The Immigration Act of 1990: Unfinished Business a Quarter-Century Later
The last major overhaul of the U.S. legal immigration system occurred a little more than 25 years ago, when Congress enacted the Immigration Act of 1990. The law attempted to create a selection system that would meet the future needs of the economy by emphasizing admission of more immigrants based on their skills and education. While the share of immigrants selected on the basis of their skills has increased during the intervening quarter-century, it has done so only modestly—from 9 percent of all legal immigration in 1990 to 15 percent in 2014.
A new Migration Policy Institute issue brief, The Immigration Act of 1990: Unfinished Business a Quarter-Century Later, examines the changes that the 1990 Act made to immigrant and nonimmigrant visa categories, including creation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and the diversity visa lottery, and reforms to other aspects of U.S. immigration law.
Authors Muzaffar Chishti and Stephen Yale-Loehr observe that “an immigration policy that remains static for a quarter-century in an economy as large and dynamic as the United States represents serious neglect of the potential that immigration holds for economic vitality and competitiveness.” They urge that lawmakers “develop a system that introduces needed flexibility into a visa allocation system that is currently frozen in a 25-year-old design.”
KJ