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Immigration
POLICY BRIEF & QUESTIONNAIRE
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Three Key Developments
Despite the divisiveness, there is more agreement on the future of US immigration—both in Congress and among citizens—than is commonly recognized. While there is not yet sufficient congressional consensus to pass legislation, three developments are improving the prospects. Â
01
Precondition Met to Make Border Significantly More Secure
For years, many in Congress have made substantially decreased border crossings a precondition to consider broader immigration reform. Currently, encounters at the southern border are at their lowest levels in decades, opening a new window for legislative dialogue.
02
Demographic Realities Creating Need for More Workers
An unprecedented demographic shift is creating a growing bipartisan agreement that the US urgently needs foreign workers in shortage industries to supplement the domestic workforce. While policymakers remain divided on whether to admit more foreign workers, the demographic challenges are not seriously disputed:
â–Ľ SHRINKING WORKFORCE
300K
PER YEAR
Working-age Americans (ages 20–64) lost annually without immigration.
Source: CBO
â–Ľ BY 2037
3.6M
FEWER WORKING-AGE
Projected drop in the working-age population over the next decade-plus.
Source: CBO
â–˛ GROWING 65+
13M
MORE RETIREES
Simultaneous growth in the population aged 65 and older.
Source: CBO
To maintain the current ratio of working-age adults to retirees—which supports a prosperous economy that benefits everyone, and core programs like Social Security and Medicare—the US will need 40 million more workers over the next 10 years than we're currently projected to have without any immigration. Without these workers, the economy will struggle, and core government programs face excruciating cuts.
03
Urgency Created by Enforcement
Current policy, according to existing statutes, is to deport all who are here without legal status or a pathway to it. The Trump Administration's highly publicized enforcement actions have led lawmakers to feel greater urgency for bipartisan legislative action to change those statutes. Many Democrats agree on the need to more effectively apprehend and deport those with criminal records. Many Republicans agree that long-term residents who have worked, paid taxes, and avoided crime should have a way to earn a form of legal status.
Three Reform Areas
Even with these developments, it is unclear what immigration legislation, if any, can pass. Still, three reform categories are under active consideration in Congress.
01
Securing the Border
Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) in July 2025, providing approximately $85 billion for border security. However, as a budget bill, it necessarily lacked policy provisions. Lawmakers, including Republican leadership, argue that additional legislation is needed to ensure future administrations keep the border secure.
02
Reforming Legal Pathways
There is a bipartisan effort to modernize the system for future legal immigration. This work focuses on updating the system to better identify those we want in the country to fill jobs when not enough US workers are available. The emphasis is also on ensuring temporary immigrant workers don't replace American workers, depress pay, and erode working conditions for both native and foreign workers.
03
Addressing the Undocumented Population
Congress is again considering reforms that address the 10 – 14 million people already here without legal status. One possible bipartisan path may involve a two-pronged approach: (1) deportation for some (particularly criminals), and (2) a pathway to earning some form of legal status for others under certain stringent criteria and conditions.
INCREMENTAL OR COMPREHENSIVE REFORM?Â
One important question is whether to reform the immigration system incrementally or comprehensively. The brief starts by asking you whether you support or oppose each individual proposal considered independently on its own merits, without making assumptions about what might be passed with it. At the end, we bring these threads back together: we describe a specific bipartisan compromise package—a comprehensive bill of the kind most likely to pass Congress today—and ask whether you’d support it. Â
As you consider the proposals independently, however, it’s useful to keep in mind the chief considerations for doing incremental or comprehensive reform.Â
Considerations Favoring Comprehensive ReformÂ
There are reasons to favor comprehensive reform on policy grounds. The three elements that organize the brief—border security, legal pathways, and status for the undocumented—can be compared to the three legs of a stool. In some ways, the system is arguably more stable if all three are reformed and working together. Â
Legislation that combines border security with reformed legal pathways for future workers is sometimes described as “fences and gates” immigration reform. Historical experience suggests that without “gates” (legal pathways), strong labor demand overwhelms even the stoutest “fences” (a secure border). Conversely, without secure “fences,” the “gates” can’t play their intended role of letting the country decide who enters and on what terms.Â
Read More - 1986 experience
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If effective fences and gates for future immigration are established, that still leaves the question of the 10 – 14 million who are already here. Both leaving them all here in limbo and deporting them all seem unfair and untenable in several ways. Instead, many believe that at least some of those who came here as children or who have been here working productively without committing crime should be given a chance to earn some sort of status. Many also believe that the most dangerous among undocumented immigrants should be deported. Â
There are also reasons to favor comprehensive reform on political grounds. The policy case for doing all three may itself help build political support. Comprehensive reform creates opportunities for smart compromises. Combining multiple priorities in one package gives lawmakers room to trade: Democrats can win provisions they care about by accepting Republican priorities, and vice versa. Single-issue bills offer no such trades, which is part of why each of the brief’s major topics has stalled on its own for decades.Â
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Considerations Favoring Incremental ReformÂ
On the other side, there are reasons to favor incremental reform on policy grounds. Comprehensive reform may be too complex to do all at once. The policy proposals in each of the brief’s three areas involve complicated policy choices, trade-offs, and expertise. And the brief by no means covers all of the issues in each category. Bundling them all together can stretch lawmakers thin and make it difficult to fully weigh the merits of each provision. Incremental reforms also make course correction easier—if a particular reform isn’t working in practice, it can be adjusted without unraveling a larger package. Â
There are also reasons to favor incremental reform on political grounds. It’s an extreme understatement to say that it’s been difficult for Congress to agree on comprehensive reform; three serious attempts over the last 30 years have failed. The broader the legislative package, the greater the risk of crossing red lines that various groups won’t cross. The policy advantages of comprehensive reform are of no practical use if it can’t be passed. From this perspective, it may be wiser to focus on the most achievable elements first. It may be easier to build coalitions around the most promising proposals that can pass legislation and finally get us on a path of actual improvement to a system almost no one supports. Â
Organization of the Brief
This brief is organized to help you reach your own informed opinion about the challenging immigration reform questions. It begins with proposals to maintain a more secure border into the future. It then moves to effective legal pathways, before moving on to proposals for the undocumented population already living in the United States. It concludes with questions about comprehensive reform that would include all three categories.
As you consider each proposal, it's useful to consider it relative to your ideal for the US immigration system. Even more relevant to determining whether you support or oppose a proposal is whether you believe it would improve a flawed current system.
BORDER SECURITY
We’ll start with proposals to build a better fence to secure the border. The proposals that Congress is actively considering include literal physical barriers, deploying technology along the border, and changing the policies by which immigrants can request asylum at the border.
Before the 1960s, it had been relatively easy for the US government to fulfill its fundamental role in securing our borders from illegal entry. Securing the southern border has become much more challenging since then.
MORE ILLEGAL CROSSINGS
From 1960 to 1980, the number of encounters with immigrants attempting to cross the southern border without authorization rose from hundreds per year to about 800,000, as shown in the chart. From 1980 to 2020, the number of encounters varied considerably year to year. From 2020 to 2023, we experienced the most dramatic increase in our history. Border encounters increased from under half a million in 2020 to a record 2.4 million in 2023. Since then, encounters have declined nearly to the pre-1960 levels. The turnaround began in 2024, the last year of the Biden Administration, when the numbers dropped to one million. In 2025 and 2026, under the second Trump Administration, the pace dropped to less than 500,000 per year.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) provided $85 billion for border security to help achieve the current levels. Since it necessarily changed little about border security policy as a budget bill, future administrations could significantly change course. Now, Congress is considering legislation to establish a lasting, effective fence.
BORDER SECURITY AND ASYLUM
The goal of more permanent border security necessarily raises the issue of asylum reform. The system that allows immigrants to request asylum so that they can stay in the US because of their fear of persecution if they returned to their home country was established in 1980. Since then, asylum requests have shifted from a rare legal safety net into an important driver of border activity. When asylum rules are relaxed, they act as a magnet, encouraging migrants to surrender to Border Patrol agents in hopes of being released into the US pending a court date. When those rules are tightened—through stricter eligibility or immediate removals—border encounters drop.
The Biden Administration’s relaxation of several asylum restrictions from the first Trump Administration contributed to the surge in border encounters from 2021 to 2023.
Three other factors contributed to the surge in that period even more.
- Unemployment Pull from the North—Historically low levels of unemployment in the US created a strong demand for additional workers.
- Growing Unemployed Working-Age Population Push from the South—Growth in the number of working-age people without jobs during a time of unusually high economic and political instability in many Latin American countries propelled workers to seek jobs in the US at historic levels.
- End of COVID Pandemic—The lockdowns and border closures suppressed migration, creating pent-up demand that was released with the pandemic’s end.
In response to the border crisis, the Biden Administration reversed course and tightened asylum limits in 2024. Those measures, followed by even tighter Trump Administration asylum restrictions in 2025 and 2026, have contributed to the current low levels of border incursions.
We now turn to specific proposals to secure the border beyond the Trump Administration. We start with the literal fence, move to technological protections, and conclude with asylum reform.
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