Immigration is one of the most miss-understood, hot-button, polarizing issues in American Politics.  There are a number of understandable reasons for this,; fear, ignorance, culture, economics, religion… and there are a number of nefarious and exploitative reasons as well.   I propose that the issues surrounding immigration have been, and continue to be, exploited by those on both the right and the left of the American spectrum for the sole means of garnering control, expanding power and enriching their person.

Immigration - Introduction

There are two types of immigration, legal and illegal.  Legal immigration consists of all forms of systematic processes by which one receives official sanction for permanent residency in the United States (LPR – Legal Permanent Residency). Since the last major decline in legal US Immigration in 1992, an approximate average just over 1-million individuals receive legal residency annually.  There are three classes of legal immigrants: 1) Immediate Relatives of U.S. Citizens 2) Refugees and Asylees  3) “Other” which makes up less than 10% of legal immigration .

There are bureaucratic diversity numbers, preference classes and special legislative classes of legal immigrations.  The 1990 Immigration Act put annual limits of 416,000 to 675,000 individuals for family sponsorship, employment and diversity.  Family-sponsored immigrants must be unmarried sons or daughters and their children; spouses, children and unmarried sons and daughters of lawful permanent residents and their children; married sons and daughters of U.S. citizens and their spouses and children; and brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens aged 21 and over, and their spouses and children.  (Whew! That is a boatload of family classifications!)

Employment Preferences are in five categories; priority workers; professionals with advanced degrees or aliens of exceptional ability; skilled workers, professionals (without advanced degrees), and needed unskilled workers; special immigrants (e.g., ministers, religious workers, and employees of the U.S. government abroad); and employment creation immigrants or “investors.” The employment preference limit is equal to 140,000 plus any unused family preferences from the previous year.

Refugees and asylees who adjust to LPR status are exempt from preference and diversity annual numerical limits. The number of persons who may be admitted to the United States as refugees each year, as defined by the Refugee Act of 1980, is established by the President in consultation with Congress. The ceiling on refugee admissions was set at 70,000 each year from 2003 to 2008. There is no numerical limit on the number of persons who can be granted asylum status in a year.

Refugees are eligible to adjust to legal permanent resident status after one year of residence in the United States. Asylees must also wait one year after they are granted asylum to apply for lawful permanent residence.

Diversity immigrants are nationals of countries with low rates of legal immigration to the United States. The annual Diversity limit has been 50,000 since 1999. Nationals of countries with more than 50,000 numerically limited admissions during the preceding five years are excluded from participating in the Diversity Program. The Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS) calculates Diversity limits for six broad world regions using data collected by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The limits are calculated annually using a formula based on immigrant admissions during the preceding five years and the population total of the region. The maximum limit per country is 3,850.



All that DHS legalese to say that approximately 1,000,000 people may legally immigrate to the United States per year and get on the road toward naturalization.   Under the current legal regime, immigration should account for just over 20% of annual population growth.  In 2008, according to the CIA World Fact Book, the U.S. birth rate was 14.18 per 1000, up 0.14% from the previous year.  The roughly equates to 4,250,000 new U.S citizens per year.  Or in other words, 1 in 5 new residence of the U.S. can be a foreign-born immigrant.

Illegal Immigrants are those who do not follow the established legal path to residency in the United States, or in other words have broken U.S. law to move to the United States.  The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website has removed all their statistics relating to illegal immigration.



There are many heavily biased websites that have loaded statistics designed to support their positions and/or refute the “other sides” positions.  These statistics are dubious at best.  Estimates of illegal immigrants living in the United States range from 12 million to over 30 million.   One way of looking at this is there are most likely 2 to 3 individuals who migrate to the United States illegally for every individual who legally migrates; or 2 out of every 7 individuals (28%) of all population growth in the United States can be attributed to illegal immigration.

Many prefer the terms “undocumented workers” or “undocumented aliens”.  This political correctness is heavily centered on the “pro-alien” side of the isle, and I feel it is inauthentic, overly sanitized, removes the onus of one’s illegal action from the actor, and is counter productive to finding a legal pathway toward citizenship.  It the balance of this series on immigration we will label immigrants and immigrant issues with the following:

•    Illegal Immigrant – one who is living and/or working in the U.S.A without following the legal pathway to residency.
•    US Citizen with Illegal Immigrant Parents (C.L.I.P)
•    Legal Immigrant – one who is living and/or working in the U.S.A and has followed the legal pathway to residency.

Your ongoing input and feedback is welcome.  I will post all opposing and agreeing view points under the following conditions: comments are civil, any quoted statistic is cited.

1 -   2008 Yearbook of Immigration from the Department of Homeland Security