Who Stays? Non-Immigrant Workers in the United States Who Become Immigrants

Sherrie Kossoudji, University of Michigan

The little understood difference between in-migration and immigration to the United States muddies our understanding of immigration policy. New immigrants include both “new arrivals” and “status adjusters”. Status adjusters, who may have migrated years before, are more than one-half of all “new” immigrants. Two implications of this fact drive this paper. First, how are those who stay different from those who don’t? Second, since the majority of immigrant visas are given to already resident non-immigrants, immigration flows are dominated by them. How large is the flow of high skilled non-immigrants to immigrants? We use calculations of the non-immigrant to immigrant flow to predict medium-term changes in the demand for immigrant visas by high skilled non-immigrants using an innovative method to compare all non-immigrant arrivals to those who eventually become immigrants. We use data sets created from federal government data on new immigrants to examine new immigrants when they actually arrived.