David J. Bier Profile picture
Jun 13, 2023 12 tweets 5 min read Read on X
Legal immigration is *impossible* for nearly all immigrants wishing to immigrate to the U.S. legally.

You can’t just “get in line.” That’s a fiction perpetuated by those who want to keep immigration illegal.

My latest report explains why. Here’s the summary in 1 pic... 🧵 Image
U.S. immigration law's basic premise is that all immigrants are *guilty* until proven innocent.

Immigration is ILLEGAL unless you prove you fall into a narrow eligible category.

The result is that over 99% of people who want to immigrate legally cannot do so.
No one outside the U.S. is eligible for a green card unless they fall into one of five narrow exceptions...
⬇️
First Option: America’s Refugee Program—Accepts about 1 in 5,000 displaced people around the world, and the percentage accepted keeps dropping year after year. Image
Second Option: The Diversity Lottery—Accepts fewer than 1 in 500 applicants.

Because the lottery excludes the top-origin countries for legal immigrants, a majority of the world’s population is ineligible to apply. Image
3rd Option: Family Sponsorship—Only available to the closest relatives of U.S. citizens & green card holders—and still has a backlog of nearly 7 million thanks to an annual cap of just 226,000.

Most new sponsors in most categories will *die* before their relatives can immigrate. Image
Fourth Option: Self-Sponsorship—Available only to
-those with “extraordinary ability,”
-people with advanced degrees or “exceptional ability” who also have projects of “national importance,” and
-$800K-$1M investors who create 10 jobs in 2 years.

Not viable for many Image
Fifth/Final Option: Employer Sponsorship—Made impossible by red tape and low caps.

The normal employer-sponsored applicant will suffer through this insane filing maze, which can take between 2 and 3 years of processing time and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Image
Very few employers are willing to do this process except for the highest-skilled workers, and even then, only if they can get them an H-1B work visa first to allow workers to work while the process plays out.

But fewer than 1 in 5 can get a visa through the H-1B lottery anyway. Image
Even if employers win the H-1B lottery, no U.S. workers apply, and wait years, there is a backlog that is many times the annual cap.

Half the workers are from India, and thanks to the individual country caps, nearly all new Indian applicants will die without getting a green card Image
AS IMPORTANTLY, there’s no year-round, low-skilled guest worker visa *at all.*

Their employers have to go through a years-long process, hoping they get a worker and hoping that the worker stays with them when they get here.

Vanishingly few even try.
The U.S. historically had a much higher rate of legal immigration than it does now, and the U.S. ranks low compared to other wealthy countries for immigrants per capita.

We’d need over 75 million immigrants *tomorrow* to catch Australia.

The status quo has no justification. ImageImage
This is a very broad overview.

My new #CatoImmigration paper is a detailed explanation of the rules of U.S. legal immigration in as jargon-free language as possible. It is a resource for policymakers & the public seeking to understand the system better.
cato.org/policy-analysi…

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More from @David_J_Bier

Feb 20
39% of the detainees disappeared to the Guantanamo offshore prison were deemed "low threat" by the Trump administration. Some of the individuals being detained at Guantanamo did not cross illegally, legally requesting asylum at a port of entry.Image
For over 2 weeks, people were being detained with no way to reach a lawyer. It was only yesterday in response to this lawsuit any effort was made to protect their rights. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…Image
Again, this is according to the Trump administration's own declarations! They are detaining low-risk offenders at an offshore prison, including people who have never violated any law. Image
Read 11 tweets
Feb 15
Among the most commonly accepted and yet utterly baseless political theories out there is the idea that you can "satisfy" nativist urges by giving into some of their demands. How much history do you need to refute this?
Did the Chinese Exclusion Act satisfy nativism?
The Japanese Gentlemen's Agreement?
The Asiatic Bar Zone?
The literacy act?
The 2-year Emergency Quota Act?
The Permanent National Origins Quota Act?
1930 public charge visa ban?
Deporting Mexicans?
Blocking Jews?
Blocking Jews did provoke a pro-immigration effect, but it didn't "satisfy" nativism. It embarrassed it, humiliated it, refuted it, exposed eugenics for the moral monster it was. This eventually led to the reform of the National Origins Act and the Refugee Act....
Read 6 tweets
Feb 14
Here are some funny exchanges from @bryan_caplan & @DanielDiMartino at @sfliberty.
-Caplan: "Why don't you restrict childbirth based on projected net fiscal burden like you want to do with immigration?"
-DiMartino: "It's immoral. I'd never support deporting even homeless Americans if it saves govt money."
-Caplan: "Oh, now it's immoral. Why?"
-DiMartino: "It's different. You're assuming everyone has a right to come like everyone born here has a right to be here."
-Caplan: "Why assume that everyone born here has a right to be here?"
-DiMartino: "Well, some people, I guess, do want us to change that..."
-Caplan: "Uh, yeah..." [chuckle]
-DiMartino: "But I'm not making a moral argument."
Wait, weren't you?
DiMartino: One of our first restrictions was ideological. We banned anarchists!
Caplan: So you'd ban much of this audience?
DiMartino: There were different kinds of anarchists.
Caplan: So you trust the govt to decide the good anarchists from the bad anarchists? [laughter]
Note: DiMartino would ban the only libertarian head of state: Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist (who he supports)
DiMartino: We should at least try to ban communists, just like we ban guns on airplanes.
Moderator: Not the right audience for banning guns.
DiMartino: Oh yeah... [laughter]
Read 5 tweets
Feb 3
NBC: Trump's admin is releasing immigrants arrested into the US. After 4 years of nonstop lies about Biden, Trump does exactly what Biden is doing. MAGA will have all the excuses about how it's really the Democrats' fault. But the facts will remain the facts! Image
NBC reports that they are releasing people but not anyone "convicted of a serious crime." Hilarious! On the one hand, Noem's out there insulting our intelligence by saying that they're only arresting "dirtbags." On the other hand, they aren't releasing any "serious" criminals! Image
Maybe that's because, per NBC, most people being arrested are not serious criminals. They can't have it both ways.
Read 5 tweets
Feb 3
Wow! The DHS notice to terminate TPS for 300,000 Venezuelans claims Venezuelan TPS holders cost the US government "billions of dollars". The citation is to testimony from a hearing at which I testified and where I point-by-point dismantled the testimony being cited...Image
You can watch me shred the testimony here. You can watch the whole hearing. There was never any response. The chairman of the committee ended up asking CBO to research the issue because he had lost confidence in his own witness's testimony.
CBO did study the issue and found that it would increase federal revenues by $1.2 trillion and reduce the deficit by nearly $1 trillion over 10 years. Image
Read 4 tweets
Feb 3
What Trump Has Done and Imminently Plans to Do:
A comprehensive review of the illegal, unconstitutional, and merely bad:
"The country is facing 4 years of indescribable lawlessness, waste, chaos, and economic uncertainty that will leave America smaller, poorer, and less free."Image
Link⬇️"He is diverting America’s military and all types of law enforcement at every level away from their primary public safety and security missions and toward this economically destructive and socially damaging project that will make America less safe" alexnowrasteh.com/p/what-trump-h…
Trump has completely shut down the US refugee entries indefinitely, canceling thousands of flights of people already authorized to enter and leaving persecuted applicants stranded around the world Image
Read 22 tweets

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