Most of the media coverage and public debate over Trump’s new immigration policies focus on his efforts to ramp up mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. But it is also important to emphasize how the new administration has sought to gut much of the legal immigration system. If they succeed, it is likely to cause great harm and injustice to both immigrants and US citizens. My Cato Institute colleague David Bier has a helpful summary of Trump’s actions against legal migration so far:
– Suspending indefinitely all US refugee entries, canceling 10,000 previously scheduled flights, and stranding 22,000 refugees who were approved to travel. A report on a potential limited restart is due in 90 days (Apr. 20).
- Suspending all case processing for refugees, which means that no progress will be made toward restarting entries.
- Closing Safe Mobility Offices in Latin America that allowed some people to apply for lawful entry to the United States.
- Requiring refugees undergo “stringent identification verification beyond that required of any other alien seeking admission,” which may invalidate all prior vetting approvals….
– Removing the ability to schedule appointments for lawful entry at the US-Mexico border using the CBP One phone app, which had permitted 1,450 people per day (529,250 per year) to enter the United States legally. About 270,000 people waiting for appointments are stranded in Mexico.
– Canceling 30,000 scheduled appointments for people stuck in Mexico. There is a lawsuit on behalf of one asylum seeker and her child who “depleted their life savings and survived kidnapping, robbery, and threats of sexual abuse” while waiting for an appointment….
Ending the parole sponsorship processes for new arrivals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Ukraine.
– Ending the family reunification parole programs for some Cuban, Guatemalan, Haitian, Colombian, and Salvadoran immigrant visa applicants who seek to reunite with their families when green cards are not immediately available under the caps.
– Ending the Central American Minors program, which allowed children from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to reunite legally with parents in the United States.
– Allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to invalidate anyone’s parole. Trump is reportedly going to strip all Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans of parole en masse.
– Rescinding the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) redesignation for 600,000 Venezuelans, including many who entered the country legally via the parole processes and CBP One. This means that their status will expire sooner than it would otherwise.
– Terminating TPS completely for 300,000 Venezuelans: These Venezuelans will lose their status in 60 days (April 1).
– Canceling visa interviews for hundreds of Colombians in response to their government’s temporary refusal to accept deportations on military planes.
– Promising to quickly cancel student visas for and deport all “Hamas sympathizers,” which some analysts interpret as a threat to anyone critical of Israel’s government. It is possible this could affect future visa issuances.
– Denying birthright citizenship to American children born in the United States to mothers who are here illegally or in a temporary status, unless the father is a permanent resident or US citizen, starting no later than February 19, 2025. This has been temporarily blocked by a court.
Elsewhere, I have written about Trump’s “invasion” executive order that relies on a dangerous legal theory to block nearly all legal migration pathways across the southern border.
In combination, this entails a massive gutting of legal migration. It will predictably consign many thousands of migrants and would-be migrants to a lifetime of poverty and oppression. Particularly egregious are the actions stripping legal status from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing a brutally oppressive socialist regime. Trump’s actions are far from the first unjust immigration restrictions in American history. But never before has the US tried to deport so many people fleeing a regime we ourselves condemn as horrifically oppressive, after those immigrants had entered completely legally.
Trump’s actions also include blocking the admission of 1700 previously vetted Afghan refugees, including some who had risked their lives supporting US forces in the Afghan war. This kind of betrayal is both wrong in itself, and likely to be damaging to national security, deterring potential future allies from working with the US to combat terrorism.
In addition to the harm inflicted on immigrants, these actions will also severely damage the US economy, as immigrants contribute disproportionately to entrepreneurship and innovation, and promote economic growth. Cutting immigration will also worsen the federal government’s already dire fiscal situation, as most immigrants .are net contributors to the public fisc. And, obviously, making legal migration more difficult is a major factor in incentivizing more of the illegal kind, and causing disorder at the border.
Bier also notes additional actions against legal immigration, that are likely in the offing, including severely curbing visas for legal entry, and ideological litmus tests for immigrants, barring those who “bear hostile attitudes toward [US] citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.” If you are skeptical of government censorship in the domestic context, you should be equally so when it comes to migration. The government should not have the power to restrict freedom of movement based on its subjective assessment of what views qualify as “hostile” to US citizens, culture, or government.
Trump has proposed to make legal migration easier for one group: white Afrikaner South Africans, who are to be prioritized for refugee status. I am all in favor of letting white South Africans immigrate freely. But the idea that they are somehow more threatened by oppression or more worthy of refugee status than, say, Cubans, Venezuelans, and Afghans, is ridiculous and perverse.
Bier concludes that Trump’s efforts to throttle legal migration are likely to lead to “four years of indescribable lawlessness, waste, chaos, and economic uncertainty that will leave America smaller, poorer, and less free.” I can’t disagree.
