More than a year into the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies, there is little evidence that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has succeeded in his objective of expanding the U.S.-born workforce by limiting border access.
A policy brief released this month by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) highlighted that between February 2025 and February 2026, labor force participation among U.S.-born individuals aged 16 and older actually declined from 61.4% to 61%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
This contraction in the domestic labor force—occurring alongside a broader economic slowdown that saw only 181,000 jobs added nationwide in 2025—followed a series of measures aimed at restricting immigration. These measures included approximately $170 billion in enforcement funding, which encompasses $75 billion allocated to Immigration and Customs Enforcement through 2029 under President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB).
The crackdown appears to have achieved its goal of deterring immigrants and those planning to relocate to the U.S. The Brookings Institute estimates that between 10,000 and 295,000 people departed the country in 2025, marking the first instance of negative net migration in roughly 50 years. NFAP’s analysis indicates a reduction of 596,000 foreign-born workers since January 2026, and a total decrease of 1.01 million since the foreign-born workforce reached its peak in March 2025.
While the initiatives to reduce the number of foreign-born workers were effective, they failed to increase employment opportunities for U.S.-born workers, according to labor economist and NFAP senior fellow Mark Regets.
“Most economic research shows that immigration increases employment opportunities for the U.S.-born, so it would not be surprising if reducing immigration harms American workers,” Regets stated in the report.
Regets has previously noted that an immigrant workforce can enhance productivity, justify the hiring of additional staff, and encourage domestic firms to utilize local labor rather than offshoring operations. Furthermore, increased immigration can drive consumer spending, which stimulates economic growth.
“A company unable to find the workers it needs for some roles could shut down operations rather than continuing,” Regets explained.
He suggested that efforts to restrict immigration under the guise of creating more opportunities for domestic workers and strengthening the U.S. economy have, in reality, been counterproductive.
“The data is raising huge red flags that we are losing immigrants of all types that we otherwise would be advancing America’s economy,” he added.
How closed borders will impact the U.S. economy
Economists have cautioned that the consequences of negative net migration—which the Trump administration has framed as a success—could lead to a contraction of the U.S. economy.
A working paper published last year by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative policy center, concluded that negative net migration could reduce U.S. GDP growth by 0.3% to 0.4%. Given that the U.S. real GDP is approximately $23.5 trillion, the economic cost of fewer immigrants could range from $70.5 billion to $94 billion in lost annual output, driven by both a smaller workforce and reduced consumer spending.
NFAP previously estimated that Trump’s immigration policies would reduce the U.S. workforce by 6.8 million by 2028 and 15.7 million by 2035.
“Our workforce is disproportionately made up of immigrants relative to their share of the population, and because of that we…really can’t sustain a high level of job growth with the U.S.-born population alone, because there just aren’t enough bodies, essentially, to do that,” report co-author Tara Watson, a Brookings Institute economist and professor of economics at Williams College, stated in July 2025.
Research released last month by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggests that immigration has helped prevent a U.S. debt crisis as national obligations climb toward $39 trillion. Between 1994 and 2023, immigrants—both documented and undocumented—contributed more in taxes than they utilized in local, state, or federal benefits, resulting in a fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion over that 30-year span. The analysis suggests that without this economic contribution, public debt would exceed 200% of U.S. GDP, a level some economists view as a crisis threshold.
In 2023, immigrants accounted for 14.7% of the U.S. population but contributed 17.3% of tax revenue and earned 17.4% of total income, indicating that they earn more and pay higher taxes per capita than their U.S.-born counterparts, according to the report. Many immigrants arrive in their twenties, requiring less public investment in education than those born in the U.S. Additionally, many temporary or undocumented immigrants are ineligible for Social Security, costing the government roughly $74,000 less per capita in retirement benefits.
“For years, nativists in Congress and the administration have wrongly claimed that immigrants are behind the growth in debt and that the U.S. immigration system allowed foreigners to take advantage of Americans’ generosity,” wrote David Bier, report co-author and Cato Institute director of immigration studies, in a February Substack post. “Our data completely repudiates this view. Immigrants are subsidizing the U.S. government.”