WHOM SHALL WE WELCOME? ELITE JUDGMENTS OF THE CRITERIA FOR THE SELECTION OF IMMIGRANTS.

This paper investigates the direction and magnitude of the effects of personal, kinship, market, and contextual attributes of visa applicants on their desirability as immigrants to the United States, as judged by members of the professional staff of the U.S. Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy. Two classic sociological questions underlie this politically relevant topic: how do societies choose their members? and how do societies allocate scarce benefits? Using the factorial survey pioneered by P.H. Rossi, we obtained from the Commission staff, numerical ratings of the desirability as immigrants of fictitious visa applicants embodying the full range of potentially relevant characteristics discussed in the political arena. Although the ratings were obtained by a number-assignment technique believed to generate a continuous variable, we accommodate the variable's possible ordinality by performing all analyses twice- using both ordinary-least-squares techniques and maximum-likelihood ordered. response techniques. The results are unambiguous: although a lawful and coherent set of rules guides each respondent's ratings, leading to a personal point system for the selection of immigrants, no two staff members' point systems are alike, not even qualitatively. In the complex weave of agreements and disagreements, three conclusions emerge. First, there is unanimous support for granting preference to visa applicants who have a job offer or a United States-citizen sibling. Second, there is severe disagreement by applicant's region of origin. Third, there is a range of disagreement on other attributes, for example, on whether the United States should favor the immigration, ceteris paribus, of older versus younger applicants or of male versus female applicants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]