President Donald Trump has expanded his regulatory curbs on migration to 39 countries, and the new rules could slash the inflow of Islamic migrants by 40 percent, according to the pro-migration Cato Institute.
Yet pro-migration advocates have been almost silent about the dramatic new rules, even though they staged frenzied 2017 protests against a “Muslim travel ban” when Trump imposed softer curbs in his first year in office. For example, the National Immigration Law Center issued a mere three-sentence condemnation when the new rules were first announced.
The progressive passivity is notable, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “No question, and [the 2026 rule] is much broader too,” he added.
Trump’s upgraded and expanded 2026 rule even blocks the spouses and kids of legalized migrants,
The silence is dramatic and important because it shows how far Trump and his voters have successfully shifted the national debate over legal and illegal migration since he was first elected in 2016.
The travel curbs come after Trump basically halted illegal migration through the southern border, reversed quasi-legal status for more than one million “inadmissible” migrants, and enforced popular laws requiring the fast-track deportation of millions of illegal migrants. He has also begun slowly curbing the kick-back-generating visa programs — such as the H-1B program — that prevent skilled Americans from raising the productivity and prosperity of ordinary Americans.
Forty Percent Cutback In Muslim Migration
The estimate of a 40 percent cutback comes from a business-backed, pro-migration advocate at the Cato Institute, who wrote:
President Trump signed a new proclamation that bans nearly all legal immigration from about 40 countries, covering about one in five legal immigrants from abroad and nearly 400,000 legal immigrants over three years. Although it exempts some foreign workers and travelers from certain countries, this ban does not include any categorical exemption or waiver for spouses, minor children, or parents of US citizens or legal permanent residents, making it far harsher than his prior bans.
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Overall, one in five (19 percent) of all legal permanent immigrant visas would be affected by the ban. That includes 33 percent of African immigrants and 42 percent of legal immigrants from majority Muslim countries.
The curb will slow the inflow of Muslim migrants into major U.S. cities, including New York, where Muslim migrants played a key role in defeating other ethnic groups as they elected Muslim candidate Zohran Mamdani to the mayorship last November, according to the Washington Post:
“We have built a neighborhood and community here,” said [Othman] Alahlemi, a Yemeni immigrant who looked up at a flag from his native country that hangs on a street once dominated by Italian immigrants. “We are going to have a bigger space, where we can also teach our children, and Muslims from all over will be coming here.”
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[Mamdami] “used the word ‘socialist’ and that meant five fundamental things — the right to food, clothing, education, health and shelter,” said [M. Anwar] Khandker, who was especially drawn to Mamdani’s pledge of universal child care. “It’s economic sense, because Islam says the same thing.”
Mamdani’s win was preceded by a national wave of threatening and violent demonstrations and attacks by Muslims — and younger progressive Americans — in the United States. Those Muslim assaults were prompted by Hamas’s jihad-style murder of more than 800 Jewish civilians on October 7, 2023. Muslims in many states repeatedly say they will use migration to win more power in the United States:
Many prominent business leaders have stepped back from pro-migration advocacy in the wake of the anti-Israel frenzy, political shifts in other Islamic-influenced U.S. states, and amid Trump’s reelection and reforms.
The quieter elites include Larry Fink, founder of the giant BlackRock investment firm, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook and Meta, investor David Sacks, and Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Similarly, many writers and advocates have stepped back from full-throated advocacy for migration.
“A nation, fundamentally, is an exclusive club,” wrote Noah Smith, a virulently pro-migration advocate, just before the 2024 election. But Democrats should “change America’s immigration system to make it more congruent with the democratic will.” Jared Bernstein, an economic advisor to President Joe Biden, dropped any mention of migration in a New York Times article about how Democrats can reduce consumers’ costs.
Even former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stated the obvious just before he died in 2023: “It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts, because it creates a pressure group inside each country that does that.”
It is also true that many elites continue to demand more migrants, even from Islamic communities that do not try to assimilate into America’s citizenship culture of reciprocal obligations and rights. “Minnesota’s Fraud Problem Isn’t Immigrants: It’s the vast size of the welfare state that corrupts them,” the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote on January 2.
Moreover, some elites who want curbs on Muslim migration also demand an increase in other non-Muslim migrants. That shift would not reduce migration’s huge economic burden on ordinary Americans
The muted progressive response to Trump’s curbs likely has many causes, Krikorian told Breitbart News.
The administration has justified the travel curbs by carefully documenting the rate at which travelers from many countries overstay their temporary visas, he said. “The travel ban has been much better explained by giving actual visa overstay rates … the rationale has been laid out more thoroughly and in a way that’s harder to caricature.”
“There are so many other things going on that [issue] lost interest” for progressives, he added:
Biden was so bad [on immigration], and his defenders so humiliated themselves, that there’s a hangover where the people who are opposing [Trump’s] immigration policies are looking for the most sympathetic cases to complain about, rather than more abstract policy issues … they’re chastened to some degree, but I don’t think they’ve changed their thinking.
The evidence of a progressive rethink is thin, he said, adding “Here’s hoping, but I’m skeptical, and I’ll believe it when I see it.”
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