Green Card Approval Rate Reaches Record Lows | Cato Institute

There is no reason to turn away people who will contribute significantly to America’s economy and society. Since the 1920s, the United States has tightly restricted legal immigration. This century of low legal limits has produced high levels of illegal immigration and a historic level of requests for green cards. This paper concisely reviews the history of immigration caps and charts this backlog’s development. It reveals a legal immigration system that is utterly failing to direct aspiring immigrants to pursue the American dream in lawful and orderly ways. Only about 3 percent of the people who have submitted green card applications will receive permanent status in the United States in fiscal year (FY) 2024. At the start of this fiscal year, approximately 34.7 million applications were pending—up from about 10 million in 1996. Legal immigration caps plus uncapped categories permit only about 1.1 million green cards for FY 2024, meaning that 97 percent of green card applicants will not

There is no reason to turn away people who will contribute significantly to America’s economy and society. Since the 1920s, the United States has tightly restricted legal immigration. This century of low legal limits has produced high levels of illegal immigration and a historic level of requests for green cards. This paper concisely reviews the history of immigration caps and charts this backlog’s development. It reveals a legal immigration system that is utterly failing to direct aspiring immigrants to pursue the American dream in lawful and orderly ways. Only about 3 percent of the people w