The United States could be heading for a year of negative net migration under President Donald Trump as deportation efforts begin to show signs of a positive outcome.
According to various analysts and economists via a report from The Washington Post, more people are expected to leave the country than arrive.
Economists at two Washington think tanks expect President Donald Trump’s immigration policies to drive this reversal: from the near-total shutdown of the southern border to threats to international students and the loss of legal status for many new arrivals, according to a forthcoming paper.
A rise in deportations — the aim of recent workplace raids that triggered protests in Los Angeles and other cities — also plays a role.
A net outflow of immigrants could stoke inflation, a risk economists already expect from Trump’s tariff policies.
It also could renew the type of labor shortages the country experienced during the pandemic. Longer term, it could even have implications for fiscal policy, with fewer immigrants paying taxes and supporting entitlement programs such as Social Security, said one of the economists, Wendy Edelberg.
“For the year as a whole, we think it’s likely [immigration] will be negative,” Edelberg said. “It certainly would be the first time in more than 50 years.”
Edelberg and her colleague Tara Watson at the center-left Brookings Institution are working with Stan Veuger of the conservative American Enterprise Institute on the paper, which is due out later this month.
Their projections point to an increased likelihood of negative immigration in 2025, compared with the economists’ last projections published in December.
The projection is a good sign for the recovery of America, which was buckling under unsustainable levels of legal migration.
Legal immigration has ballooned due to increased use of work visas such as H-1B and H-2A.
Refugee admissions and green card approvals have also surged.
Over 1 million green cards were issued in fiscal year 2023 — one of the highest numbers in decades.
Temporary visa admissions also soared.
Under Joe Biden, humanitarian parole programs and family reunification channels were expanded.
This contributed to a sharp rise in legal pathways, alongside record levels of illegal crossings.
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