As the Trump administration has moved at a breakneck pace during its first few months in office, its near-total shutdown of the southern border and an end to the wave after wave of illegal immigrants has rightly been a major focus.
But illegal immigration is not the only kind of immigration into the United States. Today, the U.S. admits more foreigners through its legal channels than ever before, and the percentage of the population that is foreign-born is higher now than ever. The principles of the nation’s founding have seemingly lost their place in the conversation of who is allowed to enter through our legal ports of entry and why.
This Washington Examiner series will explore the numerous policy and philosophical questions that are raised by the issue of legal immigration, featuring commentary from think tank scholars and academics who seek to answer those questions and provide a road map for a legal immigration regime that serves the interests of America and its citizens.
Click each topic below to jump to the related section:
Effects of mass immigration
America has more foreign-born residents than ever
The Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey from January of this year showed 53.3 million foreign-born or immigrant residents (legal and illegal alike) in the U.S., equal to 15.8% of the total population. Both are record highs in American history.
There are four important things to keep in mind about legal immigration. First, its scale. One in 8 adults in the U.S. is a legal immigrant. Second, most legal immigrants are not admitted based on their skills or the needs of the U.S. economy. Third, the whole system runs largely on autopilot with little consideration of the fiscal, economic, political, or cultural impact on our country. Finally, legal and illegal immigration are closely linked.
Is mass legal immigration overwhelming the assimilation process? Should we continue to have a system that puts so little emphasis on skills? How do we have legal immigration without spurring illegal immigration? Given the level of legal immigration, it has a much larger impact on our country than illegal immigration, so formulating sensible policy in this area is at least as important as addressing illegal immigration.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Sixty years of mass immigration is enough
After six decades of mass immigration, the United States has the largest number of immigrants ever recorded, at well over 50 million, legal and illegal combined. But that’s not too surprising, given that our overall population is also the largest it’s ever been.
This historic wave of newcomers has come precisely when our country is less prepared to deal with it successfully. Today, we have a post-industrial, knowledge-based economy, which limits the opportunities for upward mobility for those with little education. What’s more, today we have historic levels of working-age men who are neither working nor looking for work, hardly a situation where importing more workers is justified.
The welfare state was barely getting started when the 1965 law was passed; today, more than half of households headed by immigrants use welfare. This isn’t because they come here to rip us off, but because with low skills, you earn low wages, making you eligible for taxpayer-funded benefits.
Cellphones, the internet, and cheap air travel didn’t exist in 1965 — even a domestic long-distance call (on a rotary phone!) was a big deal and expense. The shrinking of the world since then, because of cheap transportation and communications, has been a boon to humanity. It has also made assimilation less likely, as people easily maintain ties with their old country and are no longer forced by circumstances to focus their affections on their new country.
Yet, mass immigration continues on autopilot.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
The cultural consequences of record immigration
The years 1880 and 1920 bookend a famously high period of immigration to the United States. The era’s “Great Wave” was so large that it remade cities, sparked social and political upheavals, and challenged the nation’s self-identity. With the foreign-born population peaking at 14.8% in 1890 and then at 14.7% in 1910, the scale of immigration was unprecedented.
Until now.
Due to decades of mass immigration, both legal and illegal, culminating in the surge of 2021-2024 under former President Joe Biden, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population stands at 15.8% as of January. It’s the highest share ever recorded in a government survey.
Ever since mass immigration began anew in the late 20th century, advocates have pointed to the “Great Wave” to insist we could handle it. After all, the foreign-born share, even by 2010, was still below the “Great Wave” peak. “We’ve been here before,” they would say.
It’s no longer true. We have not been here before. Modern immigration is testing our nation’s absorptive capacities to an unprecedented degree, and there are several reasons to be pessimistic about the outcome.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Chain migration fuels a bloated and obsolete immigration system
Each year, the United States approves more than a million immigrants for permanent residency or green cards. For decades, more than half of immigration to our country has been chain migration — immigrants sponsored by a family member who came earlier, most often a new spouse, a grown son or daughter, or a sibling. In contrast, only about 15% of annual immigration is based on skills or sponsorship by an employer, with the remainder based on a green card lottery or humanitarian programs.
Studies show that, aside from nuclear family members who are admitted at the same time, new immigrants sponsor an average of 3.45 additional family members who come later. Immigrants from some top-sending countries, such as Mexico, India, the Philippines, and China, tend to produce even more chain migration, with a multiplier of more than five additional sponsored immigrants per newcomer.
Chain migration and periodic amnesties that award huge numbers of green cards outside the regular system have fueled near-constant growth in legal immigration for decades. This is because two of the largest chain migration categories, spouses and parents of naturalized citizens, are not numerically capped. In particular, the number of parents admitted has grown by more than 15% since 2016, with more than 208,000 new green cards issued to parents of prior immigrants in 2023.
When most immigrants are chosen by family members who came earlier, there is no guarantee that immigration will help our country.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
A devalued citizenry
The worst argument in America’s immigration debate is what is called the existential imperative, which says America’s future, our very national survival, depends on importing tens of millions of foreigners.
Progressive Democrats usually frame the existential imperative in moral terms — restricting immigration betrays America’s legacy as an open, tolerant, melting pot of diversity and opportunity. Corporate-friendly Republicans tend to pitch the argument as hardheaded economists: “Immigrants do jobs Americans can’t or won’t do.”
However, in truth, the existential imperative never really comes from the Left or the Right, but from the top down. Behind the moralizing and faux economic sophistication, it’s just an elitist cudgel wielded to blackmail American citizens out of their rights, sovereignty, and national identity. Indeed, the closer you look at the existential imperative, the more insidious it gets.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Not all immigration is equal
In an age where information is abundant but wisdom is scarce, the national conversation around immigration has been overwhelmed by selective storytelling and misleading narratives. Too often, we are told that all immigration is the same — that every migrant is an asylum-seeker coming to the United States to seek a better life, all immigration benefits the country, and concern over border security and simply enforcing our laws equates to being anti-immigrant.
These partisan talking points disregard the full picture and cherry-pick information to back up their claims, which are designed to appeal to our emotions. The media, the Left, and academia have been spinning a web of lies on legal immigration for decades — from “diversity is our strength” to “our country was built by immigrants” — to obfuscate the core truth that unfettered mass migration has leveled disastrous consequences all over the world.
Let us start with a fundamental but critical distinction: not all immigration is equal. The difference between legal and illegal immigration is not semantic but foundational. Legal immigration, when properly done, is structured, vetted, and accountable. It lets us know who is entering our country, what their purpose is, and how they might contribute to our society. Illegal immigration, in contrast, circumvents the law, bypasses national security vetting, and leaves our communities vulnerable.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Visa programs
Ken Cuccinelli: End the H-1B visa program
The H-1B visa program is designed to displace middle-class American workers and facilitate the exploitation of cheap foreign labor, and it has been sadly successful in both respects. Congress should eliminate it.
Big companies and their lobbyists in Washington have long sold the H-1B program as necessary to maintain the labor supply and a “modern” workforce. Decades after its implementation, the trail of this lie is littered with more displaced workers than anyone can count.
Trump unsure how Constitution and Supreme Court affect his deportation plans
Given historically low labor participation levels, the necessity of reconstituting domestic production and manufacturing capabilities, and the H-1B program’s known history of fraud and exploitation, it is past time for lawmakers to repeal the divisive and harmful program.
The societal, economic, and domestic workforce benefits of repeal far outweigh the merits of continuing to exploit cheap foreign labor. It is time for lawmakers to prioritize American workers, families, and communities.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Foreign student visas need limits
The State Department had revoked about 1,500 visas throughout the United States as of late April, Inside Higher Ed estimates. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has investigated some of them, and some will be asked to leave or be deported if they have broken the conditions of their student status per U.S. immigration law. A small number may be deported if the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, deems their presence detrimental to U.S. foreign policy.
Two professors at Cornell and Yale claimed in the Washington Post that “our foreign students are terrified, and they’re right to be.” Please. No foreign student who is obeying the conditions of his visa and staying focused on his studies has anything to worry about.
The New York Times also claims that “losing international students could devastate many colleges.” They cite Xiaofeng Wan, a “private consultant to international students” whose gravy train is drying up and worries that Chinese parents may not want to send their children to a country that sees “China as a hostile competitor.”
But China is indeed a hostile competitor. They’ve been spying on us, sending international students to sneak out university research secrets, and stealing our intellectual property for decades. Maybe a slight reduction in Chinese students isn’t such a disaster.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
The Diversity Visa Lottery leaves immigration up to chance. End it.
Two questions dominating the immigration debate for decades can be summed up as: who should America allow in, and how many should come? There are unlimited answers to these two questions, but the most unreasonable and irresponsible response would be for our government to leave it up to random chance.
Unfortunately, this is precisely what Congress did through the creation of the Diversity Visa Lottery, putting our nation’s population growth at the service of a random lottery allocation. With the Trump administration’s mandate to restore American interests as the primary focus of immigration policy, we have a significant opportunity to reverse course.
For years, the Diversity Visa Lottery has worked by randomly selecting applicants from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States. The list of low rate countries changes year-to-year and is based on whether or not the country has had 50,000 natives immigrate to the United States in the past five years.
Other than being a native of a low immigration country, the qualifications are minimal with the applicant required to only have a high school diploma (or equivalent) or two years of work experience. We do not even charge a registration fee for the chance at permanent U.S. residence. Each applicant has an equal opportunity at the 50,000 green cards available in the lottery process as there is no weighing of applicants based on skill, threat level, ties to the country, employment prospects, or any other sensible criteria.
This system completely fails to prioritize the best and brightest entrants – and Americans are left paying the price.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Congress could boost education funding by increasing student visa fees
Research suggests that students on education visas provide a range of benefits for the U.S. These students fill seats as the college student population begins a long-term, downward trend. In addition, these students often pay full tuition, helping many colleges balance their budgets. That’s a big value-add for American students, as they benefit from the higher-quality faculty and better student experience supported partly by foreign student tuition payments.
The downstream benefits are also significant. Roughly half of new H-1B visa recipients previously held student visas, which is unsurprising given that many visa holders are studying in advanced STEM and/or business fields for which there are not nearly enough Americans to meet industry demands. A robust student visa system also allows a projection of soft power, bringing the world’s top students to our shores to experience our way of life, disposing them positively toward the U.S. and its citizens, whether they remain or return home. Some stay via green cards, and many become citizens, starting businesses at higher rates and committing fewer crimes than native-born citizens.
The downsides of the student visa program are few and relatively minor. Fewer than 3% overstay their student visas; that’s a significant number, but one that can be lowered with better enforcement. In the wake of recent campus unrest, concerns exist about admitting international students who want to agitate more than learn, but the State Department’s student visa process is already quite selective.
However, there is one area for improvement: Current fees for student visas appear to cover only the costs of the application and approval process. What if they were increased to support advanced learning opportunities for American students to help them compete at international levels? This added fee, say $20 per visa each year, would provide a meaningful revenue stream for K-12 advanced education, which is drastically underfunded at both the federal and state levels.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
H-1B visas: How a good idea went bad
Established in 1990, the H-1B program was meant to allow U.S. companies to temporarily employ highly skilled and academically accredited foreign workers in specialty occupations — think engineers, software developers, and scientists. But it has recently become the center of widespread debate and controversy.
In theory, this program fills gaps in America’s workforce, boosts innovation, and helps companies compete in the global market.
Sounds good so far, right?
But the problem isn’t the H-1B program in theory, but the H-1B program in practice, with the visa becoming something else entirely: a government-sanctioned pipeline for outsourcing, wage suppression, and worker exploitation.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Sunset the diversity visa lottery program
Four years of the Biden administration‘s unprecedented porous border policies have rightly left a majority of Americans determined to put an end to illegal immigration. They are more than ready to lock the national backdoor and restore the rule of law to the movement of foreigners into the United States.
President Donald Trump fiercely opposes illegal immigrants entering and staying in the U.S., but his mood on legal arrivals seems to swing back and forth. He seems caught up in the usual confused American ethos on immigration, and like many of his countrymen, he has not fully thought through the consequences of the country’s out-of-date laws or the fact that the government’s people-importing business contains more than its share of unappetizing sausage-making.
One piece of America’s legal immigration complex that is overdue for the waste bin is the so-called Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, which Congress created in 1990 based on the quaint notion that the U.S. was being deprived because some countries were not sending enough migrants. If that pretext — lack of diversity of immigrants — were true 3 1/2 decades ago, it most certainly is no longer.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Assimilation
For immigrants, unity, not diversity, is what makes them American
President Abraham Lincoln understood the close connection between the “rights of human nature” disclosed in the Declaration of Independence and the importance of assimilation. On July 4, 1858, Lincoln appeared before a group of immigrants and referred to the founding generation as a race of “iron men” who fought to secure rights and freedom for the nation.
Most of you here today, Lincoln said, cannot trace your ancestry to those “iron men,” — you have no connection to them by blood. But when you look through that “old declaration,” Lincoln advised, you see that their central moral principle was stated very simply: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” And it is through this principle, Lincoln told his immigrant audience, that you have the right to claim your relation to those “iron men” quite as certainly as though you are the “blood of the blood and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that declaration.”
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PUSHES FOR SELF-DEPORTATION AS IDEAL WAY FOR IMMIGRANTS TO LEAVE US
Assimilation, Lincoln held, is best achieved by a common dedication to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. This unity will be the nation’s strength. Today, of course, we are confidently assured by political leaders, Republicans and Democrats alike, that “diversity is our greatest strength.”
This is an oft-repeated meme. We know, and common sense insists we know, that diversity is the solvent of society. Where there is no common good, where people are encouraged to make demands on society based on a host of idiosyncratic claims, the common good and unity of society dissolve into tribalism or worse. Today, the progressive Left says that the “melting pot” is “racist” and “imperialist.” Lincoln was wiser: It was the idea that “all men are created equal,” regardless of ancestry or country of origin, that was a unifying principle.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
The legacy of Ellis Island is a legacy of assimilation
Although immigrants today are more assimilated into American culture than previous generations, they could still be more integrated. And contrary to what many on the Left argue, assimilation benefits not only immigrants but also the native-born by boosting job prospects, personal satisfaction, and social cohesion.
Many believe those who immigrated to Ellis Island were poor, illiterate Europeans who against all odds succeeded. But the Ellis Island narrative is misleading. While early 20th-century immigrants were poor by today’s standards, they were positively selected relative to their home countries — often better educated, healthier, and taller. That’s partly because coming to America was expensive, so the very poorest didn’t make the cut. Once here, there were no federal welfare programs before the New Deal. Immigrants who couldn’t make it simply went home. Those who stayed did so because they succeeded.
Today’s selection mechanisms are different. Airfare is cheaper, but legal immigration is harder. As a result, legal immigrants are still positively selected, but illegal immigrants from nearby Latin American countries, especially Mexico, tend to be negatively selected, as crossing the border is cheap and easy. That said, illegal immigrants from distant nations like those in sub-Saharan Africa are positively selected — only the best-off can afford to leave, and even the elite lack opportunities at home.
Two trends now shape immigrant assimilation in America. One is positive, but the other is more troubling.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
The founders understood that assimilation is essential to immigration
In the midst of war in 1747, Benjamin Franklin appealed to the German Pennsylvania settlers, asking them to create a militia to defend the colony. Franklin said people are united by “love” that commands sacrifice and transcends mere economic interest. When the Germans resisted, he opposed their further immigration.
“Why,” he asked, “should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them?” A free country should increase its population by encouraging its citizens to procreate. Franklin said immigrants brought “great disorders” and they “are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation” and did not easily assimilate into the native population. Thus, Franklin articulated the first principle that informed the American founders on immigration: unity.
The second principle was a republican virtue, secured by an education in manners and character.
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,” Franklin said, “as nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Immigration helped shape America, but on its own terms
America started attracting immigrants long before it became a country. Already in the late 1600s and early 1700s, there were newcomers from Germany, Ulster, France, etc. What made them immigrants? They willingly moved to a place, in this case colonies, that had been established and settled by others.
To succeed, they roughly assimilated to the societal structure that welcomed them. That was the optimal solution in a growing nation clearly primed to take immigrants.
When people such as the late Samuel Huntington write that America is not so much a “nation of immigrants” as a “settler nation,” they have a point. More than 100 million immigrants have come to America since the 1840s, when the immigrant spigots really opened, and they have clearly helped shape the nation.
But America is more a “nation of settlers,” and those settlers were Englishmen who were not just Protestants, but dissenters, or “protesting Protestants.” It is this nucleus that has permanently influenced the American character.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Assimilation isn’t a dirty word
For hundreds of years, America has been a nation of immigrants. From the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock to the waves of newcomers who crossed oceans and continents in search of freedom, opportunity, and a better life, immigration has been central to the American story. But it’s not enough to celebrate the word “immigration” while intentionally ignoring the two pillars that keep the system itself from collapsing. Successful immigration that strengthens rather than strains, or even destroys, a country has always relied on two principles: It must be legal, and it must be paired with assimilation.
Legal immigration is the starting point because it reflects respect for the rule of law, the very foundation of a free society. When people come here legally, they affirm that they want to join the American experiment, not circumvent it. They recognize that America’s greatness stems not just from its wealth or its land or its institutions. It stems from a collective respect for the nation’s foundation and, at its core, a Constitution that limits government power, a culture that prizes individual liberty, and a legal system that strives, however imperfectly, for equal justice.
100-DAY REPORT CARD: TRUMP TACKLES BORDER BUT HITS SETBACKS ON DEPORTING IMMIGRANTS
By entering through the front door, legal immigrants show they are willing to live by the rules that make America possible. By climbing over the fence, illegal immigrants are starting their own selfish American journey with an insult.
But legal immigration alone is not enough. For the American dream to thrive, newcomers must also assimilate — not by abandoning their heritage, but by embracing their new home.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Diversity is not our strength
That “diversity is our strength” is one of those obvious contradictions that people with common sense instantly recognize as hooey. It is poisonous hooey, mind you. As the British historian Arnold Toynbee said, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”
But the people selling diversity know that.
They champion diversity not because it is a societal bonding agent but because it is the opposite. A culture made up of discordant groups with little in common — neither religion, habits, nor, especially, language — is no culture. Without these sinews tying it together, a body cannot rouse itself and undertake common endeavors.
A nation of groups is thus an oxymoron. In the best of times, it will be a festering federation. In the worst, it will dissolve into warring tribes.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
National security
Chad Wolf: Empower Border Patrol with the technology it needs
In mere weeks, the Border Patrol achieved President Donald Trump’s goal of bringing security and operational control along the southern border.
While this fact is laudable, it is critical to remember that the smugglers, cartels, and gangs that controlled the U.S.-Mexico border under former President Joe Biden will not give up their economic or physical territory quickly — or peacefully. Their billion-dollar business model relies on access to the American market, and there are already reports of cartel drone activity meant to thwart law enforcement’s new posture.
Trump and his senior team hit the ground running on Day One by putting in place key policy changes, such as declaring a national emergency, reinstating Remain in Mexico, deploying thousands of active-duty troops to the southern border, and canceling the CBP One app, which fundamentally changed the dynamic along the border. Critically, the president also declared MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations, which allows for greater authority to target members of the criminal networks.
There is little doubt that what the president and his team have achieved is historic. However, to permanently stay ahead of the cartels, secure the border, prevent human trafficking, and stop the flow of illicit drugs, we must more aggressively provide Border Patrol officers enhanced capabilities through next-generation technology and innovation.
In the battle for the borders, America must win.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
How hostile nations use US legal residency to spy
The discussion about U.S. border security focuses on mass migration and foreigners who circumvent our legal immigration system, but those aren’t the only valid concerns. What are the espionage risks to U.S. national security posed by legal immigration?
First, it must be understood that the vetting scheme employed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement is broadly inadequate from a counterintelligence viewpoint. ICE looks more for criminals and immigration fraudsters than foreign spies.
The espionage threat from legal immigrants can be broken into two categories. First, there are spies coming to America on a secret espionage mission, which they don’t declare to ICE. Second are immigrants who, after their arrival in the United States, decide to commit espionage, usually on behalf of their homeland. Both groups are difficult for our counterintelligence to detect — the latter is especially so.
Let’s examine how the top espionage threats to this country employ legal immigrants against us.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
How America’s immigration policies can serve the national interest
Immigration policy should serve the national interest and the common good of Americans. This means that immigrants themselves should be patriotically assimilated into the American way of life and that our system of immigration should be consistent with protecting national security.
Commonsense measures to strengthen national security within immigration law have been proposed for years by congressional leaders such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and think tanks such as the Center for Immigration Studies.
What should be done? First, end the diversity visa lottery. Second, pass the RAISE ACT, introduced in 2017 by Cotton and then Sen. David Perdue (R-GA). Third, the U.S. should withdraw from the United Nations Protocol of 1967 to the refugee treaty of 1951 and amend or repeal the Congressional Refugee Act of 1980. And fourth, the U.S. should return to our pre-1990 policy of the ideological exclusion of immigrants.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Other immigration policy
Courts are overstepping their authority on the TPS program
The Temporary Protected Status program, established under the Immigration Act of 1990, was designed as a humanitarian mechanism to provide temporary refuge for nationals of countries facing extraordinary conditions, such as armed conflict or natural disasters, that prevent safe return.
The statute, codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1254a, grants the Secretary of Homeland Security sole discretion to designate, extend, or terminate TPS for specific countries, with a critical provision: these decisions are explicitly shielded from judicial review. Yet, recent court interventions, such as in National TPS Alliance v. Noem, reveal a troubling trend of judicial overreach that undermines congressional intent, erodes executive authority, and destabilizes the rule of law.
The TPS statute is unambiguous. Section 1254a(b)(5)(A) states that “there is no judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state under this subsection.” This language reflects Congress’s deliberate choice to vest the executive branch with unreviewable authority over TPS decisions, recognizing that such determinations involve complex foreign policy and national security considerations best left to the political branches. The executive’s discretion is not absolute — it must comply with statutory criteria — but Congress clearly intended to insulate these decisions from courtroom second-guessing.
Despite this, courts have repeatedly asserted jurisdiction over TPS cases, often at the urging of advocacy groups challenging terminations.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
The Founders did not believe in an open society or open borders
Open borders constitute a change of regime from the original founding belief in republican self-government and natural rights to the belief in an open society, which is justified by the cosmopolitan belief that “nobody is illegal” and we are all “citizens of the world.” This humanitarianism is often informed by the passion of compassion, an idea of human rights, and an aspiration toward some vague, peaceful, socialist world order.
In our particular case, open borders are said to flow from our identity, because we are “a country of immigrants” and a country of “openness”, as distinct from a country of citizens endowed with unalienable natural rights. Compassion, human rights, and immigrant identity eventually turn into hatred and a project for social reform, because the immigrants in question are victims of Western Colonialism and are owed a share of the American pie.
These are powerful sophistries in a rich, flabby, commercial society that has lost contact with its own first principles and its own political raison d’etre.
Open borders may seem like a fulfillment of our principles precisely because we recognize that natural rights belong to man as man, but open borders are, in fact, a corruption for several reasons.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
End temporary protected status for Salvadorans
Recognizing dramatic and systemic improvements to El Salvador‘s security situation, the Trump administration should remove temporary protected status for Salvadorans living in the United States.
Temporary protected status allows individuals without legal permission to live in the U.S. to reside and find employment in the country for a temporary period. TPS is traditionally granted to recognize the danger individuals face if deported immediately to their country of origin. The Biden administration renewed the status for Salvadorans shortly before leaving office.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should revisit that decision and remove TPS. Instead, asylum claims by Salvadorans should be considered individually, on a case-by-case basis.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Legal immigration is protecting blue state electoral power
The COVID-19 pandemic was nearly single-handedly responsible for delivering former President Joe Biden a victory in the 2020 election. But, at the same time, the yearlong lockdowns, school closures, and heavy rotation of vaccine mandates by Democrat-controlled state governments drove millions of people to greener pastures in red states.
The response to the same pandemic that helped deliver the White House to Democrats just five years ago could be handing Republicans the keys to the Oval Office, with red states looking to clean up when congressional reapportionment takes place in 2030. The only thing that can bail out blue states and a future Democratic administration from being decimated by their own inability to govern is mass immigration.
By 2022, early estimates from the American Redistricting Project predicted that the 2030 congressional reapportionment would be a bloodbath for Democrats. Reliably Democratic states, including California, New York, Rhode Island, Illinois, Minnesota, and Oregon, were set to lose 13 congressional seats, while only Delaware among the states that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 was set to gain a single congressional district.
Just two years later, the American Redistricting Project examined the 2030 congressional reapportionment based on the new population trends and found that Democrats’ projections had brightened.
So, what happened during those two years to give Democrats this massive population boom? Biden’s immigration policy.
Read more from the Washington Examiner.
Legal immigration for a moral citizenry
The illegal immigrant crisis created by the Biden regime is so appalling, and so gigantic, that it has rightly captured the attention of both the public and the Trump administration. While the scale of the crisis defies description, it can largely be resolved through a faithful execution of existing immigration law. In dealing with the problem of illegal immigration, however, it is important that we also think about America’s legal immigration policy.
In thinking about immigration, we have the benefit of being about to draw upon the ideas of America’s Founding Fathers. Not so much on specific policies, as early America’s immigration policies were largely driven in large measure by the particular circumstances of the time, but in terms of general principles. The principles of the American founding form a series of guideposts for thinking about legal immigration policy.
Legal immigration policy, like any other policy, should be oriented around the primary purpose of any just government: the protection of the unalienable natural rights of American citizens. The Declaration of Independence asserts that the purpose of government is “to secure these rights,” a reference to the unalienable natural rights stated earlier in the document. The obligation to secure rights, however, extends only to those who are lawful members of the political community: citizens. Generally speaking, the government is not obligated to secure the rights of noncitizens.
