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A professor of economics at Rutgers University and former Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, Jennifer Hunt has published a paper calling for a complete overhaul of the nation’s immigration system. The paper was produced for the Hamilton Project of the Brookings Institution.
The first section of the paper reviews the weaknesses of the current system, including its failure to align the system with the needs of the economy. As an example, she refers to the pressing needs of the nation’s health care system, which are not being adequately addressed largely because of a built-in bias towards “admitting workers primarily in male-intensive occupations.”
She also believes that a new system must reduce illegal border crossings and visa overstays. Otherwise, public opinion will turn negative on all immigration, both legal and illegal. Her general inclination is to increase forms of immigration beneficial to native-born Americans, specifically immigrants chosen by employers (not by any kind of point-based system) and immigrants in high-skilled categories.
To achieve this increase, she would eliminate the F4 category of visas reserved for siblings of U.S. citizens. Her reforms would also reduce excessive wait times for visas by adjusting or eliminating caps in various categories. She also proposes changes to lesser-skilled programs, such as agricultural (H-2A) and seasonal non-agricultural (H-2B) visas to make them open to workers in a broader range of industries and to make them easier for employers to utilize. Click here to read the full paper.
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