Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bam here. If you watch cable news these days,
Speaker 1: you may have heard a lot of impassioned debate about
Speaker 1: a phenomenon that some call family reunification and others call
Speaker 1: chain migration either way, in which immigrants who settle in
Speaker 1: the United States then sponsor family members to enter the
Speaker 1: country and join them. President Donald J. Trump said in
Speaker 1: his State of the Union address, under the current broken system,
Speaker 1: a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of
Speaker 1: distant relatives. To fix that perceived problem, Trump favors passage
Speaker 1: of the Rays Act, a piece of legislation that, if enacted,
Speaker 1: would reduce the ability of Americans to sponsor extended family
Speaker 1: and adult family members, and would impose a skills based
Speaker 1: point system for deciding who gets to enter the United States.
Speaker 1: As a result, the Act would cut legal immigration to
Speaker 1: the United States by a projected fort in its first
Speaker 1: year alone. From the tenor of the discussion, you might
Speaker 1: think that it's pretty easy to obtain a so called
Speaker 1: green card, the permit that enables a foreign national to
Speaker 1: live and work in the US permanently, provided that you've
Speaker 1: got relatives here already. But how easy is it really.
Speaker 1: Let's take the example of a naturalized citizen from say,
Speaker 1: the Philippines, who's been trying to bring a brother sister
Speaker 1: here to live. According to the U S. Department of
Speaker 1: State's latest visible in currently covering, such a sibling is
Speaker 1: now eligible for processing via family reunification if they filed
Speaker 1: immigration paperwork before February one. Yep. That means the projected
Speaker 1: weight time for a brother or sister who applies today
Speaker 1: would be more than twenty three years. Other categories of
Speaker 1: family members from various countries face similarly long waits. A
Speaker 1: sibling from Mexico faces a projected weight of slightly more
Speaker 1: than twenty years, while one from India probably will have
Speaker 1: to sit tight for about fourteen. And those projections aren't
Speaker 1: set in stone the way. It could get shorter or
Speaker 1: longer depending on other factors. We spoke with Joshua Brasblatt,
Speaker 1: an attorney and senior policy analyst at the American Immigration Council,
Speaker 1: which is a Washington, d c. Based organization that supports immigration.
Speaker 1: He said, people think you just apply, you get in line,
Speaker 1: and you come. It's much more complicated than that. With
Speaker 1: all the categories and the limits. US immigration regulations tend
Speaker 1: towards the inscrutable, in part because it essentially has multiple systems,
Speaker 1: one that's family based, another based on employment, and separate
Speaker 1: routes for refugees and those seeking asylum. That American Immigration
Speaker 1: Council has a nine page document to explain it. There
Speaker 1: are numerical limits on categories of immigrants and countries as well,
Speaker 1: but let's focus for a moment on family based and
Speaker 1: employment based immigration, which Breezeblitz says are the two main
Speaker 1: categories accounting for most of the people who enter the
Speaker 1: US legally and become permanent residents. So stick with me here.
Speaker 1: There are four categories of family based immigration. F one
Speaker 1: is unmarried sons and daughter is over age twenty one
Speaker 1: of U. S. Citizens. F two is separated into A
Speaker 1: and B. A is spouses and children of permanent residents.
Speaker 1: B is unmarried sons and daughters over age twenty one
Speaker 1: of permanent residents. F three is married sons and daughters
Speaker 1: of U. S citizens, and F four is brothers and
Speaker 1: sisters of adult U. S. Citizens. The family based portion
Speaker 1: of the system has a theoretical ceiling of four hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty thousand immigrants allowed into the country each year,
Speaker 1: though according to Breese Blett, the actual numbers often higher.
Speaker 1: That's because the f to a category of immigration preferences
Speaker 1: that spouses and minor children of permanent US residents is
Speaker 1: not capped. But that doesn't mean that they get in
Speaker 1: right away. Those applications can face a projected weight time
Speaker 1: of about two years, according to the latest State Department bulletin.
Speaker 1: Other family categories have caps on the number of people
Speaker 1: who can use them. For brothers and sisters, for example,
Speaker 1: the cap is sixty five thousand immigrants per year, unless
Speaker 1: there happens to be unneeded visas from the first three
Speaker 1: categories to supplement. In addition to the cap on categories,
Speaker 1: there's also a rule that no country can exceed seven
Speaker 1: percent of the total people immigrating to the US in
Speaker 1: a given year. A breeze split explains China, India, Mexico,
Speaker 1: and the Philippines are countries where there's a high desire
Speaker 1: to immigrate, they have longer wait times because they hit
Speaker 1: the limit sooner. Okay, but what about a foreign national
Speaker 1: without relatives of the country who wants to come here
Speaker 1: to take a job. While that's often a quicker route.
Speaker 1: In some cases, those immigrants have to wait for years
Speaker 1: as well. Immigration for employment purposes is capped at a
Speaker 1: much lower level, just a hundred and forty thousand people
Speaker 1: per year, but the number of available slots is actually
Speaker 1: less because those job related immigrants are allowed to bring
Speaker 1: spouses and minor children, and those both are counted against
Speaker 1: the a hundred and forty thousand person limit, according to
Speaker 1: bree Split. Additionally, not all workers are equal. There are
Speaker 1: different employment based preference categories. The first preference EB one
Speaker 1: a k a. The Einstein Visa, goes to people deemed
Speaker 1: to have extraordinary ability in various fields. There are also
Speaker 1: categories for people with advanced degrees both professionals and skilled workers,
Speaker 1: and another for investors willing to put up one million
Speaker 1: dollars or more to underwrite a new business that would
Speaker 1: employ at least ten full time workers, although a fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars is enough if the investment is targeted at
Speaker 1: a rural or high unemployment area. To make things even
Speaker 1: more complicated, that seven percent limit on immigration from a
Speaker 1: particular country still has to be factored in. As a result,
Speaker 1: some workers from China could face a projected weight of
Speaker 1: eleven years, while an immigrant from Vietnam in the same
Speaker 1: category might be eligible immediately for a green card. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the thing that people on both sides of the immigration
Speaker 1: debate can agree on is that the system is messy
Speaker 1: at best. In a June twenty seventeen Gallop poll, thirty
Speaker 1: eight percent of Americans said that immigration should be maintained
Speaker 1: at its present level, thirty five percent felt it should
Speaker 1: be decreased, and twenty four percent favored allowing more immigrants
Speaker 1: into the country. M HM. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: Patrick J. Keiger and produced by Tyler Clang, with kind
Speaker 1: engineering assistance by Ramsay Yount. For more on this and
Speaker 1: lots of other sticky topics, visit our home planet, how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com.