Data: Foreign Relatives of Immigrants Dominated More than 70 Percent of All Immigration to U.S. in 2016

Chain Migration

More than 70 percent of all legal immigration to the United States in 2016 came from foreign relatives of newly naturalized U.S. citizens, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Lee Francis Cissna confirmed.

In a press briefing at the White House, Cissna explained the large scale to which “chain migration” makes up the vast majority of the current legal immigration system.

Chain migration is the process by which new immigrants to the U.S. can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives with them, including adult children, grandparents, cousins, nieces and nephews, and other extended family members.

Cissna said that approximately 566,000 of the roughly 1 million immigrants admitted in 2016 were nuclear family members of newly naturalized citizens. This number does not include the extended-family members of naturalized citizens who were admitted to the U.S. that year.

Though about 140,000 employment-based visas are given out every year, Cissna said that only half of those visas actually go to workers who are entering the U.S. to take American jobs, while the other half goes to the family members of those workers who are allowed to come to the country.

In 2016, only about six percent of all immigrants came to the U.S. for employment purposes, according to the USCIS official, leaving only one in 15 immigrants arriving for employment reasons.

As Breitbart News reported, under chain migration, every two new immigrants bringing seven foreign relatives with them to the U.S. This amounts to more than nine million foreign relatives arriving in the U.S. in the last decade.

Between 2005 and 2016, roughly 9.3 million foreign nationals have come to the U.S. as chain migrants for no other purpose than to reunite with extended family members. In that same time period, a total of 13.06 million foreign nationals have entered the U.S. through the legal immigration system.

In the last decade, 1.7 million chain migrants have entered the country from Mexico, with the average Mexican immigrant bringing roughly six foreign relatives with them to the U.S. Mexico sends more chain migrants to the U.S. than any other country.

President Trump has repeatedly called on the Republican-controlled Congress to end chain migration, which would reduce legal immigration admissions from one million to about 500,000 annually.

Though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) now supports ending chain migration, he and House Speaker Paul Ryan have stalled on Trump’s pro-American immigration reform agenda.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

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