No Way In: U.S. Immigration Policy Leaves Few Legal Options for Mexican Workers

July 2005
by Rob Paral

Current immigration policies are completely out of sync with the U.S. economy’s demand for workers who fill less-skilled jobs, especially in the case of Mexican workers. While U.S. immigration policies present a wide array of avenues for immigrants to enter the United States, very few of these avenues are tailored to workers in less-skilled occupations. It should come as no surprise, then, that immigrants come to or remain in the United States without proper documentation in response to the strong economic demand for less-skilled labor.

Among the findings of this report:

• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 48 percent of all job openings, some 27 million positions, between 2002 and 2012 “are expected to be held by workers who have a high school diploma or less education.”


• Given that 12.5 percent of native-born adults age 25 and older lacked a high school diploma in 2003, compared to 32.8 percent of the foreign-born, it is clear that a large number of less-skilled jobs will be filled by immigrants.


• According to the 2003 American Community Survey, Mexicans comprised 30.7 percent of all foreign-born workers in the United States, but amounted to 88.8 percent of the foreign-born labor force in “farming, fishing, and forestry”; 60.2 percent in “construction and extraction”; and 51.6 percent in “building and grounds cleaning and maintenance.”


• Only one of the five categories of visas for permanent immigration status is tailored to less-skilled workers, and it is capped at 5,000 visas per year.


• Only two of the 16 employment-based visa categories for temporary immigrant status are available to workers in industries that require little or no formal training. One (H2A) is restricted to agricultural workers and the other (H2B) is not only capped at 66,000, but is limited to “seasonal” or otherwise “temporary” work that is defined so restrictively as to disqualify workers in many industries.


• Roughly 76 percent of Mexicans receiving temporary work visas in 2002 were recipients of only H2A and H2B visas. In other words, Mexican workers are crowded into categories in which few visas are available for most industries.


• The family-based immigration system is not capable of compensating for deficiencies in the employment-based system due to arbitrary numerical caps. In the case of Mexican nationals, wait times for visas under the “family preference” system are currently 7-10 years for the spouse of an LPR and 10-12 years for the unmarried adult child of a U.S. citizen.