Today’s immigration system is a broken promise

Adapted from a NumbersUSA newsletter (November 4, 2024)

Sixty years ago, a majority of Congress, and the president of the United States, vowed that they would not increase immigration, which was about 300,000 per year at the time. They broke that promise. And Congress has continued to break that promise every year for sixty years.

“On the Ballot: An Immigration System Most Americans Never Wanted”

The New York Times podcast “The Daily” offers up one of the best conversations about immigration that you will hear this year. After recapping the last hundred years of immigration policy, host Michael Barbaro and guest David Leonhardt arrive at a conclusion that proved to be prophetic before the 2024 election:

“Our current system is a broken promise,” says Barbaro. And “the entire Democratic Party and Brand has gotten to a place where the way it talks about immigration in general is as far away from working class America as one can imagine.”

Anyone who has read our books will be familiar with the broken promise of The Immigration Act of 1965. But Leonhardt and Barbaro are sharing that important history with a new audience who will hear – perhaps for the first time – how the top promise of the bill’s supporters was that they were not increasing immigration numbers; and how that turned out not to be true. Just two years later, the Times itself reported on the giant loophole lawmakers had created, saying “the extent of the change has surprised even those who fought hardest for it.”

Leonhardt and Barbaro talk about how the issue exploded in the 1980s and 1990s as legal and illegal immigration rose to new record highs.

They talk about Barbara Jordan educating the country on the fundamental difference between being “pro-immigrant” and “pro-immigration.”

And they talk about how American elites won out over the working class by making the 1965 loophole the new status quo.

“It simply is not sustainable in a Democracy, to have our elected representatives promise us one thing and then have it do the exact opposite of what they promised,” Leonhardt concludes.

“We’re not going to get to a sustainable immigration system until Washington reckons with the past failure to produce what it promised the American people it was going to produce.”

Washington’s broken promise makes housing less affordable, our communities less sustainable, and good jobs less obtainable. After decades of stagnant wages and a declining labor force participation rate, Congress should make it easier for Americans to find jobs, not harder.

For more from Leonhardt, read his recent column, “A Political Misdiagnosis.” Teaser: “Many voters of color are unhappy about the high immigration of the last few years.”