Five Years of Chain Migration Adds More People to U.S. than One Year of American Births

chain migration
Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images

Foreigners brought more children to America from 2005 to 2015 than American parents delivered in any two years of the decade.

Extended-family immigration, known as “chain migration,” allows newly naturalized foreign-born citizens the right to send or bring foreign relatives to the U.S., including grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, adult siblings, and their children. In general, each new immigrant brings in three additional chain-migrants.

Since 2005, 9.3 million foreign nationals have been able to resettle in the U.S. for no other reason than they had extended family members already living in the country. This huge inflow outpaces two years of American births, which amount to roughly 4 million babies every year.

Even after discounting normal immigration, the number of chain-migration arrivals at the nation’s airports during five years exceeds the number of babies born during each year. In percentage terms, foreigners deliver one in five, or 20 percent, of all new arrivals at the nation’s airports or maternity wards every year.

The number of extended-family foreign nationals who have resettled in the U.S. in the last decade is greater than the total combined population of Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco and Cleveland, the White House has noted in a new ad campaign that seeks to explain and end chain migration.

A decade of immigration to the United States where new immigrants can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives with them has exceeded two years of all American births.

Extended-family immigration, known as “chain migration,” allows newly naturalized citizens to bring foreign relatives to the U.S., including grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, adult siblings and their children. Every year, roughly two new immigrants to the U.S. bring about seven foreign relatives with them.

Since 2005, 9.3 million foreign nationals have been able to resettle in the U.S. for no other reason than they had extended family members already living in the country. This total outpaces two years of American births, where every year roughly 4 million babies are born in the U.S.

As the White House has noted in a new ad campaign that seeks to end chain migration, the number of extended-family foreign nationals who have resettled in the U.S. in the last decade is more than the total population of Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco and Cleveland combined.

The booming foreign-born population due to chain migration could be further exacerbated by a year-end plan by the Republican establishment and Democrats to give amnesty to nearly 800,000 illegal aliens shielded from deportation under the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

As Breitbart News reported, the chain migration impact of a DACA amnesty, whereby the newly naturalized immigrants can bring any number of foreign relatives to the U.S., has the potential to range from 9.9 million to 19 million foreign nationals.

Under this potential DACA chain migration flow, four years of American births would be outpaced by DACA-created legal immigration into the U.S.

Despite repeated demands from President Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Lee Francis Cissna for the Republican-controlled Congress to end chain migration, the Republican leadership has yet to take the issue seriously.

For example, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) introduced legislation known as the RAISE Act, endorsed by Trump, in August that would officially end chain migration, thus cutting annual legal immigration levels in half, taking them from more than one million immigrants a year to 500,000 a year. This move would raise wages for American workers and stabilize the U.S. population.

But, the RAISE Act has yet to even be brought up by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Likewise, the SECURE Act, which was introduced this month by a group of Senators led by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), would end chain migration but ties the issue to giving amnesty to the DACA illegal aliens.

Though the SECURE Act was designed to be a compromise between the Trump administration and the Republican establishment, by giving DACA illegal aliens amnesty while also ending chain migration, the legislation was immediately shut down by Democrats and has not been pushed as even a remote possibility by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

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

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