On August 21, 2026, a federal judge in Manhattan vacated the State Department policy that had suspended immigrant visa issuance for nationals of 75 countries. The ruling did not declare that the federal government is powerless to control legal immigration, nor did it deny that Washington may legitimately consider self-sufficiency, fiscal impact, security, or compliance when deciding who may enter and remain in the United States. It established a narrower but essential point: immigration control must operate through the law and through individual decisions, not through a nationality-wide shortcut that replaces the person with a category. Reuters reported the decision on August 21: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-strikes-down-policy-suspending-immigrant-visa-processing-75-nations-2026-08-22/
The controversy matters because it exposes one of the recurring weaknesses of the American immigration debate. Too often, policy is presented as a choice between permissiveness and blanket restriction. That is a false choice. The federal government has a duty to control the border, distinguish legal from illegal immigration, enforce immigration law, preserve lawful pathways, and remove people who have no right to remain after due process. But the same government also has a duty to make decisions according to the statutory framework adopted by Congress. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(4), the public-charge inquiry already requires an individualized assessment that includes age, health, family status, assets and financial resources, education, and skills: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=%28title%3A8+section%3A1182%28a%29+edition%3Aprelim%29. The law itself therefore points toward evaluation, not collective presumption.
This is where the paradigm “Integration or ReImmigration” can offer something useful to the United States. Its starting point is neither open-ended reception nor collective removal. It is the idea that immigration must be governed across the entire cycle: lawful admission, identification, status, integration, periodic verification, enforcement, and, when the legal basis for remaining is absent and all guarantees have been exhausted, effective return. The central unit of decision is the individual. A government may set demanding standards, but those standards should measure the person’s actual circumstances, conduct, and trajectory rather than treating nationality as a substitute for evidence.
For the American system, that principle suggests a more serious concept of measurable integration. Employment and economic self-sufficiency matter, but they are not the whole picture. Long-term immigration policy should also pay attention to lawful conduct, English-language acquisition where relevant, civic knowledge, educational progress, family stability, and participation in the social and institutional life of the country. These factors should not become an arbitrary score imposed by executive discretion. Congress would have to define any legal consequences clearly. But the federal government can already improve the quality of policy by measuring integration outcomes transparently rather than arguing about immigration almost exclusively through border encounters, deportation totals, or labor shortages.
A second pillar of the paradigm is therefore especially relevant to the United States: a recurring public integration report. The federal government publishes extensive data on admissions, enforcement, removals, employment, and benefits, while states and local governments hold much of the information that reveals whether integration is succeeding in schools, labor markets, neighborhoods, and public services. What is missing is a coherent framework capable of showing, over time, whether lawful immigration is producing durable social incorporation and where integration is failing. Such a report should measure outcomes by admission category and length of residence, while avoiding the mistake of turning national origin into a presumption about the worth or reliability of an individual immigrant.
This would also clarify federal and state responsibilities. Immigration status, admission, removal, and nationality policy belong principally to the federal government. States and cities, however, live with the concrete consequences of immigration policy: schools teach children, local labor markets absorb workers, health systems face demand, and communities manage housing and social cohesion. A functioning model therefore requires federal authority without federal abstraction. Washington should define the legal framework and enforce it; states and local institutions should provide reliable evidence about integration outcomes and help deliver the services that make successful integration possible. Responsibility must be shared without confusing constitutional roles.
The same logic applies at the end of the process. ReImmigration, as used in this paradigm, is not a program of collective expulsion and should not be confused with ideological proposals for mass “remigration.” It is the enforceable conclusion of an individual legal process. When a person has no lawful status, has received the procedures and judicial protection required by law, and no legal basis for remaining exists, the government must be capable of carrying out the final decision. A system that never enforces removal loses credibility; a system that substitutes group identity for individual adjudication loses legitimacy. Effective immigration control requires both enforceability and legal precision.
The lesson of the 75-country visa case is therefore larger than the court ruling itself. The United States does not need to choose between weak control and indiscriminate restriction. It needs a migration policy that is stricter where the law requires enforcement, more demanding about actual integration, more transparent about results, and more disciplined about individualized decision-making. That is precisely the space in which “Integration or ReImmigration” seeks to operate: not as a European formula transplanted into America, but as a comparative framework for building an immigration system that can control, integrate, verify, and, when necessary, return — one person, one legal decision, and one measurable outcome at a time.
Avv. Fabio Loscerbo
Avvocato Cassazionista
Iscritto nel Registro dei rappresentanti di interessi della Camera dei deputati in materia di Immigrazione
Lobbista registrato presso il Registro per la Trasparenza dell’Unione europea n. 280782895721-36 in materia di Migrazione e Asilo
ORCID: 0009-0004-7030-0428
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