This document is hugely important to understand. Thank you for posting.

I always found Table 6 to be the most interesting, particularly in debates about immigration — I have a green card as a 9 year long EB3 process (Employment Based, 3rd class - the CIS doesn't value Philosophy degrees as highly as engineering degrees!)

To take the last year for which data are published, 2011

A partial breakdown of new Permanent Resident status issued—informally “green card”

    Family sponsored                  206,585
    Immediate relatives of citizens   209,984 
    Employment based                   14,955

In round numbers for every green card issued on basis of employment, 28 are issued to family members of citizens. This is pretty much the inverse of popular understanding of immigration.

> In round numbers for every green card issued on basis of employment, 28 are issued to family members of citizens. This is pretty much the inverse of popular understanding of immigration.

There are people that don't understand that the US immigration system is primarily family-based? I think lots of people think the motivation for immigration is largely economic (and that's also true, even for the family-based visas), but I don't recall encountering many people that had any mental model of the immigration system that didn't know that being allowed to immigrate legally was largely through family-based classes. Certainly, much of the public political drama centers around that fact (e.g., the whole "anchor babies" thing.)

(Although "Family sponsored" is not, as you present it, necessarily family-of-citizen -- the family-sponsored grouping includes visa classes for family members of Permanent Residents as well.)

People may realize that familial relations can significantly shape immigration process, but they tend to greatly under-estimate the extent.

Immigration is almost always discussed in terms of fairness and, usually, "the line." But the metaphor is a bad one; instead of "the line," it might be better to think of the system as multiple, separate lines that are of varying distances from the destination. And honestly, some of those lines have some nasty obstacles laid out in front of them.

> People may realize that familial relations can significantly shape immigration process, but they tend to greatly under-estimate the extent.

I don't see any real evidence that's true, but, maybe it is.

> Immigration is almost always discussed in terms of fairness and, usually, "the line." But the metaphor is a bad one;

It's not really a metaphor at all, its a fairly literal description of the family-sponsored visa system which dominates immigration. At least as it pertains to the countries where immigration demand exceeds per-country quota, where qualified immigrants are literally on a wait list (in some cases one that will take a decade or more to reach them).

And I suspect it dominates the discussion specifically because the family-based part of the immigration system is the one most people know the most about.

> it might be better to think of the system as multiple, separate lines that are of varying distances from the destination.

Well, that would be even a more literal description of the family-sponsored system, since each category of visa has its own quota and queue.

Most of the rest of the immigration system doesn't really consist of lines...

You're quite correct, “Family sponsored” also contains ‘Second: Spouses, children, and unmarried sons/daughters of alien resident’ which accounts for 96,633 immigrants in 2011, which is nearly half of this category, much larger than I had realized.

That's a great point to mention. US immigration policy is heavily biased towards family reunification. If you become a US citizen, you can sponsor your parents and children (if they are under 18) immediately, there is no quota.