US government will recheck green cards from 19 flagged countries ‘of concern.’ Is Trump’s crackdown protecting America or choking the economy?

The countries in question, which also face a U.S. travel ban, are Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela — though Secretaryof the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is pushing to extend the travel ban to up to 32 countries (2).

The government is also putting all asylum applications on hold until, as Edlow explained, they can “ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” while simultaneously halting Afghan visa applications (2).

“The perpetrator should face accountability, but the entire Afghan community must not be punished due to the actions of one individual,” Richard Bennett, special rapporteur on Afghanistan for the U.N., told Time (3). It’s estimated that almost 200,000 Afghan visa applicants could be impacted by the decision (4).

Reuters reports that there could also be a push to review the cases of 233,000 refugees granted entrance to the U.S. by the Biden administration (5), a move that one observer called “unnecessary, cruel and wasteful.” It’s worth noting that while Rahmanullah Lakanwal entered the U.S. during the Biden administration, it was the Trump administration that granted him asylum earlier this year (6).

All told, this most recent crackdown compounds with President Trump’s already extreme immigration policies, which have largely proven negative for the economy since their enforcement began.

The cost of restrictive immigration policies

Less than a year into the second Trump administration, the president’s hardline immigration stance — which includes everything from travel bans and stricter border enforcement to birthright citizenship changes and ICE raids, without due process, leading to deportation or detention — already cost the U.S. labor force more than one million foreign-born workers in the first half of this year (7).

It’s a loss that’s hit immigrant-reliant industries like agriculture, construction and leisure and hospitality particularly hard. A study in August (8) showed that, for those industries, “there already is strong anecdotal evidence and empirical data indicating that the deportations are causing economic damage.”

A Bank of America Institute report (9) about the construction industry noted that “immigration actions could potentially deepen workforce shortages, drive up costs and create serious financial risks for contractors.”

The National Association of Homebuilders, meanwhile, found (10) that the skilled labor shortage resulting from immigration crackdowns cost “an aggregate economic impact of $10.806 billion per year due to longer construction times.”

And the World Travel and Tourism Council warned (11) that U.S. tourism was poised to take a $12.5 billion hit in 2025 because, “While other nations are rolling out the welcome mat, the U.S. government is putting up the ‘closed’ sign.”

“If we want the type of economic growth that we historically consider successful,” Michael Strain, the American Enterprise Institute’s director of economic policy studies, told CNBC (12), “then the demographic reality is that we’re going to have to increase inflows of immigrants. There’s no real way around that.”

Unfortunately, data suggests that the U.S. is heading in the opposite direction.

A study in October by the National Foundation for American Policy (13) found that Trump immigration policies could reduce the national GDP by $1.9 trillion by 2028, and $12.1 trillion by 2035.

The same study also showed that the policies would cost the U.S. 6.8 million workers by 2028 and 15.7 million by 2035, while “lower(ing) the annual rate of economic growth by almost one-third, harming U.S. living standards.”

Even Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell, when pressed in June on the effect of Trump’s immigration policies on the economy, noted their negative effect (14).

“There are two things that affect growth. One is growth in the labor force, more people working, and the other thing is productivity, how much do they produce per hour of work?” Powell said.

“And when you significantly slow the growth of the labor force, you will slow the growth of the economy.”

New restrictive immigration policies could dig a deeper economic hole

Pausing all asylum cases and relitigating the statuses of refugees already granted entry into the country could further drive the economy down.

Far from the ugly stereotype of refugees eating up taxpayer dollars without giving back, a study released last year by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) found that, between 2005 and 2019, the estimated government expenditure of $457.2 billion on refugees and asylees was offset by the combined $581 billion that refugees and asylees contributed to all levels of government during that same period (15).

In addition, the American Immigration Council’s 2023 report on the economic impact of refugees showed that the rate of entrepreneurship among that community outpaces both U.S.-born residents and other groups of immigrants (16).