Should Mexico Get More Green Cards?

WASHINGTON — In 2006, the United States issued about 2,500 permanent immigrant visas for low-skilled workers. Mexico got 418.

Meanwhile, millions of Mexicans are working without permission in farming, construction, landscaping and other industries throughout the United States.

Some experts say that greatly increasing permanent residency visas, or "green cards," to Mexico would help relieve some of the nation's illegal immigration problem. Mexico has the same cap as every other country for certain green card categories, including employment-based visas, at about 25,000.

Douglas Massey, a sociology professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, thinks it is "pitiful" that Mexico — a country of 108 million people that shares a 2,000-mile border with the United States — has the same cap as Botswana, a country of 1.8 million people in southern Africa.

He contends that Mexico should get special consideration as the number two trading partner of the United States, a fellow member of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and neighboring country. NAFTA did include one temporary visa program for professional workers.

"Somehow you want to create this integrated North American economy and there's going to be all this stuff moving back and forth across the borders, but no people, " he said. "It just doesn't work. It goes against history, it goes against logic and it goes against contemporary economic realities."

Massey thinks the number of immigrant visas for Mexico should be hiked to 100,000 and that the United States should start a temporary worker program with Canada and Mexico to bring in another 300,000 annually — on two-year visas.

There is precedent in the United States to focus on specific countries with immigration agreements. For example, Cubans who land on U.S. soil are given immediate political asylum. In addition, the United States and Mexico operated a large temporary worker program between World War II and 1964, where millions of Mexicans called "braceros" were imported to fill labor shortages. The program, however, was plagued by worker abuses.

Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute, said that current U.S. immigration policy is outdated and a "mis-match" with economic reality. Meissner is a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was divided up into various agencies within the Department of Homeland Security.

Meissner said that revisiting the visa rules would reduce illegal immigration.

"We've got to make changes. The longer that we don't, the more we will have an outraged public and less and less political ability to make sensible changes," she said. "Illegal immigration is by and large a response to labor market needs."

Meissner said, however, that the 25,000 per-country limit on all nations was designed to promote equity between countries after a long history of discriminating against certain nationalities. It will be difficult to change.

Other countries, such as the Philippines or Ireland, could claim that they have a long historic relationship with the United States and should get special treatment as well, she said.

Meanwhile, Mexicans are the largest group of illegal immigrants in the United States. About 6.5 million Mexicans lived illegally in the country in 2006, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The 25,000 visa limit does not include certain categories of family-sponsored immigration, including spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens, which is the way that thousands of immigrants obtain permanent residency each year. In 2006, 1.2 million immigrants obtained a green card to live permanently in the United States. Of those, 63 percent were family-sponsored, according to the Office of Immigration Statistics at the Department of Homeland Security. Many of the immigrants who obtained green cards were already in the United States under temporary visas, refugee status, or other permits. Mexicans received 173,000 green cards last year, mostly for family members of U.S. citizens, according to the Office of Immigration Statistics.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates stronger immigration controls, said that raising the cap on certain categories of green cards for Mexicans would only boost immigration levels that are already too high.

"There would be more spouses or minor children or parents who would come in," he said.

He said changing the cap would also anger many other countries and groups that represent various nationalities of immigrants.

"It's politically impossible," Krikorian said.

Massey agreed that substantially increasing Mexican visas would be difficult, but the chances could improve if a Democrat wins the White House.

The leading Democratic presidential candidates have all said that they support an immigration overhaul that includes a temporary worker program and a path to citizenship for current illegal immigrants. Republican candidates, with the exception of Arizona Sen. John McCain, have taken a harder line on the issue, focusing on enforcement efforts and denouncing legalization plans as "amnesty."

McCain supports a plan for current illegal immigrants to have a path to citizenship, but says enforcement must come first.

On the Web:

Migration Policy Institute: www.migrationpolicy.org

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: www.uscis.gov