During the 1950s, the Bracero guest-worker visa program channeled migrants into a legal and regulated market, shrinking the illegal-immigrant population by 90 percent. The Border Patrol handed visas to migrant workers when they entered and sometimes even gave illegal immigrants work visas after they were discovered working on American farms. Instead of building fences or putting troops on the border, the Bracero program welcomed migrants willing to work in the legal migration system of the time. Such a system does not exist today.

Some small reforms and a few tweaks to our current system — such as allowing migrant workers to easily switch jobs, removing quotas, removing or streamlining minimum-wage regulations that apply to migrants, and allowing more sectors of the economy to hire migrant workers — could recreate a workable migration system like the one we had in the heyday of the Eisenhower administration.

Conservatism is not an ideology that opposes all change. It is a reformist ideology that supports measured and practical changes based on our experiences, history, and institutions.