Or, a change in presidential administration should not lead to such qualitative changes in policy.

While this might be stating the obvious, what has struck me about the radical change in U.S. immigration policy is that much of it–not all of it–is legal and, other than a budget increase, has not been accompanied by significant changes in legislation. We have gone from a system, while convoluted, that still was open enough to encourage immigration to one which is not. Yet there has been no passage of the equivalent of the Asian Exclusion Act.

Instead, the immigration laws are labile enough to enable a qualitatively different immigration regime, simply at the whim of the executive (admittedly, with some assistance by the Republican Supreme Court judges). This implies bad legislation, since something like immigration policy–which obviously is of great interest–should be debated, not unilaterally decided.

One could argue this is part of a larger ceding by Congress of its Article I powers to the executive branch, but there are people who are smarter about that sort of thing than I am. Regardless, having major policy shifts (also see: tariffs) without passing legislation also means the stability of law and governance is non-existent, as many business owners here and abroad have discovered.

One more thing that will have to be fixed during the deTrumpification.