Oh puhleeze. Chain migration as a term is used to fan fear, hysteria and xenophobia.
Are you folks "pro family"? Well, what's more pro family than family reunification?
In practice, petitioning for your family members takes years and years. Try two decades for countries such as China, Philippines and Mexico.
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Chain migration, put another way, is a myth—it takes too long for a chain to form.
The vocabulary chosen by the White House is no accident. They are using the same terms that anti-immigrant organizations like the Federation for American Immigration Reform and Numbers USA have been pushing for years. These organizations, both of which have well-documented ties to white supremacy, exist to decrease immigration of all kinds. Family-sponsored immigration, most of which comes from Latin America and Asia, is a particular target. The terms of debate now being driven by the White House (look at those numbers! It’s chain migration!) are a targeted assault on Americans’ ability to reunite with their closest family members, using a misleading vocabulary straight from the playbook of some hate groups. That vocabulary is now being echoed in much of the news media.
The threat is not just fundamental to who we are as a nation of immigrants; it is also an assault on our families and our economic vibrancy. It is well established that immigrants, who tend to come in their prime working years, make enormous economic contributions to the United States. This was underscored by a 2016 panel assembled by the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine, which found that “immigration is integral to the nation’s economic growth. The inflow of labor supply has helped the United States avoid the problems facing other economies that have stagnated as a result of unfavorable demographics, particularly the effects of an aging workforce and reduced consumption by older residents.”
Family immigrants are essential to this economic growth, both because of their contributions in the workforce and because a generous family immigration policy is essential to attracting the talent we hope to bring from around the world. Think about it: We train entrepreneurs and other highly skilled economic players from across the globe at our first-rate universities. We hope that they will stay, building companies and driving innovation in the U.S. If we create obstacles for them to bring their loved ones, we will lose them to countries with more thoughtful family immigration regimes, like Canada. Family immigration isn’t just a sentimental approach, it’s an essential economic strategy.
We should call the Trump administration’s efforts to curtail legal immigration by attacking family immigration exactly what they are: an attempt to torpedo an engine of economic growth and prosperity, driven by a not-so-thinly-veiled racial agenda masquerading as an economic one. Don’t fall for it.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...gration-216536
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