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NA = Not affected by the Immigration Reduction
Act * This table shows by how much permanent immigration to the United States would have decreased if the Immigration Reduction Act of 1994 (H.R. 4934) had been passed. H.R. 4934 would have established a flexible ceiling on family-based immigration of 320,000. Each year, the number of spouses, children and parents of citizens, priority workers and refugees admitted in the previous fiscal year would have been subtracted from this ceiling. Any visas still remaining would have been divided among the family-preference categories based on percentages specified in the bill (see note b below). However, because the number of spouses, children and parents of citizens would have remained unlimited, the ceiling of 320,000 would have been exceeded each year except 1996, and no visas would have been available for other family-based categories. The Immigration Reduction Act would have taken effect in fiscal year 1995, so the numbers in the table show the cumulative decrease in immigration in which it would have resulted between 1995 and 2004. These numbers are based on those in the Actual and Projected Immigration Baseline table. ** LPR = Legal Permanent Resident 1 The skilled worker/investor category includes priority workers, professionals with advanced degrees, aliens of extraordinary ability, skilled workers and professionals, along with aliens admitted because they have agreed to invest in a business in the U.S.. that will create jobs. 2 The special immigrant category includes ministers, religious workers, retired employees of international organizations and several other ad hoc subcategories. 3 An approved asylee must reside in the U.S. for one year before he or she is eligible to apply for adjustment to legal permanent residence. Only those asylees who become LPRs each year are included in the table. 4 This category includes a variety of ad hoc humanitarian programs, such as the Cuban/Haitian Entrants Act, the adjustment programs for Soviet and Indochinese parolees, and immigrants whose removal (i.e., deportation) is canceled and who are granted permanent residence for humanitarian reasons. 5 This row shows the impact the Immigration Reduction Act would have had on the total number of aliens to be granted legal permanent resident status. 6 "Anchor Babies" are the children born in the United States to illegal-alien mothers. Under current practice, these children are U.S. citizens at birth, simply because they were born on U.S. soil. They are called anchor babies because, as U.S. citizens, they become eligible to sponsor for legal immigration any of their relatives, including their illegal-alien mothers, when they turn 21 years of age, thus becoming the U.S. "anchor" for an extended immigrant family. Moreover, the INS rarely deports illegal immigrants who have U.S.-born children, so by virtue of being born on U.S. soil, these children offer some protection to their parents from deportation. 7 This row shows the net annual change in the number of aliens whose applications for adjustment to permanent resident status are still pending because of administrative delays in processing at the INS. The adjustment of status backlog first appeared in 1994 and was exacerbated by a provision of immigration law, Section 245(i), enacted by Congress to allow illegal immigrants to adjust to permanent resident status without having to leave the country, if they were otherwise qualified. The effect of this provision was to shift a large workload from the State Department, which handles the issuance of immigrant visas abroad, to the INS. The numbers shown in the table reflect the entire backlog of pending adjustment of status application, less the seven percent historical denial rate. All the aliens in the backlog were residing in the United States as of the time their applications were submitted, and all those included in the table, since it accounts for the denial rate, eventually will be issued green cards and allowed to remain permanently. (It is possible, of course, that a small number of them will change their minds about immigrating and decide to return home, or will die before their paperwork is processed, but otherwise, all will become legal permanent residents.) Had the INS kept up with its adjustment workload, total annual immigration would not have increased by the whole amount shown in this category because of the annual ceilings on most legal immigration categories, particularly on the family-preference categories, which represent an estimated 14 percent of the backlog. However, because the vast majority of the backlog is comprised of spouses, minor children and parents of citizens, and a smaller number of workers seeking employment-based visas, some of which go unused each year, the INS estimates that, had it kept up with adjustment of status processing, up to 140,000 additional immigrants would have been granted permanent residence status each year. Thus, the backlog numbers are included in the table for a couple of reasons: first, they show that the demand for immigrant visas is not declining, even though official immigration numbers are at their lowest point in several years; and second, they indicate the degree to which the official numbers are artificially low. The table uses the net change in the adjustment backlog in order to avoid double counting these aliens once the INS begins to get on top of the backlog. Once the backlog begins to decline, the category will show a negative number, which will then be subtracted from the number of total permanent resident aliens, since these immigrants have already been counted in previous years. 8 This row shows the total permanent impact the Immigration Reduction Act would have had. Since the act did not directly affect the adjustment of status backlog, the numbers in this row include both the reduction in the number of aliens granted permanent resident status and the reduction in the number of anchor babies. a Because of the large adjustment of status backlog (see note 7 above), some of the numbers provided for these years are artificially low. The INS estimates that up to an additional 140,000 aliens would have been granted permanent resident status in each of these years if the agency had been able to keep up with its adjustment of status workload. Although a majority of the applicants in the backlog are spouses, minor children and parents of citizens—categories not affected directly by the Immigration Reduction Act—the impact of the act on the family-preference categories, particularly in 1998 when the quotas for these categories were not filled, and the employment-based categories would have been greater in the absence of the backlog because the number of aliens granted permanent resident status in these categories would have been higher. b The Immigration Reduction Act would not have limited admissions of spouses, minor children or parents of citizens DIRECTLY. It is likely, however, that as the overall number of immigrants declined, the number of spouses, minor children and parents of citizens also would have declined, since there would have been a smaller pool of immigrants to naturalize and bring over these family members. The immigration data available are insufficient to determine the extent of this INDIRECT impact. c Once the spouses, minor children and parents of citizens and priority workers and refugees admitted in the previous year were subtracted from the overall ceiling of 320,000 (see note * above), there would have been no visas available for the family-preference categories in any year except 1996 under the Immigration Reduction Act. In 1996, a total of 22,746 visas would have been available to be divided among the family-preference categories as specified in H.R. 4934: 10 percent for adult unmarried children of citizens; 39 percent for spouses and minor children of LPRs; 12 percent for adult unmarried children of LPRs (as under current law, the latter two categories were allotted a combined share of 51 percent, with the spouses and minor children getting at least 77 percent of that, or 39 percent of the total); 10 percent for married children of citizens; and 29 percent for adult siblings of citizens. d The Immigration Reduction Act would have limited this category to 25,000 visas per year, and would have limited admissions to priority workers and employer-sponsored workers with advanced degrees or exceptional ability. e This category would have been eliminated entirely by the Immigration Reduction Act. f The Immigration Reduction Act would have limited this category to 50,000 annually. g The Immigration Reduction Act would have denied automatic U.S. citizenship to children born in the United States to illegal-alien mothers. The table shows the total estimated number of births to illegal-alien mothers between 1995 and 2004. The estimates are based on the crude birth rate of the total foreign-born population in the United States: 33 births per 1,000 population. This rate is then applied to the total, annual illegal alien population in order to determine the total number of births to that population. The illegal alien population for fiscal years 1995 through 1997 is based on the INS estimate that there were five million illegal aliens in the United States at the beginning of fiscal year 1997, and that the population had experienced a steady annual increase of 275,000 since 1992 (the estimated annual increase between 1988 and 1992 was only slightly higher at 281,000). The table projects the same annual increase of 275,000 in the illegal alien population from 1998 through 2004. It is possible that annual illegal immigration to the United States will either rise or fall during those years, but no data are available upon which to make such assumptions. h The Immigration Reduction Act likely would have had a significant impact on the adjustment of status backlog, since it would have reduced substantially the workload of the INS, which is one of the causes of the backlog. The much lower number of visa slots available under the act probably would have allowed the INS to get caught up with its workload within a few years. Because a detailed breakdown of the applicants in the backlog by immigration category is not available, it is impossible to quantify how much the backlog would have been reduced as a result of the Immigration Reduction Act. |
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