US negative net migration hits 2025 marking first time since 1960s era
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The United States has experienced various industry bubbles and booms over the last six decades, including the 1990s. dot.com bubble and the housing bubble of the 2000s. A third bubble finally burst in 2025 after growing for 60 years: immigration to America.
Multiple reports show the United States experiencing negative net migration in 2025 for the first time since the 1970s. This course correction is long overdue and must continue.
The factors that lead to these bubbles and bursts across three different industries are surprisingly similar.
The technology bubble grew following the commercialization of the World Wide Web, at a time of rapid internet adoption and technology startups. It was a time when interest rates were low and economic optimism prevailed. The speculative market frenzy in technology stocks caused the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index to rise from below 1,000 in 1995 to its peak of over 5,000 in March 2000.
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By October 2002, the Nasdaq had fallen again to just above 1,000, wiping trillions off its market value. The reasons why the bubble burst were over-exaggerated speculation about emerging technologies and unsustainable business models. This should have been a cautionary tale for the housing bubble.
Housing prices, which started to rise rapidly in the late 1990s, accelerated in the early 2000s. Annual appreciation rates reached 15-17 percent in 2004 and 2005. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates from 6.5 percent in 2000 to 1 percent in 2003, encouraging borrowing and home purchases. Banks and lenders lowered standards, offering high-interest mortgages to borrowers with poor credit and often requiring little or no down payment.
Texas Department of Public Safety troopers captured 12 illegal immigrants smuggled into the United States by a Florida truck driver. (Texas Department of Public Safety)
Government policies required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to support affordable housing loans, and financial institutions packaged risky mortgage loans and sold them to investors. like dot.com With the rise of the bubble, lenders and buyers predicted that home prices would continue to rise indefinitely. When interest rates rose and home prices stagnated in the mid-2000s, borrowers defaulted en masse, the subprime mortgage market collapsed, and the bubble burst as part of the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession.
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Immigration to the United States—both legal and illegal—has been an industry since the mid-60s, when Congress passed the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965. This created the family preference system and resulted in chain migration. Spouses, parents, and children (both minors and adults) of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents may immigrate to the United States permanently along with adult siblings of U.S. citizens, who in turn may form a chain by sponsoring family members. The U.S. Government grants lawful permanent resident status to multiple people each year. 1 million Foreigners annually in most years since 2001 (approximately 75% family-based, 20% employment-based and humanitarian-based).
Illegal immigration began to increase from the early 1970s. In 1970, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended more than 201,000 illegal aliens on the southwestern border. This number has steadily increased each year; It first rose above 1 million in 1983 and consistently exceeded 1 million annually until 2006.
Annual encounters ranged from 300,000 to 800,000; until the Biden administration opened the border to record levels of illegal immigration — more than 7 million Border Parole encounters in four years.
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Since the 1970s, the U.S. Government has generally failed to enforce consequences for common types of illegal immigration, such as sneaking across the border, overstaying visas, working without permission, and committing identity and document fraud to remain in the United States.
Meanwhile, employers were becoming dependent on cheap foreign labor. Unions that opposed illegal immigration have changed their stance to support such immigration as a source of membership and power.
A US Customs and Border Protection border patrol officer talks to people on the Mexican side of the border wall at Border Field State Park in San Diego, California, US, November 28, 2018. REUTERS/Chris Wattie (REUTERS/Chris Wattie)
Politicians on the Left who oppose illegal immigration likewise gave a 180 for political power. They have expanded ways for illegal aliens to enter and remain in the United States, including the creation of visas for victims of trafficking, domestic violence, and other crimes, special immigration benefits for unaccompanied minors, and the default extension and expansion of temporary protected status.
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On the “legal” side of the ledger, the Left converted temporary visas into permanent visas, increased caps and uncapped categories, watered down asylum standards, and turned a blind eye to fraud.
During the Biden years, the Left inflated the bubble even further by weaponizing mass illegal immigration for political power, votes, ballot harvesting, and the Census. Biden administration pays tens of billions of dollars in federal grants each year to NGOs to facilitate mass migration to and across the US
The left argued that unrestricted immigration could continue indefinitely. But record numbers of immigrants, billions of dollars in costs for states and territories, record crime and fentanyl deaths have caused the bubble to burst. Americans voted to secure the border and conduct mass deportations in 2024; The Trump administration quickly accomplished this in 2025.
5 MAJOR IMMIGRATION CHANGES THAT WILL AFFECT ACROSS THE USA
The obvious result is the first net negative immigration rate to the United States since the 1960s, according to many reports.
The U.S. Census Bureau has released new population estimates showing a historic decline in net international migration (NIM) to the United States. It reported that NIM reached 2.7 million in 2024, fell to 1.3 million in mid-2025, and is projected to drop further to approximately 321,000 in 2026 if current trends continue. Brookings estimates net migration in 2025 will range from minus 10,000 to minus 295,000; This is the first time it has been negative in at least half a century. Brookings expects this trend to continue in 2026.
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Pew Research reported: 53.3 million In January 2025, aliens were living in the USA; this was the highest number ever recorded. By June, that number had fallen to 51.9 million, the first decline since the 1960s. Congressional Budget Office has made numerous updates to its Demographic Outlook since January 2025 due to decreased immigration.
This negative trend must continue. There are still millions of deportable aliens in America. Resources still go to them instead of American taxpayers.
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Housing is scarce and costs remain very high. American college students, graduates, and workers still struggle to get accepted into universities, get interviewed, get hired, and keep jobs as they compete with foreign students, graduates, and employees, and now face AI competition in the labor market.
As long as these factors continue, the migration bubble should not be re-inflated.
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