How Easy Is It to Immigrate to the U.S.?

country and join them. President Donald J. Trump said in his State of the Union address, under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives. To fix that perceived problem, Trump favors passage of the Rays Act, a piece of legislation that, if enacted, would reduce the ability of Americans to sponsor extended family and adult family members, and would impose a skills based point system for deciding who gets to enter the United States.

As a result, the Act would cut legal immigration to the United States by a projected fort in its first year alone. From the tenor of the discussion, you might think that it's pretty easy to obtain a so called green card, the permit that enables a foreign national to live and work in the US permanently, provided that you've got relatives here already. But how easy is it really. Let's take the example of a naturalized citizen from say, the Philippines, who's been trying to bring a brother sister

here to live. According to the U S. Department of State's latest visible in currently covering, such a sibling is now eligible for processing via family reunification if they filed immigration paperwork before February one. Yep. That means the projected weight time for a brother or sister who applies today would be more than twenty three years. Other categories of

family members from various countries face similarly long waits. A sibling from Mexico faces a projected weight of slightly more than twenty years, while one from India probably will have to sit tight for about fourteen. And those projections aren't set in stone the way. It could get shorter or

longer depending on other factors. We spoke with Joshua Brasblatt, an attorney and senior policy analyst at the American Immigration Council, which is a Washington, d c. Based organization that supports immigration. He said, people think you just apply, you get in line, and you come. It's much more complicated than that. With

all the categories and the limits. US immigration regulations tend towards the inscrutable, in part because it essentially has multiple systems, one that's family based, another based on employment, and separate routes for refugees and those seeking asylum. That American Immigration

Council has a nine page document to explain it. There are numerical limits on categories of immigrants and countries as well, but let's focus for a moment on family based and employment based immigration, which Breezeblitz says are the two main categories accounting for most of the people who enter the US legally and become permanent residents. So stick with me here. There are four categories of family based immigration. F one is unmarried sons and daughter is over age twenty one

of U. S. Citizens. F two is separated into A and B. A is spouses and children of permanent residents. B is unmarried sons and daughters over age twenty one of permanent residents. F three is married sons and daughters of U. S citizens, and F four is brothers and

sisters of adult U. S. Citizens. The family based portion of the system has a theoretical ceiling of four hundred and eighty thousand immigrants allowed into the country each year, though according to Breese Blett, the actual numbers often higher. That's because the f to a category of immigration preferences that spouses and minor children of permanent US residents is not capped. But that doesn't mean that they get in

right away. Those applications can face a projected weight time of about two years, according to the latest State Department bulletin. Other family categories have caps on the number of people who can use them. For brothers and sisters, for example, the cap is sixty five thousand immigrants per year, unless there happens to be unneeded visas from the first three

categories to supplement. In addition to the cap on categories, there's also a rule that no country can exceed seven percent of the total people immigrating to the US in a given year. A breeze split explains China, India, Mexico, and the Philippines are countries where there's a high desire to immigrate, they have longer wait times because they hit the limit sooner. Okay, but what about a foreign national without relatives of the country who wants to come here

to take a job. While that's often a quicker route. In some cases, those immigrants have to wait for years as well. Immigration for employment purposes is capped at a much lower level, just a hundred and forty thousand people per year, but the number of available slots is actually less because those job related immigrants are allowed to bring spouses and minor children, and those both are counted against the a hundred and forty thousand person limit, according to

bree Split. Additionally, not all workers are equal. There are different employment based preference categories. The first preference EB one a k a. The Einstein Visa, goes to people deemed

to have extraordinary ability in various fields. There are also categories for people with advanced degrees both professionals and skilled workers, and another for investors willing to put up one million dollars or more to underwrite a new business that would employ at least ten full time workers, although a fifty thousand dollars is enough if the investment is targeted at a rural or high unemployment area. To make things even more complicated, that seven percent limit on immigration from a

particular country still has to be factored in. As a result, some workers from China could face a projected weight of eleven years, while an immigrant from Vietnam in the same category might be eligible immediately for a green card. Perhaps the thing that people on both sides of the immigration debate can agree on is that the system is messy

at best. In a June twenty seventeen Gallop poll, thirty eight percent of Americans said that immigration should be maintained at its present level, thirty five percent felt it should be decreased, and twenty four percent favored allowing more immigrants into the country. M HM. Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Keiger and produced by Tyler Clang, with kind

engineering assistance by Ramsay Yount. For more on this and lots of other sticky topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.