Replacing Chaos with Order, Emotion with Institution: A Governance Strategy for Strengthening Foundations and Stabilizing the Economy
The recent riots in Los Angeles triggered by ICE immigration enforcement operations have once again thrust America’s long-festering immigration crisis into the spotlight. However, this chaos not only exposes the failure of current policies but also reveals a dangerous political falseness: in our polarized discourse, immigration discussions too often devolve into confrontation and emotion, rather than reality-based rational debate. Facing the stark choice: mass deportation of tens of millions of illegal immigrants is not only prohibitively expensive but an impossible mission to execute, one that would only push these communities entirely into opposition to the right, setting the stage for future Republican electoral defeats. Yet unconditional amnesty would be tantamount to actively expanding the left’s voter base and accelerating demographic replacement, transforming American society from one inclined toward consensus-based decision-making into one more easily swayed by emotional manipulation—equally a dead end leading to Republican collapse and the erosion of our nation’s foundations. Conservatives must confront this crisis head-on and seek a pragmatic, responsible governance strategy that ensures long-term national stability.
I. Problem Analysis: The Triple Dilemma in Reality
America’s current immigration problem has evolved into a complex web of systemic challenges whose impact extends far beyond our borders.
1. Enforcement Dilemma: Mission Impossible
Mass deportation of tens of millions of illegal immigrants who have begun putting down roots in America is far beyond the government’s enforcement capacity. This represents not just an enormous administrative burden but reveals procedural flaws in actual implementation. Due to time constraints and massive scale, many individuals who have lived long-term in America, maintain steady employment, and follow the rules paradoxically become priority targets for enforcement actions because their behavioral patterns are more predictable and they’re easier to apprehend—while actual violent criminals remain hidden for extended periods. This objectively selective enforcement is not only inefficient but sparks widespread humanitarian controversy.
2. Economic Dilemma: Contradicting National Strategy
Forcibly severing ties with tens of millions of illegal immigrants who have integrated to varying degrees into America’s economic and social fabric would cause massive disruption to both society and the economy. These populations play indispensable roles in many industries; mass deportation would lead to labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, asset devaluation, and declining consumer spending. In the current context of global economic uncertainty, with America actively pursuing industrial policies to restore domestic manufacturing amid trade wars, artificially weakening our labor base and consumer market clearly contradicts our national strategy.
3. Political Dilemma: An Unsolvable Dead End
The immigration issue has become a microcosm of America’s entrenched left-right discourse divide, with its deeper threat lying in the fundamental reshaping of our nation’s political ecosystem. Under the current system, whether through impossible deportations or automatic citizenship expectations following amnesty, both paths would accelerate demographic changes, gradually replacing our population base that tends toward rational dialogue and consensus decision-making with groups more easily dominated by specific ideologies or emotions. This potential demographic replacement has created policy gridlock and is fundamentally tearing apart American society’s unity and cohesion, even threatening the consensus-based decision-making foundation upon which our republic depends.
II. Principled Framework: Where Conservatism Meets Political Reality
Conservatives should demonstrate not blind rigidity but wise governance based on reality. To resolve this crisis, we must learn from history and face political reality head-on.
1. The Conservative Tradition of Amnesty: Reagan’s Pragmatism
Immigration amnesty is not the exclusive domain of radicalism but part of America’s conservative political tradition. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, granting amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal immigrants. Reagan’s pragmatic approach proved that amnesty policy itself doesn’t conflict with core conservative values—rule of law, order, family values—the key lies in how it’s designed and implemented.
2. The Deeper Lessons of the Reagan Model: Votes That Cannot Be Bought and Future “Time Bombs”
Reagan’s amnesty policy embodied conservative pragmatic spirit, but history also provides deeper lessons. Some at the time expected that “amnesty could secure long-term voter loyalty from beneficiary groups,” but this political fantasy ultimately proved ineffective. Most studies show that even under a respected Republican leader like Reagan, amnesty policy failed to significantly change the partisan preferences of beneficiary groups and their descendants. More critically, without simultaneous political reform, amnesty objectively laid the groundwork for America’s long-term leftward drift. When millions of newly legalized immigrants and their descendants automatically gained voting rights through the current “birthright citizenship” system, they tended—for various reasons—to support Democratic policies and candidates as a group, undoubtedly expanding the Democratic Party’s political base and accelerating demographic replacement. This is precisely the “unsolvable dead end” conservatives face today: refusing amnesty means deportation remains hopeless while pushing these groups entirely into opposition; yet, granting amnesty amounts to digging our own grave, accelerating the nation’s “comprehensive leftward shift”. This reminds us that the core of solving immigration problems is no longer just managing population but saving the foundation of long-term national stability—the population base for consensus decision-making—rather than short-term political benefit exchanges, and certainly not burying “time bombs” of “comprehensive leftward shift” that would shake the nation’s foundations. The only way to break this deadlock is to properly stratify citizens and residents.
III. Core Concept: Grace, Not Punishment—The Political Wisdom of a Two-Tier Identity System
We must recognize a basic fact: for tens of millions facing deportation threats, any form of legalization represents enormous grace, not deprivation of rights. Moving from “illegal status facing deportation” to “legal resident status” represents a massive elevation of rights, not political exclusion. When we provide life rafts to drowning people, they care about survival, not the luxury of the life raft. The two-tier identity system proposal is based on this realistic assessment and political wisdom, aimed at providing these populations with a path to redemption from illegal to legal status while avoiding impact on core national interests.
IV. Institutional Design: The “Two-Tier Structure” of Legalization
Facing reality, America needs not more confrontation but a comprehensive solution that can restore order and rebuild consensus. This requires establishing a clear, sustainable identity management system that serves the nation’s long-term interests.
1. Reconstructing Core Principles: Returning Citizenship to Its Value as “Political Privilege”
The fundamental error of the current immigration system lies in conflating the essential differences between “right of residence” and “citizenship”. This blurred definition has led to the simplistic thinking of “residence equals naturalization, naturalization equals voting,” seriously damaging the nation’s governance capacity and political stability.
- Right of Residence: Merely the legal qualification allowing individuals to live, work, and receive legal protection within specific territory. It should not automatically confer the power to participate in political decision-making.
- Citizenship: Should be viewed as the supreme political privilege, representing not just legal status but symbolizing deep loyalty to the nation, recognition of consensus decision-making traditions, and acceptance of social responsibility. Citizens bear the obligation to maintain electoral systems and the nation’s future, exchanging this for the right to participate in national governance.
To return to the republic’s original form and restore the dignity of citizenship and its meaning as the nation’s cornerstone, future institutional reform must decisively separate these two concepts. A sound immigration system should allow legal residents to live, pay taxes, and enjoy legal protection in America, but they should not automatically enjoy voting and political participation rights.
2. Two-Tier Identity System: Residents and Citizens
2.1. First Tier: Resident Status (From Undocumented to Legal)
Those meeting qualifications (entered before January 1, 2025; no violent criminal record; passed background checks; paid back taxes and penalties of approximately $5,000+) would first receive some form of temporary legal resident status. This status aims to bring formerly illegal residents into the legal framework, ending their “undocumented” state and providing basic social stability. All residents, regardless of their initial legalization pathway, must fulfill tax obligations and, upon meeting conditions, may further obtain permanent resident status. Conditions for permanent resident status include:
- Accumulated 5 years of tax records without criminal history
- Completed 2 years of mandatory service (such as military, law enforcement, or border support work) to demonstrate contribution and loyalty to the nation
All residents (including transitional legal residents and permanent residents) enjoy residence and work rights, possess US nationality, may apply for US passports, but permanently lack voting rights and cannot hold any politically influential public office. Their status is to stabilize economic and social order, not expand political participation.
2.2. Second Tier: Citizenship (Strict Threshold Mechanisms and Non-Automatic Inheritance)
Citizenship itself is a political privilege, not a right that can be accumulated through time or automatically obtained through bloodline. Those who obtained any legal status through amnesty pathways may never apply for citizenship. This ensures that solutions to historical problems don’t transform into future political hazards. Citizenship acquisition is limited to those who entered America through normal immigration channels (such as skilled immigration, investment immigration, family reunification, etc.) and obtained permanent resident status. They must fulfill strict assessments and civic duties (such as long-term mandatory service) before qualification. Citizenship acquisition must be an active application process with strict threshold mechanisms, including understanding and commitment to national history, the Constitution, language, and consensus decision-making traditions, not merely automatic acquisition based on birthplace or accumulated residence time. Citizenship is no longer an automatically inherited right. Regardless of parental status, all future descendants born within US territory will have their citizenship acquisition return to a rigorous application and assessment mechanism. This affects not only new immigrant groups but profoundly impacts how existing US citizens’ descendants inherit citizenship qualifications.
Family Reunification: Under this two-tier framework, family reunification policies will follow existing standardized processes for legal residents. Residents may apply for resident status for their immediate family members (spouses and minor children), but these family reunification residents similarly don’t enjoy citizenship rights and must comply with the aforementioned resident obligations and restrictions. This ensures balance between humanitarian considerations and political stability.
3. Deep Political Wisdom: Avoiding “Nations Within Nations” and Rebuilding Integration Mechanisms
Europe’s immigration policy failures teach us that unconditional rights grants often lead to new immigrants lacking integration motivation, ultimately forming parallel societies. Second and third-generation immigrants become even more alienated from mainstream society. This proposal aims to rebuild healthy integration mechanisms:
- Parents will more actively help their children learn English and understand American culture, as this is the clear path for their descendants to achieve the American dream of citizenship
- Second-generation immigrants have a clear goal of “becoming American,” avoiding the directionless “entitlement” mentality and promoting genuine cultural identification
This doesn’t create separation but promotes genuine integration, avoiding European-style immigrant isolation problems and creating clear goals and motivation for the next generation of immigrants to integrate into mainstream society.
V. Political Design: Combating Citizenship Abuse, Ensuring Stability
The core political design of this proposal lies in thoroughly and permanently severing the connection between status legalization and political participation rights. This is the only legitimate way to break through the current “lose-lose deadlock”. We face reality: impossible deportations and unconditional amnesty both accelerate the nation’s “comprehensive leftward shift”. Therefore, the only way to break the deadlock is to legitimately stratify “residents” and “citizens”. The tens of millions who obtain status through amnesty pathways, regardless of how long they live in America or how much they contribute, will never be able to vote or hold public office. This fundamentally eliminates concerns about immediate electoral impact, ensures that conservative political foundations and America’s consensus decision-making traditions won’t be compromised, maintains political stability and existing political arrangements, and saves the nation from the crisis of “demographic replacement”. This resolves the “aftereffects” of Reagan’s amnesty—avoiding the objective effect of expanding the mass base for specific parties, truly returning immigration policy to the level of national governance rather than short-term political benefit exchanges. Simultaneously, this provides conservatives with a “both tough and humane” political option, avoiding the extreme imagery and political backlash of mass deportation. More importantly, groups facing deportation threats will be the strongest supporters of this policy—because it saves their lives and their families’ lives.
VI. Legal and Humanitarian Foundation
This proposal balances legal principles with humanitarian concerns, addressing criticisms from all sides:
1. Legal Basis: Reaffirming Sovereign Nations’ Right to Define Citizenship
Reinterpreting the Fourteenth Amendment: This proposal would promote reinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment clause “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” emphasizing that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” should include complete allegiance and duty fulfillment to national sovereignty, not mere physical presence. This neither violates the jus soli framework nor provides new legal space for abolishing birthright citizenship.
Manifestation of National Sovereignty: Any sovereign nation has the right to define conditions for acquiring its citizenship to maintain its uniqueness, security, and cultural identity. Making citizenship a privilege rather than an automatic right is precisely how sovereign nations protect their interests.
2. Humanitarian Considerations: Dignity Within Order
Ending “Undocumented” Hardships: Granting legal status to tens of millions ends their long-term existence in shadows without basic legal protection—this itself is the greatest humanitarianism.
Guaranteeing Basic Rights: Legal residents still enjoy basic rights to work, residence, education, and healthcare—they simply don’t enjoy political participation rights. This protects individual dignity while maintaining social order.
Distinguishing Criminals: With reduced deportation pressure, law enforcement can concentrate on severely punishing violent criminals and firmly deporting them without amnesty, ensuring public safety while allowing the legalized population to truly begin integrating into society rather than being conflated with criminals.
3. Fairness of Threshold Mechanisms: Learning from Swiss Experience
Converting citizenship acquisition into a “threshold mechanism” may raise fairness concerns. However, this complexity is the necessary cost of reshaping citizenship’s seriousness. To ensure fairness, we should learn from countries like Switzerland, tightly binding civic duties with civic rights, viewing this as fundamental to maintaining national cohesion and social order. This emphasizes that all citizens should possess national consciousness and willingness to participate in public affairs, making citizenship acquisition both open and indisputably legitimate through clear, transparent, contribution-based standards.
VII. Technical and Political Feasibility Analysis
1. Technical Feasibility: Not Fantasy
Some question whether such a complex identity management system is feasible, but let’s realistically compare:
- This proposal’s implementation complexity is comparable to a national Voter ID system, or even lower, as it can rely on existing identity management infrastructure
- America already has mature identity management infrastructure (Social Security numbers, green card systems); modern database technology can fully support classified identity management
- The real obstacle isn’t technical capability but political will
2. Political Feasibility Analysis
Groups facing the threat of deportation will strongly support this plan, which offers them a legal path forward. It provides conservatives with a “tough but humane” political option, avoiding the extreme imagery of mass deportations and the political backlash they might provoke. By permanently severing citizenship rights, this plan eliminates concerns about the dilution of the Republican voter base, creating potential for gaining intra-party and voter support.
VIII. International and Strategic Perspectives
As a global leader, US domestic policy is never just about internal affairs. The resolution of the immigration issue should also be considered from a broader international and strategic perspective.
1. Avoiding Global Instability: Responsible Migration Management
When discussing the mass deportation of tens of millions of illegal immigrants, one must not only consider the chaos it would cause within the United States but also recognize the immense impact it would have on the countries of origin. Repatriating large populations who have become disconnected from their original social structures and may have no roots could lead to the collapse of social order, economic turmoil, or even humanitarian crises in those countries. Such instability would not only exacerbate global chaos but also, in turn, affect America’s global strategic interests, weakening its leadership and influence in international affairs. A responsible conservative government should possess this kind of macro strategic vision, avoiding global chain reactions caused by domestic policy shortsightedness.
2. Respecting Sovereignty, Becoming a Model of Law and Order Governance
Long-term, to fundamentally solve the problem of illegal immigration, the United States needs to re-evaluate its global role. Past attempts to export “democracy” have, for the most part, led to regional instability and power vacuums, indirectly fostering more refugees and illegal immigrants. A global strategy more aligned with conservative principles should be to respect the sovereignty of other nations and, through good governance within the United States, become a model of “law and order” and “stability.” By influencing unstable countries to establish sound governance systems, stable social structures, and predictable economic environments, the United States can reduce the motivations for people to leave their homes due to survival pressure or social turmoil. This is not only an effective way to reduce illegal immigration pressure but also a long-term plan to maintain global stability and U.S. national security.
IX. Conclusion: The Embodiment of Political Wisdom
The core logic of this proposal is to offer a clear social contract to groups facing deportation threats:
“Since you entered illegally, you are now given an opportunity for legalization, on the condition that your generation focuses on work and life, allowing your children to become full U.S. citizens through legitimate means.”
This is not punishment, but an opportunity for salvation and rebirth.
Final Effects:
- Social Order: Ending the long-term division caused by immigration issues
- Economic Stability: Maintaining the labor force base and consumer market
- Political Balance: Preserving the stability of the existing political landscape
- Cultural Integration: Promoting the genuine Americanization of the next generation
- International Image: Demonstrating America’s governance wisdom and humanitarian spirit
This is not merely an immigration policy, but a political wisdom vital to America’s destiny. It offers a third path to the United States facing a dilemma: neither a cold-blooded mass deportation nor an unprincipled political surrender, but a governance wisdom based on reality and focused on the long-term. Facing crisis, the choice for conservatives has never been political correctness, but the fundamental interests of the nation and its people.
