‘Echoes of 1924’: US visa freeze isn’t just about welfare, it’s a move to slash legal immigration

Earlier this week, the Trump administration imposed an indefinite freeze on immigrant visas to 75 countries. The policy has echoes of the 1924 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which enforced national-origin quotas on legal immigration, severely restricting immigration from eastern and southern Europe, and virtually shutting it off from the rest of the world.

Legal immigration to the US, largely European in the early decades of the 20th c., fell by 58% in 1925. Over the next four decades, the presence of immigrants in the nation's demography faded. Trump's policy will have a similar effect - legal immigration from countries affected by the freeze has been roughly half of the total in recent years. Unless more immigrants are allowed from countries that are not on the banned list, legal immigration will plummet. Net immigration in 2025 was negative - which means more immigrants left than arrived in the US.

There are some notable differences. The US State Department announced the indefinite freeze on Twitter without any deliberation in Congress or the media. The 1924 INA was in the making for over three decades, discussed threadbare by legislators and the public.


Led by US legislators, the 1924 Act had majority support. Woodrow Wilson vetoed earlier versions of the Act twice (1915 and 1917). The US Congress overrode Wilson's veto to pass the 1917 Immigration Act, which blocked most immigration from Asia and, 7 years later, resulted in legislation that extended the Asiatic ban to the rest of the world.

Trump has accomplished all that in one year by bypassing the US Congress. The Constitution does not grant legislative powers to presidents. As of now, the indefinite freeze on immigrant visas has no legislative support and is, therefore, technically not legal, just like a series of other recent immigration policy changes (e.g., banning of diversity visas). Trump's indefinite freeze on immigrant visas will be challenged in the courts. Yet, it will have the desired effect of chopping legal immigration by half, even before the court hearings begin.

The ban heralds a new era of restrictive immigration even within the Trumposphere. For most of his first term as president and in the first year of his second term, Trump's focus was substantially on stopping and deporting illegal immigration, and imposing restrictions on non-immigrant visas or raising visa fees substantially, as in the case of H-1B visas. Indeed, while simultaneously berating illegal immigration, Trump had often mentioned that he would like undocumented workers to come back through legal channels. Yet, the new ban is on legal immigration. Non-immigrant visas for tourism, education and business from these countries will continue. Any pretence that Trump only opposes illegal immigration is gone.

The State Department announced the policy decision on Twitter: 'The State Department will pause immigrant visa processing from 75 countries whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates. The freeze will remain active until the US can ensure that new immigrants will not extract wealth from the American people.' What is the threshold of acceptance? We don't know. Fiscal spending on welfare programmes is described as 'extracting wealth'.

There is little clarity on how the 75 countries have been selected. The list includes tiny countries like Fiji, Antigua and Barbuda, Cape Verde, Albania and Moldova, that have an even smaller number of people living in the US. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services Yearbook does not even mention these countries.

Immigrant dependence on the US welfare system has long been a concern. The US Immigration Act of 1882 first introduced the public-charge provision and prohibited the entry of 'any convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge'. Over the years, the government has strengthened the screening of new immigrants to ensure that they do not become a public charge, a term used to describe individuals who receive state assistance for their basic needs. Further, for determining eligibility for welfare programmes, a sponsor's income is added to an immigrant, which reduces the latter's chances of eligibility.

Federal policy prohibits immigrants from receiving welfare for the first 5 yrs after becoming permanent residents. Yet, not all state governments share the Trumpian vision of how immigrants should be treated. Many liberal states and communities go out of their way to ensure that local welfare policy does not distinguish between immigrants and US citizens. There is not much Trump can do to stop these communities and states from providing welfare and health insurance to their residents.

The first Trump administration had proposed a 'public charge' policy to ban the entry of immigrants who were likely to become dependent on Medicaid, a health insurance programme for the poor. But it had to reverse its policy when Covid struck, and the narrow-mindedness of restricting healthcare access to poor immigrants became clear. This time, while there is an emphasis on welfare and wealth extraction, the objective is not just to save welfare dollars but also to reduce legal immigration.