Trump’s Overlooked Effort to Reduce Legal Immigration
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Published on April 21, 2026.
The Trump administration has significantly decreased legal immigration, according to open borders enthusiasts at the Cato Institute. The institute's immigration studies director, David J. Bier, found that the administration has cut legal immigration even more than it has reduced illegal immigration, despite there being virtually no new illegal immigration. This is due to the administration’s 100 percent decrease in asylum seekers entering the country legally, barring would-be asylum seekers from attempting to enter the country via ports of entry, and scrapping the Biden administration”s CBP One app. Refugees have fallen by 90 percent due to reduced cap of allowed entries and reduced the number of nationalities eligible for asylum. The number of H-1B visas has fallen by 25 percent due largely to the Administration placing a $100,000 price tag on new visas for foreign guest workers. Students' visas have also dropped by 40 percent due primarily to the ban on visas for 40 different countries. The administration has also reduced immigrant visas for permanent residents by nearly half due to its ban on the Diversity Visa Lottery, stricter vetting standards for green cards, and a pause on issuing visas to 75 countries. It has also made it harder for immigrants to naturalize and for non-citizens to get green cards and has made it more difficult for public housing licenses, business licenses, car licenses, and potentially driven it harder to get into the country.
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