Immigration
Many people say they support immigration “the proper way,” without realizing how difficult the United States has made legal immigration. That misunderstanding sits at the core of the debate. We tell people to follow the rules, then maintain a system where the rules make legal entry nearly impossible for most of those who want to come.
Democrats have consistently argued for legal immigration. The difference is that they acknowledge reality: demand to immigrate to the United States vastly exceeds the number of legal slots available. When the system allows only a small fraction of applicants in, the predictable result is a steady flow of undocumented immigration. Enforcement alone cannot fix that. Until the system itself changes, the problem persists, no matter how much money is spent on crackdowns and deportations.
The current structure did not arise by accident. Modern U.S. immigration limits trace back to the Immigration Act of 1921, which introduced national-origin quotas. Those quotas were designed to preserve a white, European-dominated population. They did this by tying each country’s quota to how many people from that country already lived in the United States. Countries that were already well represented, mostly European, received larger quotas. Countries with smaller populations in the U.S., including many Asian nations, received very small ones. At the time, hostility was particularly focused on Chinese immigrants, and the system was highly effective at keeping them out. It was a legally elegant way to enforce racial exclusion.
Although the law has changed since then, the legacy remains. Today, the United States caps permanent immigration at roughly 675,000 visas per year. For a country of more than 330 million people and a global destination for opportunity, that number is extremely low. For people from Latin America, Africa, and much of Asia, the wait can stretch decades, effectively closing the door. For many, there is no realistic legal pathway at all.
This is why the phrase “just immigrate legally” rings hollow. The quotas are far smaller than the demand, and people do not stop trying to come simply because the system says no. That mismatch pushes people into undocumented status by default, not by preference.
Recent actions under Donald Trump made this clearer. His administration dramatically increased spending on immigration enforcement, imposed broad travel and immigration bans, and even restricted entry for people who had risked their lives assisting U.S. forces during wartime. More recently, rhetoric and policy proposals have extended beyond blocking new arrivals to questioning the status of people who are already legal residents or citizens. The message is not merely “follow the rules,” but “you are not welcome.”
At its core, the U.S. immigration problem is not about a refusal to obey the law. It is about a system designed to say no. That system was born out of racial exclusion, and while its language has softened over time, its effects remain. Democrats argue for expanding legal pathways because enforcement without reform wastes billions of dollars and targets people who are already working, contributing, and building lives here. Legalizing and regulating that reality is not radical. It is the logical response to a system whose limits no longer match the world we live in.