It is the primary mechanism that has caused legal immigration in this country to quadruple since the 1960s.
Chain Migration refers to the endlessand often-snowballing chains of foreign nationals who are allowed toimmigrate because the law allows citizens and lawful permanentresidents to bring in their extended, non-nuclear family members.
Chain Migration is the primary mechanism that has caused legalimmigration in this country to quadruple from about 250,000 per year inthe 1950s and 1960s to more than one million a year since 1990. Assuch, it is one of the chief culprits in America’s currentrecord-breaking population boom and all the attendant sprawl,congestion, school overcrowding, and other impacts that reduceAmerican’s quality of life.
Chain Migration is about family reunification beyond the nuclearfamily. Until the late 1950s, America’s immigration tradition of familyunity had only included spouses and minor children. But since then,immigrants can also send for their siblings, parents and adultchildren. These non-nuclear family members actually get precedence overan immigrant’s nuclear family. This ill-conceived system also createsincentives for illegal immigration because adult relatives of legalresidents are known to overstay their visas (becoming illegal aliens)in hopes of becoming legal immigrants. Moreover, since hundreds ofmillions of people in the world have a relative in the U.S., themigration chain can eventually reach them all.
The claim that chain migration is about “family reunification”ignores the fact that each immigrant who comes to the U.S. “disunites”another family by leaving some new relatives behind. If a person reallywants to live near his/her extended family, he/she should remain in thecountry where that extended family lives. Except for the very smallpercentage of each year’s newcomers who are refugees, nobody is forcingimmigrants to leave their families.