Trump Immigration Crackdown Is Reshaping U.S. Workplaces and Towns

One year into President Trump’s immigration crackdown, communities across the United States are feeling labor and social strains as arrivals slow and temporary statuses are rolled back. The administration has raised visa fees, sharply curtailed refugee admissions, reduced international student enrollment and paused extensions of temporary legal protections, officials say, while reporting more than 600,000 people expelled.

Net immigration is now estimated at about 450,000 people a year under current policies, compared with two million to three million a year under the prior administration. The foreign-born share of the U.S. population reached 14.8 percent in 2024, a peak not seen since 1890. White House advisers have invoked the 1920s immigration shutdown as a model; that era’s quotas and bans pushed net immigration close to zero and kept the foreign-born share near its midcentury low.

The changes are visible in small towns and big cities. In Marshalltown, Iowa, which is 19 percent foreign born and where some 50 dialects are spoken in public schools, festivals and church pews are thinner and a pork plant has cut workers as permits expired. New arrivals who had been settling into local life now face uncertainty.

Sergii and Tetiana Fedko, Ukrainians who arrived in 2023, waited as a parole extension was paused and then learned Sergii’s approval required a new $1,000 fee while his wife’s application remained unresolved. Hospitals and clinics are also strained.

Key Topics

AI, United States, Business, Immigration, Labor, Healthcare, Communities