If you read enough news from the United States you should be up to date with this fact: there are not enough people there to fill up all the job opportunities.

Just read this tiny part from a survey from Texas related to the service sector:

The very tight labor market has resulted in our company not growing while there are plenty of growth opportunities. Our employees are dealing with limited child care options.

You can read any study or article about this and the facts are straight: there are more jobs available than people willing to fill those.

So, my dilemma is the following: why not make something to ease the immigration process and allow more people that are willing to work to come into this great country? Why play a lottery and allow 55.000 people per year tops? How many of those 55k people that have the right to get a green card will fill those jobs?

I personally think that the US should do major steps in this direction. Even the Democrats, that are pro-immigration, are not doing anything in particular to improve this aspect.

The US is not a socialist country and people who would immigrate would not put such a high burden on the government: healthcare is not free, housing is not free, a legally employed worker would pay taxes thus more $$ for the government. Technically speaking, any immigrant would bring net more positive things to the table. Of course, there are a few bad things to take care of: the crime rate might increase, poverty, and so on because those that come from a small and poor country would not live like an American from day one. But having a well-thought immigration bill and the law would regulate this. Maybe if you’re an immigrant with a green card and you do a crime, after a warning you would be deported, or something like that.

The United States is also about freedom, so employment-based immigrant visas are not the best solution. In theory, those are good, but in practice, you don’t have the same freedom as anyone else to change the job when a new opportunity arises. The new employer needs to agree to make you the right papers so you continue to stay there. If you suddenly lose your job then… you might be in trouble, you might not have the right to stay in the USA anymore. Employment-based visas lack the stability aspects, you can’t rely a lot on those. And to gain that kind of visa, the employer must prove that you’re the only person that can be hired for that job, and that might not be true: there are American citizens that can take on that job but they do not want to.

So yeah, this is my greatest dilemma: why not do something about immigration and let the people that are willing to help this great country do it?