Concerns about border security and large-scale migration flows have consumed U.S. public attention and immigration debates for more than a decade. Successive administrations have responded with dramatically different policies that have produced wild swings in border enforcement tactics, humanitarian protection, and now mass deportations. In the process, immigration has become a top-tier political issue that can decide election outcomes and has animated deep divides in the nation’s political and civic life.
Against this backdrop, the country is missing what is perhaps the most consequential debate of all, which is the role that immigration can and should play in securing its future growth, dynamism, and competitiveness. Arguments over past policy failures are delaying conversations about how the United States can best harness the benefits of immigration to support a better future.
Such discussions are pressing given demographic pressures. The United States is aging and birthrates are down, to the point that soon, any population growth will come from new immigrants. Already, Migration Policy Institute (MPI) research shows, all growth in the working-age population over recent decades has been driven by immigrants and their U.S.-born children. Absent immigration, a smaller workforce will be funding entitlements and benefits for a growing number of retirees, leading to lower growth, higher taxes, rising costs, and fewer public services.
Given that outlook, the country urgently needs to determine how to put immigration policy onto firm footing with common-sense visa policies that enable orderly immigration aimed at sustaining economic dynamism. In addition to harnessing the advantages of immigration as a national-interest imperative, well-designed legal immigration policies would enable effective immigration enforcement, by aligning immigration pathways with economic forces. Strong control of the border is a necessary precondition for public support of immigration. Forward-looking legal immigration would bring policy in line with what voters want: polling consistently shows that Americans decry the chaos that characterized the border in recent years, with spillover into U.S. cities further in the interior, but support immigration that is orderly and legal.
Immigration: A Source of Strength, But with Costs
Immigration has been a major contributor to the country’s dynamism across its history. Immigrants launch businesses at higher rates than native-born Americans. They generate patents at far higher rates. Foreign-born farmworkers keep food affordable. Immigrant caregivers enable people to stay in the workforce when they might otherwise drop out to tend to children or aging parents. Most critically, in the face of falling birth rates, immigrants and their U.S.-born children are sustaining U.S. workforce growth as the country approaches a demographic cliff.
At the same time, immigration is not an unalloyed good. Some U.S. workers without high school diplomas and some in specialized fields face wage competition from immigrants. When communities receive sudden waves of newcomers, schools can struggle to hire English language teachers, housing availability can tighten, and local services can be strained. Those who already feel underserved may resent resources that are exclusively designed to help newcomers. When an unauthorized immigrant commits a crime—even though it happens at lower rates than by native-born Americans—it fuels legitimate anger. Most importantly, when the public sees migrants crossing the border without permission or large numbers congregating at the border or in big cities, public support for immigration drops. Thus, forward progress on immigration depends on having sustainable control over who enters the country at the border and immigration rates that the public broadly supports.
Building a Better Future
Improving legal immigration policies requires action by Congress. The last time Congress meaningfully updated immigrant selection policies was in 1990—before the internet, much less artificial intelligence. The United States needs a legal immigration system designed for the economic and workforce needs of today and tomorrow—one that lifts wages and keeps the country competitive in the global race for leadership in technology development and innovation. At the same time, getting it right calls for determining whom to prioritize for entry, under what criteria, and at what rate of change.
A First-Draft Reform Agenda
Given current population trends, labor market realities, and economic growth projections, the following proposals could constitute first steps in overhauling the nation’s outdated legal immigration system, to better align it with pressing needs.
Attract and facilitate immigration for key talent. The U.S. university system remains the world's best but faces growing international competition. The United States should encourage and ease the way for the best international students with in-demand skills to stay and contribute. The U.S. government should also create fast and straightforward visa categories for top global talent to come and work, whether to support leading companies or create their own.
While highly skilled immigrants may bring the greatest economic contributions, the economy also relies on and benefits from workers in sectors ranging from construction and hospitality to health care. Some of these jobs are seasonal, such as in agriculture and hospitality. They can be filled by foreign-born workers on temporary visas, provided labor protections that prevent exploitation are strong. Some immigrants should also, however, be eligible for long-term options for more permanent status.
Similarly, year-round jobs could also be filled by workers who come initially on temporary visas but may become eligible—having proven that they are reliable, law-abiding contributors—for permanent legal status. MPI has developed a vision for such transitions: a “bridge visa.” Today, more than two-thirds of permanent visas are given on the basis of family ties, with only about 7 percent going to sponsored workers based on employment. To facilitate the ability of more immigrant workers to fuel a growing workforce amid population aging, Congress should expand the overall number of employment-based visas available, through a mix of permanent, circular, and temporary-to-permanent visas.
Identify priority sectors where foreign-born workers can best contribute. Employers are generally best placed to determine which workers fit for individual positions and should have a strong voice in selecting employment-based immigrants. But state governments could perhaps also play a role in identifying priority sectors for granting visas that help their state to meet local workforce needs left unfilled by U.S. workers, which can vary greatly across the country.
Establish flexibility. To ensure that immigration policies remain aligned with economic imperatives and national interests, MPI has proposed the creation of an independent federal standing commission charged with recommending regular updates to immigration levels and requirements. Such a body would be nonpartisan and staffed by economists and labor market and immigration experts, charged with analyzing labor market and economic trends, immigrants’ employment outcomes, and the impacts of earlier immigration on the economy. Based on its findings, the commission would advise the executive branch and Congress on how to adjust employment-based immigration levels to better support economic goals, including maximizing opportunities for U.S. workers.
Flexibility should be a hallmark of the future immigration system, so it can serve the national interest in an era when labor markets will be upended by forces such as AI, pandemics, climate events, global conflicts, or recessions that are as yet unforeseen, but inevitable.
Allow employers to sponsor reliable workers who are already in the United States. President Donald Trump has suggested several times that employers be allowed to sponsor their workers for a visa, even those lacking legal status. Several governors and other local elected officials have repeatedly asked federal officials to find ways to provide work permits to unauthorized workers who are critical to local economies and have been upstanding members of their communities.
These proposals have merit. If advanced, such a plan would probably have to be bounded in time and involve paying a fine—perhaps by participating employers and workers alike. Legal avenues to adjust status from within the United States have been in place before. Reinstituting such measures now would help employers retain some of the long-term workers who have already proven their worth. With more than two-thirds of all unauthorized immigrants having lived in the country for a decade or more, working and contributing to their communities, this would also recognize the role that such workers have played in driving the productivity that underlies America’s economic successes.
Build employment-based immigration processing machinery that is efficient and workable for employers and immigrants alike. Due to long backlogs and chronic processing delays, immigration agencies have too long served as prime examples of government inefficiency, sparking ire akin to that garnered by many motor vehicle departments or the Internal Revenue Service. Building faith in the government’s ability to manage immigration should include investing in technology and processing upgrades that ensure border control and strong vetting, but also improve efficiency so that employers can readily hire the workers they need when they need them; the government provides fair and timely responses to applicants; and immigrant workers are not left in limbo while trying to plan their futures. The design of employment-based visa pathways should aim to avoid waitlists, unrealistic and rigid caps, and outdated processing systems that deprive employers and workers of certainty and dependable decision-making.
Sizeable resources would be required to create the modern, large-scale processing capabilities that are needed. Congress has dedicated $170 billion over four years to immigration enforcement in its 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act and is now debating $72 billion more for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). A forward-looking understanding of the role immigration and its effective management must play in the nation’s future should include reprogramming some of those resources to fund the overhaul, re-engineering, and right-sizing of immigration as a system. This would include improving adjudications of immigration applications, as well as further integration of intra- and interagency databases and screening protocols. All contribute to effective immigration enforcement as a crossagency enterprise and would immeasurably improve immigration management and enforcement outcomes overall.
Looking Ahead
Immigration should be treated as a key source of strength that is vital to America’s continued success as a prosperous society and global leader in technology and innovation. The long-held view that enforcement must be fixed first before other reforms, especially to legal immigration, can be broached has long stood in the way of understanding and envisioning the role immigration must play in America’s future.
In fact, creating visa policies for employment-based immigration that align with changing labor market needs and opportunities could help ease enforcement pressures because they would provide some alternatives to breaking the law. A functioning legal immigration architecture with new rules and avenues for employment-based visas would require ongoing strong enforcement of all immigration laws as vital to the credibility of the overall immigration system. Enforcement against illegal immigration alone cannot succeed in fixing a broken apparatus that has lost public support, as has been vividly demonstrated in recent months with the backlash and recalibration generated by the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Employers should be able to hire workers who can contribute to their business and the overall economy. Enforcement would then be directed at ensuring integrity of the border, compliance with immigration law requirements, and combatting criminal wrongdoing and exploitation. This would, in turn, reflect the attitudes of most Americans, who consistently support legal immigration that abides by common-sense rules.
Immigration is more than an enforcement problem that needs fixing; it is central to U.S. economic success and global leadership. The United States can harness the benefits of immigration to support a strong future, as it has done for 250 years and more, if it pursues flexible policies for legal immigration that promote productivity, innovation, job growth, and fiscal health while also ensuring orderly and controlled migration.
The Immigration Debate America Needs—and Is Not Having
Concerns about border security and large-scale migration flows have consumed U.S. public attention and immigration debates for more than a decade. Successive administrations have responded with dramatically different policies that have produced wild swings in border enforcement tactics, humanitarian protection, and now mass deportations. In the process, immigration has become a top-tier political issue that can decide election outcomes and has animated deep divides in the nation’s political and civic life.
Against this backdrop, the country is missing what is perhaps the most consequential debate of all, which is the role that immigration can and should play in securing its future growth, dynamism, and competitiveness. Arguments over past policy failures are delaying conversations about how the United States can best harness the benefits of immigration to support a better future.
Such discussions are pressing given demographic pressures. The United States is aging and birthrates are down, to the point that soon, any population growth will come from new immigrants. Already, Migration Policy Institute (MPI) research shows, all growth in the working-age population over recent decades has been driven by immigrants and their U.S.-born children. Absent immigration, a smaller workforce will be funding entitlements and benefits for a growing number of retirees, leading to lower growth, higher taxes, rising costs, and fewer public services.
Given that outlook, the country urgently needs to determine how to put immigration policy onto firm footing with common-sense visa policies that enable orderly immigration aimed at sustaining economic dynamism. In addition to harnessing the advantages of immigration as a national-interest imperative, well-designed legal immigration policies would enable effective immigration enforcement, by aligning immigration pathways with economic forces. Strong control of the border is a necessary precondition for public support of immigration. Forward-looking legal immigration would bring policy in line with what voters want: polling consistently shows that Americans decry the chaos that characterized the border in recent years, with spillover into U.S. cities further in the interior, but support immigration that is orderly and legal.
Immigration: A Source of Strength, But with Costs
Immigration has been a major contributor to the country’s dynamism across its history. Immigrants launch businesses at higher rates than native-born Americans. They generate patents at far higher rates. Foreign-born farmworkers keep food affordable. Immigrant caregivers enable people to stay in the workforce when they might otherwise drop out to tend to children or aging parents. Most critically, in the face of falling birth rates, immigrants and their U.S.-born children are sustaining U.S. workforce growth as the country approaches a demographic cliff.
At the same time, immigration is not an unalloyed good. Some U.S. workers without high school diplomas and some in specialized fields face wage competition from immigrants. When communities receive sudden waves of newcomers, schools can struggle to hire English language teachers, housing availability can tighten, and local services can be strained. Those who already feel underserved may resent resources that are exclusively designed to help newcomers. When an unauthorized immigrant commits a crime—even though it happens at lower rates than by native-born Americans—it fuels legitimate anger. Most importantly, when the public sees migrants crossing the border without permission or large numbers congregating at the border or in big cities, public support for immigration drops. Thus, forward progress on immigration depends on having sustainable control over who enters the country at the border and immigration rates that the public broadly supports.
Building a Better Future
Improving legal immigration policies requires action by Congress. The last time Congress meaningfully updated immigrant selection policies was in 1990—before the internet, much less artificial intelligence. The United States needs a legal immigration system designed for the economic and workforce needs of today and tomorrow—one that lifts wages and keeps the country competitive in the global race for leadership in technology development and innovation. At the same time, getting it right calls for determining whom to prioritize for entry, under what criteria, and at what rate of change.
A First-Draft Reform Agenda
Given current population trends, labor market realities, and economic growth projections, the following proposals could constitute first steps in overhauling the nation’s outdated legal immigration system, to better align it with pressing needs.
Attract and facilitate immigration for key talent. The U.S. university system remains the world's best but faces growing international competition. The United States should encourage and ease the way for the best international students with in-demand skills to stay and contribute. The U.S. government should also create fast and straightforward visa categories for top global talent to come and work, whether to support leading companies or create their own.
While highly skilled immigrants may bring the greatest economic contributions, the economy also relies on and benefits from workers in sectors ranging from construction and hospitality to health care. Some of these jobs are seasonal, such as in agriculture and hospitality. They can be filled by foreign-born workers on temporary visas, provided labor protections that prevent exploitation are strong. Some immigrants should also, however, be eligible for long-term options for more permanent status.
Similarly, year-round jobs could also be filled by workers who come initially on temporary visas but may become eligible—having proven that they are reliable, law-abiding contributors—for permanent legal status. MPI has developed a vision for such transitions: a “bridge visa.” Today, more than two-thirds of permanent visas are given on the basis of family ties, with only about 7 percent going to sponsored workers based on employment. To facilitate the ability of more immigrant workers to fuel a growing workforce amid population aging, Congress should expand the overall number of employment-based visas available, through a mix of permanent, circular, and temporary-to-permanent visas.
Identify priority sectors where foreign-born workers can best contribute. Employers are generally best placed to determine which workers fit for individual positions and should have a strong voice in selecting employment-based immigrants. But state governments could perhaps also play a role in identifying priority sectors for granting visas that help their state to meet local workforce needs left unfilled by U.S. workers, which can vary greatly across the country.
Establish flexibility. To ensure that immigration policies remain aligned with economic imperatives and national interests, MPI has proposed the creation of an independent federal standing commission charged with recommending regular updates to immigration levels and requirements. Such a body would be nonpartisan and staffed by economists and labor market and immigration experts, charged with analyzing labor market and economic trends, immigrants’ employment outcomes, and the impacts of earlier immigration on the economy. Based on its findings, the commission would advise the executive branch and Congress on how to adjust employment-based immigration levels to better support economic goals, including maximizing opportunities for U.S. workers.
Flexibility should be a hallmark of the future immigration system, so it can serve the national interest in an era when labor markets will be upended by forces such as AI, pandemics, climate events, global conflicts, or recessions that are as yet unforeseen, but inevitable.
Allow employers to sponsor reliable workers who are already in the United States. President Donald Trump has suggested several times that employers be allowed to sponsor their workers for a visa, even those lacking legal status. Several governors and other local elected officials have repeatedly asked federal officials to find ways to provide work permits to unauthorized workers who are critical to local economies and have been upstanding members of their communities.
These proposals have merit. If advanced, such a plan would probably have to be bounded in time and involve paying a fine—perhaps by participating employers and workers alike. Legal avenues to adjust status from within the United States have been in place before. Reinstituting such measures now would help employers retain some of the long-term workers who have already proven their worth. With more than two-thirds of all unauthorized immigrants having lived in the country for a decade or more, working and contributing to their communities, this would also recognize the role that such workers have played in driving the productivity that underlies America’s economic successes.
Build employment-based immigration processing machinery that is efficient and workable for employers and immigrants alike. Due to long backlogs and chronic processing delays, immigration agencies have too long served as prime examples of government inefficiency, sparking ire akin to that garnered by many motor vehicle departments or the Internal Revenue Service. Building faith in the government’s ability to manage immigration should include investing in technology and processing upgrades that ensure border control and strong vetting, but also improve efficiency so that employers can readily hire the workers they need when they need them; the government provides fair and timely responses to applicants; and immigrant workers are not left in limbo while trying to plan their futures. The design of employment-based visa pathways should aim to avoid waitlists, unrealistic and rigid caps, and outdated processing systems that deprive employers and workers of certainty and dependable decision-making.
Sizeable resources would be required to create the modern, large-scale processing capabilities that are needed. Congress has dedicated $170 billion over four years to immigration enforcement in its 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act and is now debating $72 billion more for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). A forward-looking understanding of the role immigration and its effective management must play in the nation’s future should include reprogramming some of those resources to fund the overhaul, re-engineering, and right-sizing of immigration as a system. This would include improving adjudications of immigration applications, as well as further integration of intra- and interagency databases and screening protocols. All contribute to effective immigration enforcement as a crossagency enterprise and would immeasurably improve immigration management and enforcement outcomes overall.
Looking Ahead
Immigration should be treated as a key source of strength that is vital to America’s continued success as a prosperous society and global leader in technology and innovation. The long-held view that enforcement must be fixed first before other reforms, especially to legal immigration, can be broached has long stood in the way of understanding and envisioning the role immigration must play in America’s future.
In fact, creating visa policies for employment-based immigration that align with changing labor market needs and opportunities could help ease enforcement pressures because they would provide some alternatives to breaking the law. A functioning legal immigration architecture with new rules and avenues for employment-based visas would require ongoing strong enforcement of all immigration laws as vital to the credibility of the overall immigration system. Enforcement against illegal immigration alone cannot succeed in fixing a broken apparatus that has lost public support, as has been vividly demonstrated in recent months with the backlash and recalibration generated by the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Employers should be able to hire workers who can contribute to their business and the overall economy. Enforcement would then be directed at ensuring integrity of the border, compliance with immigration law requirements, and combatting criminal wrongdoing and exploitation. This would, in turn, reflect the attitudes of most Americans, who consistently support legal immigration that abides by common-sense rules.
Immigration is more than an enforcement problem that needs fixing; it is central to U.S. economic success and global leadership. The United States can harness the benefits of immigration to support a strong future, as it has done for 250 years and more, if it pursues flexible policies for legal immigration that promote productivity, innovation, job growth, and fiscal health while also ensuring orderly and controlled migration.
Press Release