David J. Bier
The State Department announced it will suspend immigrant visa processing for nationals of 75 countries starting next week. This ban builds on prior bans that had already barred immigrant visas for 40 countries, accounting for one in five legal immigrants. This new ban brings the number of banned nationalities up to 93, 42 percent of those in the world, and the total population banned up to nearly half of those who immigrated legally from abroad in 2024.
Fox News, which obtained the State Department memo, does not state that there will be exceptions to the new policy, other than for temporary (non-immigrant) visa applicants. Fox reports that the policy will continue “indefinitely until the department conducts a reassessment of immigrant visa processing.” The map below shows that the restrictions now affect countries in every region of the world, including North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. The yellow countries are the ones that will be added to the list of banned nationalities next week, on January 21.
African countries are the most represented on the banned country list, with 39 affected nationalities, about 70 percent of African nationalities. But the targeted African nationalities compose a higher share of immigrant visa applicants. Nearly 90 percent of African immigrant visa applicants will be banned. Asian immigrants would also be negatively affected, with about 44 percent of Asian immigrants barred under the policy. Altogether, 324,000 legal immigrants would be banned by the policy, accounting for 48 percent of legal immigrants.
As the table below shows, this ban will target even close family members of US citizens and legal permanent residents. Approximately 100,000 of their spouses and minor children will be barred by this policy, one of the most extreme legal immigration policies in US history.
This policy is ostensibly based on concerns about welfare use among these legal immigrants, and the State Department states: “The freeze will remain active until the U.S. can ensure that new immigrants will not extract wealth from the American people.” This is not a good justification for a broad legal immigration restriction. Immigrant visa recipients are barred from receiving any federal means-tested public benefits for five years and are ineligible for entitlements without the necessary work history. The president could work with Congress to make these bans permanent. Regardless, immigrants reduce the deficit by paying more taxes than they use in benefits. It will also reduce economic growth, increasing America’s debt-to-GDP.
President Trump is leading the most anti-legal immigrant administration in American history. This is just the latest action to slash legal entries to the United States. These include effectively ending the refugee program for legal immigrants facing persecution abroad, ending the parole sponsorship processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and Ukrainians, ending the CBP One phone app for asylum applicants entering legally, and suspending the green card lottery program—among many other actions.
It is likely that the number of individuals affected by this action might double if the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) adopts the same policy toward these 75 nationalities for applicants who are already in the United States. It has already suspended green card processing for 40 countries affected by President Trump’s prior bans.
As I’ve noted before, Congress specifically barred discrimination based on national origin, but the courts and the administration have invented ways around that prohibition. Congress needs to reassert its control over the legal immigration system and prevent further attacks by an administration intent on destroying its system.