This interdisciplinary article argues that Foreign Policy (FP) interpretive lenses (IL’s)—heuristics oft used in International Studies disciplines to examine statecraft—are a useful and underappreciated tool for comparative state migration policy and legal analysis. IL’s have value as conceptual tools for scholars in examining state migration law and policy, and as accessible analytical frameworks that can be taught to nonprofessional audiences to assist them with seeing beyond preconceived bias when examining immigration. This article lays ground in the area by painting with broad brushstrokes how three IL’s—realism, isolationism, and liberalism—can be used as lines of inquiry into shedding new insight into state migration law, including historical U.S. immigration policy cases from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries.