While Congress has not overhauled legal immigration law in the 36 years since the Immigration Act of 1990, the Trump Administration has made significant changes. The administration has used two levers to make these changes: first, the 1952 immigration law lets the president suspend entry for any group of foreigners judged harmful to the national interest, and it sets no limit on how large that group can be. The second is the government's power to refuse an immigrant visa to anyone it expects to end up on public benefits.
Reductions by the Trump Administration
Since Donald Trump's return to office in January 2025, his administration has set its sights on restricting immigration from specific countries.
Full travel ban (19 countries)
19 countries are completely banned from any U.S. visa, unless under very limited exceptions (e.g. lawful permanent residents, certain diplomatic and special-immigrant categories, and case-by-case national-interest waivers). The list groups into three categories.
Failed states unable to verify the identity of travelers:
- Afghanistan
- Somalia
- Syria
- Yemen
- Libya
- South Sudan
- Mali
- Burkina Faso
- Niger
- Sierra Leone
- Republic of the Congo
- Equatorial Guinea
State sponsor of terrorism:
- Iran
Countries that refuse the return of removed nationals:
- Chad
- Myanmar
- Eritrea
- Haiti
- Sudan
- Laos
Afghanistan was elevated to the full ban effective January 1, 2026, after a shooting in Washington, D.C. involving an Afghan national admitted under the 2021 evacuation operation.
Partial travel ban (19 countries)
For a further 19 countries, immigrant visas, tourist and business visas, and student exchange visas are suspended. Diplomatic categories may still apply.
- Nigeria
- Tanzania
- Cuba
- Venezuela
- Mauritania
- Tonga
- Senegal
- Togo
- Angola
- Benin
- Burundi
- Côte d'Ivoire
- Dominica
- Gabon
- The Gambia
- Malawi
- Antigua and Barbuda
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
U.S. travel bans, Proclamation 10998, in force since 1 January 2026
Barred from entering the United States
19 countries face a full travel ban (all visa categories suspended). 19 more face a partial ban (immigrant, visitor, and student visas suspended).
Full travel ban
Partial travel ban
Consular Green Card freeze (75 countries)
On January 14, 2026, the State Department announced an indefinite pause on consular immigrant visa processing for the nationals of 75 countries, citing public-charge concerns. The Cato Institute estimates the freeze blocks approximately 324,000 immigrant visa issuances per year.[1] Domestic adjustment of status remains operational for many of the affected countries. The freeze does not stop entry on tourist or student visas (someone can still come to study at an American institution, or hold an H-1B), but it pauses the immigrant visa pipeline that is the standard route to a Green Card.
Of the 75 countries on the freeze list, 23 were already restricted by the full or partial travel ban above - for them, the freeze adds nothing new. The 52 other countries are:
- Albania
- Algeria
- Armenia
- Azerbaijan
- Bahamas
- Bangladesh
- Barbados
- Belarus
- Belize
- Bhutan
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Brazil
- Cambodia
- Cameroon
- Cape Verde
- Colombia
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Egypt
- Ethiopia
- Fiji
- Georgia
- Ghana
- Grenada
- Guatemala
- Guinea
- Iraq
- Jamaica
- Jordan
- Kazakhstan
- Kosovo
- Kuwait
- Kyrgyz Republic
- Lebanon
- Liberia
- Moldova
- Mongolia
- Montenegro
- Morocco
- Nepal
- Nicaragua
- North Macedonia
- Pakistan
- Russia
- Rwanda
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Thailand
- Tunisia
- Uganda
- Uruguay
- Uzbekistan
Green Card pathway, consular freeze in force since 21 January 2026
Who is blocked from the Green Card pathway
The State Department froze consular immigrant visa processing for 75 countries on January 14, 2026 under the public-charge authority. The 52 freeze-only countries are shaded below; the other 23 are already on the full or partial ban. Domestic adjustment of status remains available.
Consular Green Card freeze
H-1B Visa
The H-1B visa program has also been targeted by the Trump administration. In 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approved 328,185 petitions, a decline from the 399,402 in 2024, a reduction of 17.8%. In 2026 this number is expected to fall to about 191,000, a reduction of 52% in two years.[2]
Two executive measures have been used to curtail the program. The first was a $100,000 fee (up from $2,000-$5,000) that a company needed to pay for a new H-1B petition. This was effective on September 21, 2025, but was blocked starting on June 8, 2026 - so it was only in place for roughly eight and a half months - by a federal district court in Massachusetts.[3] While the Trump administration has appealed this decision, as of now, this fee is not being collected[4]. The more meaningful change to the H1-B program is how the lottery itself works. It had been a random draw in every year the cap was oversubscribed, so a company offering a low salary had the same odds as one offering a high salary. Now the draw is weighted by salary. A company offering top-tier pay gets four entries while a company offering a Level 1 wage, the 17th percentile of local pay for that job, gets one single entry. Employers filing for cheap labor are now the least likely to win a visa.[5] This is not a full return to the H-1 program - which brought in relatively few, highly-qualified, "best of the best" individuals to the country - but it is a big improvement on the random draw system.
The cap against the reality
The 85,000 cap never governed how many H-1B workers are here
The cap counts only new cap-subject petitions. Renewals and cap-exempt employers are not counted against it, so the number of people in the country was never governed by the number Congress set.
Refugee admissions
Refugee admissions have fallen drastically as well, from 100,034 in 2024 to 38,102 in 2025, a drop of 62%.[6] In the first ten months of 2026, 10,258 refugees were admitted.[6] The ceiling for 2026 was set at 7,500, signed on September 30, 2025 and published a month later, the lowest in the program's history, then raised to 17,500 by an emergency determination on May 21, 2026.[7][8]
The ceiling is not the reason admissions are low. Five days into the term, an executive order suspended refugee entry outright, effective 12:01 a.m. on January 27, 2025. Since then a refugee can be admitted only when the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security jointly decide the individual case serves the national interest and poses no threat to American security or welfare. The order also requires DHS to advise the President every 90 days on whether the program should restart. Admissions have run below even the reduced ceiling because each one now needs that case-by-case finding.[7]
Both 2026 determinations point the program at one group. The September determination said the 7,500 places would go primarily to Afrikaners from South Africa, along with other victims of what it called illegal or unjust discrimination in their home countries. The emergency determination of May 21, 2026 assigned all 10,000 additional places to Afrikaners as well, citing racially motivated violence by the South African government and by leaders of prominent political parties there. A program that admitted 100,034 people from around the world in 2024 is now built around a single nationality.[8]
Refugees admitted, by year
Refugee admissions over the past five years
The annual ceiling is set by presidential determination, not by Congress. It was cut from 125,000 to 7,500, then raised to 17,500 in May 2026.
The Diversity Visa lottery
Since 1995, the Diversity Visa lottery has allowed for up to 55,000 Green Cards to be given out per year, awarded at random with no test of skills, language, or ties to the United States. On December 18, 2025, the Trump administration directed the Department of Homeland Security to pause the program. The State Department stopped issuing diversity visas five days later, on December 23.[9]
Diversity visas issued
From about 50,000 a year to none
The lottery has run at roughly 50,000 Green Cards a year since 1995. None has been issued since 23 December 2025.
The cuts are not uniform
Several categories rose in 2025. Intracompany transferees were up 8.4%, extraordinary-ability admissions 6.0%, NAFTA professionals 3.2%, and agricultural workers 1.7%. H-1B admissions fell 3.5%, against 5.3% for students and far steeper falls for refugees and diversity visas.[10]
These are admission events rather than people, so one person entering four times counts four times. The pattern still holds: the reduction has fallen hardest on the categories the executive branch can move by proclamation, and least on the employment categories written into the 1990 Act.
Recommendations
Write the executive measures into a law replacing the 1990 Immigration Act, then tighten the executive tools that remain:
- Cap annual legal admissions at about 200,000. Against the 1,364,090 Green Cards grantedi in 2024 that is a cut of 85%, and against the 1,320,080 granted in 2025 it is also 85%. The 1924 Act cut admissions 80%, from an average of 879,540 a year across 1901 to 1910 to an average of 177,852 across 1925 to 1965.
- Eliminate the Diversity Visa lottery, which makes up to about 55,000 Green Cards available a year, awarded at random with no test of skills, language, or ties to the country.
- Cap family-based immigration at 100,000 a year, limited to spouses and minor children, ending sponsorship for parents, adult siblings, and adult children.
- Replace H-1B with its predecessor, the H-1 program. The H-1 program, established in 1952, admitted workers of "distinguished merit and ability." The 1990 Immigration Act swapped that for "specialty occupation," which was a fancy way of saying: bachelor's degree. Restore the H-1 program, cap the program to below 10,000 a year, and set a salary floor above the 95th percentile of the relevant U.S. occupation.
- Replace Optional Practical Training, which is given to 330,000 students each year, with a training authorization program: twelve months tied to the degree, no 24-month STEM extension, a wage floor at the local median for the occupation, Social Security and Medicare taxes paid at the same rate as for an American, and no change of status from inside the country.
- Make immigrant-visa and Green Card categories the first line of restriction, expanding the consular Green Card freeze faster and to more countries than the full travel ban reaches.
- Elevate 14 more countries to the full travel ban that already meet a failed-state, terrorism-nexus, or refusal-to-repatriate criterion.
Center for Sustainable Immigration recommendation
Countries that should be added to the full travel ban
These 14 countries already meet at least one full-ban criterion - failed state, terrorism nexus, or refusal to take back removed nationals - but sit only on the Green Card freeze or the partial ban, or face no restriction at all. Tap any country for the rationale.
This is Part 2 of two. Part 1 covers illegal entry, removals, and the collapse in border crossings.
Sources
- Cato Institute, "New Ban Hits Half of Legal Immigrants - Even Citizens' Spouses and Kids" - Freeze impact estimate (~324,000 issuances/year)
- USCIS, Quarterly All Forms Report, FY2026 Q1 - 47,821 H-1B approvals in October-December 2025 against 87,018 in the same quarter a year earlier, a 45% fall. The 191,000 figure for 2026 annualizes that quarter and is an estimate, not reported data
- State of California v. Mullin, D. Mass. No. 1:25-cv-13829, decision of June 8, 2026 - Judge Leo T. Sorokin vacated the $100,000 H-1B fee, holding it a tax beyond the President's authority and unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, No. 26-1699, order of July 24, 2026 - the government's motion to stay the vacatur pending appeal was denied, leaving the fee unenforceable while the appeal proceeds
- DHS, Weighted Selection Process for Cap-Subject H-1B Petitions, final rule, 90 Fed. Reg. 60864, Table 12 - 28% Level 1 and 55% Level 2, both below the local median wage for the occupation
- Refugee Processing Center, Admissions Reports and the annual Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions
- Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2026, signed September 30, 2025 - sets the ceiling at 7,500, allocated primarily to Afrikaners from South Africa, and subjects all admissions to Executive Order 14163, which suspended refugee entry effective January 27, 2025.
- Emergency Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2026 - ceiling raised from 7,500 to 17,500; see also the Presidential Determination of October 31, 2025 setting it at 7,500
- U.S. Department of State, "Diversity Visa Issuance Updated Guidance" - issuance paused December 23, 2025
- DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, nonimmigrant admissions by class of admission - 2025 changes by category. These count admission events rather than people.