Immigration reform takes center stage as Trump proposes merit-based system, census changes, and border security measures to fix America’s broken policies.
President Donald Trump needs to regain the public’s trust on immigration; the Supreme Court’s decision to rule on the president’s executive order ending birthright citizenship will allow him to do just that.
Win or lose, the White House can use the court’s decision to reignite the debate over immigration and propose common-sense improvements to our country’s broken system. Changes that should include no longer counting undocumented people in the census, ending the diversity lottery and initiating a merit-based admissions program.
President Trump was elected in part to end the immigration crisis created by his predecessor, President Joe Biden. The nation was horrified that Biden allowed millions of migrants to enter the country illegally. Voters were disgusted by scenes of chaos at the border; in December 2023 alone, some 300,000 people crossed into the United States illegally, largely unvetted for criminal histories or health issues. It was a national disgrace.
Trump, as promised, quickly secured the border, but his aggressive deportation policies are unpopular and his approval rating on immigration has plummeted into deeply red territory.
He needs to reset his immigration approach, which may prove critical to holding onto the historic inroads he and other GOP candidates made with Hispanic voters last year. Latinos who followed the rules to enter our country oppose illegal immigration; they do not like their neighborhoods threatened by Venezuelan gangs or their communities’ hospitals and schools overrun by undocumented migrants. But, they also don’t like seeing their long-standing neighbors picked up by ICE officers just because they are in the country illegally.
Birthright citizenship is a good reminder of how messed up our immigration rules are. The approach guarantees that anyone born on U.S. soil automatically becomes a citizen, regardless of the immigration status of their birth parents. The rule is opposed by those who consider it an enticement to illegal immigration, which it certainly is.
