Kristie De Peña, Niskanen’s Vice President for Policy and Director of Immigration Policy, wrote this opinion piece for The Hill on October 29, 2021. It discusses the bureaucratic failure of American immigration policy. Read the full story here.

The U.S. immigration system just wasted approximately 80,000 H-1B visas. These visas were largely slated to go to skilled, innovative workers who generally occupy the top 10% in terms of earning potential, all stuck in a 1.2 million-person, sometimes decades-long waiting list.

This is just one of several U.S. immigration policy disasters, each the result of bureaucratic failure. 

The U.S. also faces a record high and growing number of backlogged asylum applications. A rush of 15,000 Haitian migrants seeking asylum were forced to camp under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. The majority of them were released into the U.S. just to clear the camp, with notices to appear at an immigration office within 60 days. Of those, 70 percent are likely to be denied asylum, but it could take the system years to reach a conclusion on their cases.

Read the rest of the piece here.

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