The "Most Favored Nation" Approach in America's Immigration Policy

65% H-1Bs from India, 86% of EB-5s from China

News provided by

Nov 25, 2014, 06:00 ET

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Although the national-origins quotas for immigration were ended in the 1960s, a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies finds that certain categories of visas have come to be dominated by people from a specific country.

David North, a Fellow at the Center, analyzes seven of the many specialty migration streams that have an unusual concentration of migrants by nation of origin. All but one of the categories examined is ostensibly for temporary migration. View the entire report at: http://www.cis.org/most-favored-nation-approach-immigration-policy.

The highlighted visas and countries reveal unusual concentrations of migrants in specific categories, including: India, with 65 percent of the global H-1B visas (high tech); Mexico with 91 percent of H-2A visas (farm); Mexico with 78 percent of H-2B visas (non-farm); China with 86 percent of EB-5 visas (investors); Dominican Republic with 49 percent its nonimmigrant worker admissions being of P-1 baseball players; Haiti with 50 percent of its non-immigrant worker admissions being "culturally unique" artists/entertainers; and Turkey with large numbers of its H-1B nonimmigrant worker admissions being teachers of the Turkish language in tax-supported U.S. high schools.

"The extremely steady flow of Indian high-tech workers receiving the H-1B visas to enter the United States is the largest and most controversial of the one country dominated streams," said North. "Noting the extremely high unemployment rate in the United States, it is shocking that an estimated 900,000 H-1B visas holders are presently employed in the country, an estimated 585,000 of these are from India. Interestingly, the government has never even tried to estimate the total size of the resident H-1B population."

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization founded in 1985. It is the nation's only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States

Contact: Marguerite Telford
202-455-8185, [email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120806/MM52838LOGO

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-most-favored-nation-approach-in-americas-immigration-policy-300000872.html

SOURCE Center for Immigration Studies