The Government Wasted At Least 400,000 Visa Cap Slots in FY 2021

David J. BierThe U.S. government imposes limits on the number of immigrants, refugees, and temporary workers who it will admit or grant permanent residence every year. Congress has specified certain limits in statute, while the executive branch creates others. In fiscal year 2021 (October 2020 ‐​September 2021), the government wasted at least 400,000 visa and refugee cap slots.Table 1  shows the data for visa or refugee caps, used cap numbers, and unused cap numbers. As it shows, the U.S. government wasted 51,089 of 62,500 refugee slots (82 percent), 39,849 of 54,850 diversity lottery green cards (73 percent), 140,000 of 226,000 family‐​based green cards (62 percent), 62,000 of 262,288 employment‐​based green cards (24 percent), 42,716 of 130,716 H-2B visas (33 percent), and roughly 63,000 of 109,000 J-1 visas under the Summer Work and Travel Program (58 percent). No information is available about the use under other visa cap: the H-1B program, which has a cap o f 85,000.-Refugees: President Trump establishedan initial refugee cap for FY 2021 of just 15,000. Biden initially kept that cap through May beforeraising it to 62,500. But even when he raised it, the government directlystated that “we will not achieve 62,500 admissions this year,” claiming that it could not process them that quickly. Ultimately, just 11,411 were processed.-Diversity green cards: Trump banned all immigrant visas in April 2020 through March 2021. Biden dithered for over a  month bef...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs