There Is No Line for Many Immigrants Who Want to Come Here Legally. We’ve Got to Fix Our System.

During the Republican National Convention, speakers repeatedly tried to draw a contrast between asylum seekers who’ve crossed the southern border in recent years and immigrants who’ve entered the country through other channels. As Vivek Ramaswamy put it, legal immigrants like his parents “deserve the opportunity to secure a better life for your children in America.” Others deserve deportation, “because you broke the law.”

Elected leaders like to invoke this narrative that there’s an easy, “right” and a hard, “wrong” way to immigrate to the United States, because it makes the solution for fixing our broken immigration system seem simple. We just need more law-abiding people to get in the right line.

But the reality that is all too clear to immigrants navigating our byzantine system, and the lawyers and advocates who try to help them, is that there is no line to get into for a vast majority of people who wish to come to the United States. If the government is serious about securing the border, we have to make it easier for people to come through legal channels.

Our system of legal immigration isn’t set up to reward “good” choices. It is littered with arbitrary caps, bureaucratic delays and redundant processes that wring years of effort and money out of the precious few who qualify.

The current system is largely designed to favor those who have family ties here: namely, spouses, parents and adult children who are U.S. citizens and spouses and children of lawful permanent residents.