With crime or the economy, most people can recognize improvement even when they don't agree about what is causing a problem or how to measure it precisely. More job opportunities? That's progress. Fewer murders? Progress. More houses available? Progress. Immigration lacks a similarly shared yardstick. Headcounts of people admitted, hired, resettled, or removed mean different things to different observers.
What would it mean to define progress on immigration in a way that almost everyone, regardless of where they come from ideologically, agree it's a good thing? Most people, including those who are currently skeptical about immigration, tend to support freer movement over borders when it is demonstrably beneficial in terms of being orderly and well-managed, culturally compatible, and economically sound. Attracting more high-skilled foreigners, for instance, is so intuitively appealing that it was one of the few things both Trump and Harris voters agreed on before the 2024 election. At the same time, few people care about total numbers in the abstract, so cutting immigration on its own often does not resolve anyone's underlying worries about costs and the lack of control.
