration was slightly down,
naturalizations were up – 757,434 in 2012 compared to 694,193 the previous
year. Mexico, the Philippines and India topped this list. The DHS noted a
decades-old trend of Asians surpassing Europeans continued in part because more
Asian immigrants choose to become American citizens.
This has contributed to building a huge backlog of
petitions. The MPI report cited government statistics that showed 723,000
family-based visa petitions and 73,000 employment-based petitions were filed in
Fiscal Year 2012.
For 2012, only 370,951 immigrant visas – for both
family and employment based petitions – were available under quota limits
imposed by Congress (the Immigration Act of 1990 sets an annual limit of
between 416,000 and 675,000).
In addition, there are per-country limits equal to
7 percent of the total number of family-sponsored and employment preferences
(25,967 per country last year).
“Nationals of countries with especially high levels
of demand in certain family-based and employment-based visa categories (currently
Mexico, the Philippines, China and India) face longer wait times because fewer
visas are issued each year to these countries,” the MPI explained.
For Fil-Ams, the wait times are longest for those
petitioning siblings (about 24 years – the longest among all the categories)
and adult married children (about 20 years). Employer-based petitions for
Filipino workers have a wait time of more than 6 years.
The State Department reported that as of November
2012, there were more than 4.4 million people whose visa petitions (97 percent
of them family-based) have been approved but are waiting for the availability
of those visas.
Based on current visa ceilings and assuming no new
petitions are filed, the MPI estimates it will take the government 19 years to
clear this backlog.
The MPI says the visa backlog could even be higher,
and it’s uncertain whether some of them may be part of the 11 million estimated
undocumented immigrants in the country. “This is a critical point because the
impact of any new legalization program on the current backlog will undoubtedly
depend on how many unauthorized immigrants are being double-counted,” they
said.
The MPI suggested fixing this backlog is crucial to
any immigration reform bill that would require undocumented immigrants to “go
back the line”.
They added, if Congress and President Obama decide
to pursue this path in immigration reforms, they will have to “contemplate adding
additional visas in order to be meaningful”.
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