The Great Legal Immigration Reversal

Sixty-plus years of unchecked mass immigration have eroded the fabric of American society to the point where Americans are beginning to wonder if the country can survive...

What goes unnoticed, however, is the seismic shift in immigration policy, particularly legal immigration policy, that arrived with the latest Trump administration.

The truth is that the floodgates that have allowed more than 1–1.2 million legal immigrants into the United States every year since 1990 are closing...

What the executive branch has managed to do, with little help from Congressional leadership, is effect a necessary reset of the legal immigration system that will finally bring an end to the decades of mass immigration that Americans have consistently voted against. While there must be legislation passed by the (as of now) GOP-controlled Congress to ensure these immigration changes are enshrined into law, we should take a moment to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of this administration...

... in 2025 for the first time in half a century. According to a January 2026 report by Brookings, anywhere between 10,000 and 295,000 more people left the United States than entered the country in fiscal year 2025...

This is a major turnaround from a period when net migration (including legal immigration, 1–1.2 million annually, and illegal immigration together) into the United States has run into the multiple millions since the 1990s. Green cards issued abroad dipped to 560,000–575,000—down more than 100,000 from 670,000 in 2024. Refugee admissions plummeted to 7,600–12,000 from 105,000. And virtually all new refugees are Afrikaners and other white South Africans fleeing the persecution of their post-apartheid “rainbow” government...

Stephen Miller, currently Deputy White House Chief of Staff, expects that the new rules coming into force in 2026 will cut legal immigration by 33–50 percent over four years, denying 1.5–2.4 million green cards...

Without a full moratorium as proposed by Texas representative Chip Roy and an entirely new immigration system, which we believe should resemble the 1924 Immigration Act proposed here, residual inflows could rebound. If the Congressional GOP does not get its act together and enact more restrictions into law, a future Democratic president could undo all the Trump administration’s executive actions with executive actions of his or her own...