[LWVNM Action] Assault on Legal Immigration

[Meredith Machen]

By Susan Martin, Ph.D.,LWVUS Immigration Discussion Group Co-Leader

Donald G. Herzberg Professor Emerita of International Migration, Georgetown
University

—

Many Americans have been following the efforts of the Trump administration
to detain and deport undocumented

immigrants. Less covered in the press are concurrent efforts to curtail the
lawful entry and stay of immigrants. I am often asked why undocumented
immigrants do not come into the country lawfully. The answer is in the
convoluted legal immigration system.

There are multiple ways in which intending immigrants can obtain a legal
status, but each has limitations. About 1 million people are granted Lawful
Permanent Resident status (LPRs), also known as green cards, which provides
a pathway to U.S. citizenship. About 65% come with family-based visas. This
category allows spouses, children and parents of U.S. citizens to obtain
visas outside of annual quotas. It also allows the spouses and children of
LPRs and the siblings of U.S. citizens to obtain visas, within per-country
and per-category of entry quotas, which leads to large backlogs. Many new
LPRs are already living in the United States.

Employment visas represent 16% of LPR admissions, including the employees
and their spouses and children. Most of these visas are assigned to
applicants with at least a bachelor’s degree. As in the family-based visas,
there are long backlogs in processing applications for employment visas,
with some applicants waiting years to gain their green card.The number of
refugees and asylees receiving LPR status (11% in 2023) varies based on the
need for resettlement and the number of people granted asylum. Another 4%
come with diversity visas for people from countries with low U.S. immigration
rates, and 4% through other programs established by Congress.

Additional visas are issued each year for tourists, business travelers,
temporary workers, foreign students, journalists, diplomats and a slew of
other reasons. Most of these visas allow recipients to remain for
designated periods. If they remain after that period, they become
undocumented migrants. Two work visas, the L.1 visa for intra-company
transfers and the H-1b visa for highly skilled workers, allow recipients to
remain for six years or longer, if they apply for LPR status. However, the
waiting time for LPR status can be decades for applicants from certain
countries, such as India, because of annual per-country quotas.

Further lawful entries and stays are made on humanitarian grounds.
Temporary Protected Status, for example, allows people already in the
country who cannot return home because of conflict, disasters and other
life-threatening situations to remain.

Humanitarian Parole allows people to enter the United States because of
urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.

The Trump administration is making lawful entry and stay more difficult.
Some of the efforts are still in litigation or are awaiting final
implementation. For example, the administration has proposed a change in
the definition of public charge, which bars noncitizens who rely on
government support from getting a green card even if the support is for
programs such as SNAP, Head Start and free school lunches. Uncertainty over
how far the administration will go in assessing public charge is causing
immigrants to refuse services for families, fearing it will make them
ineligible for a green card.

The administration has also placed full or partial bars against the
admission of people from about 90 countries, mostly in Africa and Asia,
even if they are the families of U.S. citizens. This is a replay on a
larger scale of the Muslim ban in the first Trump administration.

The administration has revoked humanitarian parole and TPS for thousands of
immigrants from countries that experienceconflicts or disasters. These
programs need reform but not in the way the administration wants. They do
not provide a path to LPR status even when conditions in the home country
are unlikely to improve. Instead of fixing the problem, however, the
administration
is arguing that the conditions in countries such as Afghanistan, Haiti and
South Sudan are indeed safe enough to lift TPS and humanitarian parole.

Denaturalization of U.S. citizens, which often permits their deportation,
is another part of the administration’s plan.

According to the New York Times, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
officers are to file 100-200 denaturalization cases per month. From 2017 to
2025, only about 120 cases were filed. Denaturalization has generally been
reserved for those who purposely lied in their application about material
facts that would otherwise have prevented their naturalization, or who were
found to have committed heinous crimes.

The administration policies are also making it harder for businesses to
recruit highly skilled workers. For example, a recent rule requires
employers to pay a $100,000 fee per petition for a visa, on top of existing
fees of about $3,000.

Blocking lawful immigration pathways will only make our immigration system
more dysfunctional. It also makes it more difficult for families to
reunite, for businesses to find the skills they need and to help those
facing life-threatening situation
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