Immigration Give Me Your Rich, Your Lucky . . .

By Richard Lacayo

Wu Wen-shuo, a Taiwanese student, will be finishing medical school next year at UCLA. After that, he would like to remain in the U.S. So would many foreign residents. But Wu has an edge: cash, and lots of it. Under one provision of the sweeping new immigration law that took effect last week, permanent residency can go to investors who put at least $1 million -- or half that in rural or depressed areas -- into an American business that employs 10 or more workers. So, Wu, 22, is injecting $1.1 million, which he got mostly from his family, into a new gas station and car wash in Chula Vista, Calif. David Liang, a San Diego real estate broker who led Wu to the investment, claims there are plenty of other prospective Americans ready to plunk down their money for a fast track to permanent residency, the major step toward citizenship. "This is only my first project," he says. "If it turns out well, I have 11 other people who would like me to help them get a business started here."

It may be time to expand the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty that bears the famous lines by Emma Lazarus: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses . . ." These days the call is also out for your skilled, your rich and your lucky. That change is the result of a law that went into effect this month, the Immigration Act of 1990, the most fundamental revision of immigration policy since the 1965 law, which opened the door to large numbers of non-Europeans. At a time when America is losing ground in the global economic competition, the new law represents a major shift in philosophy about who should get permanent residency, the "green card" status that makes immigrants eligible for full citizenship in five years. The old system stressed family reunification: 90% of slots went to the relatives of earlier arrivals. Now brainpower and purchasing power will also count.

Investor slots like the one that Wu hopes to fill -- 10,000 each year under the new law -- are only part of the story. The law also creates more openings for immigrants from Europe through a so-called lottery that has thousands of applicants scrambling for a chance at legal residency. Other reforms will almost triple, from 54,000 to 140,000, the number of skilled workers who can enter the U.S. legally each year because American employers sponsor them. As a result, businesses and universities will have a greatly expanded chance to import professionals they cannot find at home. The growth of the U.S. labor force is expected to slow over the coming decade, which will make more room for skilled foreign workers -- especially in fields that are expected to show the greatest shortages, like engineering, mathematics, chemistry and physics.

The new policy brings the U.S. in line with other nations, like Canada and Australia, that have long been luring the best and the brightest. "Virtually every other country reviews its immigrant applications based on skills," says former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, co-author of The Immigration Time Bomb. "We're the only country in the world that brings in whole generations of poor people every year." The Federal Government estimates that investor visas will generate $10 billion over the next five years. That sum will only be raised if at least 3,000 investors enter the country each year. By mid- September, immigration officials had received only 100 preliminary applications. Some argue that the policy also threatens some cherished notions about fairness. "The whole implication is that if you're poor and uneducated, America doesn't want you," complains Peter Schey, director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles.

That might be true if the poor were being excluded to make room for the privileged. In fact, the new law is accommodating both rich and poor by expanding the total pool of legal aliens, from more than 500,000 annually to 700,000 for each of the next three years. The impact on the ethnic makeup and economic level of new arrivals will be limited at first. In keeping with policies set in 1965, the great majority of newcomers will still be the relatives of people who are legal residents, regardless of their economic circumstances.

For European immigrants, whose numbers have fallen off sharply in recent years, the law represents a long-awaited shot at a visa. From 1955 to 1964, 50% of all new Americans came from Europe. By 1989, that figure was down to 8%, while 29% arrived from Asia and 56% from Canada, Mexico, Central America | and the Caribbean. To avoid charges that whites are again being favored over Hispanics, blacks and Asians, the new law increases the number of slots for family members of aliens, which will largely benefit non-Europeans (from 446,000 to 520,000), while providing 40,000 visas in each of the first three years to natives of 34 countries, most of them in Europe, whose nationals had lost ground. They, in turn, will be able to petition for the entry of family members they left back home.

These visas will be distributed by an unusual method: the winners will be the first 40,000 qualifying people whose applications are received after midnight on Oct. 14 at a post-office box in Arlington, Va. Immigrants and their lawyers are converging on Arlington to dump thousands of applications directly at the post office. About 40% of the slots are reserved for people from Ireland, which reflects not only the clout of Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy but also recognition of the problem posed by the presence of as many as 100,000 illegal Irish immigrants.

The visa lottery -- it's been dubbed the Irish sweepstakes -- has enterprising immigrants filling out hundreds of applications in the hope of improving their chances. Fears that revealing their names and addresses will make them vulnerable to arrest and deportation have been muted because the names are being collected by the State Department, not the immigration service, and because an earlier lottery of this kind did not result in sweeps.

In Boston and New York City bars, Irish hopefuls hand out hundreds of applications to friends and ask their help in completing them. "I plan to fill out at least a thousand applications," said Joanne O'Connell, who was at Stephen's Green Pub in Queens, N.Y., last week, helping other Irish immigrants with their forms. "It's worth it."

Not content to wait another 25 years before it comes to terms with the question again, Congress has decided to review immigration quotas every three years. If the new law really widens the American talent pool, a further shift in favor of the skilled and wealthy is likely. In addition to the people with a dream of succeeding here, America wants the people who have already succeeded at home.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Graphics by Joe Lertola

CAPTION: HOW TO GET A GREEN CARD

With reporting by Dan Cray/Los Angeles and Moira M. O''Donnell and Andrea Sachs/New York