Class 9: Domestic Labor Markets and “Temporary” Foreign Workers
Early American immigration law treated all arriving noncitizens as putatively permanent residents. Noncitizens who had been admitted to the country had a right to reside in the country indefinitely. Certainly not all immigrants intended to resettle permanently; plenty came to the United States temporarily. Nonetheless, the law permitted them to remain for as long as they wished. There was no statutory category of temporary migration.
This began to change as Congress expanded the grounds of exclusion— in particular when it adopted a literacy requirement in 1917 that had the effect of barring the entry of many prospective migrants from Mexico. Anticipating this consequence and likely in response to pressure from agricultural interests in the Southwest, Congress in 1917 created an early precursor to modern categories of temporary admission.
In the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, Congress formalized the divide between temporary and permanent admission by distinguishing between “immigrants” and “nonimmigrants.” Immigrants had a legal right to indefinite residence and received what today we call a green card. Non-immigrants—defined under the modern code as anyone who is not an immigrant—were noncitizens who sought admission (a) for a temporary stay and (b) for a specific purpose.
In this class, we will use the rules relating to temporary labor admission to explore the relationship between temporary and permanent migrants within the INA’s regulatory framework. We’ll also continue to think about the labor migration rules more broadly, with an eye toward understanding the prominent role that employers play in that system for selecting noncitizens for admission to the United States.
Reading:
Temporary visas and “nonimmigrants” (380-87)
H-1B and H-2 visas (393-95, 401-05, 412-19)
“Guest worker” programs (422-38)
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