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

34 Pages Posted: 6 Sep 2014

See all articles by Harriet Orcutt Duleep

Harriet Orcutt Duleep

College of William & Mary - Policy School

Mark C. Regets

National Foundation for America Policy; IZA Institute of Labor Economics; Global Labor Organization

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: immigration, human capital, admissions policy

JEL Classification: J24, J15

Suggested Citation

Duleep, Harriet Orcutt and Regets, Mark C., Should the U.S. Continue its Family-Friendly Immigration Policy?. IZA Discussion Paper No. 8406, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2492433 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2492433

Harriet Orcutt Duleep (Contact Author)

College of William & Mary - Policy School ( email )

P.O. Box 8795
Williamsburg, VA 23185
United States

Mark C. Regets

National Foundation for America Policy ( email )

2111 Wilson Blvd.
Suite 700
Arlington, VA 22201
United States
571-275-9218 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.nfap.com

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Global Labor Organization ( email )

Collogne
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.glabor.org

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
81
Abstract Views
748
Rank
547,134
PlumX Metrics