I don't hear people who oppose stepped up enforcement of immigration laws express their own views about where the limits of immigration should be. I'm starting to fear that the left/resistance will become a kind of "party of no" (akin to the Repubs during the obama years) who do not have any kind of coherent political platform except for obstructing whatever the repubs propose. In this environment, the repubs could seem like the only option for anyone who cares about immigration enforcement, which is a large number of voters.

Should leftists know how many immigrants should be admitted into the country, roughly, in order to be able to have a positive policy prescription? How does one go about figuring this out? I don't have a clue, but my gut feelings are as follows:

I'm personally in favor of amnesty for present occupants (except criminals above a certain level of crime that I haven't fully thought about). I could be pursuaded that these occupants should pay a token fine before being "naturalized".

Going forward, I'm in favor of legally letting in significant but sensible numbers of immigrants, in conjunction with tight border controls that are sensible. I don't really see the benefit in the age of nuclear weapons and terrorism for not having strict border controls in place (provided the unintended consequences aren't terribly high, an open question).

How many immigrants represent "significant but sensible" numbers? I have no idea. I feel that it's possible to let in too few or too many.

This seems like a problem to me, because I cannot look at a specific policy proposal and decide if it's too loose or too restrictive.

Something like the Trump Muslim Ban is an easy exception; it seems obviously too harsh in both the details and rhetoric accompanying it. That's a plainly bad policy.

But what if trump says, we are cutting Obamas number of annual Syrian refugee admittees from 10k to 8k? How do I know if Trumps number is wrong? How do I know if Obamas.number was right?

It may be academic right now, when Trumps xenophobic rhetoric demands pushback almost in spite of potentially sound policy suggestions. But I'm looking longer term.

Sorry to write so much. Any thoughts?