Trump’s Overlooked Effort to Reduce Legal Immigration

It's hardly noticed

It’s become common to think in some circles that Donald Trump is doing little on legal immigration in his second term.

The data shows that belief is grossly mistaken, as I argue in my latest American Conservative column:

The open borders enthusiasts at the Cato Institute made a shocking discovery last week: The Trump administration has apparently cut legal immigration even more than it’s reduced illegal immigration. That seems incredible, considering there is virtually no new illegal immigration.

But Cato’s immigration studies director David J. Bier believes this is the case, claiming illegal entries were already dramatically falling before Trump took office. “The falloff in illegal immigration continued a prior trend, while the cuts in legal immigration broke the trend of rising legal immigration from 2021 to 2024,” Bier claims, noting that “the cut to legal entries was 2.5 times as large.”

The report counters the false impression among certain parts of the right that the administration is doing little about immigration beyond closing the border to illegal aliens. The data shows a completely different picture, revealing a White House trying to reverse legal immigration independent of Congress.

Read the rest here.