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Of legal immigrants, yes, but 1) recently, we have had more of illegals immigrants than legal, and 2) legal family migration is to a large degree downstream of illegal immigration. Illegals come here, and get married to legal residents, which enables them, and their families to start chain migration. They give birth to children who have been treated as US citizens, which again allows them to bring their illegal parents and older siblings through family process, and also to get married to illegals who then are legalized.
As it happens, Trump actually tries to do something about that, with his EO stopping birthright citizenship to illegals. We will see what SCOTUS says about this, but the implications of it could be enormous. For example, it will discourage illegals from starting families in here, because their children will be in bad legal situation. It will make it easier to deport parents of small children if they are no longer US citizen children.
Took a look. Damn, family based immigration is a straight exploit.
Immigrate illegally -> have a child -> wait 20 years -> get a greencard for both parents -> sponsor all the siblings and children.
It is a long con, but securely brings the whole extended family over 1-2 generations. A part of me feels thats anyone who spends 30-ish years of their life working around the system deserves a green card just for the effort . But, im not the median motte commenter.
I would have expected limits to chain immigration. Like, someone who came as a family based immigrant cant sponsor family based immigrants. Or that you can only sponsor minor siblings. But it's quite liberal. The long waitimes seem to be the only throttling tool on hand.
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Yes, that’s why I said “get married to legal residents”.
Anything involving legal immigration system is “very difficult” if you talk to pro immigration advocates, but as it happens, I personally know multiple people who went exactly this route, and it worked out for them.
Who do you think are the millions of people coming on family based visa? Are you suggesting that 200k of former employment based green card recipients are bringing 5 family members from abroad each?
You sneak through the border with a husband and a kid. You give birth to an another child. Your child is a citizen. Once he becomes old enough, he sponsors your and his brother’s family based green card.
OK, and how exactly do you think US citizens come about to have foreign family? Again, think it through. These US citizens are almost universally downstream of some relatively recent immigration event. They either became naturalized citizens, or were born to immigrants. People who were born to two American-born parents are highly unlikely to have any foreign family that they could even consider getting in here.
So, basically all family based immigration is downstream of recent immigration. If you ignore the family based legal immigration, then legal immigration has been absolutely overwhelmed by illegal immigration for many years now.
What I am arguing here is that large chunk, if not a majority of legal family based immigration is downstream of some illegal immigration event that happened in recent history. For example, US citizen born to illegal parents, or formerly illegal aliens who legalized their presence in some way (and there are ways to do it for quite a lot of people).
Therefore, when you say that
You are missing the forest for trees: yes, family based chain migration have brought more people here than fake asylum claimants, but the point is that fake asylum claimants will cause more family based migration in future, so reducing the former also reduces the latter.
You missed one option, that is, they marry illegal immigrants, but otherwise this my point: all family based immigration is downstream of previous immigration events.
This is only true in the most literal sense, as illegal immigrants are not eligible for petitioning for family based immigration, but overall it misses my point: US citizens can and do petition for family based immigration for their illegally present parents, spouses, and siblings. There is a whole legal industry for that, just search Google for “green card for undocumented parents”, you’ll find many immigration law companies adveritising their services. If your spouse, parent or sibling did not enter unlawfully, but eg. overstayed their visa, there is hardly any legal issue preventing adjusting their status. Even if you entered unlawfully, all you need to do is sneak out of US, and then pretend you’ve never been here illegally; perfectly viable for many illegals who haven’t generated federal record of their presence.
Sorry, do you actually believe that people who enter or stay illegally are a complete dead end from family based immigration purposes, or are you just asking for evidence this to be obnoxious? The existence of the legal industry dedicated to legalizing parents and spouses is evidence. You can find many businesses that help with that in Google.
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