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

Arbeitspapier

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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 8406

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
• Subject: immigration ; human capital ; admissions policy

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Duleep, Harriet ; Regets, Mark
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2014

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/101804
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET