The Unwelcoming States of America
By trying to change its demographic trajectory, Donald Trump will make his country weaker
Illustration: The Economist/Ricardo ReyFirst, give Donald Trump some credit.
He promised to restore order to the border, and he did.
Granted, the slowdown in irregular border-crossings began under Joe Biden, who belatedly closed the loophole whereby nearly anyone could walk across, claim asylum and join the labour market.
Mr Trump clamped down even harder.
The southern frontier, which was visibly chaotic in the early Biden years, is now calm.
That success could have been the foundation on which to build a rational immigration policy.
Voters like to feel in control of who comes in, which is why Mr Trump’s border wall has reassured many.
Once they think the government has a grip, there is political space to discuss the rules of entry and exit.
Two questions must be addressed.
What should the government do about the people who are already on American soil illegally?
And whom should America welcome in the future?
Mr Trump has offered a brutal answer to the first question, and a self-harming one to the second.
He has promised the “largest deportation operation in the history of our country”.
One of his enforcers said he wanted to deport 100m people, roughly seven times the number of illicit migrants in America.
The White House boasted it was rounding up “the worst of the worst”, though most of those detained have never been convicted of a crime.
The mass deployment of shoddily trained, theatrically aggressive immigration agents to Minneapolis caused a political backlash, after they were filmed killing two American protesters.
Since then, there have been fewer headline-grabbing clashes, as a showboating homeland-security chief has been replaced by a more competent one.
But the deportation machine has not slowed; it has merely grown quieter.
Rather than rappelling down buildings and seizing people in Walmart car parks, agents are co-operating with friendly cops and detaining people with expired visas at airports.
And Mr Trump has created a new class of deportables by stripping temporary asylum-like status from hundreds of thousands of Haitians, Afghans and others.
Overall, the deportation campaign is unpopular.
Most Americans favour kicking out criminals, but not tearing apart the families of hard-working people who have been in the country for decades.
Yet some in MAGA-world hanker for a less diverse America.
Senior Trump aides such as Stephen Miller stop only a few inches short of overt racism, talking of “heritage Americans”, who are somehow more American than newer arrivals, and “remigration”, a buzzword on the nativist right for sending people from alien cultures home.
Such attitudes seem to inform policies on whom to let in, too.
The only sizeable group of refugees admitted under Mr Trump has been white South Africans, whose claims of persecution are far-fetched.
The administration blocked all new immigrant visas for citizens of 75 non-rich countries.
Thus, if an American marries a Nigerian, they cannot live together in America, a curb on American liberty with echoes of a darker past.
A court last week ruled the policy illegal; the administration is now stalling and perhaps looking for a workaround.
Mr Trump is altering America’s demographic trajectory.
Net migration in 2025 was zero.
The short-term economic effects are ugly.
The labour force has shrunk by 1m since January. Leave aside the $17,000-a-head cost of processing, shackling and deporting people; American builders and bars are floundering for lack of labour.
The long-term effects could be even more damaging.
Though Mr Trump has often said he favours legal migration, especially the skilled variety, his actions suggest otherwise.
He is steadily obstructing the pipeline through which brainy foreigners come to study and work.
By one estimate, 29% fewer student visas were issued in 2025 than in the previous year, and new rules are making studying in America even less attractive.
Foreigners must complete their courses in less time than the average student takes, and then find a job within 30 days or go home.
Meanwhile, American firms that want H1-B visas for highly skilled foreign staff will have to stump up more than $100,000 per worker to apply, and may still be rejected.
Rather than boosting wages for native-born IT professionals, this will make it harder for their employers to expand.
Some within MAGA feel that shutting out foreigners will protect American culture.
On the contrary, the essence of that culture is dynamism and creativity, which has always been fed by a steady influx of industrious newcomers with fresh perspectives.
Nearly half of Fortune 500 firms were founded by immigrants or their children.
Many of America’s most brilliant entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk, entered via the college-to-Silicon Valley pipeline that is now narrowing.
A fortress America would be unAmerican.
There is little point in urging Mr Trump to recalibrate his immigration policies.
The best hope may be that the courts can limit the number of ways in which he pursues them illegally.
(He still claims the constitution doesn’t mean what it says about birthright citizenship, for example.)
However, Democrats should not assume, as they scramble to regain a slice of federal power, that the president was wrong about everything.
A big, beautiful door
He is right that the asylum system was being abused.
A future Democratic president would be wise to insist that asylum-seekers apply from the first safe country they reach, rather than giving preference to those with the wherewithal to make it to Mexico and then step into Texas.
This (far more than wall-building) is the way to avoid future mayhem on the border.
And only by persuading voters that their frontiers remain secure—rather than grandstanding about abolishing ICE—can a future administration hope to pass the kind of enlightened immigration reform that America needs.
Such a reform should make the country more open to the world’s most talented people, and less cavalier about breaking up families.
That might truly make America great again.
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