Structural Violence in Employment Based Legal Immigration

The word violence conjures up images of physical or mental assault on a person. Violence is normally seen as harm inflicted upon a person by another individual or group of individuals. However, there is another form of violence known as structural violence where individuals are clearly harmed by the rules or procedures laid out by the system. We live in a society embedded with well-defined systems like the school system for educating our kids, the road traffic system for proper movement of vehicles or immigration system to help people immigrate to the USA. In the current day and age, the topic of immigration brings into limelight the discussion of illegal immigration. The mere mention of the word illegal immigration incites passionate debate among people from both sides of the aisle. On the contrary, very little is mentioned about legal immigration in the news media. Employment based immigration is one form of legal immigration to the USA. The applicants for employment based immigration have to endure severe hardship with regards to delays in the process, restriction on job changes and difficulty with work authorization for spouses. A candidate for employment based immigration is clearly disadvantaged by the immigration process hence that individual falls within the realm of structural violence.


The term structural violence was originally created by Johan Galtung, to highlight all the disadvantages faced by humans due to economic and political structures (Winter and Leighton 1). In their article, Winter and Leighton mentions that “structural violence occurs whenever people are disadvantaged by political, legal, economic or cultural traditions. Because they are longstanding, structural inequities usually seem ordinary, the way things are and always have been” (1). On a similar note, the authors of the article “Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine” explicitly bring out the meaning of the term structural violence. They specify that in a social setting “the arrangements are structural because they are embedded in the political and economic organization of our social world; they are violent because they cause injury to people” (Farmer, et al. 1). The system in order to restrain an individual will use legal framework, political ideology or social and cultural traditions. It harms the individuals in the long run by curbing their growth. One such system that needs further analysis is the employment based legal immigration process.


A candidate for employment based immigration has to follow several steps to obtain permanent residency. The state travel department website points out that the first step in this process is labor certification which is filed by the employer of the candidate. The date of labor certification sets the priority date for employment based immigration. After the approval of labor certification, the “employer then files an Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker, Form I-140, with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for the appropriate employment-based preference category” (“Employment Based Immigrant Visas”). The I-140 procedure forms the second stage. The subsequent approval of I-140, leads to the third stage, where the candidate is assigned a visa number if his priority date matches the qualifying date (“Employment Based Immigrant Visas”). Since there are numerical limitations each year for the number of visas for each country, the qualifying dates are retrogressed for candidates from heavily subscribed countries (“Visa Bulletin”).



The numerical visa limitation per country makes several candidates from retrogressed countries wait for decades to obtain their green cards. Cyrus D. Mehta in his article “Adjustment of Status Interview After Decades,” clearly highlights the briefing by Jeff Gorsky of the State Department Visa Office to an Indian interest group, stating that employment based immigration wait period for some categories can easily extend beyond 40 years. Mehta emphasizes the fact that candidates from India and China will be most affected with delay, since they are from heavily over-subscribed countries. The State Department officials have openly accepted the fact that there are delays that extend beyond several decades. This reflects how deep rooted the problem persists for employment based immigrations. Thus the system’s failure places the person’s immigration status in a limbo for decades.


Another issue that stands out among employment based immigrant community is the inherent restriction imposed by the process on job movement. The labor certification process is tied to the job. Vivek Wadhwa in his article “America’s Other Immigration Crisis” pin points the fact that once a candidate starts the process, he has to remain in that same job and would have to deny any upward job movement or else he would lose his slot in the immigration queue (Wadhwa). This definitely places the candidates in a quandary, since they have to remain in the same jobs for years, if not decades. These restrictions on individuals which does not allow them to grow to their full capability for no fault of their own, clearly depicts the faults in the immigration system.


The immigration system also imposes impediments on the spouses of these immigration applicants by not allowing them to seek employment. Wadhwa exemplifies the issues faced by spouses in his paper by drawing attention to the story of Sanjay Mavinkurve. Wadhwa notes that Sanjay had a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Harvard University. He was involved with companies like Facebook and employed with Google. However his work visa restricted his highly educated investment banker wife from obtaining employment in the USA. Thus Sanjay had to leave the USA and seek employment in Canada. Wadhwa also adds that the spouses of the candidates cannot get social security numbers. Hence it becomes much harder for them to open a bank account or obtain driver’s license (Wadhwa). It becomes clear that the immigration system has rules and regulations that restrict the spouse’s developments with regards to their careers and other financial freedom.


The opponents of employment based immigration argue that this type of immigration suppresses labor wages and reduces the demand for that field. Wadhwa in his article emphasizes that employment based immigration bring foreign workers at reduced wages. As per the law, these workers are supposed to be paid wages determined by the Department of Labor. In the field of technology a person’s salary is determined by his skills and competence. So employers misuse the system by paying average salaries to highly competent foreign born workers. This suppresses the wages for all the workers in that field (Wadhwa 37). Alan Tonelson, a research fellow of The U.S Business and Industry Council Education Foundation, testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, that suppressing wages in the technology sector might provide short term benefits to those industries but it will make those sectors less attractive to American students. Hence very few students would pursue careers in those fields. This will affect research and development in the long run for the technology sector (Tonelson). Both Wadhwa and Tonelson have explicitly stated the ill-effects of employment based immigration but these disadvantages are perpetuated by the corporations and not by the applicants of the immigration process. These candidates of the employment based immigration system have followed the law and yet the system unfairly restricts these individuals and their family members from growing to their full potentials. Any restriction that needs to be implemented should be more focused on preventing the corporations from misusing the system for their own profits.


The immigration system is laid out in such a way that candidates of employment based immigrations are unfairly made to wait for decades. They are not allowed to make upward job movements during that period and also their spouses are restricted from seeking any form of employment. The waiting period of several decades keeps the immigration status of the person in an uncertainty which prevents the person from fully integrating with the American society. Also the inability to accept promotions at work in order to maintain their slot in the immigration queue definitely hampers the growth of the person professionally. Employment restriction on the spouses hinders them from providing financial support to the family. Thus employment based immigration system is structured in such a way that it limits its applicants from growing to their full potential. For no fault of their own, they have to suffer the hardship at different levels due to the fallacy of the immigration system. These hardships can distinctly be viewed as a form of violence due to the way immigration system is structured. Hence candidates of employment based immigration system clearly undergo structural violence. The employment based immigrants are at the mercy of the immigration system and thus have to suffer the violence inflicted by the system. An easy fix to the structural inadequacies of the immigration system involves implementing changes in the law. A onetime visa number increase needs to be adhered to clear all the applicants from the backlogs. This will remove the decade long waits needed for immigrants from certain retrogressed countries. There should be no upward job movement restriction on the candidates. The spouses of the candidates must be allowed to seek employment if they are eligible to be employed. Loop holes with regards to wage determination must be closed to prevent corporations from taking undue advantage of the system. These few changes will go a long way in alleviating the misery caused due to structural violence in the employment based immigration system in the USA.


Works sited

"Employment-Based Immigrant Visas." Welcome to Travel.State.Gov. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2011. .

Farmer, Paul E., Bruce Nizeye, Sara Stulac, and Salmaan Keshavjee. "Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine." PLoS Medicine 3.10 (2006): 1686-691. Print.

Mehta, Cyrus D. "Adjustment of Status Interview after Decades." Cyrus D. Mehta & Associates, PLLC ~ US Immigration & Nationality Law. N.p., 15 June 2009. Web. 04 Apr. 2011. .

Tonelson, Alan, "Employment Based Permanent Immigration." FDCH Congressional Testimony (n.d.):Military & Government Collection. EBSCO. Web. 17 Apr. 2011.

"Visa Bulletin for April 2011." Welcome to Travel.State.Gov. N.p., 08 Mar. 2011. Web. 04 Apr. 2011. .

Wadhwa, Vivek. "America's Other Immigration Crisis." SiliconIndia: India's Largest Professional Network. N.p., Sept. 2008. Web. 04 Apr. 2011. .


Winter, Deborah Du Nann., and Dana C. Leighton. "Structural Violence." Ed. D. D. Winter. Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Peace Psychology for the 21st Century. Ed. Daniel J. Christie and Richard V. Wagner. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. 1-5. Print.