WASHINGTON, DC, Feb. 14, 2018 – The Center for American Progress released two new analyses showing that ending family migration and eliminating the diversity visa program would eviscerate immigration from Latin America, Africa, and Asia to the United States— and would go against the core of American immigration policy and priorities in place for more than a century.

As Congress this week considers solutions to our nation’s immigration system, and a permanent fix for Dreamers, it will be presented with suggestions to slash family migration and to eliminate the diversity visa program. Both policy cuts are included in the Secure and Succeed Act led by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and in an immigration framework released by the White House last month to make substantial cuts to future immigration.

  • In “The White House’s Immigration Framework Would Eviscerate Immigration from Latin America, Africa, and Asia,” Nicole Prchal Svajlenka, senior policy analyst for Immigration Policy at CAP, concludes that if the White House immigration framework were implemented, the changes would radically alter future patterns and numbers of immigrants to the United States, effectively barring more than 350,000 people each year and gutting immigration from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In all, worldwide immigration flows would drop by more than one-third from 106 countries, and by more than 50 percent from 32 countries.
  • In “Family Reunification Is the Bedrock of U.S. Immigration Policy,” CAP’s Philip E. Wolgin, managing director of Immigration Policy, outlines how family reunification has been at the core of American immigration policy for more than a century. Even from the earliest restrictions on immigration, Congress explicitly recognized the importance of keeping families together and carved out a place for them. While conservative members of Congress in 1965 did—erroneously—believe that weighting immigration policy toward family unity above all else would preserve a largely white and European immigration flow, appeals to keep families together instead became the dominant way to challenge racially exclusionary immigration policy and to create a more egalitarian immigration system.

“Understanding our long American history of protecting family unity illustrates just how far out of the mainstream the Trump administration’s attacks on family-based immigration are,” Wolgin said.

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