For the first time in at least half a century, more people may leave the United States than arrive this year, an abrupt shift in immigration patterns with potentially significant implications for the U.S. economy.
Economists at two Washington think tanks expect President Donald Trump’s immigration policies to drive this reversal: from the near-total shutdown of the southern border to threats to international students and the loss of legal status for many new arrivals, according to a forthcoming paper. A rise in deportations — the aim of recent workplace raids that triggered protests in Los Angeles and other cities — also plays a role.
A net outflow of migrants could stoke inflation, a risk economists already expect from Trump’s tariff policies. It also could renew the type of labor shortages the country experienced during the pandemic. Longer term, it could even have implications for fiscal policy, with fewer immigrants paying taxes and supporting entitlement programs such as Social Security, said one of the economists, Wendy Edelberg.
“For the year as a whole, we think it’s likely [immigration] will be negative,” Edelberg said. “It certainly would be the first time in more than 50 years.”
Edelberg and her colleague Tara Watson at the center-left Brookings Institution are working with Stan Veuger of the conservative American Enterprise Institute on the paper, which is due out this month. {snip}
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“It’s not about deportations so much,” Veuger said. “It’s really just that inflows are down so much; not just at the southern border, but also through various legal programs.”
Already, the foreign-born workforce has shrunk by more than 1 million people since March, Labor Department data shows. (The figures are not adjusted for seasonal trends.)
That’s a sharp reversal from a recent surge in immigration that in 2024 pushed the share of foreign-born workers in the U.S. labor force to the highest level on record, fueling the country’s economic strength after the pandemic.
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