If Congress does not pass legislation to cut immigration rates, the U.S. will legally add at least 10 million new permanent immigrants over the next 10 years—a bloc of new residents larger than the COMBINED population of seven major U.S. cities:
- Atlanta (population: 447,000),
- Los Angeles (3.88 million),
- Chicago (2.7 million),
- Boston (645,000),
- Denver (650,000),
- St. Louis (318,000), and
- Dallas (1.25 million)
Together, the population of these seven cities comes to “only” 9,890,000.
Under current federal policy, the U.S. issues “green cards” to about one million new Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs) every single year. For instance, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. issued 5.25 million green cards in the last five years, for an average of 1.05 million new permanent immigrants annually.
New lifetime immigrants admitted with green cards gain guaranteed legal access to federal benefits, as well as guaranteed work authorization. LPRs can also petition to bring their relatives to the United States, and both the petitioner and the relatives can become naturalized citizens.
These 10 million new permanent immigrants will come to our shores even if Congress does nothing to pass immigration legislation.
In fact, recent failed legislation would actually have tripled that number, a release from Sen. Jeff Sessions’ (R-Ala.) explains:
“The immigration 'reform' considered by Congress most recently—the 2013 Senate 'Gang of Eight' immigration bill—would have tripled the number of green cards issued over the next 10 years. Instead of issuing 10 million grants of legal permanent residency, the Gang of Eight proposal would have issued at least 30 million grants of legal permanent residency during the next decade (or more than 3 times the entire population of the state of North Carolina).”