Ignorance: The United States Does Not Admit Alot of Immigrants Legally

Runaway slaves were "illegal" -Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez in an e-mail to me.

This is My America Too!! Why can't we give others a chance to be free!!! -"Americans in support of the illegal immigrants" website.


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Controlling immigration into the United States is in no way like slavery. In fact, native born African-Americans have been hurt quite severely by illegal immigration, but that is for another post.

And we give PLENTY OF OTHERS a chance to be free! The statement from "Americans in support" is moronic.

This post will be about how the number of lawful immigrants the United States allows to enter is reasonable.

Since 1989, the U.S. has issued an average of 977,000 Green Cards per year. 80% of those Green Cards are issued to people who do not come from the Canada, Europe or Russia- i.e. non-white. So do not charge that U.S. immigration policy is racist. On balance, it is totally non-racist!

1989	1,090,172
1990	1,535,872
1991	1,826,595
1992	973,445
1993	903,916
1994	803,993
1995	720,177
1996	915,560
1997	797,847
1998	653,206
1999	644,787
2000	841,002
2001	1,058,902
2002	1,059,356
2003	703,542
2004	957,883
2005	1,122,373

Those figures are available from the DHS (Office of Immigration Statistics) 2005 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. That was released in November, 2006, so the 2006 figures presumably will not be ready until late 2007. I simply downloaded 2005 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics from the Office of Immigration Statistics' website. In table 1, the Yearbook gives the number of people legally admitted to the United States for every year since 1820.

What percentage of Green Cards does the U.S. issue to people from Hispanic countries?

Green Cards Issued	Per	Year		2003	2004	2005
Mexico				114,758	173,711	157,992
Cuba				8,685	15,385	20,651
Dominican Republic				26,112	30,063	27,366
Central America				53,283	61,253	52,636
South America				53,946	69,452	100,811
Total Per Year				256,784	349,864	359,056

Over 15% of the Green Cards issued in any given year go to Mexico! Do not tell me that the United States discriminates against Mexico. That is a lie or a statement of ignorance. Approximately 30% of the Green Cards issued in any given year go to people from Hispanic countries! That is a totally fair percentage.

Those figures are also from the DHS. They are either from the 2005 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics or from yearly reports titled "Annual Flow Report 200x: Legal Permanent Residents: (Year)." I had to type them in by hand, and noboby is paying me to do this, so if you want all the years, go check for yourself.

Is an average of 977,000 Green Cards per year reasonable?
This question is best answered by looking at how the United States compares to other countries. Different nations report immigration statistics differently, so it can be very tricky to compare them. Several spokespersons for the anti-illegal immigration side say that the United States admits more persons legally than the rest of the world combined. Among these persons is Lou Dobbs.

Statisticians at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have devoted substantial effort to cross-national comparisons of how many people the highly developed nations admit legally. So far, they have only published comparisons for the years 2003 and 2004. I have e-mailed them and asked when they will be publishing results for more years, and I never received a response.

So far, their published findings indicate that in the average year, the United States, with a legally present population of 288 million, admits more people on a per capita basis than most other wealthy nations. When the OECD compared the United States to a basket of wealthy nations with a combined total population of 506 million, the United States average of 977,000 is equal to 62% of the total that the other countries admit. 62% of 506 million is 314 million. So the United States admits as many people as if it were a nation of 314 million.


That is to be found in the OECD "International Migration Outlook 2006" table I.1 (page 30). You can only download that publication if you subscribe to OECD. But here is the table:


When you look at the table, you may protest that the United States only admitted 705,800 and 946,100 people lawfully in the years shown. First, you have to note that the U.S. data for 2003 and 2004 corresponds almost precisely to the data published by the United States Office of Immigration Statistics. So U.S. statistics are highly reliable. Second, you have to understand that the years 2003 and 2004 were exceptionally low years for numbers of persons admitted legally to the U.S. To remedy this, I am using the average number of persons per year granted Green Cards from 1989-2005. Third, even if some of the other countries in the table were admitting exceptionally low numbers of persons in the years covered by the table, other countries may have been admitting large numbers, so discrepancies even out amongst the 16 other countries represented in the table.

I am saying, compare the average of 977,000 people per year given legal Green Cards by the U.S. to what looks like an average of 1.55 million people granted lawful permanent residence by 16 other nations with a total population of 506 million. The United States certainly is not put to shame by the other nations.

The number of persons granted Green Cards by the United States is within the realm of reasonableness. You may think the U.S. should allow in more immigrants legally, but U.S. law and policy is not totally unjust or wrong.