Over 30% of newly coming to the U.S. legal immigrants are the holders of “preference visas”. It means that they have sponsors among employers or family members, being already either permanent residents or citizens. The reality is that these reference visas are not available to everyone on an equal basis. The annual cap of immigrants is the same for all the countries regardless of their population, and the quantity of already established migration steam to the U.S. For instance, Mexico and the Philippines have a cap of about 25,000 annually which is the same as the cap of Lesotho or Andorra with the least quantity of population and less migration history of the last. As a result, immigrants from Andorra and Lesotho will have to wait in line outside the U.S. at least two times less than those from Mexico and the Philippines. The discrimination here is evident and seems to be deliberate. In the 1960s, Congress stopped the national-origins quotas, and the government implemented a policy of equal caps as the legal immigration from Asian countries and Mexico needed to be legally limited.
All appearance, the Europeans are favored, although silently, as they are entering the country easier due to the main immigration reform bills. In the 1980s, the Immigration, Reform, and Control Act ended national-origin quotas for northwest Europe, simultaneously including extra visas for over 30, mostly European, countries. By 1990, the immigration reform bill launched the Diversity Visa program, but it still had some biases. The lottery distributes around 50,000 Diversity Visas, but the citizens from 1nineteen countries are not allowed to take part in it. It is noteworthy that sixteen of these countries are in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Asia. Hence, again, it seems like an intended trial to attract more European immigrants. In practice, the lottery brought the most considerable benefit to the population of African countries but not European ones as expected.
In June 2013, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act were passed by the Senate with the support of President Obama. Unless it is still blocked in the House of Representatives, the same legislation is able to increase the number of arrivals to the family members in the U.S., broaden the employment-based visas limit, and abolish the Diversity Visa program. The country will reach valid equality of immigrants when they are admitted by occupations, ties to relatives, and skills but not the country of origin.