This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, June 23rd,

2003.

I'm Caleb Brown.

For the vast majority of people who would like to immigrate to the U.S.

It's effectively impossible.

Caters David Beer, author of a new paper on the subject, explains why navigating the Byzantine

immigration system gives lie to the notion that it can be done legally and simply.

It is almost a joke among fans of immigration, that is to say people who are trying to mimic the other side will often say something that I do hear

from people who are broadly opponents of immigration which is why don't they just get in line?

Well I just want them to do it legally and that is just a pretty common sentiment among

people who let's be frank don't know very much about how the immigration process works

within the United States.

So help those people understand why that may not be the best comeback that they might think it is.

Right, our legal immigration system is much more akin to a lottery than getting in a line.

There is random chance distributed throughout it and your

odds of making it through the maze is very, very low.

And so yes, we have, there are many immigrants here.

If you exclude the people who married or were adopted the numbers are extremely

extremely low relative to the size of the country and

the not the demand for green cards and so at the end of the day you only have four tracks,

four potential opportunities to come.

And those are the Diversity Visa lottery, which is literally a lottery in 2018, before the pandemic,

...