Annual employment-based green cards – an overview 

Simply stated, about 140,000 green cards are reserved for employment-based applications, as opposed to about 750,000 family based green cards.  How many workers come in these ways?  That depends in part on whether those dependents accompanying the primary applicants (about 50-50) are working age.  A rough estimate is that 70% – 80% of those who get in with an employment based or a family based green card are of working age. That comes to about 650,000 – 750,000 a year.  How many actually become employed? Perhaps 600,000 – 700,000.  (if you include refugees and other green cards, these estimates of employed increase by about 70,000.)

Employment visas like most other visas have annual caps. These caps for each visa include dependents. Roughly half of these visas are issued to the primary individual seeking the visa, and half to their dependents. There is a 7% cap for each visa by country; i.e. only 40,040 x 7% = 2,828 can be awarded to any country (such as India).  Actual numbers of visas awarded in any year vary due to several factors, such as access to visas what were not issued under the cap for other purposes, such as family-based visas.

It usually takes at least 12 months, if not two years or more, between the initial date of filing an application and the award of one of these visas. Over three quarters of EB visa awardees are already residing and working in the U.S. while they file and wait.

40,040 EB1 visa: persons with extraordinary ability, tenure track in academia, corporate executive, and other reasons

40,040 EB2 visa: professionals with advanced degrees or exceptional ability. Need a job offer and cubject to wage evaluation (labor certification) by Dept, of Labor

40,040 EB3 visa skilled worked in name but basically plain ol’ highly desirable workers. .Perhaps a cook who skilled at one kind of ethnic dishes. Need a job offer and cubject to wage evaluation (labor certification) by Dept, of Labor

9,940 EB4 visa: special immigrants like religious workers.

9,940 EB5 visa: investors with at least $1 million to invest in a for-profit venture and create 10 jobs, plus other criteria.

White South Afrikaners as refugees to the U.S.

President Trump has issued an Executive Order classifying South African Afrikaners as a specifically designated population for refugee status. This might be the first time an advanced western country provides formal aid to a group of white persons intimately associated with writing, not long ago, racist laws of oppression against non-white persons.

Trump’s first two weeks: immigration

I have written here a brief analysis of Trump’s actions on immigration in the two weeks since inauguration. I summarize the historical context of immigration in the United States and address his border policy, mass deportation, and destruction of the humanitarian programs.

UK’s troubled recruitment of foreign doctors

The UK has relied much more than the U.S. on foreign doctors (“foreign trained” very roughly equals “foreign born”).  About half of doctors practicing in the UK are foreign trained compared to 25% in the United States. In contrast to the U.S, the share in the UK has grown noticeably in recently.  Volatile trends in special recruitment by the National Health Service shows how much the terms of temporary immigration matter.

After World War II, the National Health Service faced harsh workforce shortages and actively recruited medical professionals from abroad, particularly from Commonwealth countries such as India and Pakistan.

A special Health and Care Worker visa was created in 2020. This provides for five years of work and after then an option to become a British citizen. In 2023, 350,000 such visas were issued (I think this includes the primary person and dependents). But the government stopped allowing workers to bring dependents, and the number in 2024 dropped to 50,000.

Today, the NHS is experiencing a shortage of health care professionals. The job vacancy rate which used to be about 2 jobs unfilled for every 100 jobs. That jumped to over 4 jobs per 100 after the pandemic.

From a 2024 report. This profile has been pretty much unchanged for at least 10 years, although sone sources say that immigration of health professionals has very recently picked up.

In 2021, 51% of junior doctors and 41% of senior doctors (called consultants) were non-white. This compares with 20% of the English working-age population. Much of this is driven by international recruitment. But even among UK-trained doctors, 37% of junior doctors and 24% of consultants were non-white.

By far the largest non-White group is Asian, making up 33% of junior doctors and 32% of consultants in 2021. The share of non-white senior doctors also increased, from 39% in 2012 to 45% in 2021.

India has been the world’s largest source of immigrant physicians.

“Mass influx” declaration on immigration law enforcement

The American Immigration Council writes that “In 1996, Congress passed a law giving the federal government the power to declare an emergency relating to a “mass influx” of migrants. When this emergency provision is enacted, the government can both disburse funding to states and localities dealing with the “influx” and delegate authority to local law enforcement agents in those areas to enforce some aspects of federal immigration law. In other words, local police officers around the country could be enabled under this law to carry out the functions of a federal immigration officer.

On January 23, 2025, the law was invoked for the first time. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine C. Huffman declared a “mass influx” affecting the entire United States for at least 60 days, authorizing the Department of Homeland Security to deputize local law enforcement to conduct immigration enforcement in all 50 states.”

Further:

The majority of arrests by ICE involve cooperation with local police forces. This makes building on this cooperation a potentially powerful tool for arresting persons on the basis of being unauthorized to be in the U.S.

A key distinction exists between the “Mass Influx” provision (103(a)(10)) and the better-known 287(g) program. The 287(g) program, which has been used for years, allows local law enforcement to cooperate in immigration enforcement but mandates formal training and does not offer significant financial compensation. In contrast, the 103(a)(10) provision provides federal funding to local agencies, making it a more attractive option for law enforcement agencies seeking additional resources.

It needs to be noted that pretty much any person who has been in the U.S. for at least two years cannot be subject to “expedited removal” but rather has access to immigration court review, and the immigration courts are backed up for years. DHS will undoubtedly try to get around this.

And the decision to invoke this law raises several concerns. The involvement of local police in immigration enforcement has historically resulted in increased racial profiling, particularly against Latino communities, including U.S. citizens. Additionally, using local law enforcement for immigration enforcement may divert resources away from public safety efforts, including investigations of violent crimes. Immigrant communities may also become less likely to report crimes due to fear of deportation, undermining overall public safety.

 

Baseline on arrests, detention and removals

Austin Kocher very helpfully provides insights into the Biden era pattern of ICE enforcement action by the United States, to serve as a baseline for the Trump administration.

Arrests: During FY 2024 there were on daily average of 310 ICE arrests and daily average of 409 ICE detainers served. A detainer is a request by ICE to state or local law enforcement to detain or otherwise keep ICE informed of a person who has been arrested in kept in custody.  (These figures show how much ICE depends on state and local law enforcement.)

Trump is implicitly promising that these numbers will skyrocket.

In detention: as of mid-January: 40,000.  Trump is promising that this number will skyrocket. Out of detention but monitored (mainly by technology) as of mid-January, 188,000. On its face, Trump’s executive orders and rhetoric would require all of these persons to be detained since they are per Trump criminals.

ACTION SO FAR; it is unrealistic to expect that arrest and detention numbers will have grown in the first week of the administration’s lifetime. Btu shall we expect perhaps 1,000 arrests a day by the end of February?

Kocher notes, “There simply are not enough immigrants in the country with criminal convictions to enable the Trump admin to massively grow detention and deportation alone. They will have to go after a growing number of immigrants with no criminal histories.”

Deportations: Kocher does not address deportations. In FY 2024, there were 270,000 deportations, or about 700 per day. During Trump 1, there were about 1.5 million deportations or about 1,000 a day.

Here is a mid 2024 analysis of deportation trends. This analysis raises an important point, which is that most removals are voluntary and not in the custody of law enforcement.