After a Slump, Legal Immigration to the United States Is Returning to Pre-Pandemic Levels

Muzaffar Chishti and Julia Gelatt, MPI, Nov. 30, 2022

"Legal immigration to the United States appears to have bounced back from steep declines sparked by COVID-19 pandemic-related disruptions to human mobility and government operations as well as the restrictive policies of the Trump administration. Although final data have not yet been published for all of fiscal year (FY) 2022, the country looks to have accepted 1 million immigrants as permanent residents, edging up to the 1.1 million average in immigrant visa issuance over the last two decades. This represents a marked turnaround from the low of 707,000 permanent immigrants accepted in FY 2020, the fewest since FY 2003. The recovery is most pronounced in the processing at U.S. consulates abroad, which issued more visas in FY 2022 than in FY 2019, the last full year before the pandemic began. Similarly, officials issued more temporary (nonimmigrant) visas in August and September 2022 than in August and September 2019, before the onset of the pandemic. This strong recovery belies predictions that the pandemic had allowed the Trump administration to make lasting, deep cuts to legal immigration. Even before the onset of the pandemic, the Trump administration made multiple policy changes that many anticipated would lower legal immigration levels—including enhanced vetting practices, higher denial rates for certain types of visas, increased interview requirements, country-specific travel bans, and a new, strict public-charge rule—yet their impact had not demonstrably materialized before the public-health crisis. COVID-19 brought new policies, including travel bans for countries with virus outbreaks and bans on many categories of nonimmigrant and immigrant visas that lowered immigration levels. Pauses in visa processing and public-health restrictions also drastically slowed mobility worldwide. While immigration slumped in FY 2020 and FY 2021, the rebound suggests that neither the Trump administration’s policies nor the pandemic have had enduring effects on the level of legal immigration to the United States. The temporary fall, however, was serious. ... "