Research, analysis, and commentary on immigration policy and cultural integration.
The 1990 Immigration Act tripled annual admissions to roughly one million per year. Median U.S. home value rose from $79,100 to $362,000. The two facts are connected, and the math is local.
The foreign-born population grew by about 30.4 million between 1990 and 2024. Across all arrival years, immigrants and their U.S.-born children numbered more than 97.2 million in 2024. Where housing construction cannot keep pace with population growth, additional demand puts upward pressure on home prices and rents.
Real median household income rose 26% since 1990. Housing in the highest-immigration metros rose 47% to 199% in real terms. The gap between what Americans earn and what their cities cost is the product of adding 33.5 million people without building for them.
From 1890 to 1924, the United States admitted roughly 21 million immigrants, the foreign-born share peaked at 14.8%, and wages for unskilled workers stayed flat for a generation. This is what happened, why it happened, and how it ended.
Since President Trump took office in January 2025, the United States has implemented a full travel ban on 19 countries, a partial ban on 19 more, and a consular Green Card freeze covering 75 nations, while also suspending the diversity visa lottery and reducing refugee admissions by 62%.
Illegal entry into the United States has fallen from a peak of about 860,000 per year in 2023 to under 20,000 per year since Trump took office (and under 50 a day in 2026). This represents the lowest amounts of illegal immigration since 1970. Net migration has fallen drastically, from 2.7 million in 2024 to 1.3 million in 2025, and is expected to be between 321,000 and 570,000 in 2026.
The Supreme Court reaffirmed birthright citizenship on June 30, 2026, ending the Trump Administration's Executive Action from January 2025. There are several things the administration and Congress can do to reduce the impacts of birthright citizenship in the future.
In 1924, Congress cut permanent immigration by about 80% and held it there for 41 years, and the middle class expanded. The 1965 and 1990 Acts reversed that cut. A modern law would cut Green Cards to about 250,000 a year and fix that number in law.
On May 21, 2026, the Trump administration ended a workaround that millions of foreign workers had used to get Green Cards without leaving the United States. People on temporary visas - H-1B workers, students, religious workers, fiancés - now have to fly home and apply at a U.S. embassy abroad.
British voters chose to leave the European Union in 2016 largely to reduce immigration. Years later, immigration has never been reduced.
Foreign-born workers supplied 10.3 million of the 18.8 million people added to the American labor force since 2005. Over the same years the share of young households owning a home fell below where it stood in 1994.
The U.S. government approves approximately 400,000 H-1B petitions per year. With the rise of generative AI for programming and tens of thousands of American STEM graduates without a job, the H-1B program is in need of a deep overhaul.
Foreign buyers purchase about 100,000 existing U.S. homes a year - roughly 2.7 million over the past 15 years - and foreign owners hold about 45.8M acres of American farmland. No federal law bars a single one of those purchases.
The 1890-1924 wave packed the Lower East Side to over 334,000 people per square mile, filled the tenements with overcrowding and disease, and held unskilled wages flat for fifteen years. The 1924 Act cut immigration roughly 80%, and the next four decades produced rising wages, easing housing pressure, and full assimilation of the immigrants already here.
Immigrants and their U.S.-born children numbered 97.2 million in 2024, according to the Migration Policy Institute. This measure includes all arrival years and adult children.
Congress has not passed comprehensive immigration legislation since 1990. Annual admissions have run above one million for thirty-five years, and the foreign-born share has doubled from 7.9% to 15.8%.
The H-1B visa was meant for irreplaceable talent. By the Homeland Security Department's own count, 83% of new H-1B jobs are filed at wages below the local median, and 70% of approvals go to one country.
Since 1990, the U.S. has added over 33 million foreign-born residents, with approximately 64% of them settling in just 20 metropolitan areas. In those regions, a home now costs between five to nine times a median household's yearly income, while foreigners hold higher incomes than the local Americans.