Ease policy for legal immigrants’ kids

Wait for visa could last a lifetime

There are more things wrong with U.S. immigration policy than we can list here, but a recent Dispatch story illustrated one of the most irrational: We turn away people who already are contributing to society and the economy.

For an especially foolish case, see the Oct. 9 story explaining how hundreds of thousands of children who were born in India but have lived most of their lives in the U.S. will, unless rules change, have to leave when they turn 21. They’re being raised by parents with H-1B work visas, in skilled jobs, and most have American dreams of their own.

Just when they could start contributing via their own careers, they’ll become illegal and have to leave because, as adults, they no longer will share their parents’ work-visa status. It follows, then, that many of their highly skilled parents also will leave, rather than send their barely adult children alone back to countries they know nothing about.

The problem is biggest for families from India because the number of skilled Indian workers who want to build careers in the U.S. far outstrips the number of immigrant visas the U.S. grants each year.

H-1B workers from some smaller countries have a reasonable shot at becoming permanent residents or even citizens before their children reach 21. In those cases, the children will automatically become permanent residents or citizens when their parents do. But for people from India, the wait for an immigrant visa is more than 70 years, so their children are likely to enter adulthood with no legal right to stay in the country where they’ve grown up.

Opponents of illegal immigration — the ones who ask, “Why don’t they follow the rules?” — should understand that, for many, “the rules” will never allow them to come.

One fix would be to abandon the approach that subjects every country to the same numerical limit on immigrant visas, regardless of how many people from that country have applied. A would-be immigrant from a country with a tiny population has a huge and unfair advantage over one from China, Mexico or India.

Why not allow proportionally more visas for countries that are sending skilled immigrants in droves, or allot visas according to the merits of each application?

Another option is simply to open the gates a bit wider and allow more people to immigrate legally.

From the very start, immigration has supplied the U.S. with hard workers and big dreamers who cherish American freedoms and help replenish the national supply of energy and creativity.

The national argument over immigration at the other end of the economic scale — involving traumatized refugees and unskilled laborers who come illegally — involves thorny issues and is harder to resolve. While it re-energizes the nation, too, it also causes social and financial strains that must be accounted for in policy.

But there is little logical reason to arbitrarily discourage skilled professionals from joining the U.S. economy.

President Donald Trump’s nativist rhetoric has made it harder than ever to reach a national consensus on immigration. But addressing the nonsensical barriers to legal immigration by skilled professionals is a good place to start.