Slow-growing U.S. green card caps, delays and waste have characterized the system for a century, and are only worsening under politically polarized immigration laws

by Helen Ozturk

Slow-growing U.S. green card caps, delays and waste have characterized the system for a century, and are only worsening under politically polarized immigration laws.

At a Friday, March 1 Ethnic Media Services briefing, immigration policy experts discussed how we have reached our present crisis, economically sound solutions and the human cost of our current system.

A century of green card caps

In 2024, 1.1 million people are expected to receive green cards from 35 million pending applications. In other terms, only about 3 percent of the people who have submitted green card applications will receive permanent status.

This low approval rate owes not to the convoluted process of applying for a green card but to green card caps, said David J. Bier, Associate Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute. Until 1922, when backlogs began, about “98 percent of the applicants who tried to get the then-equivalent of legal permanent residence were approved.”

By the mid-1920s, the approval rate was about 50 percent due to the Immigration Act of 1924, setting “very low numerical limits based on country of birth, particularly restricting legal immigration from Eastern Europe and Asia. In the early ‘30s, we adopted a later phased-out public charge rule that banned almost all applicants,” explained Bier. Approvals remained below 20 percent during and after World War II, “and this is how we got from open borders to what we have now, which is almost closed borders — a 98 percent approval rate down to 3 percent for the last few years.”

Despite the fact that green card applications have more than tripled from about 10 million in 1996 to 35 million now, modern caps — which were originally set by the Immigration Act of 1990 — have barely risen, from 357,000 annually in 1922 to just over 575,000 in 2024.

“The caps are arbitrarily determined by the President in consultation with Congress, they have no basis in reality,” said Bier.

U.S. population growth — which was 0.1 percent in 2021 and has been roughly 0.25 percent this decade so far — has never been lower.

“Even if after accepting the 35 million pending green cards, we increased ongoing legal immigration five-fold, we still wouldn’t catch up to Canada’s foreign-born population share,” Bier added. “The U.S. is a huge country, there’s no reason population wise we can’t welcome these people.”

The economics

Clearing green card backlogs by welcoming more legal immigrants makes major economic sense, said Jack Malde, a senior immigration and workforce policy analyst at Bipartisan Policy Center.

As 89 percent of the employment-based backlog involves people currently in the U.S. on temporary, work-restricted visas, “removing those labor market restrictions allows them to advance in their likely higher-skilled careers,” he explained.

“On the other hand, most of the family-based backlog are currently outside of the country, so green cards would allow them to contribute to our economy by paying taxes and entering our labor force, which is in dire need of new workers with shortages across industries and an aging population dependent on federal benefits,” Malde continued

As of March 2023 the employment-based adult backlog is 1.4 million (1.8 million total, across ages) and the family-based adult backlog is 4 million (5.8 million total), per a Bipartisan Policy Center report.

What would be the final gain?

Clearing current employment and family-based backlogs, not including future ones, would result in a moderate projection of $3.9 trillion in GDP gains in the next 10 years — though as low as $2.8 trillion or as high as $4.9 trillion.

U.S. immigrants who arrive at age 25 as high school dropouts have a net fiscal impact of +$216,000, not including descendants, which reduces their net fiscal impact to +$57,000. By comparison, American-born dropouts of the same age have a net fiscal impact of −$32,000 that drops to −$177,000 including their descendants.

“It’s a mistaken perception that there are a fixed number of jobs in the economy,” said Malde. “When immigrants enter the country, they create more jobs for U.S.-born workers, because they contribute their skills.”

The human cost

“Working legal immigrants and their children are in danger of falling out of status in a never-ending limbo,” said Cyrus Mehta, an immigration lawyer and founding and managing partner of Cyrus D. Mehta & Partners.

Employee-sponsored temporary visas like an H1 “get them in backlogs that last forever with extension after extension as non immigrants bound to employers, and in the process, the US loses,” he continued. “They get frustrated and go to countries with much more attractive immigration benefits and systems, like Canada, and so the US may not be able to maintain its world leadership with respect to attracting the best and brightest.”

Alongside spouses, the children of these sponsored immigrants get temporary H4 visas until 21, when they’ll most likely age out “due to horrendous backlogs,” Mehta explained. Even if the child gets a student F1 visa for college, “it requires them to have a non-immigrant intent to return to the foreign country.”

Meanwhile, there’s an H1 cap for employees with U.S. master’s degrees if the child continues to graduate school — and if the child is lucky enough to get one, they start the green card process again. The parent’s priority date cannot be transferred.

As a policy fix, Mehta suggested counting unified family units rather than discrete family members for caps in the employment and family-based categories, or allowing temporary visa holders already in the U.S. to file for early status adjustment before their priority date, so their children’s ages are frozen.

“But you can imagine what an unworkable, untenable, unhuman system this whole thing is, especially for a child who has been here for their whole life,” he said. “To free up visas, bipartisan agreement from Congress is hard, this issue is politically fraught … but once you show that an administrative policy is successful, then Congress may someday bless it. Parole is one example.”

The Campus Opioid Safety Act required colleges and universities to put the power of reversing fentanyl overdoses directly into the hands of students. Some campuses are giving out the life-saving nasal spray Narcan, while others are not

by Li Khan

When Mel McKernan moved in with her new roommate Braedon Ellis, they bonded quickly. Every night she would stay up until 1 a.m. just waiting for Ellis to get back from her job so they could watch TV together. McKernan, 19, was a second-year student at Seattle University. Ellis was 20 and working as a Domino’s delivery driver.

“She genuinely was the light of my life,” recalled McKernan, who has since transferred to UC Berkeley. “She had this beautiful purple hair. I felt like that was just an aura that she carried around with her.”

McKernan thought she had made a friend for life. The two young women lived with two other roommates in a beautiful waterfront house in Kenmore, Washington. But behind the walls, a darkness lurked. Their other roommates were addicted to fentanyl, an extremely potent synthetic opioid.

McKernan had braced herself for the possibility of losing a roommate. But she never expected it to be Ellis. Their magnetic connection severed when Ellis overdosed from a combination of drugs that included fentanyl.

“It completely changed my view on opioids,” McKernan said. “Because I was like, this could hit anyone. It can hit literally anyone.”

Fentanyl is now the leading cause of drug-related deaths nationwide. After a new wave of deadly overdoses among Californians 15 to 24 started to rise in 2019, lawmakers turned to California’s public colleges and universities to offer life-saving resources to its students.

The Campus Opioid Safety Act, which took effect Jan. 1, 2023, required campus health centers at most public colleges and universities to offer students free Narcan, a nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose. Some colleges and universities have since armed students with Narcan, but not all have followed suit.

The rise of fentanyl deaths 

Today, when someone in the United States dies of a drug-related overdose, it’s usually linked to fentanyl. That’s a change from 20 years ago, when prescription opioids like OxyContin were the leading killer, according to Theo Krzywicki, founder and CEO of End Overdose, a national nonprofit based in Los Angeles aimed at eliminating drug-related overdose deaths, especially among teens and young adults.

“Fentanyl is a very different drug than OxyContin,” Krzywicki said. “The way people use it has changed.” Because fentanyl delivers a stronger and shorter-lived high than other opioids, people often use more of it, he said, and build up a tolerance to it quickly.

For years, the opioid epidemic hit middle-aged Californians harder, but the new wave brought on a rise in death rates for teens and young adults. By 2021, teens 15 to 19 were five times as likely to die from an opioid overdose compared to 2019. For 20- to 24-year-olds, they were over three times as likely. Rates for adults between 25 and 75 years old, meanwhile, roughly doubled in the same time frame.

Recently, opioid-related fatalities among the state’s young people have started to reverse. While death rates for adults 25 and over continue to rise, rates have declined for people under 25. Since 2021, per-capita rates for opioid-related overdose deaths dropped by over a third for Californians 15 to 19 and 20 to 24.

Rising awareness could be what’s driving the recent decline, according to a statement from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. College-aged students increasingly use social media to spread information about the risks of fentanyl and where to find life-saving resources such as Narcan. Young people also tend to have stronger support systems and are less likely to use drugs alone, according to the statement.

Lawmakers require colleges to combat the crisis

Melissa Hurtado, a Democratic Central Valley state senator, introduced the Campus Opioid Safety Act, or SB 367, in February of 2021. She said she chose to target college campuses after hearing story after story of young people overdosing in her district.

“It was just such a serious threat,” Hurtado said. “And it still is.”

This January, another law, AB 461, went into effect that added fentanyl test strips to the requirements. The small paper strips can be used by drug users to check if their supply contains fentanyl. Counterfeit prescription pills, made to look like OxyContin or Adderall, often contain fentanyl, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The act requires campus health centers at California State University campuses and community colleges to order free Narcan through a state program called the Naloxone Distribution Project. Schools also must educate their students about preventing overdoses, and let them know where they can find opioid overdose reversal medication. The law “requests” the University of California system to do the same, stopping short of a requirement because of the system’s constitutional autonomy.

At least 100 public colleges in California have Narcan somewhere on campus, according to data from the state distribution project that included a list of all applications from colleges and universities. Although not required by law, some private universities like Stanford also offer Narcan to students.

Every UC and Cal State has ordered Narcan from the state distribution project in the last two years, with the exception of CSU Maritime Academy. However, CSU Maritime said in an email statement that Narcan is available through their student health center.

Fourteen of California’s 72 physical community college districts were not represented in the data, but Narcan could still be on those campuses. Victor Valley College, in San Bernardino County, ordered Narcan through its police department, so the request was categorized as law enforcement. DeAnza College in Santa Clara County received its supply of Narcan from the county health department, according to college spokesperson Marisa Spatafore.

Cal State Bakersfield gets the word out

Hurtado represents much of Kern County, one of the deadliest counties for opioid-related overdoses among young people. In 2022, 15- to 19-year-olds in Kern County fatally overdosed on opioids at a rate three times higher than the statewide rate for the same age group, according to the California Department of Public Health. For 20- to 24-year-olds, the rate was twice as high.

The county is home to Cal State Bakersfield, whose health education department has given out about 60 boxes of Narcan to its students since January 2023. After completing a short online training, students can drop by the campus health clinic to pick up the opioid reversal drug.

Lauren Hedlund, a health educator at Cal State Bakersfield, said her team gets the word out to students through tabling, activities, and flyers. They also bring Narcan directly to classrooms if an instructor requests it. The instructor shows the training video beforehand, then the health education team visits the class to answer questions and hand out Narcan.

“It’s just making sure that I can reach as many students as possible so that they’re aware,” Hedlund said. She added that even if a student never needs the resources, they could know someone who does.

Some colleges lag behind

More than a year after the law went into effect, some colleges have yet to put Narcan in the hands of students. Elsewhere in Kern County, community colleges in Taft, Ridgecrest, and Bakersfield do not have a program for distributing Narcan to students. Bakersfield College is currently working on setting up a vending machine that would stock Narcan, menstrual products, and other health items, according to Marissa Perez, a medical assistant at the college.

In the East Bay Area, Peralta Community College District received Narcan from the state early last year, but until recently, no efforts were made to make it available through the student health center. The district initially distributed the Narcan to its security staff. No Narcan trainings have been held for students, although the safety department held a training this year at an event for college employees.

Students can request a single packaged dose of Narcan through the district’s public safety office, according to a Feb. 14 announcement sent by associate director of public safety Amy Marshall. The email was sent to employees, but not to students. Marshall informed CalMatters via email that the health center received Narcan on Feb. 20. However, the district’s associate vice chancellor of educational services, Tina Vasconcellos, clarified in an email to CalMatters that the Narcan would be for health center staff to use within the clinic, and that they would not distribute Narcan to students.

A spokesperson from Hurtado’s office confirmed that even if a college has Narcan somewhere on campus, the school needs to offer it to students to comply with the law.

UC Berkeley students steer efforts 

Crushed after losing her close friend, McKernan dropped out of Seattle University and took a year off college to stay home in Sacramento. Now 21, she’s finding her footing as a transfer student at UC Berkeley, where she majors in social welfare. She’s fervent about spreading harm reduction resources like Narcan, destigmatizing addiction, and addressing the deeper systemic issues that lead to addiction.

At her former university, McKernan had tried to organize her fellow students around overdose prevention, but struggled to find enough volunteers. So when she saw students from End Overdose’s UC Berkeley chapter handing out fentanyl test strips in Sproul Plaza on a recent afternoon, she asked immediately if she could join, offering to share infographics she’d made for social media.

Before her roommate’s death, she knew her household would benefit from Narcan, but she didn’t find out where to access it in time. “A lot of people, including myself, just learn about it too late,” McKernan said.

Tyler Mahomes, a legal studies major at UC Berkeley, founded the chapter of End Overdose last year. It’s one of the organization’s many college chapters across the United States, where students spread overdose prevention awareness and resources to fellow students. Mahomes’ team brings Narcan directly to fraternities and other student groups, and works with his university to patch holes in their harm reduction efforts. For example, he notified the university when his dorm hadn’t been restocked with overdose safety kits containing Narcan.

The students can even go where the university cannot. Last fall, the chapter volunteered at the Portola Music Festival in San Francisco to hand out Narcan to festival-goers.

Students are receptive to End Overdose’s peer-to-peer, non-judgemental approach. “They don’t see us as this administrative force,” Mahomes said. “We’re students like them […] so they feel very comfortable.”

The approach has already seen some results. According to Mahomes, one student at a frat party recovered from an overdose after someone used Narcan provided by End Overdose.

The spark that went out

Ellis, the purple-haired light of McKernan’s life, left behind her mother and an 8-year-old brother when fentanyl took her life. Her mother, Dionne Waltz, would find out two days later, while driving to pick her son up from school.

Ellis was a “fireball,” Waltz recalled. She still misses her daughter’s kind and generous spirit. When they went out for coffee, Ellis would insist on covering the tab, even paying for the car behind them. Even though she didn’t make a lot of money, she’d always save up to buy her little brother something nice for Christmas.

Two years later, the initial shock has faded. Waltz still grieves her only daughter. But she sees flickers of her spark everywhere: in the sunsets, in the birds, and in anything bright pink, one of Ellis’ favorite colors.

“On the inside there’s that hollow echo all the time,” Waltz said. “I think about her every single day.”

When Ellis’ spark went out, another was lit. McKernan vowed not to lose another friend to an overdose. She believes that just starting a conversation about Narcan could save others.

“Because if you’re educated and you’re prepared, it’s so much less likely that you’re going to lose a life to overdose,” McKernan said.

Khan is a fellow with the CalMatters College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. This story and other higher education coverage are supported by the College Futures Foundation.