The Formula for Making Immigration Popular With American Voters
A practical path to lasting freedom and prosperity
The Cato Institute's Alex Nowrasteh and Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward debate National Review's Rich Lowry and Steven Camarota from the Center for Immigration Studies on the benefits and drawbacks of mass immigration. Thursday, October 2, live on stage in Washington, D.C. Get your tickets here.
With crime or the economy, most people can recognize improvement even when they don't agree about what is causing a problem or how to measure it precisely. More job opportunities? That's progress. Fewer murders? Progress. More houses available? Progress. Immigration lacks a similarly shared yardstick. Headcounts of people admitted, hired, resettled, or removed mean different things to different observers.
What would it mean to define progress on immigration in a way that almost everyone, regardless of where they come from ideologically, agree it's a good thing? Most people, including those who are currently skeptical about immigration, tend to support freer movement over borders when it is demonstrably beneficial in terms of being orderly and well-managed, culturally compatible, and economically sound. Attracting more high-skilled foreigners, for instance, is so intuitively appealing that it was one of the few things both Trump and Harris voters agreed on before the 2024 election. At the same time, few people care about total numbers in the abstract, so cutting immigration on its own often does not resolve anyone's underlying worries about costs and the lack of control.
The good news is that there appears to be a workable overlap on what "getting it right" looks like in practice across at least three distinct areas: higher administrative capacity that moves cases quickly and accurately, better immigrant outcomes that also make immigrants' own contributions to the U.S. visible, and more predictable enforcement that make our border more secure and enforcement encounters lawful without chaos.
Higher administrative capacity: Timely and accurate decisions on both admissions and deportations reduce uncertainty for everyone and are desirable, regardless of whether you think immigration in general is good or bad. Backlogs erode trust and push people into limbo. Simpler filings, clearer criteria, and expanded premium processing can shrink backlogs and produce more consistent results.
Greater administrative capacity implies both faster protection for those who qualify and faster removals for clearly ineligible cases, which pro-immigration advocates should accept as a feature of an orderly system. Without sufficient processing capacity, we can't have either good immigrant outcomes or a secure border.
Better immigrant outcomes: While these may be important in and of themselves, we know that voters genuinely care that newcomers land on their feet and add value to their new adopted country. Earnings growth and tax contributions over time, language acquisition and stable employment, and alignment of skills with documented needs are intuitive signals that immigration policies work.
Contrary to what many assume, the better immigrant outcomes observed in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries, compared with mainland Europe, likely stem more from selection or the greater desire of ambitious would-be migrants to come there than from elaborate integration or welfare programs, which often fail on their own terms.
More predictable law enforcement: If you believe open immigration is a right, it is understandable to be uneasy about deporting an unauthorized person who has settled here, even if that person has done nothing illegal beyond entering the country illegally. But making enforcement more credible or the border more secure does not require embracing cruelty or the counterproductive practices of the Trump administration.
A sense of predictability matters because it communicates whether rules are real in everyday life. And for most people, progress looks exactly like clear rules applied the same way every day. That means consistent adjudication, capacity to handle spikes at the border without chaos, and steady implementation of lawful outcomes, even when some laws on the books are imperfect and may harm individual migrants.
Immigration Progress Is Not Just About Better Messaging or Reducing Prejudice
Making progress on immigration is decidedly not about coming up with better messaging strategies. In our increasingly polarized politics, every persuasive pro-immigration message meets a more persuasive counter-message. And even the best possible rhetoric hits hard limits if it is not tied to a credible policy design or outcome. Slogans and stunts may help generate short-term headlines, but grand promises without execution feed the long-term backlash.
Instead, sustainable gains in public trust come from better performance: rules that are legible, timelines that are kept, outcomes that ordinary people can verify in their own communities. Messaging can set tone, but lasting persuasion follows visible and predictable competence, which is what ultimately builds trust and creates room for further reform.
Making progress on immigration is also not mainly about reducing prejudice. It is true that people with racial biases are more likely to oppose immigration, especially immigration from culturally different groups. But reducing bias at scale is hard and slow: Psychological research shows that these attitudes are deeply rooted in people's personality and shift little over time.
Happily, my research shows that most opposition to immigration is conditioned on specific policy details rather than rooted in blanket xenophobia. Many people who are currently skeptical of immigration do not hate immigrants. When they see clear benefits, they are willing to back a more open system.
In other words, durable progress does not come from information campaigns trying to convince skeptical voters of how good immigration really is yet again. It comes from governments adopting better policies that prove their value and generate their own support.
What This Means for Work Visas
If progress follows performance, governments should start where voters already agree: high-skill immigration. That is why the recent presidential plan to levy a $100,000 charge per H-1B work visa is a useful case study for how not to do immigration politics or policy.
Since 1990, the H-1B visa has been the main channel for U.S. firms to hire foreign professionals. Economic evidence ties these high-skill visas to higher productivity, patenting, startup formation, and wage gains for natives as well as immigrants, which makes the plan to impose a $100,000 fee counterproductive. If it does not effectively halt the program entirely, a blanket charge of that size would price out smaller employers, push work offshore, and undercut graduate pipelines, repeating a familiar pattern of missing an opportunity for real reform. Nor do the newly proposed H-1B wage rules help: By relying on artificial government wage levels instead of real pay, they may end up favoring outsourcing firms over genuinely high-skill hires.
The H-1B program has many real flaws, from the inefficient lottery system to the fact that immigrants are effectively tied to their employers, who abuse that leverage. So the administration's stated goal and rhetoric of benefiting American workers by prioritizing stronger skills in the program is reasonable. But the administration's proposal taxes people for participating rather than selecting better applicants, so it fails on its own terms. As repeatedly suggested by both center-right and center-left analysts, a more credible fix is to rank petitions by wage-based selection. That way, offers with stronger market signals rise to the top, allow workers to switch employers without risking their legal status, and step up penalties for repeat abusers.
Public opinion supports this direction. Americans are unusually favorable toward skilled immigration: Large shares want to prioritize highly skilled workers, and earlier surveys found about 8 in 10 think skilled immigration should be encouraged. Doctors, engineers, and other professionals are intuitive assets because the benefits are visible: They fill needed jobs, pay taxes, start firms, and integrate quickly. Critics are right that H-1B can be misused and does not always bring in the most skilled workers. Yet unlike illegal immigration or asylum pressures, there has been no broad bottom-up opposition to H-1B or any mass protest movement. Most public pushback that exists has come from either a narrow slice of Republican elites opposed to immigration in general or from left‐wing labor populists who see guest worker programs as threats to American workers. Attempts to mobilize anger about H-1B have consistently fallen flat compared with illegal immigration or asylum issues. And when most people are asked about H-1B visas, even with some explainer, they support it.
The same principle applies beyond H-1Bs. Our rules should set legal migrants up for success in ways that are demonstrably beneficial to the public: work visas tied to documented labor needs, quicker reunification for immediate family, credible student-to-work transitions for strong performers, and state-based visa programs that let communities with shrinking populations opt in to invite workers to settle and contribute to their local economies.
What Does This Mean for Refugees and Asylum Seekers?
Openness to refugees and asylum seekers is the hardest test for immigration progress, because humanitarian appeals persuade few voters and because gains are easy to undermine. Most people want clear benefits at home, not just compassion abroad. But progress is possible, if humanitarian admissions look orderly, useful, and limited.
The idea of community or private refugee sponsorship, first launched in Canada in 1979, directly addresses a common retort in debates about humanitarian obligations: "Why don't you house them yourself?" Sponsorship gives willing individuals and private groups across ideological lines a legal way to act on their convictions and share both the financial and social costs of resettlement.
We have already seen these principles work in the United States. The Welcome Corps, launched in 2023, allowed vetted civic groups, campuses, congregations, and local coalitions to sponsor refugees under national rules and ceilings. It converted a willingness to help into a capacity to help, it relieved pressure on a fragile resettlement system, and it attracted support that crossed party lines because it kept government control over eligibility while letting communities opt in. According to a 2023 YouGov poll, this was one of the few pro-immigration policies supported by the majority of Republicans. The program ended in early 2025, when the current administration stopped all humanitarian admissions, but not because of any opposition to sponsorship itself. So if it is revived, it would likely regain bipartisan support.
Despite its potential, sponsorship is not a fix for possible asylum pressures. Border processes must be rule-bound and credible. That means discouraging illegal entry, adjudicating claims quickly in custody, removing people who do not qualify, and narrowing eligibility where abuse is common, while preserving protection for those who meet the standard. One possible template is to rebuild and speed up border adjudication while setting clear limits on asylum pathways. Put together, quiet competence at the border and voluntary capacity in communities make humanitarian immigration more acceptable and sustainable.
How To Make Progress When People Disagree
Immigration is generally beneficial, but it is not costless: It has winners and losers, economic tradeoffs, and moral dilemmas. In a democracy, what matters is not just your view but what your fellow citizens think.
We know that name-calling or fact-dumping will not persuade, since we have already tried that many times. We also know that neither closed borders nor open borders is politically possible right now. But the politics of compromise is not about abandoning principles, teaming up with the enemy, or blindly following cost-benefit analysis. It is about devising and passing policies that improve lives in ways that most people, regardless of where they come from politically, can recognize as good.
Immigration progress is possible when benefits are visible to ordinary citizens. That means prioritizing demonstrably beneficial immigration—skilled work, immediate family reunification, structured humanitarian pathways—that reassure skeptics while widening opportunities. It means finding ways to make freer movement compatible with popular consent.