CMS Statement for Senate Hearing: “Removing Barriers to Legal Migration to Strengthen our Communities and Economy”

On March 15, 2022, the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety, of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing titled, “Removing Barriers to Legal Migration to Strengthen our Communities and Economy” to discuss the challenges immigrants face when seeking to enter the United States via legal channels. In the words of Senator Alex Padilla, “the immigration system that Congress designed to achieve critical goals associated with strong immigrant pathways has failed to keep up with the needs of the 21st century.” Senator Padilla further notes that the current framework in use by Congress to organize and facilitate lawful immigrant pathways to resettlement has not been revised for several decades – notably, since before the launch of the World Wide Web.

For this hearing, CMS’ Executive Director Don Kerwin provided a statement which offered a critical perspective on the current barriers to legal migration in the United States. “The nation’s antiquated, self-defeating immigration policies impede its ability to realize its family, labor and humanitarian interests,” Kerwin wrote. The CMS statement included discussion on the benefits of legal migration, the transition to the Biden administration, the need to reform the legal immigration system, and the appalling visa backlog.

CMS recognizes the need for more flexible, timely, and evidence-based legal immigration systems. The reality of legal migration and general migration flows should not be oversimplified, and citizenship should be “the organizing principle and goal of the legal immigration system, given its myriad benefits to immigrants, their families, and the communities” as a whole.

Click here to read CMS’s entire statement.

Click here to view a recording of the hearing.