One enduring criticism of President Trump’s border and immigration policies is that by rejecting mass immigration, the United States is both abandoning its historic purpose and squandering its economic future. Even establishment outlets like The Economist see the departure, forced or not, of up to 2 million illegal immigrants as auguring a “zero migration America.”
True, some MAGA activists seem determined to reduce even legal immigration. This is both misguided and unlikely, especially given the strong possibility that Congress will be more Democratic after next year’s midterm elections. But though the surge in illegal migration has now been reversed, U.S. legal immigration remains at basically pre-Trump levels, even if naturalization requests have dropped somewhat.
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Critically, the big shift of talent to the U.S.—primarily from Europe, India, and China—proceeds apace. The United States remains a top destination for STEM professionals, offering some of the highest energy salaries globally and the highest pay for independent contractors.
If anything, America’s appeal is growing. A recent study by Airswift, a company that specializes in recruiting skilled workers, found that relocation interest has increased from 16 percent in 2021 to 22 percent in 2025—this, despite growing complications in U.S. visa application processes, like the flawed H-1B program.
Such educated immigrants represent a powerful national asset. Most come from such places as India, China, and the former Soviet Union, the latter of which has sent 2.2 million people to the U.S. since 1965, including the founders of Google and WhatsApp. (By contrast, the Biden-era migration wave has come largely from south of the border, drawing disproportionately from populations in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean that, on average, have lower levels of formal education than immigrants from East and South Asia or sub-Saharan Africa.)
To some, immigrants’ differing skill levels don’t much matter. Many on the left, along with a number of libertarian conservatives, believe that mass migration of any kind is an economic boon. Many businesses, too, embrace the prospect of mass unvetted immigration, legal or illegal, as a source of cheap labor.
Some see waves of unregulated migration as critical for addressing the West’s ongoing demographic implosion and reviving its stagnating economies. More people, they argue, will boost GDP and growth.
The truth is we need fewer strong backs than in earlier decades. The share of jobs requiring extensive manual labor has dropped to 22 percent in 2025 from 35 percent a half-century ago. Western countries will need immigrants in the future, but the questions of how many, and who, should determine policy, not political expediency.
The most recent waves, particularly those under Biden, demonstrate the limitations of largely unregulated mass migration. Since 1993, immigrants have almost doubled their share of the U.S. population living in poverty. That figure continues to increase, rising from 18.2 percent in 2018 to 22.4 percent in 2024.
Much of the problem is that the newcomers, particularly those arriving illegally, are far less educated than earlier waves. They therefore are likely to remain at the bottom of the employment chain throughout their lives. The most recent massive immigration surge has had some negative effects, according to the Congressional Budget Office. These newcomers primarily compete with other poor people for living space, jobs, and social services.
Unregulated mass migration has proved even more disastrous in Europe, with newcomers being far more dependent on welfare transfers than natives. In Spain, the rate of poverty for immigrants from outside Europe—mostly Latin America and Africa—is roughly three times that of the native population. In Canada, one in five recent immigrants now suffers “deep poverty”—an income below 75 percent of the poverty line—compared with only 5 percent of the whole population.
Once sold as a solution to the continent’s shrinking workforce and a stimulus for economic growth, the immigrant tsunami has failed to boost EU economies, including those in prime immigrant destinations like France and Germany. The economy of the U.K., which now takes in considerably more immigrants per capita than the U.S., has also stagnated.
Arguably, the most convincing demonstration of nonselective immigration’s lackluster economic effects is Canada. Political leaders like former prime minister Justin Trudeau frequently contrasted the country’s openness to migrants with the more restrictive Trumpian approach. But while Canada has one of the world’s highest per-capita rates of immigration—in 2023, the country of 40 million received 1 million immigrants, accounting for 97.7 percent of Canada’s population growth—this surge has not prevented it from suffering one of the slowest economic growth rates among advanced countries over the past decade.
None of this should be taken to suggest that legal immigration will be anything other than essential in the coming decade. The U.S. may not need more postmodernist English teachers or professional agitators, but there remain profound shortages of skilled manufacturing workers, health-care workers, and construction workers. We may not need to continue importing so many software writers, especially given the growth of the artificial intelligence industry. But by 2030, the U.S. will need to fill a projected shortage of 500,000 registered nurses and 40,000 doctors nationwide.
If America needs more skilled hands, it will likely get them—with or without Trump. America’s appeal remains unsurpassed, particularly when it comes to entrepreneurial or highly skilled people. Europe’s overregulated, overtaxed economies allow for fewer opportunities. “France and Germany are not good for startups,” says Giacomo Gentili, founder of Pack, a digital mentoring firm based in Barcelona.
Europe has nothing like Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Wall Street, or the booming metros of the Texas triangle, Gentili noted. Immigrant success in the U.S. is exemplified by the CEOs of tech firms like NVIDIA, SpaceX, Tesla, Microsoft, Intel, Zoom, IBM, and DoorDash. By contrast, Britain is hemorrhaging millionaires, who are headed, in considerable numbers, to Trump’s supposedly benighted America.
Our primary competitors in East Asia also seem unlikely to be able to import massive numbers of skilled workers, due to their cultural aversion to outsiders. To be sure, even xenophobic Japan now recruits foreign temporary workers to fill gaping holes in low-end professions, especially those needed to service its own rapidly aging population. But a multiethnic Japan seems highly unlikely.
China, for its part, has never accepted many immigrants, and its record with those it has taken in—particularly Africans—has been poor. The Middle Kingdom has never conceived of itself as an immigrant society; today, it is also suffering an economic downturn that has forced many educated millennials to confront diminishing prospects.
Many of those individuals want to pursue their dreams in America. The number of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. increased from about 1.2 million in 2000 to 2.4 million by 2023. This population has grown as Xi Jinping’s dictatorship has become more repressive.
Ultimately, neither the legal-immigration restrictionists nor the open-borders militants have it right. America needs immigrants, but primarily those who can contribute to our economy and—as they have done for centuries—embrace the American dream.
Photo: SDI Productions / E+ via Getty Images
