Trump Will Cut Legal Entries More Than Illegal Entries

It's easier to make legal activity illegal than to stop illegality

President-elect Trump campaigned against President Biden’s border policies, fallaciously portraying Biden as too lenient on border crossers. Regardless, Trump will enter office a second time with Border Patrol arrests at a lower level than when he left in January 2021. Illegal migration may fall further during his term—or it may rise like it did during his first term—but whatever happens with illegal entries, the number of legal entries will undoubtedly fall much further.

Trump will likely cut legal entries more than illegal ones for five reasons:

1. That’s precisely what he did during his first term. Illegal immigration actually increased substantially during his first term, while legal migration of all types was reduced before and after the pandemic.

2. Legal migration is now much higher than it was at any point during Trump’s first four years. This higher baseline means that if Trump imposes limits similar to those we saw during his first term, the cut will be much greater than during his first term.

3. Illegal immigration is much lower than when Trump left office. Moreover, illegal entries are always much lower than legal entries, so even a small percentage cut from legal migration will be much larger than even a large percentage cut to illegal immigration.

4. Trump has repeatedly promised to impose even more severe restrictions on legal entries than he did during his first term (at least pre-pandemic). Moreover, his legal immigration agenda was never fully implemented during his first term, so we should expect much more serious cuts.

5. Trump has promised mass deportation, but this will be much more difficult to achieve. It is far easier to end legal activity than end illegal activity, so he will attempt to appease his nativist base and the nationalist political class by cutting legal immigration.

Although President Trump occasionally makes statements in support of legal immigration, his advisors and most of his active political supporters are universally opposed to any effort to expand legal immigration, even for skilled workers. Elon Musk’s recent defense of the H-1B visa ultimately concluded with him endorsing draconian restrictions on the visa (limiting it to 0.1 percent of skilled workers). In the next four years, no category of legal immigration will escape restrictions.

Illegal immigration is low

The figure below shows Border Patrol arrests under Trump and Biden through December 2024. President Trump entered office after Border Patrol made 43,251 southwest border arrests in December 2016. By the time he left office in December 2020, that number had risen to 71,142 arrests. He will enter office a second time with arrests at 47,326 in December 2024. In summary, illegal immigration increased during Trump’s time in office, but it is now at a lower level than when he left office and is comparable to levels seen in 2016.

Evasions of Border Patrol—known as “gotaways”—are also lower than when Trump left office. We don’t have data through the end of 2024 yet, but it appears likely that they continued to fall even lower than the levels recorded in July 2024. Obama left office in December 2016 with 9,145 gotaways, Trump left with 22,569 in December 2020, and Biden will leave office with fewer than 13,000. Trump has little opportunity for serious improvements in border security.

Legal immigration is high

Here is the big picture for legal permanent immigration. The number of new legal permanent residents—which includes individuals adjusting their status in the United States—fell from 289,626 in the first quarter of fiscal year 2017 to 132,557 in the first quarter of 2021 during Trump’s term (a 51 percent cut). It had already fallen 12 percent by the 2^nd quarter of FY 2020 prior to the pandemic. The number has now risen to 395,411 in the final quarter of 2024. In other words, legal immigration is much higher than it was when Trump came into office last time, giving him more room to implement restrictions.

New permanent residents immigrating from abroad

Narrowing our focus only to those entering from abroad, Trump cut immigrant visa issuances (for permanent residents) by 78 percent by December 2020. By February 2020, they had already fallen 27 percent from the 2016 monthly average. Biden’s monthly immigrant visa issuances are already significantly higher than Obama's numbers, hitting over 62,000 in October 2024—22 percent higher than Obama’s final result. Again, Trump will have to make further cuts than he did in 2017.

New refugees entering legally from abroad

Refugees do not initially enter as legal permanent residents but receive permanent status and may apply for permanent residence after one year. Trump will enter office in January 2025 with the Refugee Admissions Program resettling nearly more than 12,000 refugees per month in December 2024. This is a significant increase compared to just 7,371 in December 2016, giving Trump much more leeway to implement cuts than during his previous term. In December 2020, Trump cut refugee admissions to just 598—a 92 percent cut. By February 2020, admissions had already been cut by 79 percent.

Temporary work visa issuances

Between 2016 and 2020, the Trump administration reduced the number of work-authorized visas issued by 51 percent. In contrast, seasonal visas (H-2A and H-2B for agricultural and nonagricultural seasonal or temporary jobs) increased by 25 percent, while all other visas fell by 72 percent. As of 2024, the number of work-authorized nonimmigrants has reached a new high.

Student visas

Trump oversaw a 76 percent reduction in student visa issuances from FY 2016 to FY 2020. By 2019, the number of students had already fallen by about a quarter. However, under Biden, student visa issuances increased to a level higher than any year under President Trump.

All temporary visas

An analysis of all nonimmigrant (temporary) visas—primarily issued to tourists and business travelers, temporary workers, students, and their families—shows that the Biden administration has managed to increase visa issuances to levels higher than in 2016. Trump oversaw an 82 percent cut in temporary visa issuances by December 2020. Again, the Trump administration had already restricted temporary visas issued prior to the pandemic—with visa issuances down 33 percent by February 2020 compared to the FY 2016 average.

Humanitarian parole entries

For decades, administrations have granted some individuals seeking entry into the United States (commonly known as “asylum seekers”) access to “humanitarian parole.” This policy expanded under President Obama, was restricted under President Trump, and expanded again under President Biden. Unfortunately, we can only estimate entries by looking at the number of “inadmissible” aliens encountered at southwest ports of entry. In October 2016, the number reached 20,000 before Obama’s administration restricted this form of entry. Trump restricted it further before nearly eliminating the program in 2020.

Parolees receive one or two years of legal status and work authorization. Entries at southwest ports fell 93 percent, from 15,161 in December 2016 to just 1,106 in December 2020. By February 2020, entries had already fallen 56 percent. Meanwhile, Biden increased the number to 50,050, primarily through the scheduling app CBP One. Immigrants can schedule appointments to be vetted and admitted as parolees at southwest border ports—up to 1,450 per day (about 45,000 per month).

Biden also created new parole sponsorship programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and Ukrainians, allowing up to 30,000 individuals per month to fly directly to the United States. This program started in October 2022 but was phased out by Biden from June 2024 to December 2024.

If President Trump institutes a level of legal migration similar to what he achieved just before the pandemic, visas and grants of status or parole would drop by 24.1 million over four years. If the pandemic level were imposed—which is possible but unlikely—it would be a reduction of 48.2 million. The numbers for permanent immigration would be between 3 and 4.8 million. For permanent immigration, in addition to work-eligible temporary workers, students, and parolees, the cut would be between 6 million and 10.9 million.

Trump’s second-term proposals

Trump has already endorsed ending all the Biden parole programs and CBP One app appointments, instituting a legal migration ban that affects an even broader group of nations than what he imposed last time, and suspending the refugee program. He is also likely to impose a low cap on refugee admissions again, which was only 15,000 at the end of his term. Given that the program has already admitted more than this number, it will likely be offline until October 2025, when the new fiscal year starts.

Trump’s advisors are also planning a pause on all visa issuances, which will create enormous problems, delays, and chaos throughout the system that will take years to resolve, just as the pandemic closures did (we are still dealing with those delays). He will undoubtedly impose new “extreme vetting” requirements. I call it extremely bureaucratic vetting, which seeks to delay and add new costs to processing visas. New biometric or interview requirements for green card and H-1B applicants in the United States would create vast new delays for those programs, which again we saw last time.

These actions will happen very early, within a month of taking office. In the longer term, Trump has a lengthy list of policy proposals waiting to upend legal immigration further. The most dangerous of these is the public charge rule, which seeks to ban most low-income legal immigrants, including spouses of US citizens. Separately, Trump wants to impose a health insurance mandate for all legal immigrants. These two rules only briefly went into effect for a few months during the pandemic. For employment-based immigrants, Trump is prepared to introduce new wage requirements designed to price out all immigrants just starting their careers in the United States.

Conclusion

Although Trump likes to claim that his immigration agenda is focused primarily on stopping illegal immigration, his record indicates otherwise. He oversaw severe cuts to legal immigration while illegal immigration increased during his time in office. Illegal immigrants can hide and obstruct removals in many ways, whereas legal immigrants have little way to protect themselves from Trump policy changes. Stripping someone of their legal status requires little more action than the stroke of a pen. Trump’s anti-legal immigration agenda will increase illegal immigration and harm American prosperity.