Each year, the United States approves more than a million immigrants for permanent residency or green cards. For decades, more than half of immigration to our country has been chain migration — immigrants sponsored by a family member who came earlier, most often a new spouse, a grown son or daughter, or a sibling. In contrast, only about 15% of annual immigration is based on skills or sponsorship by an employer, with the remainder based on a green card lottery or humanitarian programs.
Studies show that, aside from nuclear family members who are admitted at the same time, new immigrants sponsor an average of 3.45 additional family members who come later. Immigrants from some top-sending countries, such as Mexico, India, the Philippines, and China, tend to produce even more chain migration, with a multiplier of more than five additional sponsored immigrants per newcomer.
Chain migration and periodic amnesties that award huge numbers of green cards outside the regular system have fueled near-constant growth in legal immigration for decades. This is because two of the largest chain migration categories, spouses and parents of naturalized citizens, are not numerically capped. In particular, the number of parents admitted has grown by more than 15% since 2016, with more than 208,000 new green cards issued to parents of prior immigrants in 2023.
When most immigrants are chosen by family members who came earlier, there is no guarantee that immigration will help our country. As it turns out, our chain migration system is very expensive for taxpayers. Census data show that more than half of all immigrant-headed households are accessing at least one welfare program, compared to about 40% of native U.S.-born households, at a cost of $42 billion per year.
President Donald Trump’s recent statements have revealed his interest in reforming the legal immigration system to give greater priority to those who graduate from U.S. colleges and would purchase a $5 million “gold card” as a path to citizenship. In his first term, he backed legislation to reduce chain migration and eliminate the green card lottery in favor of a new points-based system that would greatly favor more highly educated immigrants who can speak English. Additionally, Trump has said he would like to have an amnesty for the 600,000 “Dreamers” who arrived illegally as children, have work authorization, and are protected from deportation.
Eliminating most chain migration in favor of an emphasis on a new skills-oriented program would greatly modernize our immigration system, deliver a flow of global talent for employers, and likely bring in immigrants from a greater range of countries who are more likely to be self-sufficient and less likely to depend on welfare programs. It would also reduce the multiplier effect of allowing extended family immigration.
BECOMING AN AMERICAN: HOW TO FIX THE LEGAL IMMIGRATION SYSTEM
In particular, Congress should abolish the visa lottery, end categories for non-nuclear family members, preserve categories for spouses and children, and cap the parents category at about 100,000 per year. Instead of admitting 200,000 extended family chain immigrants each year, we should have a new merit-based category of that size.
Thanks to the four-year border crisis that added more than 8 million migrants outside the legal system, Americans are experiencing serious migration fatigue. Replacing chain migration with a modern system balancing family admissions with more skilled immigrants will restore public support for our cherished tradition of generous immigration and better serve our national interest.
Jessica Vaughan is director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.