March 18, 2008 10:11 AM
I interrupted postings on this popular series to address the bill against immigrant workers in the Suffolk Legislature. With that legislation dead, I decided to resume the series. Immigration 101 is based on my course on immigration law that I teach with Professor Lauris Wren at Hofstra University School of Law.
It was interesting last year to hear the immigration debate revolve almost entirely around economic issues, i.e. is immigration good for the economy. You would think that almost all immigration is job related. In fact, more than two out of three legal immigrants come to join family members.
Now when I say family members, you should understand that I am not talking about cousins and uncles or even grandparents. U.S. law has a fairly strict definition of who is a family member for immigration purposes.
For a lawful permanent resident (LPR), you know, someone with a green card, a family member is defined as a spouse, an unmarried child under 21, or an unmarried child over 21. A lawful permanent resident applying for his wife today can expect to wait at least five years before her green card is issued so she can join him. Same wait if he applies for his 12 year old son.
Politicians would like you to believe that the long wait is due to an unweildy bureaucracy that is overwhelmed with applications. This is just not so. The long wait is primarily due to limitations on the granting of green cards set up by Congress itself. So in this case it is the pols, not the bureaucrats, that are behind the wait.
U.S. citizens have a bit more leeway in who they can apply for to come into the U.S. A citizen can apply for a spouse, a child, and married or unmarried sons and daughters. She may also apply for her parents and for brothers and sisters. Some of these relatives, a spouse for instance, will come in quickly. Just a matter of a few months to a year, which is lightning speed in immigration law. But her brother will take about eleven years from when she files for him until he is finally allowed to enter the U.S.
And not all countries have the same waiting period. Mexico and a couple of other countries have longer than normal waiting periods under laws set down by Congress. So while it will take five years to bring in the spouse of a lawful permanent resident from England, it will take six for someone from Mexico. Would your marriage surrive a six year separation? The brother of a U.S. citizen from Ireland takes 11 years, but a sister from Mexico would take 13 and a half years.
The long waits family members have to endure have been cited as a factor in the growth of illegal immigration. Wives unwilling to endure long separations from their husbands make up a growing component of the undocumented.
Read Part II of Family Based Immigration
Here are other installments in the Immigration 101 series