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美联储主席格林斯潘回忆录——动荡年代：勇闯新世界-111:EDUCATION AND INCOME INEQUALITY-7

美国移民项目大致可以分为两类，【亲属团聚移民】和【职业移民】。

【亲属团聚移民】

不过多介绍了，属于‘前人种树后人乘凉’的移民途径。

公民或者是五年以上的永居卡持有人具有担保资格，无配额排期限制的亲属移民包括以下几种情况：

（1）申请人为公民的已婚配偶

（2）申请人为公民的子女，且未婚，年龄在21周岁以下

（3）申请人为21岁及以上公民的父母

有配额和排期限制的亲属移民，即公民的其他种类亲属（担保已婚子女、兄弟姐妹等）和永居卡持有人的亲属移民。这类亲属移民的排期时间是非常久的，可能长达10几年，等不及的话就得考虑职业移民了。

【职业移民】

按照移民局审理的优先级排序，职业移民由快到慢依次有五个优先类别：

EB-1杰出人才移民→ EB-2优秀人才移民→ EB-3雇主担保移民→ EB-4特殊职业移民→ EB-5移民。

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Much of our skill shortage can be resolved with education reform. 

But at best, that will take years. 

The world is moving too fast for political and bureaucratic dawdling. 

We need to address quickly a double U.S. disability: 

the increasing income concentration and the increasing cost of staffing our highly complex capital stock. 

Both could be "cured" by opening up the United States to the world's very large and growing pool of skilled workers. 

Our skilled jobs are the highest paid in the world. 

Accordingly, were we to allow open migration of skilled workers to this country, there would soon be a lower wage premium of skilled over lesser skilled and an end to our shortages of skilled workers.* 

The shortages occur because we are inhibiting world competitive labor markets from functioning. 

Administrative exclusionary rules have been substituted for the pricing mechanism.

In the process, we have created in this country a privileged, native-born elite of 

skilled workers whose incomes are being supported at noncompetitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. 

Eliminating such restrictions would, at the stroke of a pen, reduce much income inequality and address the problem of a potentially noncompetitive capital stock. 

The politics of immigration policy, of course, is influenced by far more than economics. 

Immigration policy confronts the considerably more difficult issue of the desire of the population to maintain the cultural roots that tie the society together and foster voluntary exchange to mutual advantage. 

*The rise in the income spread between skilled and less-skilled workers worldwide suggests that the shortage of skills is a global problem. 

Because international migration is so inhibited, the "price" for skills does not converge globally. 

It is clearly more of a problem in the United States than elsewhere. Hence, opening skilled immigration into the United States would put upward pressure on wages of non-US. skilled workers and increase income concentration by a modest amount; it would also lower the U.S. skilled wage level. 

407 

THE AGE OF TURBULENCE 

The United States has always been able eventually to absorb waves of immigration 

and maintain the individual rights and freedoms bestowed by our Founding Fathers. But the transitions were always more difficult than hindsight makes them appear. 

If we are to continue to engage the world and improve our standard of living, we will have to either markedly improve our elementary and secondary education or lower our barriers to skilled immigrants. 

In fact, implementing both measures would confer important economic benefits. 

Public policy is a series of choices. 

We can build exclusionary walls around the United States to keep out the goods, services, and people that compete with domestic producers and workers. 

The result would be a loss of competitive spark, leading to a stagnant and weakened economy. 

Our standard of living would fall and societal discontent would fester and rise, 

as the once-vaunted superpower fell from its position of world leadership. 

Alternatively, we can engage the increasingly competitive high-tech world, address our domestic school system's failure to supply a level of newly skilled workers sufficient to quell our disturbing increase in income inequality, and further open our borders to the world's growing skilled-worker pool. 

No alternative offers a rising American standard of living without the challenge and stress of borders open to goods and people. 

Choice is what public policy is all about. 

And with choice come both benefits and costs. 

To achieve the benefits, we need to accept the costs. 

408 

(未完待续, To be contd)
 

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