How many immigration applications could the US process in a year?

Question

I have no idea how many illegal immigrants who come would want to do so legally and I don't care. The point is that we have no real immigration policy to enforce. Either you give immigrants wishing to come legally a fair and reasonable opportunity to do so (Ellis Island ring a bell?) or you set a limit on how many legal immigrants you'll accept and then enforce restrictions on the rest. The "Land of Freedom and Opportunity" doesn't have the same ring if you add, "but only for those of us who are already here" to the end, but at least it would be a coherent policy. My true challenge for the "close the border" types out there is what would you do if the gov't actually made it reasonably doable for even 1/2 the immigrants who come to do so legally? Would you still be singing the "it's not that they're immigrants (read: not white), it's that they're illegal" tune?

Answer 1

The US has a very complete set of immigration laws in the Immigration and Nationality Act: you can read the whole thing right here:
http://www.uscis.gov/lpBin/lpext.dll/inserts/slb/slb-1/slb-20?f=templates&fn=document-frame.htm#slb-act

There are numerical limits to all categories of immigrants except the immediate relatives of US citizens:
http://www.travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/bulletin/bulletin_3009.html