Faking the Chain (Pt. I)
How Trump and the nativist right are lying to you about family immigration, and why it matters
The Trump administration has declared war on so-called “chain migration.” Starting with the President’s support for the hard-right Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (“RAISE”) Act and continuing through last month’s press conference/hostage video from the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services attempting to link family migration to terrorism and the recent formal announcement and flashy explainer from the White House, we now know that the administration intends to aggressively turn its base’s considerable anti-immigrant energies to destroying one of the core values of American immigration policy.
Trump and his nativist base are, of course, lying about what “chain migration” is and how it works. And it is very important that we all understand how and why now as “ending chain migration” becomes a central bargaining chip in the current round of immigration reform negotiations.
“Chains” are families
Let’s start here: “Chain” migration is family migration.
The idea that families immigrate together is one of the simplest and most fundamental values of our immigration system throughout the relatively brief period of American history in which we have gone to the trouble of having an “immigration system” at all. It was a centerpiece of the bipartisan 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, and has been vaunted by “family values” conservatives for decades as an essential right of any new immigrant.
Chain migration” is the legal right to bring immediate family to the U.S.
Since the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965, new immigrants have had the right to file visa petitions for spouses, parents, and minor (under 21) children as “immediate relatives.” Adult sons and daughters and siblings (who may also include their own spouses and minor children) are assigned “priority dates” and must wait until their visa numbers become “current.” This is a wait which could, in some cases, take 162 years — more than two average human lifetimes — per person. (More on this below.)
“So why call it “chain” rather than “family” migration?
Because a“chain” is made of objects, while a “family” (the actual components of the “chain”) is made of people. Calling family unification “chain migration” is an effective way to distance our immigration policy from the humanity of the people it serves. And referring to non-white families as “chains” gives white supremacists and their enablers cover to speak out against family-based immigration from the kinds of majority non-white nations which Trump has recently derided as “shithole countries.
All you need is a quick Twitter search to see how the expression has joined other nativist catchphrases (e.g. “illegal immigrant,” “anchor baby”) as a legally and factually-inaccurate way to explicitly simplify a complex concept in the most dehumanizing way possible. It is a cynical and disturbing way to recast family unity as “nepotism” or somehow not “in keeping with American values.”
“Chain migration” raises the specter of floods of “the wrong” kind of immigrants streaming in without discretion or restriction. This is not only unfounded in, but directly contradicted by reality.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Infographics
NumbersUSA recently produced an outstanding example of how easy it is to lie with infographics. NUSA is an SPLC-certified hate group founded by white supremacist John Tanton which, among many other things, supports racial quotas in the immigration system and explicitly advocates against Latino immigration. Along with Tanton-founded Federation for American Immigration Reform (“FAIR”) and the Center for Immigration Studies (“CIS”), NumbersUSA is one of the leading voices of the nativist anti-immigrant lobby.
The NumbersUSA infographic below presents a seemingly-straightforward case study in how one extremely dark-skinned employment-based immigrant would be able to bring his entire family and all of their many colorful relatives with him. But even people who don’t enjoy a good infographic as much as I do might notice that something is missing here.
Take another good look at this before reading on. Although woefully inaccurate in quite a few ways (more on which below), there is an absolutely essential data point missing here — not coincidentally, the same one which the Trump administration has quietly omitted entirely from its recent anti-family immigration push.
That one all-important factor?
Time.
The lie is simple: the relatives featured in NumbersUSA’s complex infographic represent hundreds of years of future immigration under current law and waiting times. Yet Trump, Tanton’s nativist organizations, and other supporters of the RAISE Act seem to be suggesting that the “chain” provides a quick, if not immediate, process.
This is a lie, and they all know it.
How long would it actually take for each of the people included in this infographic to come to the U.S.?
In an outstanding piece written for the American Immigration Lawyers Association a few years ago, attorney Marti Jones detailed the hard math and even harsher realities of “chain migration.” Her piece included a helpful chart which, unlike NumbersUSA’s misleading graphic above, was based directly in the real world.
This is the reality of “chain migration”: 162 years for siblings of Mexican-Americans. A century for married adult children of naturalized Filipinos. Almost fifty years for unmarried adult children of naturalized Mexicans. (As noted in the chart, these figures are taken from seven-year-old State Department statistics. But the latest numbers haven’t changed much.)
Study and consider these numbers. Mentally map them into the NumbersUSA infographic above, and you’ll see the lie immediately.
In its most recent annual report, the State Department significantly downplays the problem:
Saying that waits for family visa petitions from countries like Mexico and the Philippines are “even longer” than thirteen years is like saying that the distance from Los Angeles to Boston is “even further” than the distance from Boston to New York City — technically true, but not a particularly accurate or useful metric.
Uninformed pundits and Facebook experts often blame “red tape” for these long waits. But these families are being kept apart by policy, not processing.
The entire family visa process is tightly controlled by an algorithm which only allots a certain number of visas in each category every year. Results are published monthly in the Visa Bulletin, and if you really want to get into it the full formula and controlling numbers are here.
Here are the latest numbers from the Department of State’s January 2018 Visa Bulletin:
It is natural to assume from this chart that because the Department of State is now processing Mexican sibling (F4) petitions from Nov. 1997, a beneficiary should expect a 21-year wait for a visa. However, given the enormity of the backlog and the limited number of visas available in this category each year, many of these numbers (especially in the Mexico and Philippines columns) have barely moved during 13+ years that I have been practicing immigration law. Marti Jones’s chart above gives a much more realistic assessment of what to actually expect.
At the end of the day, anyone who tries to scare you with the massive waves of immigrants coming to the U.S. through “chain migration” is either lying or ignorant about the reality of this system. (And as I will further discuss another time, they are also fundamentally mischaracterizing the central purpose of an immigration system.)
The United States has, until now, always naturally understood that new immigrants have a right to bring their families, and that they will almost certainly be happier, more productive, and all-around better citizens when they have the love and support that every human being deserves.
Finally, the nativist depiction of “chain migration” illustrated in the chart above is incredibly presumptuous. Who is to say that an immigrant’s parents, siblings, adult children, nieces, nephews, etc. would even want to make the enormous sacrifice to their standard of living that immigrating to the U.S. might require?
Very few of my clients’ parents choose to come to the U.S. to stay, as they would typically rather spend the rest of their lives around the places, friends, language, weather, etc. that they have always known rather than starting over at retirement age in a completely new country. And if they are from a country which values basic services such as health care and education over military spending, they will have to adjust to the reality of paying far more than they have heard have of anyone paying for these vital services.
It has been nearly a year since the 2017 Presidential inauguration, and interest in immigrating to — or even visiting — the U.S. is down significantly. If Trump and proponents of the RAISE Act really want to cut future immigration rates in half, all they really need to do is give this President another term.
Next: How Trump’s war on “chain migration” contradicts hundreds of years of American law, policy, history, & values.
