Conservatives Are Right On Immigration. We Just Need To Say It Better. 

I lock my front door every night. Not because I despise the families who live down the street, but because I cherish the three sleeping heads under my roof.

That impulse — to guard what we love — lies at the heart of the conservative case for a secure border. Too often, we let opponents cast us as people against something (immigrants) when, in fact, we’re actually: for our children’s safety, for working-class wages, for the fragile civic glue that lets strangers treat one another like neighbors.

Polling shows the mainstream agrees. Eighty percent of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, say Washington is mishandling the migrant surge, and immigration now tops Gallup’s “most important problem” list.

Conservatives are right to sound the alarm. We just need to explain that we’re doing so out of a sense of stewardship, not spite.

History backs the prudence of timed, purposeful immigration. During the American Revolution, foreign-born allies such as France’s Lafayette and Prussia’s von Steuben arrived with artillery drills, engineering skills, and diplomatic muscle that an infant republic simply lacked; without them, Yorktown’s surrender may never have come. The young nation welcomed outsiders for a specific mission: win independence and teach the citizen army how to march, aim, and dig trenches.

Fast-forward to the wreckage after Appomattox. The Civil War killed more than 600,000 Americans and scorched the rail lines meant to reunite the continent. Rebuilding demanded manpower the battered South and draft-depleted North no longer possessed. Thousands of Irish and German laborers laid the ties and pounded the spikes of the transcontinental railroad, knitting markets back together and jump-starting a devastated economy. Immigration in that moment was not charity. It was the scaffolding of national recovery.

The same pattern repeated when smokestacks crowded city skylines. By 1920, immigrants and their children supplied over half of all manufacturing workers — two-thirds if you count grandchildren — allowing American factories to roar at a scale native labor alone could not have matched. The message is clear: when the nation needs fresh shoulders, controlled immigration can be a patriotic tool.

Yet prudence also means knowing when the job is done. After the industrial boom settled, Congress judged the house full and passed the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, limiting visas to 2% of each nationality’s 1890 population, and virtually closing the door to Asia. Even a country famous for welcoming immigrants understood that unending inflows can outrun assimilation, depress wages, and strain public trust.

We are living through another such inflection point. The crisis is not a shortage of bodies but a shortage of babies. America’s fertility rate hovers well below replacement while housing prices, classroom head counts, and entitlement programs all creak under existing loads. Before we import millions more people, we should ask why so many citizens feel they cannot afford to start or grow a family.

Conservatives aren’t anti-immigrant. We are pro-family, pro-fairness, and pro-order.

When we do invite guests, we open the front entrance — offering lawful visas to people who follow the rules — rather than waving strangers through a broken window. Securing the southern border, finishing reliable fencing, and speeding up deportations for criminals are not acts of hostility but of hospitality rightly ordered. They protect wages for citizens at the bottom rung, preserve classroom resources for kids who are already falling behind, and honor the millions who waited in line.

Positive reform flows from the same ethic. Conservatives can champion faster asylum rulings so genuine refugees are sheltered quickly while false claims end swiftly. We can simplify legal work visas tied to market demand, not political patronage, and insist those visas come with a date certain to go home or a clear path to stay that includes English proficiency, tax compliance, and civic education. We can tighten E-Verify so employers cannot undercut American labor, and we can steer foreign aid toward church-based charities that fight cartel terror in place — reducing the push factors long before migrants reach the Rio Grande.

The test for our movement is tone. Instead of saying, “We’re against immigration,” say, “We’re for the American worker, for the rule of law, for assimilation strong enough to turn strangers into compatriots.” Tell the single mom in El Paso that a porous border lets fentanyl and traffickers hunt her kids. Tell the legal immigrant in Phoenix that respecting the line he stood in is an act of justice. Tell the Honduran father that a stable, self-confident United States is the best gift we can offer the world, because chaos here would slam every golden door shut.

Someday my children will ask what we did with the inheritance our grandparents secured — ordered liberty, decent wages, a common language of rights and responsibilities. I want to tell them we acted as guardians, not gatekeepers; that we said “yes” to a future large enough for newcomers and natives, but only after we repaired the foundation already cracking beneath our feet.

Conservatives are right on immigration because we refuse to trade short-term sentiment for long-term stability. We are not building a wall of hate; we are stewarding a border of love. And love, like any good father knows, sometimes says “stop” today so it can say “welcome” tomorrow.

Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast “We The People.” Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.