“This will be a wall with a big, very beautiful door because we want the legals to come back into the country.” -Donald J. Trump, August 23, 2015

“I want people to come into our country legally. I want to have a big, fat, beautiful open door.” -Donald J. Trump, September 3, 2015

“I want tremendous numbers of people to come in, and we are going to have that big beautiful door in the wall.” -Donald J. Trump, November 2, 2016

“We’re going to have a big, fat beautiful door right in the middle of the wall. We’re going to have people come in, but they’re coming in legally.” -Donald J. Trump, October 28, 2015

The House Freedom Caucus—a coalition of Republicans—were reportedly the “driving force” behind talking President Trump into a government shutdown over the border wall. Freedom Caucus leaders Jim Jordan (R‑OH) and Mark Meadows (R‑NC) “led a revolt” on the House floor against the bill that would have kept the government open without more money for Trump’s wall. Rep. Jordan justified their position this way:

Let’s do what we said. Let’s build the border security wall …It’s pretty simple. What did you tell the voters you were going to do? What did they elect you to do? Go do that.

That’s a fair point. Trump did center his campaign in 2016 around a border wall along the southern border. Of course, he also told voters repeatedly that Mexico—not U.S. taxpayers—would pay for it. But setting that issue aside, President Trump also vociferously promised that the border wall would contain a “big beautiful door” that would let in “tremendous numbers of people.” So why are Republicans not demanding a shutdown if the door isn’t built? Isn’t that what Americans were promised too?

Of course, they have no intention of keeping this promise. The Trump administration is closing down legal ports of entry for asylum seekers to prevent them from entering legally. It has championed bills to cut legal immigration by 50 percent, and its regulations are already making legal immigration much more difficult. Don’t expect any shutdowns for the “big beautiful door” any time soon.

President Trump has repeatedly cited drug smuggling as a reason to build a wall along the Southern border. But my new Cato policy analysis shows that, if stopping drug smuggling is the goal, a border wall is about the worst possible investment. Here are a few of the main findings:

• Hundreds of miles of border fences built from 2003 to 2009 had no effect on marijuana smuggling.
• Marijuana legalization starting in 2014 has cut marijuana smuggling between ports of entry (i.e. where a wall would go) 78 percent from 114 pounds per agent in 2013 to just 25 pounds per agent in 2018. 
• Since marijuana is the primary drug smuggled between ports of entry, the total value of all drugs seized by the average Border Patrol agent fell 70 percent from 2013 to 2018.
• As a result, the average inspector at ports of entry made drug seizures that were three times more valuable than those made by Border Patrol in 2018. In 2013—prior to legalization—the average Border Patrol agent made more valuable seizures.
• By weight, the average port inspector seized 8 times more cocaine, 17 times more fentanyl, 23 times more methamphetamine, and 36 times more heroin than the average Border Patrol agent seized at the physical border in early 2018.

The best proxy measure for changes in drug smuggling is the amount of drugs seized by Border Patrol. To control for enforcement levels, the paper looks at seizures per agent. From 2003 to 2013, the rate of seizures per agent was virtually constant, even as the number of agents doubled and the government constructed hundreds of miles of border fences. But enforcement didn’t stop the flow—only when states, starting in 2014, started to fully legalize marijuana did marijuana smuggling decline (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Marijuana seizures and length of border fences

Because marijuana is primarily smuggled between ports of entry, the most valuable drug smuggling now occurs at ports of entry. As Figure 2 shows, Border Patrol was seizing more drugs—by value—in 2013, but by 2018, value of drugs seized at ports of entry was three times the value of drugs seized between ports of entry by Border Patrol. In other words, a border wall would not target the most valuable drugs crossing the border.

Figure 2: Value of drug seizures per agent by location of seizure

All of this should inform policymakers on how to address illegal immigration as well. Policies that make legal immigration easier undermine the incentivizes for black market activity. As Figure 3 shows, when lesser-skilled guest worker admissions increase, the number of apprehensions per Border Patrol agent declines. Since 1949, a 10 percent increase in guest workers was associated with an 8.8 percent decrease in apprehensions per agent. The current H‑2A and H‑2B guest worker programs for seasonal workers are already helping the situation greatly, but they could be improved and expanded on to cut illegal entries further.

Figure 3: Lesser-skilled guest worker admissions and apprehensions per Border Patrol agent

If Congress wants to address drug smuggling, it should legalize marijuana nationwide and invest in better ports of entry, not build a wall. The same lessons that drug smuggling have provided should apply to illegal immigration, cutting demand for illegal immigration by making more legal options available to immigrants.

President Trump claimed last week that “people are pouring into our country, including terrorists.” This came after his unsubstantiated claim that Middle Easterners are traveling in the caravan. Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) fellow Todd Bensman has repeatedly defended these types of claims by equating immigrants from “countries of interest” with “terrorists.” This conflation is common and rarely challenged as Homeland Security officials and members of Congress frequently describe immigrants from these countries as a terrorist threat. Despite Border Patrol apprehending tens of thousands of foreign nationals from these countries of interest and many thousands more who have undoubtedly entered illegally, not a single person has been killed by a terrorist who entered as an illegal border crosser from any of the countries of interest.

Special Interest Alien Apprehensions

The terminology used to describe these immigrants varies considerably between sources. In 2011, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General defined the term “specially designated countries” to mean countries “that have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members.” Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar described “Special interest countries” as “basically countries designated by our intelligence community as countries that could export individuals that could bring harm to our country in the way of terrorism.”

These definitions could apply to nearly every country in the world, as just about every major country has “produced” or “exported” at least one terrorist. With several exceptions, the lists have consisted primarily of countries with large Muslim populations. The designated countries have changed repeatedly over the years:

In 2003, DHS released a list of 52 countries. In 2004, the list included 35 countries, two of which were new. In 2007, the list was referenced in a news article, and though the full list was not quoted, it included another country (Tanzania) that was not on either of the prior two lists. In 2018, DHS released yet another list of countries where CBP “had Enforcement Actions against aliens from the following ‘Special Interest Aliens’ countries for FY18.” This partial list included yet five more countries that were not on the prior lists. Altogether, these lists have contained 63 countries. Only 14 have shown up on all the lists.

From 2007 to 2017, Border Patrol apprehended 45,006 immigrants from any of the countries ever designated as a “country of interest” (See Table 1). During the same period, it apprehended 4,109 from countries that made it onto all three lists. Given the inconsistency in these lists and for sake of completeness, Figure 1 shows the annual number of special interest aliens apprehended by Border Patrol separated by the different lists and those apprehended from countries that appeared at least once on a single list. Fiscal Year 2007 is the earliest year that Border Patrol has made the number of apprehensions by citizenship publicly available.

Figure 2 shows that only 0.85 percent of all Border Patrol apprehensions from 2007–2017 were special interest aliens. This includes aliens from any country that ever appeared on any special interest countries list. The other 99.15 percent, 5.25 million apprehensions, were for illegal immigrants from countries other than those that have ever appeared on a special interest countries list.

With 16,979 apprehensions, Indians were the most common “special interest aliens” apprehended from 2007 to 2017, followed by Brazilians with 12,925 apprehensions. Both countries were on the 2003 list, but not listed in 2004 or 2018. Bangladeshis were the most commonly apprehended “special interest aliens” who were on all three lists with 2,469 apprehensions.

No Terror Attacks on U.S. Soil

Zero people were murdered or injured in terror attacks committed on U.S. soil by special interest aliens who entered illegally from 1975 through the end of 2017. However, seven special interest aliens who initially entered illegally have been convicted of planning a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. They all entered illegally from Canada or jumped ship in American ports before the list of special interest countries even existed. None of them successfully carried out their attacks and none illegally crossed the Mexican border.

Five of those seven illegal border crossers resided as illegal immigrants in the United States. Walid Kabbani, a native of Lebanon, walked across the Canadian border illegally in 1987 to deliver a bomb to his co-conspirators in the United States. He was discovered by a local police chief and arrested before he could carry out his attack. Algerian-born Ahmed Ressam attempted to enter with false documents in 1999 on his way to attack Los Angeles International Airport as part of the so-called Millennium Plot. U.S. border inspectors apprehended him, discovered his bomb in the spare tire well of his car, and then arrested him. In the scuffle to detain Ressam, he broke free of U.S. law enforcement officers and ran into the United States before being apprehended a short time later. Since Ressam technically entered the country unlawfully when crossing the Canadian border, we included him on this list. 

Algerian-born Abdelghani Meskini aided Ressam in his plot after he entered the United States illegally as a stowaway on a ship. Palestinian Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, who was born in Israel and traveled on Israeli papers, was apprehended at a bus stop after illegally entering the United States in 1997. Somali-born Nuradin M. Abdi originally entered the U.S. unlawfully in 1995 on a fake passport. While he did not cross the border unlawfully, he did so on a false passport and would have been blocked like Ressam was if his subterfuge was discovered by Customs agents. In order to include the maximum number of possible terrorists so that we bias the results against ourselves, we included Abdi. 

From 1975 through 2017, a total of nine terrorists entered the United States illegally and only three did so along the Mexican border: Shain Duka, Britan Duka, and Eljvir Duka.* They crossed as children with their parents in 1984 and were arrested as part of the planned Fort Dix terror attack that the FBI foiled in 2007. The Dukas are ethnic Albanians from Macedonia – neither country has appeared on any special interest countries list. The only terrorists who crossed the border with Mexico illegally did so as children, decades before becoming terrorists, and were not even from the special interest countries.

In addition to the five illegal immigrant border crossers from the special interest countries, two people from those countries entered illegally and applied for asylum. We typically count these people as asylum seekers, but Bensman and others might include them as illegal border crossers. As a result, we decided to include them here. Although data is a little sketchy on these instances, Pakistan-born Majid Shoukat Khan and Shahawar Matin Siraj are two of the eleven asylum-seekers who probably initially entered illegally before asking for asylum. They entered in 1996 and 1998, respectively. They are both from a special interest country, neither of them committed an attack, neither injured or murdered anyone, and they both crossed the Canadian border.

Although there have been zero attacks committed by illegal border crossers from any of the special interest countries, foreign-born people who entered legally from those countries were responsible for 99.5 percent of all murders and 94.7 percent of all injuries committed by foreign-born terrorists on U.S. soil from 1975 through the end of 2017. This isn’t surprising as the 9/11 terrorists are responsible for over 98 percent of all the murders and 87 percent of all of the injuries committed by foreign-born terrorists over this time. Of the small number of foreign-born terrorists who committed attacks or were convicted of planning to do so on U.S. soil from 1975 through the end of 2017, the most successful strategy was to first enter legally. There is no evidence that that pattern of activity has changed. 

Conclusion

So far, there have been zero people murdered or injured in terror attacks committed by illegal border crossers on U.S. soil. This includes those who entered as illegal immigrants and those who entered illegally and then applied for asylum. Only seven terrorists from special interest countries, all of whom entered prior to the government putting those countries on a list, even entered the U.S. illegally by crossing a land border. Two of them were arrested within hours of doing so, two other received asylum, and none of them crossed the Mexican border. 

Our above evidence is based on past events. The future could be different, but those who think that special interest aliens from these countries will enter illegally across the Mexican border and commit terrorist attacks here should present some compelling evidence before policymakers take them seriously. 

*Numbers based on a forthcoming updated Cato Institute policy analysis.

President Trump told Democratic leaders Tuesday that he would be “proud” to shut the government down if Congress refuses him $5 billion for a border wall. A shutdown is virtually the only situation where Trump could back himself into such a corner that he would accept the wall-for-Dreamers trade that Democrats offered, but he rejected, earlier this year. Yet Democrats aren’t even bringing immigrants up. This is a tragedy for the immigrants who are counting on them.

After Democrats listened to Trump rant about “terrorists” coming across the border—who a Trump wall would supposedly keep out—all they could say is that they wanted more security and that they didn’t want to shut the government down. That’s not good enough. Democrats need a pro-immigrant exchange for wall funding—a deal where both sides can walk away with a win. If they don’t, Trump could win this fight, leaving immigrants with nothing to show for the wall.

Democrats have entirely dropped their demand from earlier this year that any wall funding be tied to the Dream Act—which would provide status to unauthorized immigrants brought to the country as children. Indeed, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the media that those are “two different subjects,” and she wouldn’t reup the offer. Democrats have even already given Trump a way to claim victory by agreeing to $1.6 billion border “fence” funding for this year.

So as it stands right now, Democrats are going into a shutdown fight over immigration where the worst case scenario for Trump is $1.6 billion in fences, and the best case scenario for Democrats is nothing. That’s a terrible negotiating stance. They should at least say, “We’re happy to give you more money if you give us one of our immigration priorities.” That gives Trump a landing spot where he can get his $5 billion, but Democrats and immigrants get something in return.

Perhaps the political calculation is that Trump will harm himself long term with a lengthy shutdown, but when Republicans shut down the government in 2013—while they took a short-term hit in the polls—it made no difference to their 2014 outcomes. Indeed, the GOP kept the House and took over the Senate that year. Trump remembers this, and even thinks that the shutdown could have worked for Republicans, so he may just hold for what he wants.

Democrats may think they won the House this year by ignoring immigration. But Trump won’t allow them to do that, so as a strategic manner, they should put up a pro-immigrant counteroffer, and leave it out there just in case Trump will take their life preserver during his shutdown. It’s still a very long shot, but without the offer, the shutdown brings them no upside and plenty of downside.

On December 7, 2015, President Trump called for a Muslim ban. This ban later turned into “extreme vetting” policies, which—according to Trump—had the same goal. Now nearing the 2‑year mark of his administration, an accurate assessment of these policies is now possible. All the major categories of entries to the United States—refugees, immigrants, and visitors—are significantly down under the Trump administration for Muslims or applicants from Muslim majority countries.

91% fewer Muslim refugees

President Trump has dramatically reduced the number of Muslim refugees. According to data from the U.S. Department of State—which records the religions of refugees—Muslim refugees peaked at 38,555 in fiscal year (FY) 2016, fell to 22,629 in FY 2017, and reached just 3,312 in FY 2018—a 91 percent decline from 2016 to 2018. Refugees of other faiths have also seen their numbers cut, though not to the same extent as Muslims. The share of refugees who were Muslims dropped from 45 percent in FY 2016 to 44 percent in FY 2017, and then again to 15 percent in FY 2018. President Trump has reversed the earlier trend under President Obama, where Muslim refugee admissions increased.

30% fewer immigrants from majority Muslim countries

Approvals for immigrant visas—that is, for permanent residents—for nationals of the 48 majority Muslim countries have fallen from 117,444 in FY 2016 to 104,228 in FY 2017 to 82,260 in FY 2018—a 30 percent drop overall. The share of new immigrants entering from abroad from majority Muslim countries has fallen as well, from 19 percent in FY 2016 to 18 percent in FY 2017 to 15 percent in FY 2018. This also reflects a change in the prior trend. From 2009 to 2016, immigrants from Muslim majority countries increased from 80,435 to 117,444.

The decline in immigrant visas occurred primarily in the family reunification categories, which President Trump refers to as “chain migrants.” From FY 2016 to FY 2018, the number of family-sponsored immigrants declined by 29,607—a 36 percent decline. Special immigrants—interpreters and other partners of the U.S. military mainly from Iraq and Afghanistan—accounted for the rest of the reduction. In FY 2018, there were 45 percent fewer immigrant visas for special immigrants than in FY 2016.

18% fewer visitors from majority Muslim countries

Though they were already relatively low to begin with, nonimmigrant visa approvals—temporary visas for workers, students, and tourists—from Muslim majority have also declined 18 percent from 2016 to 2018. In 2016, the Obama administration issued 856,886 nonimmigrant visas to nationals of Muslim majority countries. In 2017, this number fell to 718,535. By 2018, it had dropped to 702,375—154,511 fewer than 2016. The declines occurred among both tourist visas and other visa categories.

Explanations for the Decline in Visas and Refugees

Since President Trump establishes the refugee quotas for each region of the world and for each fiscal year, his decision to cut the quota and distribute the cap away from the Muslim world explains the drop in Muslim refugee issuances. For FY 2017, President Trump established the lowest refugee quota in the history of the refugee program. 

The primary cause of the decline in the immigrant visa approvals is the travel ban that has singled out for exclusion eight majority Muslim countries since January 2017: Chad, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Chad and Sudan have been completely removed from the list, and while Iraq is not officially designated, the latest proclamation from September 2017 singles Iraqis out for additional scrutiny.

The eight travel ban countries explain 65 percent of the decline in immigrant visa issuances for Muslim majority countries. Immigrant visa issuances for these countries have fallen 72 percent from FY 2016 to FY 2018. The travel ban explains only 28 percent of the decline in nonimmigrant visa issuances from Muslim majority countries. Nationals of the travel ban countries received 62 percent fewer nonimmigrant visas in 2018 than in 2016.

Beyond the travel ban, President Trump has imposed “extreme vetting” policies that make immigrating more bureaucratic and costly for everyone. He has massively increased the length of immigration forms, adding new subjective “security” questions. According to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, more applications for Muslims are disappearing into an “administrative processing” hole, where applications are held up for security screening. Undoubtedly, some Muslims simply want to avoid the United States where stories of profiling and discrimination abound.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the Trump administration is leading a major overhaul in the types of travelers, immigrants, and visitors who are coming to the United States. His administration reduced Muslim refugees by 91 percent and has overseen a 30 percent cut to immigrant visas for majority Muslim countries and an 18 percent cut to temporary visas. These policies lack a valid national security justification, but they are nonetheless having a significant effect. President Trump is certainly following through on his promise to limit Muslim immigration, even if a “total and complete shutdown” has not happened.

The most popular piece of legislation in the House of Representatives—with 329 cosponsors—would phase out and eliminate the per-country limits for employment-based green cards, while doubling the limits for family-based immigrants. These per-country limits discriminate against nationals of countries with high demand for green cards. For employment-based immigrants, immigrants from India receiving green cards in 2018 waited a decade, Chinese immigrants waited 3 years, while everyone else waited less than a year.

It is fundamentally unfair to make equally qualified employees of U.S. businesses wait ten times as long based on their birthplace. Rather than selecting employees solely on who has the best resume, employers now also have to consider who has the right home country. Moreover, the wait times distort the market and keep immigrants with more experience and higher wage offers from receiving green cards. My analysis earlier this year showed that the per-country limits artificially suppress the average wage offer for most employer-sponsored immigrants by $11,592.

In August, however, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Francis Cissna who runs the legal immigration bureaucracy for the Trump administration appeared to criticize the change for undermining the “diversity” of immigrants. “It would indeed ameliorate the situation of Indian nationals,” he said. “But it would also have other effects on the diversity or flow more generally – and national representation amongst the employment-based immigration pool.”

“Diversity” is, indeed, the main argument for the country limits. But even assuming that the government has a legitimate interest in promoting diversity, is the argument even valid? Of course, the per-country limits result in diversity of, as Cissna put it, “national representation.” But using “nations” is a poor proxy for individual diversity. Compare immigrants from the European Union and Indians in the EB‑2 green card lines for employees of U.S. businesses with master’s degrees, the line where nearly 70 percent of the employer-sponsored Indians are waiting.

Table: Comparison of India and European EB‑2 Immigration

Sources: Annual Report of the Visa Office; Visa Bulletin

The European Union has a collective country EB‑2 quota 28 times higher than the quota for India because it is made up of 28 individual nations. It ends up using just 7 percent of that quota, but this is still almost twice as many green cards as all of India in the EB‑2 category. This disparity exists even though the European Union has only 40 percent as many people as India. This seems unfair, but we’re told that this is alright because the EU—composed of 28 countries—is much more diverse than India.

Yet India has virtually the same number of official languages as the EU (22 v. 24). It has at least six major religions—Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism—while the EU only has three—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Indian immigrants in America reflect this religious diversity as well: only half are Hindu, while the rest are Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Christians, or others. The number of ethnic groups in each location is difficult to pin down, but India and the EU appear to have similar levels of ethnic diversity. Wikipedia lists 22 Indo-Aryan peoples, rivalling the roughly 28 nationalities in the EU. India is, of course, a geographically diverse area as well.

The fact is that nationality is not a very good approximation of individual diversity. On this point, Director Cissna’s statements were not strictly false, but they are misleading. Even if we grant that the EU is more diverse, is it so much more so that it justifies giving Indians 4 percent as many green cards? The only important legal difference is that India is considered a single state, while the EU, though it has a governing body, is still considered 28 different states, so it receives 28 times as many potential green card slots.

Of course, I find the entire idea that the government should attempt to micromanage the religious, linguistic, ethnic, or racial diversity of the United States ridiculous. The government has no legitimate interest in trying to keep out immigrants on these grounds or making them wait longer because of them. If it were proposed to discriminate directly on these grounds, that would be clear to anyone, but only because we disguise the discrimination as diversity in “national representation,” people excuse it.

Diversity should occur naturally as Americans—acting as family members, employers, or consumers—freely interact with people around the world. The government should not tip the scales to make the country more diverse or less diverse than it would otherwise be. In any case, employer-sponsored green cards are supposed to serve economic goals, not social engineering.

We know that the country caps, which started in 1924, did grow out of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Asiatic Bar Zone of 1917, which were explicitly efforts at racial engineering. Even when Congress reformed the country limits in 1965 to make them equal across countries, supporters of the legislation reassured  skeptics that America would not be flooded “hordes of Africans and Asians.” The reason Congress didn’t simply get rid of the caps was explicitly to keep down Asian and African immigration. The arguments have changed, but the end result is the same, and this type of government intervention is as inappropriate now as it was then.

In his comments, Director Cissna also recognized some of the problems that long waits can create, as employees are stuck with their employers and can be taken advantage of, and that the wait times are unfair toward Indians. But he’s wrong to emphasize the loss in diversity. Indians are a very diverse group themselves, and even if they weren’t, it is none of the government’s business anyway.

I have previously described in detail the reforms that America’s immigration system needs. In this post, I want to highlight what I think the general principles behind those reforms should be. Three basic principles should guide immigration reform: openness, equal treatment, and flexibility. Reform should make America more open to immigrants, should treat all immigrants equally as individuals, and should be flexible enough to respond automatically to changes in the economy or society.

1) Openness to new immigrants. Reform should make it easier to immigrate legally, not more difficult. This pillar protects the rights of Americans to associate, contract, and trade with people born in other countries. These people might be their family members, friends, employees, or employers, but ultimately, restrictions on immigration are restriction on the liberty of Americans. Reform should recognize the presumptive right—overcome only for very good reasons—of Americans to freely interact with foreigners on U.S. soil.

Of course, the freedom to associate across borders also benefits Americans—even those who don’t participate directly with the immigration system—by expanding the pool of employees, consumers, investors, and entrepreneurs who produce goods and provide services that improve the quality of life of all Americans. The social capital that immigrants bring with them makes America a stronger, safer country. Immigrants marry, have children, and participate in religious groups at higher rates than the U.S.-born population, and it is precisely for these reasons that they have much lower rates of criminality.

As a practical matter, there are many ways to move toward a more open immigration system. My list of reforms gives specific examples. But here is a general blueprint: grant indefinite work visas to anyone with a job in the United States, confer legal permanent residency on anyone who works for 5 years, and remove the quotas on green cards for immediate family members—adult children and siblings of U.S. citizens as well as spouses and minor children of legal permanent residents.

2) Equal treatment for new immigrants. America has a long legacy of discriminating against certain types of immigrants, from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Asiatic Bar Zone to the National Origins Quota System. Unfortunately, this legacy is not entirely purged from the statute books. Today, the government still attempts to micromanage the ethnic makeup of legal immigrants by limiting nationals of any particular country to no more than 7 percent of the total green cards. These “per-country caps” discriminate against immigrants from high-demand countries like India, China, and Mexico, while discriminating in favor of those from less populous countries like those in Europe. The caps are not only an affront to the fundamental principles of fairness but they are economically harmful, forcing immigrants with more experience and higher wage offers to wait longer than others.

Last year, President Trump introduced more discrimination into the system by banning all entries from six countries. This effectively imposes a country quota of zero for Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen. This means that even if an Iranian or Syrian is eligible for a green card under the normal channels, they would still be barred from immigrating. The president previously labeled this an extension of his “Muslim ban” concept. In order to end this discrimination, and prevent it from returning, Congress needs to repeal the per-country limits and bar the president from reimposing similar limitations without explicit authority from Congress.

3) Flexibility to changes in the economy and society. Congress has not updated America’s immigration system in 28 years. During that time, America’s population has grown by a third, and its economy has doubled. Yet the immigration quotas and categories have not changed at all. In order to prevent the immigration system from becoming antiquated, it’s not enough for Congress to merely update it based on what would be best for today—it needs to build a system that is flexible enough to adapt to changes that will happen in the future. Otherwise, the new system will become outdated soon after it is implemented.

Ideally, Congress would end arbitrary quotas on immigration. The government should impose qualitative, not quantitative limits, on immigration. Hard numerical limits are the most rigidity-inducing aspect of the legal immigration system and cause the most harm, but if Congress does maintain quotas, it should go beyond merely updating them. It should link family-based quotas to population growth (or the number of families in the United States) and link employment-based quotas to economic growth, growing as the economy grows.

This would prevent the numbers of immigrants from becoming outdated, but the categories and regulations under which those immigrants enter also fall out of line with the needs of the economy. Consider the fact that there are no programs for lesser-skilled temporary workers who want to work in year-round jobs because Congress in 1990 believed that employers only needed seasonal workers. While Congress can plug the holes as best it can, it should also grant the ability to states to sponsor immigrants based on whatever criteria that the state wants. Canada already has this type of immigration program for its provinces. This would allow states to essentially invent new green card categories, even while the numbers remain largely the same.

With these principles in mind, Congress can construct an immigration system that will provide for America’s economy and society long into the 21^st century.