Number Of Legal Immigrants To U.S. Continues Declining
Legal immigration to the United States declined last year for the fourth year in a row, recording the steepest sustained drop since World War II despite public perceptions of a rising tide of immigrants.
Figures to be announced today by the Immigration and Naturalization Service show that 720,461 legal immigrants were admitted in fiscal 1995 ending last September, more than 20 percent fewer than in 1993.
Opponents of current immigration policy charged, however, that annual admissions of immigrants are still too high, that last year’s drop was “an aberration” and that the INS numbers do not account for tens of thousands of foreigners who become de-facto residents in the United States every year after applying for political asylum.
The INS figures showed a continuing dispersal of legal immigrants to different parts of the country.
The number of immigrants admitted last year was 10.4 percent lower than in fiscal 1994 and 20.3 percent below the level of two years earlier. Excluding the effects of a bulge in legal immigration from 1989 to 1992 because of an amnesty program - which led to an exaggerated drop immediately afterward - the decline since 1993 represents the largest two-year fall since 1943, INS figures show.
According to the INS, the main reasons for last year’s overall decline in legal immigration were a sharp drop in employment-based visas, the end of special programs under the amnesty provisions of a 1986 law and lower admissions of spouses and parents of U.S. citizens.
“This is a statement that the system can work,” INS Commissioner Doris Meissner said of the new immigration numbers. She said the figures support the Clinton administration’s position that the United States can have “moderate reductions” in legal immigration and still maintain a “generous” system that does not seriously undercut family-based immigration as its fundamental principle and that preserves “room for growth in employment-based immigration.”
The release of the figures comes amid an intensifying national debate on immigration and congressional efforts to push through immigration-reform legislation this year. The House passed a bill last week to crack down on illegal aliens, and the Senate is considering separate measures to reform legal and illegal immigration.
The U.S. business community, especially a growing high-tech lobby, has strongly opposed provisions to restrict employment-based immigration. It argues that the current system must be maintained to let in highly skilled immigrants and preserve the U.S. technological edge in an increasingly competitive global economy.
The lobby was instrumental in effectively shelving provisions in the Senate bill that would have reduced the availability of employment-based visas from 140,000 a year under current law to 90,000 a year. In the House, most provisions on legal immigration were stripped from the bill passed last week, leaving current levels intact.