Our immigration debate is trapped in a vicious cycle of anti-immigration and pro-immigration backlash. Anti‑immigration voices demand harsh restrictions, pointing to various possible threats, while pro-immigration voices push for more open borders, appealing to humanitarian obligations. And governments across the spectrum consistently fall short of delivering what any of these voters want. The result is paralysis: voters are upset about immigration because they see governments mismanaging it, and policymakers hesitate to reform it for fear of public pushback.
Yet freer mobility between countries has much potential to benefit us all—if we confront the trade‑offs honestly. The truth is, whether you view immigration as an opportunity or a problem, it can be managed far more effectively than it is today. This newsletter aims to highlight innovative, often‑overlooked solutions that make immigration both more functional and politically sustainable, alongside the best social science research behind these solutions.
From private refugee sponsorships to labor mobility partnerships, I’ll write about promising tools that expand legal pathways, improve lives, and minimize public backlash. I’ll also explore the real downsides of immigration and call out well‑intentioned policy failures that advocates should retire. Doing more of what clearly works and less of what clearly fails won’t “solve” our toxic immigration politics, but it can push the debate—and people’s lives—meaningfully forward.
Over the next few months, I will also commit to:
Breaking down regional case studies on successes and failures from encouraging student migration in Germany to New York City’s strained asylum response.
Showing what we know (and still don’t) about what voters really want, with explainers on conjoint experiments, issue salience, and various survey techniques.
Spotlighting the best new research on migration and public opinion—from DACA and populist backlash to climate migration and externalization programs.
Tackle hot debates in the migration and adjacent fields, like the claims that “abundance” through immigration is politically toxic or that the only way to make policy progress on immigration is not to talk about it.
Why making migration popular is an uphill battle
I’m a political science professor who has been thinking and writing about migration politics for more than a decade. My new book, In Our Interest: How Democracies Can Make Immigration Popular (stay tuned for a feature‑length summary very soon!), distills years of data and frustration into one core insight: no democracy has ever eased widespread immigration concerns without securing its borders and being selective about whom it admits. Persuasion through better messaging alone doesn’t cut it—what wins voters’ trust are better policies.
My research shows that public support rises only when policies are demonstrably beneficial—when ordinary citizens can easily see, in practical terms, how immigration serves the national interest. The benefits of such policies must be legible to all—conservatives and liberals, college‑educated professionals and high‑school graduates alike—and leave no mystery about who gains and why. Building that trust is hard, but losing it is very easy. Even Canada, often rightly praised for migration governance, sometimes faces pushback whenever people doubt the system’s payoff.
While I believe deeply in the transformative power of human mobility, I also think it can be so much better. My research also convinces me that a durable, broad‑based consensus on immigration requires compromise. Even the best possible message will not convert everyone. So getting to a better place isn’t just about sharper talking points—it’s about crafting policies that are popular by design.
Progress is still possible
During my recent presentations on my book tour across both sides of the Atlantic, these arguments resonated with audiences from tech executives to ivory tower academics, conservatives to progressives, even more so than before. Perhaps, pragmatism now feels more urgent than ever: far‑right parties are surging across Europe, and Donald Trump’s renewed crackdown looms in the United States. To the surprise of many, The Economist has declared the global asylum system unworkable.
Many advocates have asked me, “What exactly should we do next?” While my book articulates the main principle of making immigration popular by designing better policies, it leaves many practical aspects unaddressed since these details naturally depend on the context. What works for the U.S. might not work for Finland, but the logic of demonstrable benefits travels. That’s what Popular by Design will cover—starting from these broad principles and translating them into context‑specific, practical ideas of not just what immigration already is but what it could be.
If you’re interested in better immigration policies that actually win and keep public support, as well as the social science research behind it, I hope you’ll subscribe. If you want me to spotlight any particular policy or political quirk on immigration or adjacent areas, let me know, too. I look forward to the conversation!
Out of all the words here about immigration, you did not include or devote one iota of time to the starting of the process of immigrating, and that is where most of the major problems exist, and that is USCIS. And this only speaks to immigrating to the United States. Other countries have their own problems and issues as well for immigrating to their respective countries. But speaking to USCIS, it's an agency primed to treat people in the worst possible way by denying people opportunities to immigrate if they can, i.e., fail to dot an I or cross a T, back to the end of the line for you with RFE's. Add to it, the years of waiting while constantly being bombarded with forms, ambiguous questions, higher fees (recently doubled to provide a better service, only to end up providing a worse service) and a process that can take years depending on your country of residence, only to then go through more processes after being approved by being forced to do the same thing at the NVC stage. There, one must fill out even more forms, answer more questions, and pay even more fees (that also went up) and wait, depending on country, more than a year to get approved there after doing medical exams (fees recently doubled there) traveling to biometrics appointments (more fees) and then traveling to an interview, after which you could in fact be denied by a consular agent that just had a bad night and came in and denied everyone he interviewed for no cause whatsoever. Then, if you make it out of that you get your visa, but when you land in the United States, you now have to wait up to 160 more days before you get your greencard, which must be paid before you leave or after you land and get to your final destination. And if the address is an apartment or box number, USCIS will not add it to your card mailing, thus you will end up not getting it and having to wait 8 weeks for it to get returned to them only to have them mail it out again to you with the same problem not addressed, even though you made sure they corrected it. And, if your card gets lost, stolen or even damaged, it will take over 2 years to get a replacement card and cost you 540.00 USD to get it. And then, and only then, can you start your life. Is it any wonder people try to go a different direction? And what about those who took all the right steps and then see others just walk across and get handed papers to stay until xyz happens on their case? If you address immigration at all, start where they start, and that is at USCIS, and dig into that quagmire, because you'll find out quickly that this is where the journey to hell for immigrants begins.
Greatly looking forward! I would be curious for your take on what lessons the gulf states migration model has for the US and Europe. Could such an approach ( a very high level of temporary migration with no path to citizenship) be popular in a western democracy?