As U.S. Legal Pathways Expand, New Analysis Examines the Channels and Current Numbers from Mexico and Northern Central America

WASHINGTON, DC — Legal pathways for Mexicans and northern Central Americans seeking to enter the United States have grown in recent years, as the U.S. government has increased its focus on managing migration cooperatively with neighbors in the region. With an emerging body of research suggesting that access to legal channels may reduce irregular migration pressures, a new fact sheet out today explores the permanent, temporary and humanitarian legal pathways that exist for citizens of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, how widely these pathways have been used and how these numbers have changed over time.

The fact sheet by Migration Policy Institute (MPI) analysts Ariel G. Ruiz Soto and Andrew Selee draws on U.S. government data to provide an analytical overview of U.S. permanent and temporary visas and humanitarian pathways available to Mexicans and northern Central Americans.

The fact sheet, U.S. Legal Pathways for Mexican and Central American Immigrants, by the Numbers, finds that:

• Family sponsorship for an immigrant visa (also known as a green card) is a significant route for the arrival of Mexicans and, to a lesser extent, northern Central Americans, with the number ranging from about 80,000 to 120,000 annually for much of the past decade out of an average 469,000 green cards issued yearly to all new arrivals to the United States during the fiscal year (FY) 2014-2023 period.
• Non-immigrant visa issuance more than doubled for Mexicans and northern Central Americans between FY 2012-2019, increasing their share of overall non-immigrant visas from 9 percent to 16 percent. As of 2023, their share stood at 20 percent of all non-immigrant visas, which includes the H-2 seasonal agricultural and non-agricultural visas, F visa for international students, H-1B specialty occupations visa, TN professionals visa and the L-1 intra-company transfer visa.
• Mexicans still dominate the categories of H-2A visas for temporary agricultural workers and H-2B visas for temporary non-agricultural workers, receiving more than 90 percent of H-2A visas and over 70 percent of H-2B visas since FY 2010. While this reflects long-established recruitment practices and networks, a small but increasing share of H-2 visas are going to northern Central Americans. Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans accounted for 18 percent of H-2B visa issuance in FY 2023, up from 5 percent three years earlier and representing a more than eightfold increase in the overall number of H-2B visas issued to these nationals.
• Refugee resettlement and humanitarian parole are increasingly important mechanisms to provide Mexicans and northern Central Americans entry, in particular temporary humanitarian parole, facilitated by the CBP One app to schedule admissions at a port of entry. Mexicans were the fourth largest nationality receiving appointments through the CBP One app between January 2023 and March 2024. Combined, Mexicans and northern Central Americans were 28 percent of CBP One appointments during that period.

“The pathways available for Mexicans and northern Central Americans seeking to enter the United States legally have grown gradually in recent years. These include visas for seasonal work and, in the case of Mexican citizens, high-skilled work; green cards for family members of those already living permanently in the United States; and refugee resettlement and humanitarian parole for people seeking safety,” Ruiz Soto and Selee write. “These pathways account for a small but growing proportion of all migration from these countries; unauthorized migration remains larger, but they hold the potential to increase over time and provide lawful alternatives to otherwise dangerous journeys.”

Read the fact sheet, published by MPI and the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Mission Foods Texas-Mexico Center, here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/us-legal-pathways-mexicans-central-americans.

For a policy analysis by MPI and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) of legal pathways within the entire Western Hemisphere, click here.