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Family members of immigrants to gain legal
entry into the U.S. take 12 years:
Family-based petitions into two categories:
- There are no caps for spouses, unmarried minor children, or parents
of U.S. citizens. In these cases, the wait can take up to a year, but
this is short by comparison with family sponsorship for family members
of green card holders.
- The government caps the number of visas available to relatives of
permanent legal residents, and to non-immediate relatives of U.S. citizens.
Normally, no one country is allowed more than 15,820 family-preference
visas per year. In 2004, 226,000 visas will be available to family members
in the capped categories. But many, many more people will be applying
for visas, and the real travesty is that not all visa slots are even
taken. Some 60,000 available visas go to waste each year, as people
wait to get in, simply because the Dept. of Homeland Security can't
keep up.
- Roughly 2.4 million people are on the family waiting. That number
is a starting point and doesn't include the applications being processed
by federal immigration officials in the Department of Homeland Security.
- Department of Homeland Security officials say the reason for the backlog
is simple: Demand for visas in these categories exceeds the supply.
- "There are limitations to the number of immigrants that can come
in from each country in any year," said Chris Bentley, spokesman
for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. "We have no leeway
in assigning any limits."
The vast majority of immigrant visas, commonly referred
to as "green cards," are awarded through a handful of pathways:
- American employers can sponsor a foreign-born employee for legal
permanent residence. The State Department says about 203,000 employment-based
immigrant visas will be available this fiscal year.
- Some people seeking refuge from persecution can obtain green cards
as refugee or asylum applicants.
- Fifty thousand people from countries with traditionally low rates
of immigration to the United States are eligible through an annual "diversity
lottery." In recent years, people from Africa and Europe have benefited
most.
For family-based petitions, the government divides
relatives into two categories:
- There are no caps on spouses, unmarried minor children and parents
of American citizens. The wait in these cases is reasonably short, though
the application process can take up to a year.
- The government does cap the number of visas available to other relatives
of U.S. citizens and to relatives of permanent legal residents.
This year, 226,000 green cards will be available to people in these categories,
the State Department said. In general, no one country is allowed more
than 15,820 family-preference visas annually.
- People from the Philippines, Mexico and India experience the longest
waits in these categories.
- Over time, immigrants in the United States from those three countries
have filed more visa petitions than those from any other country, significantly
outpacing the fixed quotas. The result: Extra-long wait times.
- Despite the millions of people waiting for immigrant visas, not all
of the available family visas are used every year because of processing
backlogs.
- State Department, estimated that 60,000 family visas went unfilled
last year because Department of Homeland Security application processing
has been slowed by new security checks.
- All of the different checks create additional processing time. That
can reduce the number of cases that are ultimately processed to conclusion.
- As the backlog grows and waits increase, some immigrant advocates
argue that the system encourages illegal immigration.
A bill in Congress by Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska,
and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., would make additional
visas available to backlogged family categories, and would remove the
caps on spouses and minor children of green card holders.
Many lawmakers acknowledge that major immigration reform bills have little
chance of passage during this presidential election year. Besides, proposals
that would increase the number of available visas face steep opposition
from certain politicians and from immigration-control groups.
Diana Hull, president of Californians for Population Stabilization, said
family-sponsored immigration should be limited to spouses and minor children.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies
in Washington, D.C., proposes, at the very least, to eliminate the category
that gives brothers and sisters of adult citizens the opportunity to immigrate.
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