Trump's Deputies Halve Legalized Migration amid Border Shutdown

The Trump administration has quietly halved the inflow of legalized migrants in 2026, while also blocking nearly all illegal migration, says the New York Times. In February, “the State Department issued just 26,000 immigrant visas, which grant a green card and legal permanent resident status … compared with an average of 52,000 a month in the years before Trump took office,” the newspaper noted. The regulations implemented by President Donald Trump’s deputies sharply reduced the inflow without help from logjammed Congress, the report notes, adding: [They] made it all but impossible to immigrate from 91 countries and reduced the number of immigrant visas available in another 61. Africa and the Middle East were hit particularly hard, and immigration from Muslim-majority countries plunged by more than 90 percent. Vice President JD Vance has been outspoken about the need to cut illegal and legal migration. He has repeatedly said mass migration lets investors cut salaries and grow profits while skimping on the high-tech productivity and training that promote middle-class prosperity. Migration also corrodes the civic culture that helps ordinary people, and the overall economy, make the best use of resources, he said. On Sunday, for example, he told CBS: My goal here is to make it so that we can have a country with some baseline of social cohesion and sense of community. Because what happens when too many people come to the United States — even if they’re very good people …. — it changes the country in very profound ways. I have neighbors, I have friends of mine, who literally don’t know a single person in their neighborhood who speaks the language they do. Now, that’s not a criticism of anybody, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for an American citizen to want to share their community with people they have something in common with, and I think our immigration system has to build that. The administration has not released migration data beyond the Spring of 2026. In 2024, President Joe Biden’s staff granted permanent residence cards — “dubbed green cards” — to a record 1.35 million legalized migants. Those cards allow the migrant to apply for citizenship after five years. This welcome was supported by the pro-migration alliance of progressives and business groups. The 2024 inflow was much higher than the normal award of roughly one million green cards, as set by the 1990 immigration law. The vast majority of legalized immigrants are chain-migration family members. The annual inflow is roughly one million, or about one legalized immigrant for every four American births. RELATED: Bessent — Economy ‘Fantastic and Accelerating’; Ending Mass Migration Means More Jobs, Pay Business-funded advocates are appalled by Trump’s low-migration policies, which are curbing the Extraction Migration economic strategy that was adopted in the 1990s. The strategy inflates the nation’s economy by pulling millions of consumers, renters, and workers from developing countries into the U.S. economy. That migration strategy helped to offset the main street damage caused by the export of the U.S. industrial sector to China and other cheap-labor countries. But it greatly reduced the economic gains and political power of many ordinary Americans. Trump’s rollback of legalized migration — if continued — can shift much wealth and political power back to ordinary Americans. “Illegal entries are down under Trump, but he’s cut legal immigration even more than illegal immigration,” complained David Bier, who is paid by Cato’s funders to cheerlead for endless immigration. Bier continued: President Trump has cut every type of legal immigration. He has reduced immigrant visas by 50%, mainly for spouses, minor children, and parents of US citizens and green card holders but also employment-based immigrants and others. Again, no new laws, just a lawless presidency. Progresives and business groups are filing lawsuits to help revive legal migration into American communities. Since January 2025, deportations by the Department of Homeland Security have reduced the foreign population by roughly 3 million illegals. That remaining illegal population is roughly 14 million amid a resident population of roughly 28 million legal immigrants and 290 million Americans. The Trump cuts have had little impact on the visa programs which allow employers to keep more than 2 million foreign contract workers in jobs needed by young Americans. Most of the 2 million contractors are imported by the Fortune 500 for jobs that would otherwise be held by American graduates. The federal government is tightening oversight of the many visa programs that keep roughly 2.5 million legal contract-worker migrants in many jobs that would otherwise be held by skilled Americans. So far, that tighter enforcement has not yet reduced the 2.5 million population of foreign workers.