Tag Archives: U.S. Citizenship

Immigration Blog

Family Immigration Backlogs Persist

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In recent years, much attention has been paid to the long waits for green cards for employer-sponsored immigrants. Many believe such waits harm the competitiveness of U.S. companies, since it makes it more difficult to retain top talent in the United States.

Much less attention has focused on the waits in the family-sponsored immigration categories. The wait times for sponsoring a close family member are long and, in some cases, extremely long. In a November 2010 report, the State Department tabulated more than 4.5 million close relatives of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents on the immigration waiting list who have registered for processing at a U.S. post overseas. That does not include individuals waiting inside the United States, such as in a temporary visa status, who would gain a green card via adjustment of status at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office. Counting such individuals as well would likely increase the waiting list to over 5 million.

An “immediate relative” of a U.S. citizen can immigrate to America without being subjected to an annual quota. This is important, since it is the relatively low quotas in the family and employer-sponsored preference categories that lead to waits of often many years for would-be immigrants. While there is no numerical limit in the immediate relative category, processing would still normally takes several months. The three primary immediate relatives included in the category are: spouses of U.S. citizens; unmarried children of a U.S. citizen (under 21years old, or under 16 if adopted); and parents of U.S. citizens, if the petitioning citizen is at least 21 years old.

The Preference Categories

Below are the descriptions of the four family-sponsored preferences as detailed in the State Department’s monthly visa bulletin, along with their annual quotas.

“First – Unmarried Sons and Daughters of Citizens: 23,400 a year.

“Second – Spouses and Children, and Unmarried Sons and Daughters of Permanent Residents: 114,200 A. Spouses and Children: 77% of the overall second preference limitation, of which 75% are exempt from the per-country limit; B. Unmarried Sons and Daughters (21 years of age or older): 23% of the overall second preference limitation.

“Third – Married Sons and Daughters of Citizens: 23,400.

“Fourth – Brothers and Sisters of Adult Citizens: 65,000.”

The wait times are longer for U.S. residents sponsoring relatives in Mexico and the Philippines. That is because of the per country limits, which generally limit a country to no more than 7 percent in the preference categories. For example, the wait time for a U.S. citizen petitioning for a brother or sister from the Philippines exceeds 20 years. For siblings from countries other than Mexico and the Philippines the wait times are closer to 10 years. These  estimates are based on examining the visa bulletins and other data from the State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Wait Times for Sponsoring a Relative in India

The wait times for individuals sponsoring relatives who are in India are estimated to be as follows:

Unmarried Adult Children of U.S. Citizens – 7 year wait.

Spouses and Minor Children of Permanent Residents – 3 year wait.

Spouses and Minor Children of Permanent Residents – 8 year wait.

Married Adult Children of U.S. Citizens – 10 year wait.

Siblings of U.S. Citizens – 11 year wait.

More Visas Needed to Reduce Family Wait Times

To reduce family wait times more immigrant visas would need to be added to the family preference categories. H.R. 3012, which would eliminate the per country limit for employment-based immigrants, would help people from India and China in those categories. However, increasing the per country limit from 7 percent to 15 percent in the family categories, which the bill does, would help those waiting the longest for family members from Mexico and the Philippines. By doing so, it would lead to somewhat longer waits for family-sponsored immigrants from other countries, including India. Other than permanently increasing the number of family-sponsored green cards, something Congress has not done since the current quotas were set in 1990, the long wait times for relatives will likely continue.

Immigration Blog

Employers May Soon Need Approval From a Federal Database for New Hires

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It is surprising that only months after taking office on a platform of smaller government, House Republicans appear poised to enact a program that some consider to be quite a big government solution to illegal immigration. The legislation is H.R 2164, sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-Texas). It bears watching in the coming weeks.

E-Verify is an electronic employment verification that allows employers to send, generally speaking, the name and social security number of a potential new hire and get back an answer from the federal government as to whether that individual is legally authorized to work in the United States.

The key issue is not whether such a system should exist. The issue is whether the federal government should require every employer in America to use E-Verify, as mandated in H.R. 2164.

In theory it may make sense to have such a system for checking new hires. But in practice it may be an entirely different story. A new report I completed details some of the problems with making E-Verify mandatory. (A copy of the report can be found here.)

First, it is unclear whether the system will actually reduce illegal immigration in any significant way. A government report by the consulting group Westat found about half of illegal immigrants show up in the system as work authorized, primarily, it’s assumed, by using a false identity. In addition to identify fraud the system could be thwarted by employers that decide not to submit the names of employees suspected of being illegal immigrants.

Second, the errors in the databases are likely to affect individuals here lawfully who seek jobs but are mistakenly shown by the system to be not authorized to work. This could be a major problem, since even under the current system employers often go against protocols and “pre-screen” applicants. That means individuals may not even realize why they are not called back after a job interview.

Misspellings of names and naturalization can lead to errors in the database. It is not surprising that someone with the name Mukherjee or Chidambaram is more likely to have a database error than a guy named Smith or Jones.

By some estimates foreign-born individuals are far more likely to experience problems with the Social Security or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services databases than native-born. “E-Verify error rates are 30 times higher for naturalized U.S. citizens and 50 times higher for legal nonimmigrants than for native-born U.S. citizens,” according to Congressional testimony by Tyler Morgan of the National Immigration Law Center.

Third, employers should be aware that H.R. 2164 vastly increases fines not only for employing illegal immigrants but also for what may be considered paperwork violations or a failure to submit an individual through the E-Verify system. The legislation puts in place a system more complex than simply checking new hires. An employer is also required to check existing employees under certain circumstances, including if an employee starts working on a state or federal contract or is within 30 days of work authorization expiring. A government allegation that workers were misclassified as independent contractors (and not required to be checked through E-Verify) rather than as employees could potentially trigger fines of at least tens of thousands of dollars.

The House legislation provides a short window for this to be up and running. The largest employers would be required to use E-Verify within 6 months, employers with between 20 to 499 employees within 18 months, and those with 1 to 19 employees would be required to use E-Verify within 24 months. A Senate bill, sponsored by Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) has a shorter window – one year for all employers – and requires all existing employees to be verified as well.

The House legislation could be marked up in the Judiciary Committee as early as this month. If it became law it could mark an enormous change in the operation of the U.S. workplace. Supporters of the bill view that as a good thing. Others are not so sure.