Are the Per-Country Limits Necessary to Promote “Diversity”?

The most popularpiece of legislation in the House of Representatives —with 329 cosponsors—would phase out and eliminatethe per-country limits for employment-based green cards, while doubling the limits for family-based immigrants. These per-country limits discriminate against nationals of countries with high demand for green cards. For employment-based immigrants, immigrants from India receiving green cards in 2018waited a decade, Chinese immigrants waited 3 years, while everyone else waited less than a year.It is fundamentally unfair to make equally qualified employees of U.S. businesses wait ten times as long based on their birthplace. Rather than selecting employees solely on who has the best resume, employers now also have to consider who has the right home country. Moreover, the wait times distort the market and keep immigrants with more experience and higher wage offers from receiving green cards.My analysis earlier this year showed that the per-country limits artificially suppress the average wage offer for most employer-sponsored immigrants by $11,592.In August, however, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Francis Cissna who runs the legal immigration bureaucracy for the Trump administration appeared to criticize the change for undermining the “diversity” of immigrants. “It would indeed ameliorate the situation of Indian nationals,” hesaid. “But it would also have other effects on the diversity or flow more generally – and national re...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 5, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: David Bier Source Type: blogs