This CATO Institute blog desribes the new memo on issuing Green Cards only in Consular offices overseas as quiet quitting. There are over 1.2 million green card applications at USCIS. This new procedure which doesn’t seem to be supported by law would effectively eliminate many green card applicants. There is a good chart in the blog that shows the number of green card approvals have been down in recent months.
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Jenn Budd’s substack shows a list of articles and reports that provide information about ICE abuse through the years.
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Travel and business are the top two reasons people get US visas. But people also arrive in the US for education, family, and safety, and there are visas for all these situations. We now have data on 83 visa types on our site, so here’s a look at who’s coming to America (on a visa). 
The US issued 11 million visas in fiscal year 2024, the most recent year for which data is available. Compare that with the average number of visas issued annually from 2013 (the first year of available data) to 2019: 9.68 million.
The number of issued visas fell 68.0% from 8.7 million in 2019 to 2.8 million in 2021. By 2023, the number was back to 10.4 million, on par with pre-pandemic levels.
Twenty-two percent of visas, the highest share issued in FY 2024, went to Mexican nationals, totaling 2.41 million recipients. The next-highest visa-holding groups were from India (1.37 million or 12.5%) and Brazil (1.17 million or 10.7%).
Examples of work visas include the H-1B (specialty occupations) or H-2A (temporary agricultural workers). Tourism/business visas are for short-term travel, medical care, or business meetings. The most common is the B1/B2 visitor visa.
Safety visas are for certain crime victims. The US did issue these in FY 2024, but at rates so low they don’t read on the chart above. For example, it issued 155 U-1 visas, which are for people who have agreed to cooperate with law enforcement after being victims of certain crimes that violated federal law or occurred in the US.
Visas themselves don’t include permanent residency cards or applications for asylee or refugee status. -
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Migration Policy Institute writes this short statement of the debate we need but are not having.
They ask: What role can and should immigration have in the US?
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Immigration Insight 