How Trump’s immigration policies hurt legal immigration, data reveals Portrait of Ignacio CalderonIgnacio Calderon USA TODAY

As President Donald Trump’s administration cracks down on people entering the country illegally, new data shows legal pathways for immigration have also taken a dramatic hit. In 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved 8.3 million applications compared with the 11.4 million in 2024, a 27% decrease. Employment-based and humanitarian petitions made up the bulk of the change, dropping 26% and 69%, respectively. Green-card-related approvals dropped by 16%. On the other hand, family-based petition approvals were up 8%, and naturalization-related approvals held steady. Experts say the decreases can be long-lasting and can ripple through the U.S. economy. "Immigrants are not just workers; they also create jobs. That's partly because they, like all of us, consume goods and services that create demand for jobs," said Julia Gelatt, the associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute. The State Department, which handles visa applications from abroad, has not released its full 2025 data, but the numbers through September show a similar picture. For example, international student visas issued dropped 31% compared with the same time in 2024. Many people come to the United States as students, and some transition to work visas and later into permanent residents with green cards. A decrease in international students today will cascade in the future. "If you cut off that pathway, you could see the impact of that for years to come," Gelatt said. Beyond job- and family-based routes, there’s another pathway for people to enter the country: for humanitarian reasons. In fiscal year 2024, more than 100,000 people were admitted, but during Trump’s second term, the cap was set to 7,500 for fiscal year 2026, the lowest in nearly half a century. So far, however, all but three of those admitted were White South Africans, the nonprofit progressive magazine Mother Jones reported. After the COVID-19 pandemic, almost half of the country’s biggest cities were recording population declines, but by 2024, the trend had started to reverse in most places. Last year, however, marked another slowdown, which experts largely attributed to a decline in international migration. Get the Susan Page newsletter in your inbox. Get the latest story from Susan Page right in your inbox. Delivery: Varies Your Email Read more: Immigration decline is reversing post-COVID population growth in these cities "When the workforce starts to decline, that means less economic growth. That means less things are produced, which means higher costs for consumers," said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "It's a real problem for the country that the administration has taken such a hard line, even against legal immigration." Income earned by immigrants, documented and undocumented, also contributes to Social Security, even if most of them won’t collect benefits. The Social Security trust fund, which supports more than 75 million Americans, is projected to dry up in 2032. Trump’s second administration enacted multiple restrictions on legal immigration pathways: Student visas were canceled, the temporary protected status for migrants from countries with dangerous living conditions were cut, a $100,000 fee for H-1B work visas was imposed, and dozens of countries were placed on a travel ban list. Some of the restrictions were partially or fully reversed after public backlash and court challenges. Many of the student visas were reinstated after cancellations sparked more than 100 lawsuits. After the announcement on the H-1B visa fee, companies and their workers were left scrambling on a frantic weekend to get them back to the country. This June, a judge struck down the $100,000 fee. Another judge halted other policies, saying the U.S. government "threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo" by pausing asylum applications and work permits for people on a list of 39 countries under a travel ban. But even temporary changes could be detrimental, experts say, because they signal to people who want to come here that they might not be welcome. "There's definitely a lot of backtracking," said Jeff Joseph, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "The problem with that is the damage is done. You send out a memo to all your field offices basically saying this is how you exercise discretion, and it's hard to turn that message off." Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump had campaigned on border and immigration control but also had defended the need for foreign workers. Border Patrol encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border continued to drop during Trump’s second term while the number of people on immigration detention rose sharply, particularly for people with no criminal record, according to USA TODAY’s immigration tracker. "I think they did that efficiently and quickly and effectively, but what I don't think people expected or anticipated or voted for, frankly, is the attack on the legal immigration system," Joseph said. An earlier analysis from Bier found that legal immigration declined 2.5 times faster than illegal entries did in the first three quarters of 2024. "An entirely new administration with a new ideology and a new goal for the immigration system is not going to be able to undo all of the concerns that people will have about coming here," Bier said. But beyond public perception, USCIS, the agency that processes petitions for employment authorizations, green card and citizenship applications, has been affected by workforce reductions in early 2025. CBS reported in February 2025 that 50 workers who processed applications were among the layoffs. Through 2025, the application backlog increased, leaving it 48% higher than at the end of former President Joe Biden’s term. The processing times for petitions have also risen across every category. The frontlog, which includes unopened applications, peaked at nearly 250,000 in 2025 – up from zero before the second Trump administration began. "Each of those envelopes also usually contain payment for a processing fee for that application," Gelatt said. "So USCIS wasn't even opening the envelopes to get the money that funds its operations, it just suggests an agency that's not performing as well as it could be performing." Unlike most agencies that rely on taxpayer money, USCIS relies on filing fees for 96% of its budget. "You're setting yourself up for a situation in which people don't want to come to the United States anymore because the U.S. government is unreliable," Bier said. "I think the United States' reputation is really taking a blow here." For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.