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Overview

The United States has admitted, on average, over one million legal immigrants each year since FY 2000. In 2007, the number was 1,052,415. This number does not represent the actual number of people settling here lawfully; it represents the total number of people who were granted permanent residence ("green cards"). Half of these new permanent residents were already living here, some illegally and some legally on temporary visas.

The mechanism for selecting legal immigrants is very complex, but almost all legal immigration flows have three components: family, employment, and humanitarian. Our family immigration program admits the spouses, parents, and minor children of U.S. citizens without numerical limits, and has limited categories for the adult sons and daughter of citizens, the siblings of citizens, and the spouses and children of non-citizens. The employment-based categories are a complicated collection of preferences ranging from "priority workers" to unskilled and religious workers and investors. The humanitarian categories include refugees, asylees, and those receiving "cancellation of removal," i.e., longtime illegal aliens whose deportation would cause hardship for American family members. In addition, there is a visa lottery for people from countries other than the primary sources of current immigration.

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