Breaking chain migration myths

Families are landing pads and launching pads

One of the most common misunderstandings in immigration policy is around “chain migration.” When it’s referenced, it’s overwhelmingly said as if it is obviously bad, and we should end it immediately. Yet, put another way, chain migration is simply family immigration. Though a significantly less fearsome name, chain migration is that simple. 

Despite public discussions that suggest otherwise, chain migration is subject to the same limits as the rest of the US immigration system. It is true that families make up a large portion of those who receive visas to the US. It’s easy to misunderstand this because it makes families look like they only serve as a landing pad for immigrants to arrive in the US. But families are also launching pads for new Americans. Families help new arrivals assimilate and integrate themselves. 

There are interesting discussions on whether the US should admit more economic migrants, even if that means reducing family-based immigration. Yet discussions of chain migration get muddled in the loaded and pejorative nature of the term. Policymakers should see past this when discussing immigration and remember the value of families comes in helping the long-run success of new Americans.

Chain migration is not unlimited

In their video explaining chain migration, NumbersUSA describes it this way, 

Once approved, a legal immigrant can bring his or her nuclear family, consisting of his spouse and minor children. After that, the chain begins. Once the original immigrant and his or her spouse become US citizens, they can bring in their parents, adult sons and daughters along with their spouses and children, and their adult siblings, creating a potentially never-ending chain, all possible from one immigrant.

The idea that chain migration is “never-ending” is simply false. Each of the sponsored immigrants is subject to the same caps and limits as the rest of the immigration system. Their accompanying fact sheet says that an average of about 250,000 people are admitted each year through qualifying family paths. 

In the sense that NumbersUSA appear to mean it, we should all pray that chain migration is never-ending! It implies that 250,000 people will want to come to the US every year for all of time. 

The one sense that family migration is “unlimited” is that the immediate relatives of new Americans are not subject to a cap. The legal definition of immediate relatives is narrow, however. It includes only spouses of US citizens, unmarried minor children under 21, and the parents of US citizens. All other family members must come through capped paths. And extended families (cousins and grandparents, for example) are ineligible until an immediate relation is a US citizen. That’s not the never-ending flood that NumbersUSA alleges. 

Family members often run into other limits in US immigration laws. A primary challenge for our immigration system is that the existing caps create huge lines for people for the sole reason of where they were born. Today’s limits on family-based immigration have resulted in large lines for several countries. Americans who made the mistake of being born in Mexico, for example, may die before they can sponsor their family members.

Think about the size of the country

Clear-thinking about chain migration is frustrated by confusion about scale. Hearing that 250,000 people arrive in the US each year through family sponsorship sounds like a lot. But it’s minuscule when thinking about the entire country of more than 330,000,000. Naturally, readers think of 250,000 people as a lot, likely because it would be in their neighborhood. Cache County, for example, has around 140,000 people. Thinking about 250,000 additional people showing up here is overwhelming—that’s nearly doubling the county’s population overnight! Spread across the country, however, it’s unnoticed.

In 10 years, at this rate, 2.5 million people will have been admitted to the US. That is still less than one percent of today’s US population! For some reason, NumbersUSA describes this limited and controlled process of family reunification as if it is out of control. They write, “Like any chain reaction, the system is all but impossible to manage or control.”

Immigrants indeed contribute to US population growth. As economist Madeline Zavodny’s research shows, immigrants will be the primary driver of population growth in the US for the coming decades. A 2020 set of projections from the US Census comes to the same conclusion. In fact, the Census predicts that without immigration the US begins shrinking by 2035. This is only about 11 years from today.

This population decline has much more to do with Americans having fewer children than with immigrants replacing Americans. How to boost native-born fertility rates is well-worth research, of course. Family-based migration, that is, chain migration, is only a part of this solution to population decline. 

Does the US really stand out on family immigration?

The US system does have a lot of family-based immigration. It’s common to point out that the US admits primarily family migrants, not economic migrants. This is the nugget of truth within discussions of “chain migration”. And there are arguments for admitting more purely economic migrants into the US that extend from this point. This is why chain migration is often contrasted with “merit-based” migration. These arguments tend to say that the US should look more like Canada and Australia, which have more economic migration. 

It turns out, however, that these comparisons are much more difficult to make. Australia and Canada have a lot of families migrating to the US as well. In an international 2018 comparison, researchers at the Migration Policy Institute found much more similarities to the US than is usually understood. Relative to their populations, Australia, Canada, and the US all admit about the same number of people through family migrants. Per 1,000 people, the US admits 2.1 family immigrants. On the same scale, Australia admits 2.6 and Canada 2.0. Seen this way, the US is behind on economic migrants, But the US is not so different on family immigration.

The Institute’s researchers also pointed out that many economic migrants are family members of those already in the country. So comparing apples to apples can be difficult. But this would have the effect of inflating the economic categories for each of these countries and deflating the family categories. Because of data limitations, the researchers only compare Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, not Australia. But their adjusted numbers show that family migration becomes the largest share of migrants for those three countries.

Families are landing pads and launch pads for immigrants

Based on these figures, it’s clear that the US admits fewer economic migrants than similar countries. It’s simply true that not everyone who wants to come to the US will ever actually migrate, even if they have the chance. And there are arguments for considering how the US can bring more economic migrants to the US, either in addition to or in place of some of the current system’s focus on family migration. 

Setting aside these separate policy debates, concerns about chain migration are based on misunderstandings about the immigration system. There are clear guardrails preventing chain migration from overwhelming the country. 

Yet the fundamental misunderstanding that “chain migration” creates has to do with the way it sees immigrants and their families. Critiques of chain migration see families forming the landing pad for new Americans. Another immigrant to the US expands the potential network of people who can migrate to the US in the future. But this is just treating them the same way that we treat native-born Americans—they’re allowed to sponsor their families because they are Americans!

What these critiques miss is that families are also launching pads for new Americans. They help them learn how to migrate legally, find English-language classes, and everything else. These are all things that make newcomers successful and help them Americanize. 

Results are hard to argue with on these questions about assimilation and the success of immigrants. Immigration research is clear that immigrants assimilate along important dimensions. In their recent book, Streets of Gold, immigration researchers Leah Boustan and Ran Abramitzky conclude that immigrants take on the culture of America. As they learn English, marry people outside of their immediate ethnic groups, and Americanize their choices in names. 

Beyond this cultural assimilation, family-based immigrants have rapid earnings growth. That’s clear evidence that families form not just a pathway into the country but a path towards the American dream. 

Complaints about chain migration center on the way that families are the landing pads for new Americans. But these complaints forget the dual purpose of immigrant families. They are landing pads and launch pads, sending immigrants on to success in America.