Trump’s Vetting Rules Just Cut Off Nearly All Immigration From Muslim Majority Nations

Joe Biden's administration approved more legal immigrants in a single year than any point in American history.

Trump's new vetting rules target one specific belief above all else, and they are already working as designed.

Immigration from Muslim majority nations has collapsed more than ninety percent since he took office.

State Department Numbers Show a Collapse With No Modern Precedent

The State Department issued just 26,000 immigrant visas in February, according to figures The New York Times obtained and Breitbart reported.

That is roughly half the monthly average under the final year of Joe Biden's presidency.

The Biden administration issued a record 1.35 million green cards in 2024 alone, far above the roughly one million a year Congress set as the norm back in 1990.

Trump's team has not released migration numbers beyond that spring 2026 snapshot.

New regulations, written without a single vote in Congress, made immigration all but impossible from 91 countries.

Sixty one more countries saw their available immigrant visas slashed.

Africa and the Middle East absorbed the heaviest cuts of all.

The Center for Immigration Studies estimated the illegal population fell by roughly 1.6 million in Trump's first six months back in office, from about 15.8 million to about 14.2 million.

David Bier, an immigration researcher at the Cato Institute, complained that "illegal entries are down under Trump, but he's cut legal immigration even more than illegal immigration."

Bier meant that as a criticism.

Every American who watched Biden wave in millions of strangers will read it as a receipt.

USCIS Vetting Rules Explain Exactly Why the Numbers Fell

The collapse did not happen by accident.

USCIS officers now screen every green card, visa, and citizenship applicant for anti American, antisemitic, or pro terrorist views.

Officers can treat those views as what the agency calls overwhelmingly negative factors.

USCIS spokesman Matthew Tragesser laid out the standard in blunt terms.

"America's benefits should not be given to those who despise the country and promote anti American ideologies," Tragesser said.

He added that immigration benefits "remain a privilege, not a right."

Elizabeth Jacobs of the Center for Immigration Studies noted the new discretion runs deep.

"The agency cannot tell officers that they have to deny," Jacobs said, describing just how much latitude reviewers now carry into every file.

Trump's team layered on a tougher good moral character standard for naturalization.

Work permits for refugees and asylum seekers that once lasted five years now expire after 18 months, forcing repeat screening.

Temporary Protected Status ended for roughly 76,000 people from Honduras and Nicaragua.

The CHNV parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans is gone too, stripping legal status from another half million people.

Why a Falling Number Is the Entire Point

Vice President JD Vance told CBS his goal is a country with "some baseline of social cohesion and sense of community."

That is not a slip.

Tom Cotton was saying the same thing about wages and legal immigration back before Trump's first term even began, arguing high legal intake had "driven down wages and taken a lot of jobs" from American workers.

It took a decade, a pandemic, and Biden's record breaking green card spree to finally get a White House willing to act on it.

Cato and the Times want you to read 26,000 visas in a month as a crisis.

Treat it as a report card instead, because every one of those missing visas is a wage increase for an American worker, a seat in a classroom that stays empty for a citizen's kid, and proof the vetting rules are doing exactly what Tragesser said they would do.

The next fight is already visible on the horizon.

Roughly 2.5 million foreign contract workers still hold visas the administration has barely touched, and tighter oversight of that program is already moving through the same agencies that just cut legal migration in half.

Sources:

• Neil Munro, "Trump's Deputies Halve Legalized Migration amid Border Shutdown," Breitbart, October 19, 2026.
• Michael Dorgan, "Trump Administration to Vet Legal Immigrant Applicants for Anti Americanism, Antisemitism," Fox News, August 20, 2025.
• Hank Berrien, "U.S. Foreign Born Population Plunges Since Trump Inauguration," Daily Wire, August 12, 2025.
• Fox News, "Cotton: Almost Every Republican in Congress on Trump's Side," Fox News, November 14, 2016.