&gt; Imagine if they lifted that policy, then countries like Mexico, India, China would lock out pretty much any other country from immigrating to the US. Add in the Amnesty program for undocumented workers, and you could imagine that nearest neighbors to the US would lock everyone else out.<p>You are assuming that they will lock-out without supporting with real data. Already 30% of H1Bs are taken by Indians, and a good percentage of family based immigration is from Mexico.<p>India and China make up around 35% of the world&#x27;s population. A uniformly drawn sample of immigrants from across the world would consist of 35% Indians and Chinese. Further, Mexico is America&#x27;s neighbor, and the two countries share a lot of history.<p>The number of Indians has grown from 1.7 million in 2000 to 2.8 million in 2010 in spite of the caps. The numbers are not magically going to explode, most of the people who&#x27;re in the green card queue will likely duke it out and become citizens in due time. Their children will likely stay in the US too. So, I don&#x27;t see how the caps are limiting or democratizing the process. You don&#x27;t have caps at H1B, you don&#x27;t have caps for citizenship. Only the in-between stage of permanent residency, caps exist. That already makes it an ineffective tool in un-biasing the skew.