 When we talk about immigration, we usually talk about specific kinds of immigrants, like illegal immigrants, or immigrants here to do high-skill jobs, like software engineers. Taking a step back and looking at the whole picture might help. No, that's too far. Seeing all the types of immigration together would help you understand where some of the different immigration arguments fit into the whole system. So we'll try to answer two questions. One, what are the different types of immigration to the US? And two, how many immigrants come here in each category? First, the different types of immigrants. You can come to the US if you're married to, or engaged to, a US citizen. The rules are a little different depending on whether you're married or not and how long you've been married. You can also come if you're in the immediate family of a US citizen, like a parent, sibling, or child. There's also a special category for orphans adopted by Americans. When a citizen's family members are coming to the US, there's no limit to how many husbands, wives, children under 21, or parents that can immigrate. But if a citizen wants to bring their adult children, their grandchildren, or their brothers and sisters to the US, there is a limit every year. So it's first come, first serve. You're also not eligible to come, even if you qualify, if you've committed a serious crime, stayed past the end of your allowed visit or haven't been vaccinated. The State Department can also keep you out if they decide you're a security risk or that you'll probably need welfare. The next big category aside from family is people coming here to work. First, a business has to apply to be able to hire an immigrant and then offer a specific person a job before that person can even start the process. The first group is people who have extraordinary abilities in science, arts, education, business, or athletics. We're talking national or international reputations like Nobel Prize winners, national soccer champions, and that sort of thing. These people also don't need to have a job offer before they come, unlike everybody else. Another part of this group is professors and scientific researchers coming to take jobs at colleges and universities, or managers and executives at multinational companies transferring to US office. The second group is people with advanced degrees like PhDs, MBAs, MDs, and so on, experts in their fields, and people with bachelor's degrees and several years of experience. The third group is regular, unskilled, skilled, and professional workers. This means people whose jobs take less than two years of experience or training, people who need more than two years, and people who need a college degree to do their jobs. The fourth group includes a bunch of small special groups like broadcasters, ministers, former US government employees, Iraqis and Afghanis who work with the US military, and some graduates of foreign medical schools. The fifth group is people who've invested at least $1 million, or $500,000, in high unemployment or rural areas, into businesses in America. The business has to create at least 10 jobs for American workers within two years, and that doesn't count any jobs created for the investor's family. Each group gets a percentage of the total amount of visas given out every year for immigrants coming here to work. Being in a more selective group makes it way easier to get in. So start winning pie eating contests, future Americans. There's also a limit to how many people can come from a particular country every year on top of the category permits. So you might be within the limit for your category, but if people from your country are 7% of the people who immigrated to the United States that year, no one else from your country can come. The next kind of immigrant is a refugee, meaning someone who flees their home country due to a reasonable fear of being persecuted for their race, nationality, religion, political views, or being part of a particular social group. There's a limit to how many refugees can come, and then also limits to how many can come from a particular part of the world. If you'd like to learn more about how refugees come to the US, check out our video on it. One big change is that President Trump has signed an executive order which stops all refugees for 120 days and doesn't allow refugees from Syria at all. After 120 days, about four months, the yearly living on refugees will be cut from 110,000 to 50,000 a year. Finally, there's a special lottery for immigrants. Every year, 50,000 visa applicants are randomly selected from countries which have sent less than 50,000 immigrants to the US in the last five years. The fewer immigrants your country has sent, the more likely it is that you'll win. To qualify, someone has to have at least a high school education and at least two years of experience in the last five years, working at a job which requires two years of training or experience. President Trump's order also stopped all immigration from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for at least 30 days while the government adds more screening and vetting procedures. We'll do a video on how immigrants and refugees are screened and processed soon. Now for some numbers, all the numbers. In 2015, over one million immigrants moved to the US. Most of them came because they had family already here, especially immediate family and the biggest category of those were husbands and wives, reuniting. The second biggest category is people coming to work and then the third was refugees. In 2014, about 18 million children were living with immigrant parents and that number has gone up about 34% since the year 2000. This puts them at about one quarter of all the people in the US under the age of 18. The number of illegal or undocumented immigrants in the country is guessed to be about 11 million, which is 3% of the total US population of 324 million. This counts people who cross the border, but also people who come here legally and stay past the end of their visa. Some methods are easier than others. Most illegal immigrants are from Mexico with almost 6 million. After all, it's hard to get here from other places if you're poor. But the number of undocumented immigrants from Mexico has been going down since 2009 with more coming instead from Central America, Asia, and Africa. Studies guessed that 8 million are working out of that 11 million total, which means about 5% of the total workforce. The total number of immigrants in the United States is guessed to be about 43 million out of the US population of 324 million. That's about 13 and a half percent. There are also a little over 1 million permanent legal residents in the US who aren't citizens. Most of them are from Asia or North America, meaning Mexico or one of the Caribbean countries. So that's permanent immigrants, but what about visitors? There's also a long list of allowed reasons to visit the US. An athlete coming for a professional competition, an au pair or nanny, certain Australian professionals, business visitors, foreign soldiers stationed here, foreign diplomats or employees of a foreign organization that has an office here, someone on an educational or cultural exchange, visiting for medical treatment, serving on the crew of a visiting ship or airplane, a journalist, doctor, or religious worker, seasonal laborers, tourists, families and people with green cards, or someone brought to the United States because they were a victim of a crime or human trafficking. Certain professionals can also come here temporarily from Mexico or Canada, or from another country if they have specialized knowledge. In 2014, about 181 million people visited the US at some point. Most of them were business travelers or tourists or maybe a little bit of both. About three and a half million temporary workers came, some with their families. And there were two-minute students, some studying more practical fields than others. So the immigration system is complicated. Some big things to remember are that there are way more visitors than immigrants, that most immigrants come because of family that's already here, that it's easier to work here in the more education you have and that there are limits on how many people can come from each country and how many refugees can come from different parts of the world. But now you have an idea of all the different kinds of immigration. And there you have it.