America’s labor shortage is growing as legal immigration faces new restrictions

President Trump stood before Congress in 2019 and said, “Legal immigrants enrich our nation and strengthen our society in countless ways. I want people to come to our country in the greatest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.” In 2024, when he ran for re-election, he reiterated this point: “We need people.”

The president was right. But since Trump took office, his administration has sharply reduced legal immigration. Illegal immigration is down, too, but not by much. Overall, the administration reduced the number of legal arrivals by twice as much as it cut off illegal entry. Indeed, my Cato Institute report, which President Trump cited, shows the decline in immigration comes mainly from a minority of legal immigrants.

Earlier the president promised to prioritize Christian refugees, saying “we will help them.” But he didn’t. By 2024, most refugees vetted abroad and legally admitted to the US were Christians, yet he reduced the refugee program from 125,000 to 7,500. It now hosts a number of South Africans. There is zero room for religious persecution.

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If persecuted people can somehow come to the United States, the law protects their right to apply for asylum status. In 2018, President Trump encouraged asylum seekers to apply for legal entry, promising that immigrants “may find themselves in our asylum program, as long as they present themselves properly for screening at the port of entry.”

However, in January 2025, the president signed an executive order that completely eliminated the possibility of applying for asylum. This order reduced the legal entry of asylum seekers by 99.9 percent. On Truth Social, the president praised the findings of Cato’s report on Trump’s immigration numbers, sharing a graph of the drop in legal asylum applications as evidence that his policies were “the best in US history.”

President Trump praised his family’s immigration news, itself a product of family ties, and said how “great” it was that his wife could legally immigrate. However, his administration has not spared even close family members of American citizens applying for immigrant visas.

In December, the president signed an executive order banning legal immigration from 40 countries, and the State Department extended the ban on immigrant visas to more than 90 countries. These policies now block nearly half of all previous visa-free entry for immigrants, including half of all immigrant spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens.

It’s not just family. Workers are also caught up in the growing chaos of legal immigration bans. One single father with two older children with disabilities told PBS that Sierra Leone’s immigration ban prevents him from bringing back his domestic caregiver to provide for them. “The burden you are carrying is very heavy. It is difficult for me to be able to sleep enough,” he said.

These policies are not based on individual risk assessments. Indeed, background checks for all legal immigrants are far higher than anything members of the Trump family would have faced in decades past. There are legal US immigration partners who have spent years being vetted only now to be banned.

It’s not just a burden of time. The government also collected nearly $1 billion in money from illegal immigrants and American donors blocked by their various policies.

President Trump has long advocated for immigration reform, but even high-skilled workers have faced insurmountable new obstacles under this administration. In September, the president introduced a new $100,000 grant for the H-1B high-skill visa application process.

When he signed the order, he said, “We need workers – we need workers, we need big workers, and this ensures that’s what’s going to happen.” But the administration says the proposed cuts have cost the government $20 million, while retaining nearly 90 percent of new skilled workers applying for visas abroad.

President Trump has also campaigned to allow talented foreign students to come and live in the United States. “It’s very sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, very big schools, and small schools that are amazing schools too,” he said in 2024, adding: “You have to be able to stay.”

Even after he took office, the president has recognized the value of foreign students whose high tuition even helps to subsidize American students. By 2025, he said, “if we can cut [student visas] half, half of the colleges in the United States would go out of business.”

Ironically, the Trump administration cut student visas by 40 percent last summer, largely by suspending visa issuance during busy weeks. That didn’t cost many colleges. Still, it cost US colleges $3 billion and forced many colleges to cut back on programming and other student spending. Many colleges are waiting, hoping that next year will reverse these cuts.

When you add up all these cuts, you find that the administration has cut immigration twice as much as it has cut illegal immigration. That is not in line with the principles stated by the president. So what’s going on?

Trump’s fanatical underlings deserve the blame. They told him that these cuts are just getting rid of problem immigrants, not that they are reducing the numbers and shutting anyone down.

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When the president signed the H-1B order, White House Labor Secretary Will Scharf told Trump that the order would “make sure that companies have a way to hire people who are truly extraordinary.” That’s very different from telling him it would cut visas for new skilled workers by 90 percent. Once again, Trump said “we need people” as he finished signing.

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The president’s mind is right. America needs people. US population growth has slowed by 90 percent. Social Security is already short the millions of workers it needs to keep its income equal to its expenses. The workforce will shrink without immigration. Fewer employees with some retirees will lead to higher prices.

White House counsel Stephen Miller tells the president that immigrants are “the primary cause of the national debt.” Some immigrants can be a burden, but many organizations across the ideological spectrum agree that legal immigration is a huge win for the US budget.

No one is suggesting that America’s immigration system was perfect. It would be wise to improve the process, limit welfare access, and ensure that all legal immigrants are stopped from contributing to the United States. But President Trump should follow his own advice: get the people we need. Focus on profitability, improve the process, and make immigration great again.