From the Desk of the CEO: The Myth of the “Right Way to Immigrate”

“Why don’t immigrants just come here legally?”

By Jeff Thielman, President & CEO of the International Institute of New England

Fairness is a defining American value. We believe that every system we navigate can and should be fair for all. This includes our immigration system. We want it to be just, orderly, humane, and mutually beneficial.  

More than two-thirds of immigrants admitted to the U.S. come to join family members already living here. Most others come for economic or education opportunities, or to seek refuge from persecution, violence, or natural disasters. All of these reasons align with long-standing U.S. values and priorities: supporting strong families, strengthening our workforce, driving innovation, and championing social mobility and freedom. Most Americans support immigration. They also believe that our system does not work the way it should.

When complaining about its flaws, many tend to direct their anger to those they believe do not follow our immigration laws and to a government that does not enforce them. This leads to discourse around the “right way vs. wrong way to immigrate” to the United States.

Here are five reasons why the “right way to immigrate” is not as clear as it may seem. 

1) For much of our nation’s history, any path was the “right path.”

The U.S. did not have a federal immigration system until the late 1800s. If your ancestors came to the U.S. during its first century, they did not have to “wait in line.” There was no visa system, no quota system, no centralized federal immigration authority, and no standardized “legal process” comparable to what exists today. If people could make it here from another country, they would likely be able to stay. Unlike today, the “right way” was simply to show up.

2) Even as immigrants helped build and strengthen the country, discriminatory laws denied many a “right way” to become American.

For as long as it’s been a country, the U.S. has received immigrants and refugees seeking opportunity and safety. Once here, they have helped build farms, factories, railroads, and cities. They have expanded the labor force, started businesses, enriched culture, and strengthened communities.

However, the federal government’s early attempts at establishing immigration laws were not designed to create a fair, orderly legal process that recognized the contributions immigrants were making, and no law was passed to allow people to enter for humanitarian reasons until after World War II. Early laws like the Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 excluded people based on race, ethnicity, and religion, barring entire groups from immigrating at all.

Laws like the National Origins Act of 1924 continued this approach by favoring some nationalities and religions and shutting others out. The problem was not that immigrants ignored the law; it was that the law denied them any “right way” to immigrate in the first place. It’s worth noting that the 1924 law led to an historically low immigration rate that coincided with a gradual decline in American innovation. 

3) After hard-won reforms, our system became more restrictive.

In the mid- to late 20^th century, the U.S. benefited from significant immigration reform. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and the Refugee Act of 1980 created a more humane, orderly system focused on keeping families together and offering safety and opportunity to people fleeing persecution. In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act championed by President Reagan provided a pathway to citizenship for millions of long-term undocumented residents who had been providing much-relied-upon seasonal and low-wage labor. These reforms were largely bipartisan and aligned with our values of freedom, fairness, and opportunity.

Over time, however, politics shifted, and for the past three decades, Congress has failed to pass laws needed to update and modernize our immigration system. Refugee ceilings rose and fell with political winds. Most temporary visas offered no lasting status. Many immigration applications faced decades-long backlogs. By the 21^st century, many immigrants who tried to “get in line” discovered that the “line” either didn’t move or didn’t exist for them at all. 

4) As more people were forcibly displaced from their homelands, our immigration system became less efficient.

In the last decade, the number of people forcibly displaced from their homelands because of violence and persecution has doubled from 60 million to more than 120 million. On average, an additional 21 million people around the globe are forced to leave the regions where they live each year because of weather emergencies. The “right way” for even a small number of these populations to enter the United States is full of obstacles.  

The United States, which has a proud history of welcoming people fleeing persecution, is home to people from every nation facing displacement, meaning there are millions of people longing to join family living in the U.S. Morever, with a declining birth rate and a need for talent at all levels of our economy, humanitarian populations have the potential to make important contributions to America’s growth.

The failure of multiple immigration reform efforts, however, has created a system marked by visa caps that don’t match real-world needs, immigration courts with multi-year backlogs, and under-resourced refugee and asylum processing. The result is a system of chaos and delay that frustrates those who deserve a “right way” to become American. 

5) Over the past year, our federal government has targeted ALL immigrants, including those who followed the law.

 Beginning in January 2025, the federal government has restricted or suspended nearly all remaining “right ways” to immigrate: 

• Family reunification was halted or delayed for hundreds of thousands through a new “travel ban” placed on more than 30 countries representing one-fifth of the world’s population.  

• More than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who were lawfully admitted to the U.S. for humanitarian reasons, including more than 12,000 clients served by IINE, had their statuses canceled, exposing them to sudden deportation from the United States.  

• H-1B skilled work visa fees increased from $1,500 to $100,000, as new vetting and processing changes made them harder to renew.  

• The refugee admissions program was suspended, stranding hundreds of thousands of extensively vetted humanitarian immigrants, and all asylum cases were paused, preventing immigrants fleeing violence and persecution from seeking protection in the U.S.

• Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from dozens of the world’s most troubled conflict zones was terminated without cause, revoking protections for hundreds of thousands of persecuted immigrants who put down roots in our communities.

• The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program was suspended, eliminating up to 50,000 visas made available annually for people from countries with low immigration rates. 

• Thousands of student visas were revoked for individuals who exercised their right of free expression by participating in protests, speaking out, or publishing their views online and in print.  

• Temporary work visas, once touted as the “legal way” for employers to hire much-needed immigrant workers, were hit with new restrictions, higher fees, and tougher enforcement. Employers began facing more risk and uncertainty, and many long-time seasonal workers lost access to legal employment. 

As immigrants already in the country lost their status, they became subject to deportation. Others who were lawfully present have been detained while attending routine appointments with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services or required immigration court dates. Unbelievably, some who passed all the tests to become U.S. citizens have been pulled out of line at their swearing-in ceremonies, unable to realize a dream they had pursued for decades.

Throughout the year, we have seen an increasing number of acts of extreme violence by immigration enforcement agents directed at American citizens and immigrants alike. Most Americans are dismayed that there appears to be no way to hold these individuals or the agency they work for accountable for well-documented extrajudicial activities.

Taken together, the policies and actions implemented in the past year send a chilling and decidedly anti-American message: even if you follow every rule, file every form, pass every background check, and wait patiently in line, the door to the U.S. can still be slammed shut in your face.  

Where do we go from here?

The good news is that the story isn’t over. Millions of Americans are disgusted and dismayed by our broken immigration system and by how law abiding, hardworking people are being treated by our government. 

As we know from IINE’s more than 100-year history, our nation’s commitment to welcome has persevered through many dark moments. Americans of every political background have come together throughout history to reform our immigration system when the law no longer reflected fairness, human dignity, or common sense. We can do so again by insisting on a system that is clear, lawful, humane, and effective: one that protects the persecuted, reunites families, rewards honest labor, respects due process, and gives people a straightforward and fair path to become an American.  

If there is any time to reform our system to enable people to immigrate to the United States the “right way,” it is right now.