Press Release
December 5, 2023
Employment-based Immigration Policy in the United States: Challenges and Reforms
In a new insight, AAF President Douglas Holtz-Eakin reviews the state of the labor force in the near term and into the foreseeable future, examines the problems with current U.S. policy toward employer-based immigration, and offers potential reforms.
Key points:
- The United States faces a shortage of workers in the near term and demographic trends indicate such pressures will continue to strain the labor pool over the longer term.
- The current U.S. employment-based immigration system has long-standing problems that make it unable to remediate these shortages: It caps the number of workers at unrealistically low levels, allocates them inflexibly and inefficiently, and processes cases too slowly.
- Congress should act to reform the system to admit more workers, process those workers more rapidly, and allow greater flexibility in visa status and mobility across the economy.