Toward a Positive Vision for Immigration Policy in 2026

As we close out 2025 and head into 2026, it’s easy to feel stuck and demoralized. The headlines about immigration enforcement are relentless, and for those of us who care about immigrants and their families, much of our energy has gone toward reacting: tracking deportations, documenting abuses, sounding alarms. But reaction is not a strategy. And if we spend the next year only playing defense, we will have squandered the opportunity that 2026 presents.

That’s why I was so glad to sit down with Andrea Flores, a former White House and DHS official who spent 15 years working on immigration policy from inside the government. Andrea now writes at America’s Promise here on Substack, and her recent piece, “Out with the Old, In with the New,” is exactly the kind of forward-looking vision we need right now. Our conversation explored why the old framework of “comprehensive immigration reform” has run its course, and what it might look like to actually win on immigration again.

Andrea’s central argument is that we’ve been selling the same policy vision since 2013, and the politics have only gotten harder since then. Instead of sweeping bills that try to fix everything at once, she makes the case for targeted, understandable proposals that connect to real problems Americans are experiencing: spouses of U.S. citizens trapped by bureaucratic barriers, childcare centers closing for lack of workers, dairy farms and restaurants losing the employees they’ve trained.

These aren’t abstract policy debates; they’re kitchen-table issues that Americans can understand and get behind. And framing immigration as a prosperity policy rather than a problem to be managed is, in Andrea’s words, both factual and emotionally compelling in a way that can actually compete with the politics of fear.

We also talked about what it was like to work inside the government on these issues, what lessons came out of the Biden administration’s first year, and how 2026’s primaries offer a real opportunity to ask candidates: Do you have an immigration vision?

If you’re looking for something to carry into the new year beyond the doom scroll, I’d encourage you to listen to our conversation, read Andrea’s post from this week, and be sure to subscribe to her work, too. Her Substack will be an essential hub of positive visioning as we move into the next daunting election year. Thank you, Andrea R. Flores, for your time and generosity.