Alex Nowrasteh

President Trump said that he wants a merit-based immigration system that “nations around the world, like Canada, Australia, and many others have.”

Border apprehensions of illegal immigrants are substantially down in the first few months of the Trump administration. In fact, the border apprehension figure for the month of March is only 16,600, the lowest monthly figure...

The United States allows in about a million lawful permanent residents a year, the largest number of any country, but that is a small percentage of the almost 325 million people who already live in the United States – about...

Last week Cato published a new immigration research and policy brief called “Criminal Immigrants: Their Numbers, Demographics, and Countries of Origin” that estimates the illegal immigrant incarceration rate—a subject lo...

We need a ground-up rethinking of our entire immigration system. A new system ought to be flexible, embrace America’s traditional openness, and have clear and simple exclusions that are easily enforceable.

Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and David Perdue (R-GA) recently introduced the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act.  If it were to become law, RAISE would cut legal immigration by 50 percent over the...

President Obama just ended a decades old policy that allowed escapees from Communist Cuba to enter the United States without a visa. Known as “wet feet, dry feet,” it allowed Cubans who showed up at America’s borders to...

We don’t know how John Kelly will attempt to tackle the issue of illegal immigration besides support for more border security.  If he wants to be known as the man foremost responsible for ending illegal immigration in modern...

Donald Trump’s campaign has certainly galvanized feelings of nationalism and patriotism.  John Fonte and John O’Sullivan even wrote that Trump’s election victory represent a “return of American nationalism.”  It’s no...