Across the United States, the absence is becoming noticeable. It shows up not as a statistic at first, but as a problem to be solved: a construction company in Louisiana that cannot finish projects on time because there aren’t enough carpenters; a rural hospital in West Virginia forced to cut services after international doctors and nurses fail to arrive; a youth soccer league in Memphis cancelling teams because immigrant families no longer feel safe bringing their children to public fields.
One year into President Trump’s renewed immigration crackdown, these gaps are appearing with increasing frequency. The administration has tightened the border, raised barriers to legal entry, reduced refugee admissions to near zero, and rolled back temporary protections granted under the Biden administration. Together, these policies are reshaping who can come to the United States — and who is able to stay.
Visa fees have risen sharply. International student admissions have dropped. Refugee resettlement agencies, once busy, now sit nearly idle. Hundreds of thousands of people who previously held temporary legal status are once again vulnerable to deportation, sometimes with little warning. The administration says it has already expelled more than 600,000 people.
The effects are not yet a full shutdown, but the direction is clear. According to Oxford Economics, net immigration is now running at roughly 450,000 people per year under current policies — a steep decline from the two to three million who arrived annually during the Biden years. Even so, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population reached 14.8 percent in 2024, matching a high last seen in 1890.
White House officials argue that this level is unsustainable. They have made clear that their long-term ambition is something closer to the immigration regime of the 1920s, when Congress passed sweeping restrictions that cut off large parts of the world and drove net immigration close to zero. By 1970, the foreign-born share of the population had fallen to just 4.7 percent.
Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser and architect of the policy push, has repeatedly praised that era. He has described the decades of low immigration as the last time the United States was an “undisputed global superpower,” suggesting that economic dominance, social cohesion and national strength were all products of closed doors.
Whether history supports that view is deeply contested. What is far less disputed is how deeply immigration has become embedded in modern American life — and how disruptive its sudden absence could be.
In many industries, immigrants are not a marginal workforce but a central one. They make up large portions of construction crews, food-processing plants, elder-care facilities and hospitals. In rural areas especially, foreign-born doctors and nurses have kept hospitals open that would otherwise have closed years ago. In cities, immigrants sustain small businesses, restaurants and service jobs that rely on constant labor turnover.
Schools, too, reflect these changes. In places like Marshalltown, Iowa, public schools report more than 50 dialects spoken by students. These communities have grown not despite immigration, but because of it, stabilizing shrinking towns and keeping local economies afloat.
A sharp move toward zero immigration would likely accelerate labor shortages already felt in health care, housing and agriculture. Wages might rise in some sectors, but economists warn that higher costs would ripple outward — raising prices, slowing construction and straining public services. An aging population would face fewer working-age taxpayers to support Social Security and Medicare.
Culturally, the changes would be just as visible. Neighborhoods would grow quieter. Fewer languages would be heard in classrooms and parks. Festivals, restaurants and religious institutions built by immigrant communities would shrink or disappear. Some Americans might welcome this transformation, seeing it as a return to familiarity. Others would see it as a loss — of energy, of creativity, of connection to the wider world.
The 1920s immigration shutdown did not merely reduce numbers; it reshaped the nation for generations. It altered who could become American, who could climb the economic ladder, and which voices were heard in public life. Repeating that experiment in the 21st century would take place in a vastly different country — one more interconnected, more dependent on global flows of people and ideas, and more demographically fragile.
America may not reach zero immigration anytime soon. But as policies tighten and doors close, the outlines of such a future are coming into focus — not as an abstract debate, but as empty jobs, shuttered programs and communities quietly thinning out.
What remains unresolved is whether the country is prepared for what comes next — and whether what is lost can ever be rebuilt once the doors are closed.