International Organization for Migration (IOM)

The current US immigration system is based on the Immigration and Nationality
Act of 1965 that abolished the national origins quota system and replaced it with a
system of preference categories. The preference system was primarily concerned with
reuniting family members of US citizens and permanent residents. It also allocated
a maximum of 20 per cent of the numerical ceiling under family reunification – or
54,000 per year – for employment-based immigration.
The first major change in the preference system came with the Immigration Act of
1990 that more than doubled the employment based immigration ceiling to 120,120,
plus any unfilled quota from family reunification to be transferred to the employment
preference group. In addition, the 1990 law introduced new non-immigrant visa
categories to allow highly skilled workers with employer sponsorship. Subsequent
changes in non-immigration visas during the 1990s further increased inflows of
highly skilled migrant workers to meet labour shortages in specific occupations.
As a result of these policy changes, the labour migration system in the United States
has evolved into two distinct components: a primary component that is purely supply
driven and a large supplemental demand-driven component. The supply-driven
component comprises of immigrants who enter the country at their own initiative
such as immigrants sponsored by family members, immigrants on diversity visas or
the undocumented. Migration of workers in response to direct employer demand
and initiatives, via the supplemental demand-driven component of migration policy,
remains confined to a few occupations such as nursing, teaching, highly skilled
professions in science, technology, engineering and maths, and seasonal agriculture
and non-agriculture workers.
The demand-driven component of labour migration comprises of a number of
legal routes via which foreigners can enter the country for a short-term temporary
residency on grounds of employment. Most of these channels have been created to
meet labour shortages in specific occupations, and in almost all cases, employers
sponsor the foreign worker and submit the application for work visa. In many cases,
there is an annual quota for specific visas. Often, annual applications far surpass
the quota (Ruiz et al., 2011). Thus, immigrant inflows via the employment channel
fail to fully cater to the demand for foreign workers even in the occupations for
which the special visas have been designed. Foreign workers in these occupations,
therefore, often enter the country via channels other than employment as students,
tourists, or dependants (Pittman et al., 2012).
A series of H category visas are available to hire foreign workers on a temporary basis
for a short term. These are:
• H-1B visas for temporary workers with “speciality” occupation
• H-1C visas for registered nurses participating in nursing relief in disadvantaged
areas
• H-2A visas for seasonal agriculture workers
• H-2B visas for non-agriculture workers
country studIes – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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