The United States’ legal immigration system, admitting about 1.2 million permanent foreign residents a year, continues to heavily favor China despite national security concerns.
No country in the world delivers more legal immigrants to the U.S., with the exception of Mexico, as China has annually for the last three years that federal immigration records are available.
From 2008 to 2018, more than 825,000 Chinese nationals arrived in the U.S. on green cards — an immigration status that provides them with permanent residency, a pathway to American citizenship, and eventually the ability to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country through the process known as “chain migration.”
Between 1990 and 1999, hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals arrived in the U.S., but since 2000, the flow of legal immigration from China has been steady at about 65,000 t0 88,000 admissions a year.
In the last three years, from 2016 to 2018, nearly 220,000 Chinese nationals secured green cards, with the plurality arriving as the immediate family members of their foreign relatives already naturalized and living in the U.S.
Close to 60,000 Chinese nationals in this period obtained their green cards through employment categories — the overwhelming majority of which were likely in the U.S. working already and merely adjusted their status to become permanent residents.
About 45,000 Chinese nationals, from 2016 to 2018, secured green cards through various chain migration categories as the extended family members of their relatives already naturalized and living in the U.S.
China, like India, has benefitted more than any other country from particular visa programs. India, for example, has monopolized the H-1B visa program that imports hundreds of thousands of white-collar foreign workers to replace American professionals.
Similarly, China has monopolized the EB-5 visa program that primarily delivers green cards to wealthy Chinese investors and their families so long as they promise to invest in a handful of American jobs. In the last three years, nearly 30,000 foreign nationals — 80 to 90 percent of which are from China — were able to obtain EB-5 visas.
The number of EB-5 visas rewarded to mostly Chinese nationals is, in some cases, 40 times the rate at which these green cards were once given out. For instance, between 2006 to 2008, only about 750 to 1,300 EB-5 visas were allotted to foreign nationals each year.
The annual number of EB-5 visas given out every year since 2014 has not dipped below 10,000.
Currently, due to the Chinese coronavirus crisis, President Trump has banned travel on China. The travel ban has yet to expand to any permanent immigration reforms on China, and the EB-5 visa program continues to have a backlog for Chinese nationals trying to make their way to the U.S.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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