Congressionally imposed withholding requirements against Honduras and Guatemala, however, continue to undermine regional-security efforts. Since fiscal year (FY) 2012, Congress has withheld a minimum of 20 percent of security assistance from Honduras because of human-rights concerns. In FY 2014, it increased the hold to 35 percent, despite the country’s great strides in both human rights and democratic governance. Additionally, U.S. defense cuts have directly impacted regional-security efforts. Reduced naval and personnel assets have diminished U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) capability to interdict illicit drugs and to conduct joint operations and trainings.

Much like Mexico’s embrace of free trade pushed the country toward economic prosperity, so, too, should economic freedom be an essential element of U.S. policy in Central America. Capitalizing upon the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), the United States should press the region toward greater economic freedom. In addition to countercrime programs, creating long-term economic prosperity will move the region’s economy and society forward. According to the Heritage Foundation’s “Index of Economic Freedom,” restrictions on labor, monetary and business freedoms, as well as high levels of corruption keep the region from advancing.

While the other efforts are focused on improving the U.S. immigration system domestically, the executive branch must lead on foreign policy. Congressional restrictions and withholding on aid do not help, but an administration that is serious about combatting illegal immigration should take a lead in engaging with other nations and building more effective mechanisms and initiatives to improve the security and economic freedom of Central America.

Sixth and last, the executive branch must commit to using honest statistics to determine how well enforcement is—or is not—reducing the number of illegal immigrants in the United States. Currently, DHS manipulates statistics to feign enforcement. In reporting deportations, for example, it considers only one kind of deportation, called removals, which reached record highs in 2013. However, total deportations—including the other kind of deportation, called returns—were actually at their lowest level since 1973. While information is not fully available for FY 2014, leaked documents point to even lower levels of deportations this year. The number could fall as low as 500,000—the lowest since 1972, when the illegal-immigrant population was only a fraction of what it is today. The administration also seeks to hide the fact that interior enforcement of U.S. immigration laws has been consistently falling.

The United States needs honest statistics to track and measure enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. Increased enforcement activities and better administration of our immigration system (as laid out in the preceding points of this checklist), should produce a decrease in the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States and a decline in the total number present in the United States, according to U.S. census data. By providing this proof, the executive branch can assure Congress and the American people that it is fulfilling its duties and enforcing the law properly.

Legislative Reform: The Right Reforms at the Right Time

Once the president has completed this checklist, then, and only then, should Congress begin legislative reforms. There is a good rationale for this order of events: If current laws are not enforced, there is no reason to believe that new laws will be any better enforced. Indeed, there are important reforms that Congress should make, but they will be effective only if the executive branch is committed to their enforcement. After the executive checklist is completed, Congress has its own list of reforms that should be pursued. These include: strengthening border security and enforcement, further empowering states and local governments, supporting security and economic freedom in foreign countries and making reforms to the legal immigration and visa system.

First, while there is much that the administration can do on its own to improve immigration enforcement and border security, support from Congress is needed for greater reforms. On the border, Congress should support and oversee the development, funding and implementation of additional border infrastructure and technology. Similarly, Congress should recapitalize the Coast Guard, which patrols America’s coastlines to interdict illicit materials and illegal immigration.

To better enforce U.S. immigration law, Congress could expand the mechanisms for removing illegal immigrants, so that more illegal immigrants are removed more efficiently. Congress can also mandate and support higher levels of detention or alternatives to detention that compel attendance at immigration proceedings and reduce the number of absconders.

Enforcing the law against unauthorized labor will also require additional DHS resources to investigate and prosecute those companies that hire illegal immigrants. Improving E-Verify and cracking down on identity fraud requires using Social Security Administration (SSA) data to find suspicious uses of Social Security numbers—e.g., a number is being used in multiple places, a number belongs to a child not old enough to work, etc. While the president could do this himself, Congress should also mandate coordination on immigration issues between various government agencies including DHS, SSA, the State Department and others. Finally, Congress should work to combat visa overstays by redirecting funds from DHS’s biometric exit efforts and using them to actually find overstays and remove them from the United States.

Second, Congress should support state and local law enforcement by reorienting homeland-security grants to focus more on communities at higher risk and with greater needs, such as jurisdictions at greater risk of terrorism or those near the border that face challenges arising from illegal immigration and drug-cartel activities. At the same time, Congress should restrict federal security grants from going to sanctuary cities that flout federal immigration law. Municipalities may wish to welcome illegal immigrants, but the federal government doesn’t have to pay for it.

Congress should also support the expansion of the 287(g) program that trains and deputizes local and state law-enforcement officers to enforce U.S. immigration law. One interesting proposal is to require DHS to enter into 287(g) agreements with any law-enforcement agency that wants to participate in the program. Regardless, more cooperation with and empowering of state and local governments is a critical and cost-effective way to multiply immigration enforcement efforts and resources.

Third, the United States must remain committed to citizen security, economic freedom and democratic governance in the Western Hemisphere. Currently, restrictions on security assistance to nations like Honduras and Guatemala undermine regional-security efforts, thus encouraging emigration from the region and illegal immigration into the United States. Similarly, cuts to U.S. military funding harms security cooperation in the region. Congress should remove these restrictions and cuts and support improvements to initiatives like CARSI. A more stable and prosperous Latin America is in the best interests of all of the Americas.

Fourth, Congress should consider reforms to the immigration system. This starts with changing how USCIS operates, including better integration with enforcement and border-security efforts, updating and digitizing its provision of services and making some of its funding appropriations-based, so that Congress can more effectively oversee and direct projects like the long-overdue updating of the way it provides its services. After all, if the United States is going to make changes to its legal immigration system, USCIS needs to be able to handle this change.

With a reformed USCIS, Congress should then turn toward making changes that refocus the immigration system to better serve the U.S. economy. Human capital has long been America’s greatest resource. For all of its history and long into the future, some of these resources have been and will continue to be imported. America is a free-market society, and labor is part of that market. The government’s job is to facilitate the movement of labor in a manner that keeps America free, safe and prosperous. Equally as important, for the free-market exchange of labor to work, the United States must become and remain an “opportunity society,” rather than a magnet for trapping low-skilled labor in a cycle of poverty and impoverishment without the opportunity for social mobility or patriotic assimilation.

As such, the United States should seek to attract high-skill labor, both through the immigration and nonimmigration systems. Higher levels of employment-based visas or new visas based on individuals’ skillsets would attract the highly skilled to come and work in America, and eventually become Americans. Nonimmigrant visas like H-1Bs should have a higher cap, enabling more skilled workers to benefit the U.S. economy. Of course, higher levels of skilled workers would also generate additional net tax revenues because these experts are generally well paid.

The United States also needs an effective temporary worker program that supports seasonal and lower-wage industries. Such a program could take many forms, but in its essence, it would harness the power of the free market while also protecting the United States from the fiscal costs of mass immigration. A temporary worker program should not be a pathway to amnesty; rather, it must be truly temporary. It must ensure that guest workers actually return to their home countries at the end of their work periods—using methods like delaying full payment of wages until the workers have returned home.

A Conservative Vision for Immigration Reform

The United States stands at a critical crossroads. One path is amnesty, the “easy” solution that kicks the can down the road, avoids meaningful solutions and weakens U.S. security, fiscal stability and the rule of law. Another path is restrictionism and protectionism, policies that ignore much of the economic benefits of immigration and the free movement of labor. The third and wisest path is one in which Americans enforce their laws, secure their borders, work with other countries to combat illegal immigration and create a legal immigration system that is easier to use, brings in more high-skilled immigrants and creates well-functioning, temporary worker programs to improve the economy.