when we talk about immigration we usually talk about specific kinds of immigrants like illegal immigrants or immigrants here to do high-skill jobs like software engineers taking a step back and looking at the whole picture might help and look at the whole picture might help no that’s too far-seeing all the types of immigration together will
help you understand where some of the different immigration arguments fit into the whole system so we’ll try to answer two questions one what are the different types of immigration to the US? and two how many immigrants come here
in each category? first, of the different types of immigrants, you can come to the u.s. if you’re married to or engaged to a US citizen you’re married or engaged to a US citizen the rules are a little different depending on whether you’re married or not and how long you’ve been married you can also come here in the immediate
family of the US citizens like a parent sibling or child there’s also a special category for orphans adopted by Americans when a citizen’s family members are coming to the u.s. there is no limit to how many husbands wives children under 21 or parents can immigrate but if a citizen wants to bring their adult
children their grandchildren or their brothers and sisters to the u.s. there is a limit every year so its first come first serve you’re also not eligible to come, even if you qualify, if you’ve committed a serious crime or stay past the end of your allowed visit or haven’t been vaccinated the State Department can also keep you out if they decide you’re a security risk or that you’ll probably need welfare the next big category aside
from family is people coming here at work first a business has to apply to be able to hire immigrants and then offer a specific person a job before that person can even start the process the first group is people who have extraordinary abilities in science art education business or athletics we’re talking national or international reputations like Nobel Prize winners national soccer champions and that sort of thing these people also
don’t need to have a job offer before they come unlike everybody else another part of this group is professors and scientific researchers coming to take jobs at colleges and universities or managers and executives at multinational companies transferring to u.s. office the second group is people with advanced degrees like PhDs, MBAs, MDs, and so on
experts in their fields and people with bachelor’s degrees and several years of experience the third group is regular unskilled, skilled, and professional workers this means people whose jobs take less than two years experience or training people who need more than two years and people need a college degree to do their jobs the fourth group includes a bunch of small special groups like broadcasters, ministers, former US government employees, Iraqis and
Afghanis who worked with the US military, and some graduates of foreign medical schools the 5th group is people who’ve invested at least $1 million or $500,00 in a high unemployment or rural areas into businesses in America the business has to create at least ten jobs for American workers within two years and that doesn’t count jobs created for the investor’s family each group gets a percentage of the total amount of visas given out every year for
immigrants coming here to work, so being in a more selective group makes it way easier to get in so start winning pie-eating contests future Americans there’s also a limit to how many people can come from a particular country every year on top of the category limit so you might be within the limits for your category but if people from your country are 7% of the people who immigrated to the united states that year no one else in your country can come
the next kind of immigrant is a refugee meaning someone who flees their home country due to a reasonable fear of being persecuted for their race nationality religion political views or being part of a particular social group there’s a limit to how many refugees can come and then also a limit to how many can come from a particular part of the world
if you’d like to learn more about how refugees come to the u.s. check out our video on it one big change is that President Trump has signed an executive order which stops all refugees for 120 days and doesn’t allow refugees from Syria at all after 120 days, or about four months, the yearly limit on refugees will be cut from a 110,000 to 50,000 a year finally the special lottery for immigrants every year 50,000 visa applicants are randomly
selected from countries which have sent less than 50,000 immigrants to the US in the last 5 years the fewer immigrants your country has sent the more likely it is that you’ll win to qualify someone has to have at least a high school education and the least 2 years of experience in the last 5 years working at a job which requires 2 years working at a
job which requires 2 years of training or experience president Trump order also stops all immigration from Iran Iraq Libya Somalia Sudan Syria and Yemen for at least 30 days for the government to add more screening and vetting procedures we’ll do a video on how immigrants and refugees are screened and processed soon now for some numbers all the numbers in 2015 over 1 million immigrants moved to the US most of them came because they had family already here especially immediate family and the biggest category of those were husbands
and wives reuniting the second biggest category is people coming to work and then the third was refugees in 2014 about 80 million children were living with immigrant parents and that number has gone up about 34% since the year 2000 this puts it about 1/4 of all the people in the US under the age of 18 the number of illegal or undocumented immigrants in this country is guessed to be about 11 million which is 3% of the total u.s.
the population of 324 million this counts people who cross the border but also people who come here legally and stay past the end of their visa some methods are easier than others most illegal immigrants are from Mexico was almost 6 million after all it’s hard to get here from other places if you’re poor but the number of
undocumented immigrants from Mexico has been going down since 2009 with more coming instead from Central America Asia and Africa studies guess that 8 million are working out of that 11 million total which means about 5% of the total workforce the total number of immigrants in the united states is about 43 million out of the US
population of 324 million that’s about 13.5% there are also a little over 1 million permanent residents in the u.s. who aren’t citizens most of them are from Asia or North America meaning Mexico or one of the Caribbean countries that are permanent immigrants but what about visitors there’s also a long list of allowed reasons to visit the u.s.
an athlete coming for a professional competition an au pair or nanny certain Australian professionals, business visitors foreign soldiers stationed here foreign diplomats or employees of a foreign organization that has an office here someone on an educational or cultural exchange visiting for medical treatment serving on the
crew of a visit ship or airplane a journalist doctor or religious worker seasonal laborers, tourists, families of people with green cards or someone brought to the United States because they were a victim of a crime or human trafficking certain professionals can also come here temporarily from Mexico or Canada or from another country
if they have specialized knowledge in 2014 about a 181 million people visited the u.s. at some point most of them were business travelers or tourists or maybe a little bit of both? about 3.5 million temporary workers came some with their families and there were 2 million students some studying more practical fields than others so the immigration system is complicated some big things to remember is that there are way more visitors
than immigrants that most immigrants come because of family that’s already here that it’s easier to work here the more education you have and that there are limits on how many people can come from each country and how many refugees can come from different parts of the world but now you have an idea of all the different kinds of immigration and there you have it
