Grace Meng and the Most Foreign-Born District in America
Grace Meng is the U.S.-born daughter of Taiwanese immigrants and represents the most foreign-born congressional district in the country, where a majority of residents were born abroad. Her signature immigration work is raising the limits on legal immigration.
- Origin
- Taiwan
- Pathway
- U.S.-born (2nd gen)
- Citizenship
- U.S.-born citizen
- Religion
- Protestant
- Caucus
- Dem leadership
- First elected
- 2012
Key Findings
Grace Meng was born in Queens, New York, in 1975, the daughter of immigrants from Taiwan who arrived in the 1970s. She is the second generation, the U.S.-born child of recent immigrants.
She represents New York's 6th district, anchored on Flushing, Queens. As of 2024, 54.4% of its residents were born outside the United States, making it the most foreign-born district in the country.
Her DW-NOMINATE first-dimension score is −0.371 and her Heritage Action score is 16%. She belongs to the Progressive Caucus and cosponsored both the Green New Deal and Medicare for All.
Her central immigration work is expanding the volume of legal immigration. She cosponsored a bill to raise per-country green-card limits and pushed amendments to recapture hundreds of thousands of unused visas going back to 1992.
No congressional district in America has more immigrants than New York's 6th. As of 2024, more than half of its residents, 54.4%, were born in another country.[2] Its representative, Grace Meng, is the U.S.-born daughter of immigrants, and her main project in Congress is to bring more immigrants in.
Queens, second generation
Meng was born in Queens in 1975. Her parents had come from Taiwan in the 1970s and ran a lumber business in the borough.[1] She is the second generation, raised in the immigrant New York her parents helped build. She won a seat in the state assembly in 2008 and the 6th district's House seat in 2012, becoming the first Asian-American to represent New York in Congress.[1]
The district is centered on Flushing, one of the largest Asian immigrant communities in the country. Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Spanish are spoken across the district, and most residents speak a language other than English at home.[2]
The record
Meng votes with the mainstream of the party's left. Her DW-NOMINATE first-dimension score is −0.371, and her Heritage Action score is 16%.[3][4] She is a member of the Progressive Caucus and a senior member of the Asian Pacific American Caucus. She cosponsored the Green New Deal and the Medicare for All Act.[5]
Raising the limits
Meng's distinctive contribution is on the size of the legal immigration system. Where some members focus on enforcement, she focuses on the caps.
She cosponsored the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, which would raise the per-country limit on family-based green cards and eliminate the per-country cap on employment-based green cards.[6] The bill passed the House in 2019. She also pushed amendments through the Appropriations Committee to recapture unused family, employment, and diversity visas going back to 1992 and return them to the green-card backlog, adding hundreds of thousands of slots to the pipeline.[7]
This is immigration policy aimed at volume. The per-country caps and the annual limits are the main levers that hold legal immigration down. Meng has spent her tenure working to raise them. Representing the district with the highest foreign-born share in the country, she legislates to make the inflow larger.
Working the caps
Meng does not campaign on enforcement, and casting her as an enforcement radical would be inaccurate. Her energy goes to the other end of the system. She cosponsored the bill to lift the per-country caps and drove Appropriations amendments to recapture unused family, employment, and diversity visas dating back to 1992, funneling hundreds of thousands of extra slots into the green-card backlog. The caps and annual limits are the main levers holding legal immigration down, and Meng has spent her tenure working to raise them.
New York's 6th is the most foreign-born district in the country, 54.4% born abroad, built on the Flushing immigrant economy her Taiwanese parents joined in the 1970s. The U.S.-born daughter of that wave now legislates to enlarge the flow that produced her district. Among the members in this series, she is the one whose agenda reduces most cleanly to a single word: more.
Sources
- U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives, Grace Meng - born in Queens in 1975; daughter of immigrants from Taiwan; first Asian-American to represent New York in Congress
- Data USA, Congressional District 6, New York (American Community Survey) - 54.4% foreign-born as of 2024
- DW-NOMINATE first-dimension scores, voteview.com - Grace Meng −0.371
- Heritage Action Scorecard, 118th Congress - Grace Meng 16%
- Congress.gov, H.R. 1976 (Medicare for All) and H.Res. 109 (Green New Deal) cosponsors - Meng as cosponsor; Progressive Caucus membership
- Congress.gov, H.R. 1044, Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, 116th Congress - raising the family per-country cap and eliminating the employment per-country cap; Meng as cosponsor
- Office of Rep. Grace Meng, "Meng immigration amendment passes key House committee" - visa-recapture amendments restoring unused visas to the green-card backlog