It’s how Trump and
his family got here
By
Let’s do a mental exercise.
Imagine that Jose moves to the
United States from El Salvador. He comes here legally — he applied for the
diversity visa lottery and he won!
Then he quickly gathered together the required papers to prove to the U.S. that he was who he said he was, and he wasn’t a criminal, and he moved to New York.
Then he quickly gathered together the required papers to prove to the U.S. that he was who he said he was, and he wasn’t a criminal, and he moved to New York.
Once Jose’s here, he brings his
kids, his wife, and his parents. In the next two decades, his parents bring
their other children, who bring their families, and so on.
In all, 40 members of their
family resettle in the U.S. over a 20-year period. They do this by applying for
and obtaining family reunification visas.
What is the net effect of Jose
bringing his entire family on overall U.S. immigration?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The U.S. has quotas for the number of immigrants who may come here legally in any given year. There are a few different types of visas, each with their own quotas.
Furthermore, there is a limit to
how many people can come here from any one country, which primarily limits
immigration from the countries with the most people coming here (like Mexico).
No matter how many relatives
Jose wants to bring with him from his country, they still have to apply for
visas — and there is a quota on how many visas will be given out.
You might have heard the term
“chain migration.” It is a made-up, disparaging term for immigration for family
reunification. It implies that allowing one single immigrant into the U.S. will
unleash a flood of other family members all coming over the U.S. border.
It can’t. Not legally. Because
we have quotas.
My family came here on a family
reunification visa about a century ago. My great-great grandfather came here
first. He then sent for his wife and kids, including my great grandmother.
They probably came here in the
steerage. They were poor Eastern European Jews. My grandfather says they were
from Austria. I’m sure they spoke no English.
I don’t know how that generation
fared economically at first. The story my family tells is that my great
grandmother was nuts. My grandfather once said to me, “It makes sense my mother
is from the same country as Hitler!”
By the time she died, although
she was an unpleasant person to her near-relations, she was also quite well
off.
I know what happened later,
though. My grandfather served in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II and then
owned a small business. His children all went to college. My mother has a
master’s degree, as do I.
Many families have stories like
this. Maybe the first person in the family to immigrate here is poor and
uneducated, but they work hard, and future generations are better educated,
speak English, and become better off.
There’s a good argument for
allowing families to reunite in the United States. Families support one
another. A single person who comes here alone will have no support system.
Furthermore, I imagine a lot of
the same people who are yelling that we should limit family reunification
immigration are also the people who call themselves “pro-family values.”
What kind of family values is it
to force families to split up?
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is the author of
Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It.
Distributed by OtherWords.org.