Should the U.S. Continue Its Family-Friendly Immigration Policy?

Harriet Duleep () and Mark Regets ()
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Harriet Duleep: College of William and Mary

No 8406, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: An ongoing debate is whether the U.S. should continue its family-based admission system, which favors visas for family members of U.S. citizens and residents, or adopt a more skills-based system, replacing family visas with employment-based visas. In many ways this is a false dichotomy: family-friendly policies attract highly-skilled immigrants regardless of their own visa path, and there are not strong reasons why a loosening of restrictions on employment migrants need be accompanied by new restrictions on family-based immigration. Moreover, it is misleading to think that only employment-based immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy. Recent immigrants, who have mostly entered via kinship ties, are economically productive, a fact hidden by a flawed methodology that underlies most economic analyses of immigrant economic assimilation.

Keywords: admissions policy; human capital; immigration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published in: International Migration Review, 2014, 48 (3), 823 - 845

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