A United States Customs and Border Protection Officer checks the documents of migrants, before being taken to apply for asylum in the United States, on the International Bridge 1 in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, Wednesday, July 17, 2019. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Ann Skeet is senior director of leadership ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Views are her own.
Publicly elected officials have an ethical duty to represent the interests of the people who elected them and to serve the common good—to find solutions to society’s challenges that work for all of society, not just some subset of people. How leaders serve the interests of the people also matters and, in fact, influences those interests. Ethical decisions poorly executed lead to unethical outcomes and execution failures are rampant in the American immigration system. They are so pervasive that to refer to it as a system is generous as the word tends to describe something that works.
A 25-year look at American sentiment on immigration reveals that the generally positive feelings Americans have about immigration dipped during the Biden administration. This dip contributed to the political rhetoric during the last election and an emphasis by the Trump campaign on immigration enforcement.
But recent polling shows that sentiments have changed again. According to a Gallup poll headline, the “Surge in U.S. Concern About Immigration Has Abated.” A record high 79% say immigration benefits the nation according to the poll, taken in June 2025. According to the poll’s summary, this “is consistent with the long-term pattern of more Americans viewing immigration as helpful than harmful to the country.” Since 2001, the percentage of people feeling immigration has positive effects has never fallen below 50%. The poll also revealed that many more Americans disapprove than approve of the way President Trump is handling immigration. In a Washington Post/IPSOS poll in September 2025, “the chaotic and sometimes violent” ICE raids were the “strongest issue motivating disapproval of the president.”
There is an understandable lag between leaders’ responses to shifts in public sentiment and policy changes. However, given the long-term generous feelings Americans have towards immigration, the disconnect is notable. In a September 23, 2025 address to the United Nations, President Trump railed against unchecked migration, accusing the UN of “funding an assault on Western countries.” “If you don’t stop people you’ve never seen before, that you have nothing in common with, your country is going to fail,” he said in his speech. This flies in the face of American history, a country built on waves of immigration, often driven by increased demand for labor. There have also been periods of resistance to immigration, typically centered on the sense that immigrants are threatening American’s employment prospects. We are currently emerging from one such period.
It is also true that over the past 25 years, while American’s have held generally positive feelings about immigration, legislators and appointed officials from both parties have struggled to write immigration laws and enact them effectively. One reason for this is that the last immigration reform, drafted nearly 40 years ago, was not implemented well.
That reform focused largely on workforce-related immigration (as opposed to asylum seekers and refugees), but failed to hold companies accountable for their end of the bargain. The Immigration Reform and Control Act, (IRCA) was passed in 1986, during the Reagan administration. It was a piece of legislation for a moment in time, providing a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants who had entered the country before 1982, introducing the first ever ban on hiring illegal immigrants, and adding to the budgets for Border Patrol and the Department of Labor. Essentially, it offered amnesty in return for enforcement. Reform at that time focused largely on addressing concerns about illegal immigration from Mexico by people looking for work. But worksite enforcement never materialized as companies caught in the crosshairs of the law were able to successfully bargain for relatively small fines and no criminal sanctions. This sewed distrust such that repeated attempts at new legislation in subsequent administrations have failed. Eroding the rule of law is a slippery slope and the result has been unevenly applied policy, opening the door to abuses of the system.
Elected officials have also failed to allocate adequate resources to support legal immigration. Congress has repeatedly mandated the development of an electronic entry/exit tracking system, which would alert officials when people visiting the country are overstaying their visas. But it is not yet operational, though some pilot programs have been conducted. There also exists an electronic system used to verify IRS and social security information when someone is hired. Only about half of new hires are screened through the system currently, however, since its use is voluntary. And the time to process asylum cases is often longer than the time asylum seekers are given temporary permission to stay in the country. Through no fault of their own, their status becomes illegal while they are waiting for their case to be reviewed.
One practice of ethical leadership is designing ethical systems—creating systems that encourage and motivate ethical behavior. If 79% of people polled feel immigration is a net benefit to our country, legislators should craft laws and enact policies that allow us to realize that benefit. But over the years, corporate and political leaders alike have suffered from ethical fading, which happens when people focus on some other aspect of a decision and lose track of its ethical dimensions. For employers, skirting the immigration laws has been recast as a business decision.
With political leaders allowing for the uneven application of the law, delays in processing requests, sudden turnabouts like the recent H1-B visa fees, the deployment of masked ICE agents, and the detention of asylum seekers on the way to legitimate appointments, people affected by the implementation challenges are motivated to behave unethically. Leaders from both parties have contributed to this laundry list of systemic failures.
Writing laws and implementing them effectively is hard work, particularly in today’s charged political climate. Presumably people seek office as lawmakers and elected officials because they are willing to do the work, which includes compromising with people across the political aisle.
The current state of immigration in America reflects this systemic failure and only attention to addressing these long-term failures will set it on its correct path. Let’s keep our attention and pressure on leaders to set and follow guidelines and implement them in such a way that motivates employers and immigrants alike to follow the rules.