By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

How to Win on Immigration

Growing opposition to immigration is reshaping global politics. A promise to ruthlessly crack down on immigration helped Donald Trump win a return to the White House in 2024. In his first week back in office, Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border. Since then, his administration has ramped up immigration raids on businesses, threatened widespread deportation, and canceled temporary legal status for more than a million people living in the United States. Even as voters have soured somewhat on the administration’s extreme tactics, more Americans approve of Trump’s immigration policies than they do any of his actions in other areas.

The United States is not an outlier when it comes to public hostility toward immigration. Anti-immigration parties have gained popularity across the globe. Far-right parties, which often base their appeal on bashing immigrants and calling for tighter border controls, are now the most popular political force in Europe. Even center-left governments, such as that of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, have felt obliged to adopt hard-line immigration measures out of fear of losing further ground to the surging far right.

Defenders of immigration often argue that they have both the facts and the morals on their side. Immigration is not a zero-sum game: more immigration can boost local and national economies while improving the fortunes of people seeking better lives. Immigration advocates blame racial prejudice or misinformation for opposition to immigration and point to demagoguery that scapegoats vulnerable immigrants for economic and social problems. Although prejudice and ignorance likely play some role in shaping attitudes—and elite politicians are powerful forces in driving public opinion—the fact is that many citizens have genuine concerns about immigration that cannot be ignored. These include practical worries about whether the state can maintain order, promote fair job competition, and ensure that housing and public services do not become overstretched.

But these concerns do not mean that the only viable immigration policy is one that is as harsh as it is cruel. Finding a better political solution must start with understanding what drives public backlash to immigration. Many citizens are deeply troubled by mismanaged flows of people into their country. This concern stems from a failure of policy, not of messaging. Until decision-makers craft more targeted immigration policy that straightforwardly focuses on how immigrants can provide economic benefits, anti-immigrant attitudes and parties will continue to gain ground.

 

Not A Numbers Game

Most observers believe that governments should be more responsive to voters on immigration, but they often fail to understand what the public wants. One popular approach to addressing the anti-immigrant backlash is to set numerical targets, such as the United Kingdom’s goal of reducing “net migration.” This reflects a tendency to think of immigration as a numbers game. If governing parties assume that voters simply want fewer immigrants, they pursue policies to limit overall immigration. But research shows that even when mainstream politicians embrace hard-line positions such as capping the number of new immigrants, they still fail to win over disaffected voters.

Few people care about immigration numbers in the abstract. Research shows that there is no correlation between public opposition to immigration and actual immigration levels. Small inflows have sparked intense controversy even in cosmopolitan places—as happened, for example, with the arrival of tens of thousands of asylum seekers in New York City in 2022. By contrast, far larger waves, such as the European Union’s reception of millions of Ukrainians after Russia’s 2022 invasion or Israel’s acceptance of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union, drew less resistance. The lack of direct connection between public attitudes and the number of immigrants also helps explain why people living in areas with relatively few immigrants can still strongly oppose immigration when the issue is salient nationally.

The vast majority of voters in rich democracies don’t have especially fixed views on immigration across the board. Only ten to 20 percent of voters seek to either shut borders completely or open them to all comers. For everyone else, views on immigration depend on whether they believe the new arrivals will benefit the country and the specific details of immigration policies. If voters perceive new immigrants as helpful to their community and the country at large, they are likely to support more immigration and reject strict anti-immigration policies.

In other words, voters assess immigration not on whether it affects them personally, but on how it affects society. Citizens in the United Kingdom opposed immigration if they believed it harmed their fellow citizens. But they were willing to countenance new immigrants if they felt the country as a whole would be better off. Data from other countries reveal similar patterns: survey respondents presented with policies designed to benefit the country’s economy, such as attracting immigrants to fill labor shortages, are more likely to support them. A large majority of people in the United States—including Trump supporters who cheer on his harsh immigration crackdowns—favor attracting new high-skilled professionals who can help maintain the United States’ technological edge.

But the incoherence of current immigration polices has generated widespread distrust and opposition to immigration in the United States. This is not just a problem of unconvincing rhetoric. Rather, the immigration system is so convoluted and mismanaged that few people believe that immigration can possibly help the country thrive. Congress is stuck in a perpetual cycle of trying to broker a grand bipartisan solution of trading pathways to citizenship for border security, which then fails to satisfy anyone. The immigration system has become so broken—and immigration debates so toxic—that it can be hard for any voter to imagine how immigration could be in the U.S. public interest.

 

A Tale of Two Countries

In an ideal world, citizens would accurately perceive the exact benefits of an immigration policy on society. Or, with enough rhetorical swagger, a charismatic pro-immigration politician could provide them with facts that would convince them to support immigration policies whose benefits outweigh the costs to society. Unfortunately, politics is never so simple. But better designed policies can help build support for immigration.

Examples from a variety of wealthy democracies suggest that immigration policies focused on addressing a host country’s economic needs are more likely to win support than immigration policies rooted in humanitarian concerns. Consider Sweden, where far-right anti-immigration parties have swelled in response to recent waves of immigration. In the last few decades, Sweden has welcomed hundreds of thousands of refugees and their relatives without considering income or skills. Policymakers have provided generous support to newcomers as part of the country’s long-standing commitment to asylum and equality. Before 2000, Sweden did not even count immigration for work as a separate category in its immigration statistics.

The uncomfortable fact is that foreign-born people in Sweden, many of whom arrived as asylum seekers, on average pay less in taxes than the state spends on benefits to support them. These recent arrivals have stoked social tensions and raised concerns about the growing strain on the welfare state. Widely publicized violent incidents in immigrant neighborhoods became national flashpoints, which the public linked to a failure to integrate new immigrants into Swedish society. The sense that the immigration system is not working has fueled the rise of the Swedish Democrats, a far-right party, since the 2010s.

To be sure, economists have argued that accepting even low-skilled immigrants typically has knock-on effects that contribute to economic growth and benefit society. Immigrants can fill essential jobs and push native-born workers into higher-paying positions. They can help revive depressed communities in rural or post-industrial areas. But most voters cannot see these benefits, which, if they occur, are widely spread out and become evident only many years later.

Canada, by contrast, has built a system that admits large numbers of immigrants but is selective in doing so. To attract needed workers, the Canadian government uses a points-based approach that prioritizes people with rare or sought-after skills. Immigrants are admitted largely based on what they can contribute to society in the near term. The immigration process uses transparent criteria, such as education or regional demand for workers, which most voters can understand.

This policy has been remarkably successful. Canada has one of the highest immigration rates per capita in the world. Although some citizens have expressed vocal concerns about housing strain and student visa abuse, the Canadian government has moved swiftly to tighten immigration oversight and recalibrate admissions to maintain the trust of voters who still generally feel that the immigration system works for the country. As a result, anti-immigrant demagogues have gained little traction in national politics.

 

Targeted and Transparent

Determining who can immigrate based on a points rubric or where workers are needed may seem cold and unfeeling in the face of the deeply human imperatives that drive international migration. But such a policy is the only viable path to a more open immigration system. As my research shows, no democracy has ever managed to ease widespread immigration concerns without being very selective about whom to admit. Cross-national data also reveals that more selective countries such as Canada are admitting more immigrants of all kinds. In other words, Canada’s experience shows that when immigration policies are demonstrably aligned with national needs, they build public goodwill that can later extend to more vulnerable newcomers, including refugees.

A points-based system to admit “the best and brightest” is just one of many possible policies that can make immigration popular. Any policy that primarily focuses on solving visible national problems while signaling control of population flows is likely to make the public feel good about immigration, while those that explicitly sideline citizens’ interests are more likely to spur backlash, resentment, and populism. Immigration policies that focus on filling labor shortages, revitalizing struggling regions, or supporting family reunification of immediate relatives can all win public support.

Some politicians will always seek to exploit immigration anxieties, exaggerate problems, and spread misinformation. But it is easier to do in Sweden than in Canada. This isn’t because Canadians are more tolerant, nor is it because their leaders have found the perfect communication strategy to sway the population. Rather, it’s because voters can see that Canadian immigration policies work. The more that democratic governments take public concerns seriously and craft immigration policies that clearly benefit society in ways people can understand, the less space there is for xenophobic populists to claim that only they have the country’s interests at heart.

Responsible democratic governments serious about making immigration politically viable must also be willing to compromise. Immigration debates are often framed in binary terms—open versus closed, pro-immigration versus anti-immigration, nationalist versus cosmopolitan. But real solutions lie in which types of immigration policies countries pursue. Work-oriented policies, rather than humanitarian-based ones, are more likely to command broad support. Sweden has finally begun moving in this direction by introducing more selective immigration criteria. Inspired by Canada, Germany has also adopted its version of a points-based immigration system; in 2024, the country issued ten percent more skilled worker visas than the year prior.

Implementing a points-based system will not solve all problems, however. How such a system is designed matters for its success. Many so-called merit-based proposals—such as some of those Republicans have proposed in the U.S. Senate in the past decade—will not help if their primary aim is to find a new way to cut overall admissions. Instead, what builds public support is an immigration policy visibly tied to labor demand, immediate work authorization for new arrivals, and publicly reported benefits of immigration that voters can understand.

Advanced democracies could also adopt immigration policies tied to demonstrable regional needs. For instance, U.S. states could issue visas for workers who have the skills to meet a labor shortfall they face, such as licensed nurses for understaffed hospitals in Michigan or eldercare aides in Minnesota. These policies are most effective when visas are designed to be portable across approved local employers and the policies lay out a path to permanent status for workers after a period of sustained employment. Canada’s Provincial Nominee Program and Australia’s Regional Visa program are examples that can serve as models for U.S. policymakers.

Similarly, governments can establish bilateral employment partnerships to fast-track visas or permanent residency status for workers from a specific country with relevant skills. These partnerships can apply to fields with national labor shortages, such as eldercare, construction, engineering, or artificial intelligence. Australia and South Korea have established effective regional programs that prepare and train workers from other countries and then match them to verified jobs with wage floors.

These types of targeted, narrow immigration policies can help voters recognize immigration’s benefits to their country. The logic is the same as for dedicated taxes: voters often support tax increases when they know exactly how their tax money will be used. Voters do not necessarily want less immigration; they want immigration that they can see working. When citizens see immigration policies that are effective—bringing in doctors at understaffed hospitals, entrepreneurs who create jobs, or caregivers who support aging populations—they also see their communities benefiting.

The fact that targeted, well-managed immigration policies are more popular than purely humanitarian approaches does not preclude helping those in need. But efforts to assist refugees and displaced people must also demonstrate their benefits to society to avoid backlash. Governments are more likely to gain public support when they strictly enforce immigration rules, quickly provide accepted refugees with the right to work, match them to open jobs, and expand the role of communities and private companies in sponsoring new arrivals. When willing citizens and employers share the costs, everyone—including politicians, workers, and even asylum seekers—can also share in the benefits.

 

 

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