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After my recent column on ICE and migration ran, it attracted nearly seventy comments within a day or two, many of them passionate, angry, supportive, dismissive, ideological, conspiratorial, and occasionally thoughtful. What they mostly were not, however, was engaged with the two central arguments of the piece.

That may not be surprising, because this subject is rarely approached calmly anywhere. It is also not a purely American issue. In Ecuador, almost every family we come into contact with has relatives living in the United States, some documented, some seeking asylum from claimed persecution in Ecuador, and some not documented, but hoping to become so eventually. You cannot spend much time here without noticing that many taxi drivers in Cuenca learned their professional English picking up phrases like “good afternoon” and “where you wanna go?” while working in Manhattan, Miami, or Minneapolis, and Western Union transfers, absences overseas, return visits, and uncertain legal status are woven into everyday life here.

This is not an abstract debate at all, but something that runs through many Ecuadorian households and something that almost every Ecuadorian has an opinion about.

The two central points of my original column were these: first, that immigration in the United States is fundamentally a labor and employment issue, and second, that America has no properly worked-out system for matching workforce needs with legal migration pathways and work permits.

Naturally, hardly anybody who commented on the article wanted to talk about either of those issues.

Instead, the discussion drifted into familiar territory: riots versus protests, sanctuary cities, opinion polls, presidential motives, personal insults, European bureaucracy, masked agents, fascism, conspiracy theories, the alleged moral failings of entire continents, and the root causes of the fall of the Roman Empire. All of this may be emotionally satisfying, but none of it explains why the same problem keeps returning decade after decade.

For roughly twenty years now, under presidents from both parties, the United States has relied mainly on enforcement, detention, and deportation, expanding ICE, increasing budgets, intensifying raids, softening them, then intensifying them again. Millions of people have been removed under administrations of very different political colors, using very similar tools, while the underlying situation has remained stubbornly unchanged.

If enforcement alone were the solution, it would have worked long ago.

What has remained constant, and is rarely discussed honestly, is that large parts of the American economy depend on non-citizen labor, especially in agriculture, meat processing, construction, hospitality, cleaning, caregiving, food service, and landscaping. These industries do not function without migrant workers, however uncomfortable that fact may be for politicians on either side of the aisle.

Employers need workers, workers come because there is work, and when there is no realistic legal pathway, an informal system fills the gap. That system rewards dishonesty, subcontracting tricks, shell companies, wage theft, unsafe conditions, and fear-based control over people who have very limited ability to defend themselves.

Raids may ramp up the climate of fear for a while, but they do not change the way the world turns.

This is not a new story, nor is it unique to the present moment.

In the 1950s, the U.S. launched Operation Wetback, a mass deportation campaign that removed hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers, only to see agriculture suffer, labor shortages follow, and informal hiring quietly resume within a few years.

In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, granting amnesty to nearly three million undocumented migrants while promising tougher employer enforcement. The amnesty worked, but the enforcement did not. Employers adapted, documentation became more elaborate, and the shadow labor market returned.

In 1980, the Mariel boatlift brought about 125,000 Cubans to Florida in a matter of months, producing panic, headlines, and dire predictions. Within a few years, most were working, communities had adjusted, and the economy had absorbed them.

Each episode followed the same pattern: dramatic political action, moral outrage, temporary disruption, and then a slow return to economic reality.

What is also often ignored is that the United States is still bound by international law. It is a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees and the 1967 Protocol that expanded its scope, agreements that commit signatory states to offer protection to people fleeing persecution and conflict. These obligations are rarely mentioned in modern political speeches and almost never discussed honestly in public debate, even though they remain legally binding.

You cannot sign international treaties, benefit from global influence, and then pretend those obligations do not exist when they become inconvenient.

Today, other countries facing similar pressures are responding more pragmatically.

Canada and Australia, while far from perfect, operate regulated systems that license employers, require proper contracts and tax compliance, impose real penalties for abuse, and issue visas in line with labor demand rather than political theater.

This week, Spain announced that it will allow around half a million undocumented workers to regularize their status, provided they can show brief residence and a clean criminal record, a decision driven by the simple recognition that their labor is needed and that pretending otherwise serves no one.

Spain is not becoming lawless. It is acknowledging reality.

A serious American reform would begin from the same premise, but it would also require detailed, modern legislation rather than slogans.

It would mean establishing licensed and supervised systems for employers, employment agencies, colleges, and universities that recruit or sponsor foreign workers and students. These institutions would be required to report real labor needs, comply with contracts and wage rules, and participate in transparent planning processes at state and federal level.

It would involve regular assessments of workforce shortages by region and sector, including the role of international students and temporary workers in hospitals, farms, universities, hotels, and research centers. Jobs would have to first be advertised domestically, with preference given to qualified U.S. workers, before visas were offered abroad, and work permits would be linked to enforceable labor standards rather than informal arrangements.

Enforcement would focus on large-scale abuse, trafficking, and corporate fraud rather than theatrical raids on kitchens and fields, while heavy penalties would apply to companies that hide behind contractors. Faster, simpler, realistic work visas would replace decade-long backlogs, and basic labor protections would reduce fear and dependency.

Such a system would not 100% eliminate informal migration, because nothing ever will, but it would shrink the shadow economy, reduce exploitation, and make enforcement more targeted, credible, and defensible and would signal to the rest of the world that the Wild West has finally been replaced by the mild Midwest.

It would also drain much of the poison from today’s politics.

At present, immigration policy swings wildly every few years, with one administration tightening, the next loosening, each accusing the other of cruelty or chaos, while public trust erodes, communities are put under stress, workers live in fear, and employers operate in permanent legal gray zones.

Meanwhile, vegetables still need picking, chickens still need plucking and gutting, hotel toilets still need cleaning, and elderly people still need caregivers.

No amount of rhetoric changes that.

I have not argued that borders do not matter, nor that laws should be ignored. I am arguing that enforcing expired visas at gunpoint without reform obviously does not work very well and has failed repeatedly under presidents supported by people on all sides of the political spectrum, a failure that becomes obvious when viewed over the decades since 1986 rather than through the lens of a single election cycle.

After half a century of crackdowns, amnesties, moral panics, and political theater, it seems reasonable to ask whether a regulated, economically honest system might serve everyone better, including citizens, employers, migrants, and communities alike.

Until that question is faced seriously, there will be the same arguments, in the same tone, with the same frustration, every few years, with only the names and slogans changing. America is capable of doing better.