Trump Restrictions on Legal Immigration Could Sharply Reduce U.S. Population Growth

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Since Trump retook office, his administration has been layering legal immigration restrictions one by one, many of which face legal challenge:

Cutting refugee resettlement and humanitarian parole. On his first day back, Trump imposed a temporary pause on refugee resettlement, with the administration later resuming processing at the lowest level since the start of the modern refugee system in 1980, with just 3,664 refugees resettled between February 2025 and February 2026—down from 100,034 resettlements in fiscal year (FY) 2024.

The administration also stopped allowing legal entry through the various humanitarian parole programs created by the Biden administration, including for Ukrainians; Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans with U.S. sponsors; and those who had secured appointments to enter using the CBP One app. These programs, providing temporary relief from deportation and work authorization, permitted the entry of more than 1.7 million people.

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In January, USCIS also committed itself to rereviewing and possibly revoking any status granted since January 2021 to individuals from the 39 travel ban countries, following a similar order in November to revisit grants of refugee status to more than 200,000 people in the same period. USCIS has not pointed to specific cases or flaws that led it to conclude prior vetting was insufficient. This means the agency must rereview likely millions of past decisions, diverting vast staff resources from processing new applications.

The expected result is dramatically slower USCIS processing. This prevents U.S. citizens and permanent residents from reuniting with family members, employers from sponsoring workers, permanent residents from seeking citizenship, and noncitizens from maintaining legal status and work authorization. USCIS processing speed was already slowing in 2025, with hundreds of thousands fewer applications adjudicated each quarter than in the prior year.

75-country “pause” on permanent visas. The State Department in January 2026 announced it was suspending the issuance of permanent visas (these immigrant visas are necessary to secure a green card) for 75 countries. Collectively, these countries accounted for 46 percent (280,015) of the immigrant visas issued in FY 2024. The administration said the pause was necessary to combat the potential of some becoming a “public charge”—that is, primarily dependent on the U.S. government to meet basic needs. There has been no explanation of when the halt could be lifted.

Pausing the diversity visa lottery. The State Department halted issuance of diversity visas in late December, following the murder of two professors by a man who had received a diversity visa in 2017. The expressed reason for this suspension was to update screening and vetting procedures, but the administration has yet to reopen the green-card lottery. The diversity visa program typically allows up to 55,000 people to get a green card annually, through a lottery, from countries that send few immigrants to the United States.

H-1B visa challenges. The H-1B visa program has been under particular scrutiny. In September, Trump imposed a new $100,000 application fee for employers sponsoring H-1B workers coming newly from outside the United States. As of February, just 85 employers that did not need to wait for the annual lottery (nonprofits and universities) had paid the fee. The real impact will be felt soon as winners of the annual H-1B lottery, which was held in March, begin to apply for visas. Smaller employers and startups are likely to be particularly unable to afford the fee.

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Raising the bar for naturalization. The administration has also enacted new requirements for naturalization. Last year, USCIS added more potential questions to the citizenship test, and now requires applicants to answer 12 questions correctly instead of six. USCIS is applying a higher “good moral character” requirement for naturalization, asking applicants to affirmatively demonstrate their character by describing their educational attainment, employment, compliance with tax law, social and family ties, and other contributions. USCIS is also reinstating neighborhood investigations, not used since 1991, for certain applicants. If fewer green-card holders can naturalize, that has the potential to reduce future immigration levels, given the broader sponsorship pathways available for U.S. citizens relative to green-card holders.

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The measures described above will likely cause legal immigration to drop by hundreds of thousands of arrivals annually in 2026 and possibly beyond.

Because fewer babies are being born and deaths are rising as the U.S. population ages, immigration is the primary driver of all U.S. population growth. Without immigration, the U.S. population’s natural increase (number of births exceeding deaths) is roughly 500,000 a year—a slow rate of growth that is quickly falling to zero. A major decrease in legal immigration could tip the country into population decline as soon as this year. While increased productivity can sustain economic growth even with a shrinking workforce, falling immigration creates strong headwinds against economic dynamism and competitiveness.

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