Trump's Overlooked Effort to Reduce Legal Immigration

The American Conservative ^ | April 21, 2026 | Scott Greer

[River Hawk]

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.

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TOPICS: Government; Miscellaneous; Society
KEYWORDS: immigration; trump

[Wuli]

CATO - pro “immigration” including amnesty, so its opinion on legal immigration is questionable.

[Sacajaweau]

We’re not that stupid..

[Regulator]

Thank God and Stephen Miller

[9YearLurker]

We’ve still got 50+ million illegals to expel.

[Secret Agent Man]

Hes also overlooked stopping businesses bringing in foreign workers abusing the h1-b to replace American workers.

[Vendome]

legal immigration has dropped because they know if they overstay their visa, they will never have a chance at coming back to America

[FLT-bird]

Good. The fee on H1Bs does not appear to be sufficient. Make it $100K per year instead of per 3 year visa.

[jerod]

With the UK handing out free money, free healthcare, free hotel rooms and even free phones to illegal immigrants... And if you don’t want any of that stuff, they’ll even give you £40,000 to voluntarily leave the country within seven days... The smart illegals are heading heading to the UK.

[Robert DeLong]

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.

I sincerely doubt the claim I posted above is true.

Approximately 2.8 million legal immigrants were allowed into the U.S. in fiscal year (FY) 2024, the most recent year with complete official data. FY 2024 ran from October 2023 to September 2024, and data for FY 2025 (October 2024–September 2025) has not been finalized or released.

So, where exactly are they getting their data from, and is the source reliable?

I doubt that their source is reliable as well.

[Bikkuri]

"Make it $100K $10,000,000 ($10m) per year"

[JeemBeau]

Here is the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ H-1B data hub, which lists employers who use the H-1B program. When using the dropdowns to make a selection, be sure to click the “Apply” button at the bottom of the dropdown :

https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employer-data-hub

Note that the 85,000 limit on new workers per year does NOT apply to colleges and universities.

[JeemBeau]

Big Tech Companies Prepare to Skirt Trump’s $100,000 H-1B Fee :

https://archive.is/exl6x

STEM-OPT training for foreign students - Graduating Into Second Place :

https://ifspp.substack.com/p/graduating-into-second-place

https://optobservatory.org/

https://www.h1bexposed.tech/

Industrialized fraud in H-1B program, as per a U.S. consulate officer who was India :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KumpIWZ6ZpI

“How Thousands of Middlemen Are Gaming the H-1B Program” (Bloomberg). The methodologies used to match up and analyze the data are at the bottom of the article, as well as a link to the data itself :

https://archive.is/VHPxZ

https://github.com/BloombergGraphics/2024-h1b-immigration-data