Wonks on Immigration

In National Review, Yuval Levin and Reihan Salam argue for a "middle ground" on immigration reform.  They argue that "essential components of the recurring elite proposal are a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants; more immigration by the highly skilled; and a guest-worker program, combined with other significant increases in immigration by less-skilled workers, to help employers hold down wages."  In contrast to this approach, Levin and Salam propose a "package of reforms [that] would consist of legalization without a path to citizenship for those here illegally, and a gradual rebalancing of legal immigration toward higher-skilled workers and away from extended-family unification, temporary workers, and lower-skilled immigrants."  Crucially, they find that increased enforcement should precede some of these reforms.

In the past, I've been skeptical about proposals for legalization without a path to citizenship, but Levin and Salam make some interesting points.