Common Sense
Immigration Reform
A strong border. A functioning door. A system that respects people, saves money, and gets good workers into our economy — because dysfunction is what fuels the cruelty.
The immigration debate in Washington is almost entirely theater. One side performs cruelty. The other performs sympathy. Neither side is serious about fixing the system — because a broken system is politically useful, and a functioning one would rob both parties of their favorite weapon.
I hold degrees in Information Technology Management and Supply Chain Management, and I have spent years building software systems that streamline broken processes. I look at immigration and I see a badly designed, redundant, backlogged, expensive, and dangerous process that fails at its own stated goals — punishing people doing it right, rewarding those with money and lawyers, and generating the very black market it claims to be fighting. I know how to fix broken processes. That is what I am here to do.
And I know what Scripture says about the stranger among us. It is consistent, it is clear, and it is not what Washington is practicing.
I am LDS, raised in a household where the scriptures of many traditions were studied seriously and taken at their word. I want to be direct: the Bible is not ambiguous about how God’s people are to treat the immigrant, the foreigner, the stranger. It is one of the most consistently repeated commands in all of Scripture — across every book, every covenant, every testament. The Hebrew word ger — the closest word to “immigrant” — appears 92 times in the Old Testament alone.
Only 12 percent of evangelicals report that their beliefs about immigrants are shaped by the Bible. The other 88 percent are being shaped by something else entirely. When political leaders who claim Christian values use those values to justify cruelty toward immigrants and families, they are not reading the same Bible I was raised on. I will say that clearly, on the record.
“Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen.”
“I was a stranger and you invited me in… whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
“He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.”
“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”
The Book of Ruth — an entire book of the Bible — is the story of a foreign immigrant woman who is welcomed, protected, integrated, and becomes part of the lineage of King David and of Christ himself. The Good Samaritan — Jesus’s answer to “who is my neighbor?” — makes the hero a foreigner. This is not a footnote. This is the text.
The Broken Door Is the Black Market
Dysfunction doesn’t prevent smuggling. It creates it.
Here is what Washington will not say plainly: the dysfunction of legal entry is what fuels smuggling and human trafficking. When the legal path takes nearly three years on average, costs thousands of dollars, and offers no certainty of outcome, desperate people pay cartels. When ports of entry are understaffed and overwhelmed, criminal organizations fill the gap.
A well-functioning legal entry process — adequately staffed, efficiently designed, fast enough to be a real alternative — is not the opposite of border security. It is border security. You cannot secure a border by making the legal door impossible to walk through. You secure it by making the legal door the obvious, accessible, and reliable choice.
I have built software systems that streamline broken processes. I understand what happens when the legitimate channel fails: the gray market and the black market expand to fill the demand. This is not political opinion. It is a systems principle — and here it has life-or-death consequences for real families.
Fix the Whole Pipeline — Not Just One Node
The backlog is not a court problem. It is a system problem.
You cannot fix one broken node and call the system repaired. The immigration pipeline has bottlenecks at every stage — and they feed each other. The Trump administration’s response was to fire nearly 100 immigration judges in 2025, leaving courts starting 2026 with fewer than half the judges from a year prior. That is not reform. That is sabotage of an already failing system.
Here is where the pipeline actually breaks down:
Not Enough Judges
570 active immigration judges handling 3.9 million cases — an average of 5,500 cases per judge. Even the recent OBBBA funding caps new judges at 800, still hundreds fewer than needed.
USCIS Upstream Delays
People in immigration court are simultaneously stuck in multi-year visa backlogs at USCIS — despite paying processing fees. Two broken systems feeding each other indefinitely.
No Strategic Plan
EOIR’s last agency-wide strategic plan was written in 2013. A government agency managing millions of lives on a 13-year-old plan would fail any basic operations audit.
Judges Lack Tools
Immigration judges cannot manage their own dockets, pressure settlement, or close low-priority cases the way federal judges in every other court can. Their hands are tied by design.
Chronic Underfunding
EOIR’s budget increased only 4% from 2024 to 2026 — a fraction of what’s needed — while enforcement spending dwarfs court resources by billions.
Appeals Cascade
Every slow, low-quality first decision generates appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals and then circuit courts. Fix the first decision and the cascade shrinks.
The Economic Case: Integration Pays, Persecution Costs
This is not a left-wing argument. Penn Wharton, the Cato Institute, Brookings, and the American Enterprise Institute all arrive at the same conclusion from different directions: persecution is catastrophically expensive, and integration pays. The sooner a cleared person enters the workforce, the sooner they contribute taxes, spend money, build housing, and strengthen the programs we all depend on.
Mass Deportation Costs $315 Billion Minimum
A one-time operation: $89B in arrests, $168B in detention, $34B in legal processing — before a single dollar of economic damage is counted.
American Immigration Council, 2024
GDP Could Fall 7.4% by 2028
Comparable to the Great Recession. Mass deportation would also cost 44,000 U.S.-born workers their jobs for every half million immigrants removed from the labor force.
Peterson Institute / Joint Economic Committee
$23B Annually Cut from Social Security
Plus $6 billion from Medicare every year — programs Idaho seniors depend on — eliminated when immigrant workers are removed from the tax base.
U.S. Joint Economic Committee, 2024
Immigrants Pay $580B in Taxes Every Year
They also hold $1.6 trillion in annual spending power and contribute close to $50 billion each in personal income and consumer spending.
U.S. Joint Economic Committee, 2024
454,000 Construction Workers Needed
The construction industry alone needs that many additional workers above normal hiring pace. Agriculture, healthcare, and hospitality face similar shortfalls — Idaho feels this directly.
U.S. Joint Economic Committee, 2024
Speed of Integration Is the Variable
Every month a cleared person spends in legal limbo is a month of lost tax revenue, lost labor, and lost consumer spending. Fast, fair integration is an economic accelerator.
Fleming Immigration Framework
The Fleming Immigration Framework
Strong Border Infrastructure — That Actually Functions
A strong border is not a slogan — it is staffing, technology, infrastructure, and operational capacity. Ports of entry must be resourced to process people efficiently and humanely. An understaffed checkpoint is not tough on immigration — it is incompetent on immigration, and it hands business to the cartels. We need a border that works, not one that performs.
Lean the Process — Eliminate the Labyrinth
The current immigration system would fail any basic process audit. Duplicate forms. Redundant interviews. Years-long backlogs for people who have already been partially vetted. Steps that add delay without adding security. I will apply the same systems principles that make software and supply chains efficient: map the full process end to end, find the waste, eliminate it, and deliver results. Streamlining is not amnesty. It is competence.
Staff the Courts — Dramatically
We need far more immigration judges, adequately supported, with the docket management tools that every other federal judge already has. We need a fully funded USCIS that can process applications without multi-year delays. And we need a real strategic plan — not one written in 2013 — that sets measurable goals and holds leadership accountable for results.
Fair Vetting — We Have the Technology
We have biometric data, international database access, and cross-agency coordination tools that can vet people effectively and thoroughly in a reasonable timeframe. What we lack is the will to build the system correctly rather than use it as a political football. Good people who want to contribute deserve a process that tells them yes or no — not a decade of limbo and legal fees.
Full Integration — No More Legal Limbo
Once someone has been vetted and cleared, they should be able to work, pay taxes, own property, and contribute fully — without years of additional waiting. Every month of limbo is lost tax revenue, lost labor, lost economic contribution. Integration is not a threat to American identity. It is how American identity has always been built. And it is how we grow the economy Idaho needs.
Focused Enforcement — on Criminals, Not Families
Enforcement resources belong on criminals, traffickers, and genuine security threats — not on terrorizing farms, raiding workplaces, or separating children from parents who came here to work and contribute. An enforcement system that treats everyone as a criminal catches no one effectively. Focused, intelligence-driven enforcement protects communities. Theater does not. And persecution — as the numbers make clear — costs the country far more than it saves.
What Lean Immigration Reform Looks Like in Practice
Anyone who has built efficient software systems or studied supply chain management knows: a process that takes three years, costs thousands of dollars, and delivers unpredictable outcomes is not a secure process — it is a broken one. Here is what fixing it actually requires:
- Map the full pipeline end to end — every form, every step, every handoff, every delay point from first contact to full integration
- Separate value-add from waste — which steps genuinely improve security? Which add only delay and cost?
- Eliminate redundancy — one thorough vetting, not five partial ones spread across a decade
- Fund the bottlenecks — courts, judges, USCIS processing, ports of entry — not just enforcement
- Give judges docket tools — the same case management authority every other federal judge already has
- Set clear timelines and publish them — applicants deserve to know what to expect and when
- Measure outcomes, not just activity — processing time, security incidents, integration success, economic contribution
- Treat it as a system to be managed — not a crisis to be exploited every two years for campaign contributions
“Every person who crosses a border is a child of God. A system that respects that — that is fast, fair, and functional — costs less, protects more, and builds the economy Idaho needs. That is not a radical position. It is the oldest one in the book.”
— Natalie M. Fleming, Independent Candidate for U.S. Senate, Idaho, 2026