Washington DC, February 3, 2026 --  

America's anti-immigrant backlash has been quite successful. For the sake of the country, it had better not last.

America's largest ever wave of immigration has now come to an end. A stunning 16 million immigrants came to the United States between 2009 and 2024 bringing America's foreign born population to 15.8 percent -- its highest level in recorded history.¹

End of the Line. Source: Center for Immigration Studies

Just as stunning as the surge has been the backlash. The Trump administration has unleashed paramilitarized Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents onto American cities by the thousands to hunt down immigrants for deportation. The killing of two Americans protesters by ICE agents in Minneapolis has galvanized public outrage against the brutal crackdown.

Yet by the most important metric, the crackdown has been highly effective. Net migration to the United States not only ended in 2025, it became negative. Deportations and voluntary emigration exceed immigration to the United States for perhaps the first time ever, according to a Brookings Institution study.²

This is not America's first anti-immigrant backlash. Millions of Europeans came by steamship between the Civil War and the 1920s, spiking the foreign born population to 14.8 percent in 1890 and 14.7 percent in 1910.³

Widespread resentment triggered the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, then the Immigration Act of 1924. These targeted newer immigrant groups like Japanese, Italians, and Jews, deemed undesirable by nativists. Immigration from Japan was completely banned as Chinese immigration had been in 1882.

Eastern and Southern European immigration was limited by a quota system of two percent of the 1890 percentage of the population. This especially hit migrants from Italy, Greece, Russia and other Eastern and Southern European countries as they were but a tiny percentage of the US population back in 1890.

The legal quota system lasted mostly untouched for 50 years, with a tweak here and there. Desperate labor shortages in World War II created the Bracero program that brought in temporary Mexican farm laborers. That abusive and restrictive system created an illegal Mexican immigration market for farm labor that lived on even after the Bracero program ended in the mid-1960s. Temporary exemptions also allowed many European refugees after World War II. Yet immigration remained way down from the turn of the 20th century.

By 1970, tight immigration quotas had dropped the foreign born population of the United States to an all time low of 4.7 percent.⁴ Then a turning point came -- explosive population growth in Latin America sent peasants streaming into cities and across the border into America outside the law. The collapse of the South Vietnamese regime led millions of America's former allies to be granted refugee status, also outside the quota system.

This new reality of immigration -- illegal arrivals over America's southern land border, and legal refugee arrivals by boats and airplane, never eliminated the 1920s quota system, but completely eclipsed it.

This surge abruptly collapsed in Trump's 2025 crackdown. it remains to be seen if that will last.

If so, America is in real trouble. America's economy relies heavily on immigrants for both high-end jobs (research scientists and engineers) and low-end jobs (agricultural and construction workers.) While some native born Americans may take some positions, the economy will suffer from the lack of specialized talent on the top-end and from skyrocketing wages for low-end work that fuel inflation.

Demographics may be an even larger problem. The fertility rate for American women is down to 1.6 percent⁵, significantly below replacement level of 2.1. Without immigration the US population and labor force will shrink which will cause a decline in American power and cultural influence.

Population decline worries are shared by America's MAGA movement. Trump's former DOGE bigwig Elon Musk (with dozens of children by many baby mammas) and Vice President JD Vance (fourth child on the way) have spoken out about the need to increase birth rates. But similar calls to increase birth rates have failed to stop population declines in Japan, China, Russia and Germany.

Hope for American growth and resumed immigration is not lost.

The draw of immigrants to the United States is strong and enduring. The spectacle of the crackdown's brutality has done far more to frighten immigrants away than the actual border controls or deportations have stopped them. In time, migrant ingenuity will enable them to adapt.

Further, Americans have soured on the Trump administration's brutality and are bound to rein it in. Polls show that the spike in concern about immigration that coincided with Trump's 2024 election victory is now gone.⁶

While immigration returning to the record levels of the early 2020s is unlikely in the near term, it is also unlikely we will see another 50 year pause like after the 1920s nativist backlash. The brutal efforts to quickly stop immigration to the United States since 2025 are not sustainable. Expect those efforts, like the halt in the flow of immigrants, to come to an end.

Related Web Columns:

Betrayed to the Communists, November 11, 2025

Political Roadblocks, July 9, 2024

Here to Stay, December 13, 2022

Cuba's White Flight, August 23, 2022

Who Will Do The Dirty Work?, May 1, 2012

Stupid and Irresponsible, April 27, 2010

Submitting to the Rising Tide, June 12, 2007

Meet the Parasites, April 4, 2006

Out of the Sand!
America's Failed Immigration Policy, July 22, 2003

Crossing Borders With Uncrossed T's, April 2, 2002

Constitutional Rights: DENIED, December 11, 2001

Profoundly Evil
The Deadly Face of Modern Migration, June 27, 2000

Lessons of the Conquistadors, April 4, 2000

Constitutional Apartheid
America's New Political Underclass, March 9, 1999

Notes:

1. Center for Immigration Studies, Foreign-Born Number and Share of U.S. Population at All-Time Highs in January 2025, March 12, 2025

2. Brookings Institution, Macroeconomic Implications of Immigration Flows in 2025 and 2026: January 2026 Update, January 13, 2026

3. Center for Immigration Studies, Ibid.

4. Center for Immigration Studies, Ibid.

5. National Vital Statistics System, Vital Statistics Rapid Release, April 2025

6. Gallup, Surge in U.S. Concern About Immigration Has Abated, July 11, 2025