When examining immigration issues, it is helpful to make a distinction between immigrant policy and immigration policy.
Immigrant policy focuses on what to do about the effects of immigration upon our society.
Common immigrant policy debates include whether bilingual education helps or hinders the children of immigrants, whether immigrants should receive welfare, and whether non-citizen residents should have voting rights. Immigration policy focuses on what to do about the laws that admit immigrants to our country and that create the immigration flow. Examples of immigration policy debate include whether there should be an overall cap on immigration, how chain migration should be limited, and why so many unskilled immigrants are being admitted. It is easy in the immigration debate to be distracted from the need to address the problems with our current immigration policy by the more immediate problems of how to deal with current immigrant policy issues. Although immigrant policy issues are pressing and should not be dismissed or overlooked, they tend to address the effects of our immigration policy, and contribute little to ameliorating the source of the problems.