New Essay: Making progress on immigration requires compromise

A practical path to lasting freedom and prosperity

I have a new essay in Reason Magazine arguing that making progress on immigration requires compromise (I didn’t choose the header or the cover image). I start with a simple idea: even defining progress on immigration is hard compared to most other issues, since people disagree not just on facts but on desired outcomes.

Still, there is broad agreement on attracting skilled immigrants and on what I call “demonstrably beneficial” immigration more generally. So I also offer a more concrete set of metrics where agreement already exists, whether explicit or not:

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.

In the piece, I go into each of these categories in more detail, with a particular focus on state capacity, since it enables most other goals that voters and experts may share, regardless of their current stance on immigration. This list isn’t meant to be exhaustive, though, and I’d love to hear from readers—what other overlooked areas do you think could win broad agreement and move the immigration debate forward?

I also want to say it was refreshing to work with a libertarian publication on trade-offs that may feel uncomfortable to even mention among some pro-immigration or freedom advocates. I appreciated Reason’s willingness to adjust tone and framing in the spirit of the essay itself. There’s a growing appetite across the political spectrum for pragmatic compromise, and I hope more people start to see it as the path forward, regardless of their current convictions on any particular issue. As I mention in the end:

[T]he 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.

Make sure to read the full piece!