Border control sets stage for reform

Over the first six months of the Trump administration, the United States has experienced a dramatic decline in illegal border crossings. In June, the Department of Homeland Security reported there were just 25,243 apprehensions or expulsions — the lowest such number in reported history.

A consequence both of tougher enforcement and of would-be entrants deciding not to try it, this trend reflects a broader decline in illegal immigration, including not just border crossings but also visitors overstaying their visas. Last fall’s exit polls found broader voter support for order at the border. They’ve gotten it.

Now what? To oppose illegal immigration is not necessarily to oppose legal immigration. Indeed, progress in combating the former might well reassure Americans about the benefits of the latter. A recent Gallup Poll suggests this process is already underway. The share of respondents favoring lower immigration levels fell from 55% last year to 30% this year. And even during the Biden years, most Americans remained favorably disposed to immigration as a whole. In the latest Gallup survey, 79% said it was, on balance, a good thing for our country. Only 17% said it was a bad thing.

Some reformers want Congress and the White House to hammer out some grand, sweeping rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws. I think that’s doomed to failure. A better strategy, I submit, is to address specific issues with targeted remedies.

Take the problem of labor shortages in agriculture, for example. In a recent policy report, my John Locke Foundation colleagues described them as “critical” and identified as one of the causes onerous federal restrictions on the H-2A program, which providers visas to guest workers at farms and other agribusinesses.

By streamlining the application process and lifting costly mandates on employers, Washington could alleviate this shortage without attempting to rebuild the system from scratch. North Carolina’s senators, Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, have joined 11 of our 14 US House members in asking federal regulators to intervene, saying it would “bring long-overdue clarity and stability to agricultural labor policy.”

I’d like to see Congress create similar guest-worker programs for other high-demand occupations — construction, hospitality, and medical care, for starters — for which there is an inadequate supply of native-born employees.

Another visa system needing reform allows universities such as UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, and Wake Forest to employ visiting researchers and graduate students from other countries. If these scholars worry that trips abroad to attend conferences or visit family pose a risk of not being readmitted, some may well decide that working or studying here isn’t in their interest.

Chasing them away is decidedly not in our interest. These are talented people who contribute significantly to research and educational efforts on campus. While carefully vetting scholars and students from countries with governments antagonistic to the US is prudent, policymakers ought to be encouraging tomorrow’s top inventors, entrepreneurs, and investors to come to our country and gain a greater appreciation for our culture and free institutions.

As a conservative, I see such policies as essential to our country’s prosperity and security. The Freedom Conservatism Statement of Principles, which I helped to draft, affirms our government’s obligation to “secure its borders and design a rational immigration policy — built on the rule of law— that advances the interests and values of American citizens.”

At the same time, the hundreds of activists, scholars, policy staffers, and former politicians who signed the FreeCon statement agreed that “immigration is a principal driver of American prosperity and achievement” and celebrated that “America is exceptional because anyone — from any corner of the earth — can seek to live in America and become an American.”

These two propositions aren’t contradictory. They are entirely consistent with an orderly process of lawful immigration. What their consistent application wouldn’t permit is either a free-for-all or a draconian, no-admission policy. Neither is in America’s interest.

Immigration is a complex matter with many moving parts. A gradualist approach is better than a quixotic quest for perfection.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy and American history.