Where American Immigration Policy Stands in 2026 (Part 2 - Legal Migration)

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:

1. Afghanistan
2. Somalia
3. Syria
4. Yemen
5. Libya
6. South Sudan
7. Mali
8. Burkina Faso
9. Niger
10. Sierra Leone
11. Republic of the Congo
12. Equatorial Guinea

State sponsor of terrorism:

13. Iran

Countries that refuse the return of removed nationals:

14. Chad
15. Myanmar
16. Eritrea
17. Haiti
18. Sudan
19. 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.

1. Nigeria
2. Tanzania
3. Cuba
4. Venezuela
5. Mauritania
6. Tonga
7. Senegal
8. Togo
9. Angola
10. Benin
11. Burundi
12. Côte d'Ivoire
13. Dominica
14. Gabon
15. The Gambia
16. Malawi
17. Antigua and Barbuda
18. Zambia
19. Zimbabwe

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:

1. Albania
2. Algeria
3. Armenia
4. Azerbaijan
5. Bahamas
6. Bangladesh
7. Barbados
8. Belarus
9. Belize
10. Bhutan
11. Bosnia and Herzegovina
12. Brazil
13. Cambodia
14. Cameroon
15. Cape Verde
16. Colombia
17. Democratic Republic of the Congo
18. Egypt
19. Ethiopia
20. Fiji
21. Georgia
22. Ghana
23. Grenada
24. Guatemala
25. Guinea
26. Iraq
27. Jamaica
28. Jordan
29. Kazakhstan
30. Kosovo
31. Kuwait
32. Kyrgyz Republic
33. Lebanon
34. Liberia
35. Moldova
36. Mongolia
37. Montenegro
38. Morocco
39. Nepal
40. Nicaragua
41. North Macedonia
42. Pakistan
43. Russia
44. Rwanda
45. Saint Kitts and Nevis
46. Saint Lucia
47. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
48. Thailand
49. Tunisia
50. Uganda
51. Uruguay
52. Uzbekistan

H-1B visa

While the Trump administration has been successful in cutting some forms of immigration, the H-1B visa program represents an area with lots of reform required. In fiscal year (FY) 2025 (Oct. 2024 - Sep. 2025), USCIS approved ~406,000 petitions, a increase from approximately 399,000 in FY 2024. The FY 2026 numbers however are projected to go back down to 360,559, a reduction from 2024 of 9.7%^[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 H-1B 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.

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]

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]

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 approximately 200,000. Against the 1.3 million Green Cards grantedi in 2024 that is a cut of 85%. The 1924 Immigration Act cut admissions 80%, from an average of ~879,000 per year across 1901 to 1910 to an average of ~178,000 per year between 1925 to 1965.
• Eliminate the Diversity Visa lottery, which makes up to about 55,000 Green Cards available per year, awarded at random with no test of skills, language, or ties to the U.S.
• Cap family-based immigration at 100,000 per 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 per year, and set a salary floor above the 95th percentile of the relevant U.S. occupation.
• Replace the Optional Practical Training (OPT) visa, 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.

Update - Monday, September 28, 2026

Parts of this article describe restrictions that are no longer in effect:

• The 75-country consular Green Card pause ended August 21, 2026, following the court order in CLINIC v. Rubio. The section above and its map describe the former pause, not a current blanket freeze. Separate travel restrictions and ordinary visa eligibility requirements can still apply.^[11]
• The Diversity Visa issuance pause ended August 28, 2026, following the court order in Medani v. Trump. The statements above that the lottery remains suspended and that no diversity visas have been issued since December should not be read as current facts. Ending the issuance pause does not itself establish the registration dates for a future lottery.^[12]
• The H-1B entry restriction was extended, but its legal status must be distinguished from the proclamation itself. On September 18, President Trump issued a proclamation extending the restriction through September 21, 2027, effective September 21, 2026. It directs employers to make a $100,000 payment for covered petitions involving workers outside the United States who need to enter to take up the approved employment. It allows national-interest exceptions. This is not a blanket charge on every H-1B renewal or every worker already in the country.^[13]

The court decisions discussed above concern the earlier policy. Issuing a new proclamation does not, by itself, show that those decisions have been reversed or establish whether USCIS is currently collecting the payment. The article's statement that the fee is not being collected therefore needs a current agency instruction or court order before it can be treated as an up-to-date conclusion.

The proclamation also reports a nearly 97% decline in consular-processing requests between the FY2025 and FY2027 cap seasons and a 92% decline in registrations at the largest IT staffing and outsourcing firms. These figures describe particular application channels; they do not mean that total H-1B approvals or the number of H-1B workers fell by those percentages.^[13]

The approval figures above also need correction. The key finding says FY2025 approvals fell, while the body says they rose. Annual comparisons must use the same USCIS series and include the same petition categories. Total approvals include initial and continuing employment, rather than counting only newly arriving workers. Any FY2026 projection must identify its year-to-date data, its FY2025 comparison and the assumption used to estimate the remaining months. Until those figures are reconciled, the article's stated annual decline and precise FY2026 projection should not be treated as established results.

Sources

1. Cato Institute, "New Ban Hits Half of Legal Immigrants - Even Citizens' Spouses and Kids" - Freeze impact estimate (~324,000 issuances/year)
2. 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. This is a quarterly figure, not a valid full-year 191,000 projection.
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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
6. Refugee Processing Center, Admissions Reports and the annual Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions
7. 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.
8. 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
9. U.S. Department of State, "Diversity Visa Issuance Updated Guidance" - issuance paused December 23, 2025
10. 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.

Additional:

11. U.S. Department of State, Immigrant Visa Processing Updates, updated August 28, 2026 - notice that the 75-country issuance pause ceased to apply August 21, 2026.
12. U.S. Department of State, Diversity Visa Issuance Updated Guidance, updated August 31, 2026 - notice that the December 2025 issuance pause ceased to apply August 28, 2026. See also State Department cable 26 STATE 88862, September 10, 2026, filed in court, directing resumption of immigrant and diversity visa processing and issuance.
13. White House, Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers, September 18, 2026 - extends the covered H-1B entry restriction through September 21, 2027; the proclamation is not a court ruling on enforceability.