Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/101804 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 8406
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
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.
Subjects: 
immigration
human capital
admissions policy
JEL: 
J24
J15
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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