President Trump has lit up Truth Social in the wake of the National Guard shooting in Washington, D.C., promising to cut off immigration from third world countries and extolling “REVERSE MIGRATION.”
Trump’s reaction is typically over the top, but a recalibration of U.S. legal immigration policy is badly overdue.
For too long, the default Republican position on immigration has been that illegal immigration is bad and legal immigration is good. The former proposition is solid, but the latter depends on what sort of legal immigration we are talking about — specifically, the numbers and the criteria involved. And it obviously matters who the immigrants are.
In general, our policy has not been choosy enough and has operated on the assumption that the higher the number, the better — and that we have no right to prefer some immigrants to others. Our approach has tilted too far toward the interests of the immigrants — for whom entry into the United States is usually a boon — rather than a cold-eyed calculation of our national interest. At times, it has also privileged the interests of employers without asking whether those are the same as the interests of the nation.
There should always be some humanitarian element to our system, and the impulse, as a matter of honor, to get our Afghan allies out of the country as the Taliban swept to power was a correct one. We must realize, though, that refugees — who have immediate access to U.S. welfare programs and generally low levels of education attainment — are very expensive. They also typically have trouble assimilating into the radically different culture of the United States, in which dependence can easily curdle into resentment. Even if Rahmanullah Lakanwal didn’t commit his act of infamy, it was going to be a rough road for him and his family after getting plucked from Kandahar and dropped into Bellingham, Wash., near the Canadian border.
Numbers matter, as well. Trump has been criticizing Somali immigrants. Good people may come from Somalia (if properly vetted and meeting other sensible criteria), but it is a problem when there are enough of them to form an ethnic enclave in a major municipality and change its politics and culture. And if their public spokespeople, like the ingrate Representative Ilhan Omar, bristle with hostility toward their adopted country.
Trump says he wants to permanently pause third world immigration. There is a strong case for doing whatever is necessary to get a handle on vetting issues and visa overstays from places where these are chronic issues, like the aforementioned Somalia. But we shouldn’t paint with too broad a brush. For instance, immigrants from another troubled country, Nigeria, have done pretty well in the United States because their level of education is quite high, which gets to the crux of the matter.
Through our prior tolerance of illegal immigration and through chain migration in the legal system, we haven’t selected immigrants with the best chance of immediately thriving in a 21st-century economy. It is hard enough for high school dropouts born and raised in the United States to make it here; and even more so for high school dropouts from, say, Guatemala who don’t speak English. A more rational approach would be to end illegal immigration (which Trump has made strides toward doing) and weight the legal system much more toward selecting for merit — education levels, work skills, English proficiency, and other qualities that suggest an immigrant would assimilate and succeed here quickly. We should not hesitate to demand people who actually like America and its culture, values, and system of government.
After an extended period during which high levels of immigration have brought the percentage of the foreign-born population to a historic high, it’s appropriate to lower the overall number. Counter to some of the overly simplistic, romanticized notions of the history of immigration into the United States, the level of immigration has risen and fallen in the U.S. over time; what’s been remarkable about the last 60 years is that it hasn’t ever fallen.
Ideally, we are admitting immigrants who are culturally compatible with the United States; but if the overall numbers are lower, there is at least less risk of self-reinforcing ethnic enclaves.
It is past time that we adopted hard-headed immigrant policies that, yes, put America first.
By National Review – https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/12/rethinking-immigration/
