Even debates over small, incremental policy reforms are valuable in the context of borders.

The point is, we should treat immigration restrictions as time-limited responses to specific, articulable conditions, not as a default mode. To the extent that immigration might need to be restricted or regulated more closely in certain emergency circumstances, our concern must be to admit immigrants primarily on the basis of need, and the direness of the situation they will face if returned, not according to factors like nationality, wealth, education, or ability, which is how our U.S. system presently operates. All this, however, is the long game. We certainly can’t arrive at a more open immigration system overnight, and I think that there’s a hierarchy of intermediary policy goals that would alleviate some of the most unconscionable effects of our present system, while laying the groundwork for a future immigration system that looks entirely different. Here, I’ll outline several policy changes that would benefit immigrants who are already present in the U.S., and individuals who face serious dangers in their home countries. (Stay tuned for part three, which will deal with visa allotments, employment-based immigration, and admissions more generally.) Fiddly Legislative Fixes Given how messed-up our immigration system is on a large scale, it’s worth asking how much time we ought to devote to tinkering with the finer points of laws that we would be better off scrapping wholesale. Some people might say that these kinds of small fixes are a waste of energy, like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. But I disagree. In a disaster of this scale, you want some of your people making repairs to the leaky lifeboats, and other people working to contact bigger rescue vessels, because who knows which avenue will prove more successful before the whole mess slides into the sea. What I mean by “fiddly legislative fixes” are legal changes that wouldn’t result in any immediate, sweeping changes to what categories of people are eligible for immigration relief: rather, they might slightly alter the boundaries of those categories, and also ensure that people who are eligible for immigration relief aren’t barred from getting it for reasons that are totally outside their control.