America’s worker shortage grows as legal immigration faces new limits

President Trump appeared before Congress in 2019 and said: “Legal immigrants enrich our country and strengthen our society in countless ways. I want people to come to our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come legally.” He repeated the point as he runs for re-election in 2024: “We need people.”

The President was right. But since Trump took office again, his administration has significantly reduced legal immigration. Illegal immigration also decreased, but not by that much. After all, the administration reduced legal immigration twice as much as it reduced illegal immigration. Indeed, my report for the Cato Institute, which President Trump cited, shows that the decline in immigration is driven primarily by fewer legal immigrants.

The president had previously promised to prioritize Christian refugees, saying “we will help them.” But he didn’t do this. Most of the refugees screened abroad and legally admitted to the United States in 2024 were Christians, but he reduced the refugee program from 125,000 to 7,500. It now only accepts a small number of South Africans. There is zero room for religious persecution.

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If persecuted people can somehow reach 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 “will be able to take advantage of our asylum system as long as they properly present themselves for inspection at the port of entry.”

But in January 2025, the president signed an executive order that completely ended the opportunity to apply for asylum. The decision reduced the legal entry of asylum seekers by 99.9 percent. On Truth Social, the president praised this finding in Cato’s report detailing Trump’s legal immigration numbers and shared the chart of declines in legal asylum applications as evidence that his policies “are the best in US History.”

President Trump praised his own family’s immigration stories, which were a product of family connections, and said how “nice” it was that his own wife was able to immigrate legally. But his administration did not even spare immediate family members of U.S. citizens applying for immigrant visas.

In December, the president signed an executive order banning legal permanent immigration from 40 nationalities, and the State Department expanded the immigrant visa ban to more than 90 nationalities. These policies now block about half of the previous immigrant visa stream, including half of all immigrant spouses and minor children of American citizens.

It’s not just family. Workers are also caught in a growing web of legal immigration bans. A single father with two adult disabled children told PBS that Sierra Leone’s immigration ban prevented him from bringing back a home care provider for them. “The burden on me is huge. Getting enough sleep is a struggle,” he said.

These policies are not based on individualized risk assessments. In fact, background checks on all legal immigrants are far superior to anything Trump’s family members would have been subjected to decades ago. Legal immigrant spouses of Americans who have been subject to years of scrutiny are only now being blocked.

It’s not just a time burden. The government also collected nearly $1 billion in fees from legal immigrants and American sponsors who were stymied by its various policies.

President Trump has long advocated for merit-based immigration reform, but even the highest-skilled workers face insurmountable new obstacles under this administration. In September, the president set a new fee of $100,000 just for the chance to apply for the H-1B high-skilled visa.

As he signed the order he said: “We need workers; we need workers, we need great workers, and that is the guarantee of what will happen.” But the administration said the wage cuts cost the government $20 million, leaving out about 90 percent of newly skilled workers seeking visas from abroad.

President Trump also campaigned on allowing talented foreign students to come and stay in the United States. “It’s very sad to lose people from Harvard, from MIT, from the biggest schools and from smaller schools that are also outstanding schools,” he said in 2024, adding: “You should be able to stay.”

Even after taking office, the president recognized the importance of foreign students, whose high-value tuition fees even help subsidize U.S. students. In 2025 he said: “If we cut [student visas] Halfway through, half the colleges in the United States will go bankrupt.”

It’s odd, then, that the Trump administration cut student visas by 40 percent last summer, largely by suspending visa processing during peak weeks. This did not bankrupt many universities. However, it cost US colleges $3 billion in revenue and forced many colleges to cut back on programming and other expenses for students. Many universities are on hold, hoping to reverse these cuts next year.

When you add up all these cuts, you find that the administration has cut legal immigration twice as much as it has cut illegal immigration. This does not align with the president’s stated goals. So what’s going on?

Trump’s overzealous subordinates deserve some of the blame. They tell him that these cuts only zero out problem immigrants, reducing the total number and replacing them with no one.

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As the president signed the H-1B order, White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf told Trump that the order would “give companies a way to hire truly extraordinary people.” This is quite different from telling him that visas for newly skilled workers will be reduced by 90 percent. “We need people,” Trump said once again as he finished signing.

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The president’s instinct is correct. America needs people. U.S. population growth is down 90 percent. Social Security already lacks the millions of workers it needs to keep revenues equal to expenses. Without immigration, the workforce will decrease. Fewer workers and more retirees will lead to higher prices.

White House Counsel Stephen Miller told the president that immigrants are “the root cause of the national debt.” Some immigrants can certainly be a burden, but many organizations across the ideological spectrum agree that legal immigration is a big win for the U.S. budget overall.

No one is claiming that America’s legal immigration system is perfect. It would be wise to improve the process, restrict welfare access, and ensure that all legal immigrants are set to contribute to the United States. But President Trump should follow his own advice: Get the people we need. Focus on merit, improve the process, and make immigration great again.