What should America's immigration policy be implemented?
This may seem like an absurd question for the current immigration agenda to send hundreds of people, including those who have legally been here and many without criminal history, to the largest prisons of the Salvadra faction known for human rights violations, to reclaim the visas of domestic candidates by speeding up tickets, losing customs or random imprisonment.
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Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance has posted on X. You can't afford to worry about the “due process.” Yes, he placed a fundamental constitutional right in a frightening quote, as it would require the deportation of 20 million people who came to the United States illegally under Joe Biden. These claims are that Biden is popular with tens of millions of people on the right, but there are literally no reliable estimates to suggest that 20 million immigrants have come in based on his tenure. The most reliable estimate is that between 4 and 6 million people entered the United States illegally during the Biden administration, with a total of 8 million people entering the country illegally.
In the face of this, I feel it is useless to try and outline what an approach to immigration should be. Immigration policies that follow the constitution will improve over the current situation.
Everything I have said above is very underwater in the polls, but voters still tend to support Trump's overall treatment of immigrants. That suggests that Democrats have serious challenges. They need to communicate immigration policy to voters, a clear break from Biden's approach. His temporary widening of protected status and the increase in asylum seekers did not move the needle in favor of the party.
Now, the Trump administration has chosen to pursue a lawless, respectable, anti-court campaign against all immigrants in the country. And it's essential to develop consistent alternatives that allow Democrats to actually win elections. Of course, I can't speak for the party, but I wanted to clarify some of the policies I want to see in immigration and take some shots over the next few weeks. If you do so, when the people turn on this administration's disruption campaign, there are some compelling options available.
Biden was wrong about immigration
I am a strong supporter of immigrants.
Immigration makes America stronger – not only highly skilled immigrants who work in technology, science and medicine, but also migrants who work in agriculture and construction, who play an important role in the US economy. Immigration is good for those who come here, but it is good for those who are already here too. It benefits America as a more populous person. Larger countries have more power on the global stage of benefiting Americans with trade agreements, access to consumer goods, and international policy. Immigration to the US tends to effectively assimilate, immigrant crime rates are significantly lower, and immigrant children flaunt their performances academically.
However, immigration policies in democracy require a careful balance.
Generally, the public supports immigration under some circumstances, but vehemently opposes it under others. Most legal immigration programs are individually popular, as are the paths to legal status for those who have been here for a long time. However, public opinion has traveled back and forth about immigrants much more than other controversial issues like abortion. When Biden's term began, only 28% of Americans wanted to reduce immigration. By mid-2024, 55% had been that way. And they cared a lot about it. Immigration appears on a daily basis at the top of the reasons people voted for Republicans, and Trump's vote is the best issue.
Biden adopted a policy that brought more people to the United States, illegally or in temporary positions, than in previous governments. Of course, there were factors other than his control. Central America's economy and situation had a dramatic impact on the flow of immigration. However, policy was also important.
And the way the Biden administration responded to the surge in people at the border quickly changed Americans against immigrants and Biden and the Democrats. It even helped Trump return to power. Biden made this happen and cracked down on the border in 2024, but was delayed. Neither his initial expansion of immigration nor subsequent crackdowns included much in the way they explained why they benefited from policies he had explained to skeptical voters what he was pursuing.
The Biden administration's executive order-led approach to immigration turned out to be a terrible mistake. For one, immigrants need stability and long-term assurance that they are allowed to stay in the country, and policies implemented by the executive order can later be reversed by the executive order, allowing lives to be thrown into the mix. “The failure to secure a border is a gift for immigration restrictors,” Atlantic Derek Thompson warned last year. Immigration is very important to our country and voters are open to it, but they have to believe it is working.
It's not Biden's fault that he couldn't get the process through Congress. The parties have been calling for comprehensive immigration reform for decades, but are happy enough to drive away the cans, and Trump opposed the bipartisan bill that came out during Biden's term. Congress is not doing their job, but the president should not yet try to route around them.
Finally, the absurd abuse of the present moment could persuade Congress to postpone it and truly reform immigration. If that happens, what do you hope it looks like?
My hopes for a post-trump policy
The first thing you need is a complete reopening of international students. It's very good that people all over the world want to come and learn from America. This is a source of income for American universities, businesses and communities. Americans are the opportunity to meet, learn, learn and share people from very different backgrounds than we ourselves. And many of them, as my colleague Brian Walsh explained earlier this month, have been extremely successful in America and continue to innovate important technologies.
As part of embracing students, Congress should pass on the explicit free speech protection of visa holders, robbing the secretary of state's authority, and robing students to be out of the country and creating an OP-ED. (I think these deportations are likely to be unconstitutional, but a new set of formal legal protections for student visa holders is a good way to close the doors for that chapter.)
They also need to strengthen existing laws and add new laws to protect against other Trump abuses when necessary. Governments should not have the right to send people to prisons indefinitely whether a person is a US citizen and whether the prison is in the US.
The second component of a better immigration policy is to expand and improve the workforce pipeline. There is a deep shelf of excellent suggestions for improving the H-1B Visa program. This brings talented people, a key recruit in the US. Currently, the program works through lottery tickets, so all eligible people will submit an H-1B application and only get a portion.
Advocates of the better immigration process have pleaded us to fix this for a long time. We also need to conservatively expand the number of H-1Bs we offer. This wins for applicants, businesses they want to hire, and taxpayers who benefit from the taxes paid and the value they generate when they move here.
It should also make it easier for spouses of people with H-1B visas to work in the United States. They also need to terminate country-specific green card process rules that force immigrants from India and China to wait much longer for immigrants and citizens.
And while skilled workers are the most obvious victory, the pipeline of all workers needs to be improved. People don't just make America rich and better by coming here if they become software engineers. They also benefit from the efforts of immigrants in manual labor. Our reliance on illegal immigration in our construction and agricultural industry is frankly shameful. If someone needs to work, you need to provide a legal route for that. (Again, none of these are even new or partisan ideas. They are mere ideas that I think are worth putting the spotlight as they try to provide a positive vision of immigration.)
Historically, the epic bargain imagined in the immigration deal would be the marriage of these proposals that welcomed more people to America (pro-Democrats). Future newsletters argue that we must look to both parts of the photograph and pursue immigration policy, whether or not there is a bipartisan compromise at the table.
