Newsweek36%
How Immigration Could Shape the Future of America: Three Scenarios 33%
By Giulia Carbonaro9%
7/3/2026, 2:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 33 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Confirmation Bias, and Optimism Bias, with Post Hoc (False Cause) as the most egregious example at 14.1% saturation with 345 hits. Analysis detected 3,158 faulty-reasoning hits from 2,445 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 41.3% and a BS Rank of 33% (14,807 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 67.70% of the article peer group.
The United States is "a nation of immigrants," as John F.
Kennedy said in a famous 1963 speech, shaped by the waves of foreign-born individuals who, through its 250 years of history, reached its land and made it their home.
But, in recent years, immigration has become a highly controversial issue, with large numbers of migrant arrivals during the Biden administration prompting the same political concern and public backlash that has given way to President Donald Trump’s mass deportations.
In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, illegal immigration was seen as a "very big problem" in the country by 51 percent of voters, including 78 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of Democrats, according to a Pew Research Center’s survey—proving how partisan an issue this is.
Trump vowed to fight what he warned was an "invasion" of illegal migrants to the U.S., promising the largest mass deportation in the nation’s history.
In the 12 months following Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, his administration said nearly 3 million "illegal aliens" left the country, including an estimated 2.2 million "self-deportations" and more than 675,000 deportations.
Immigration to the US Has Plunged Since Trump’s Return
As a result of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration and a perceived sense of hostility toward migrants, including those who may have been living in the U.S. for a long time, immigration to the U.S. has slowed down dramatically.
Brookings, a Washington-based nonprofit public policy organization, estimated that last year the U.S. experienced negative net immigration (the difference between the number of people entering the U.S. and those leaving) for the first time in at least a decade—and 2026 is expected to be the same.
In 2025, net immigration likely ranged between -295,000 and -10,000, researchers said.
For 2026, they project it will likely range between -925,000 and +185,000.
Their figures were confirmed by Census data issued in January, which showed that net international migration peaked at 2.7 million in 2024 and fell to 1.3 million in 2025, as of July 1.
It is expected to further decline to approximately 321,000 in 2026 if current trends continue, Census wrote.
A drop in immigration levels has a ripple effect on the country: according to the latest Census data, between July 1, 2024 and July 1, 2025 the U.S. population growth slowed to 0.5 percent, its lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic.
"With births and deaths remaining relatively stable compared to the prior year, the sharp decline in net international migration is the main reason for the slower growth rate we see today," Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for Estimates and Projections at the Census Bureau, said in a statement in January.
A Looming Population Decline—and Immigration’s Role in Preventing It
As immigration helped to mold the U.S. into what it is now, its absence—or significant drop—could also influence the future of the country, according to some experts.
Demographer William H.
Frey, a senior fellow with Brookings Metro, argues that the country should continue welcoming migrants to avoid the rapid aging of the U.S. workforce and reverse an impending population decline.
Immigration researcher and director of Research for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Steven Camarota, on the other hand, has long advocated for lower immigration rates—and argues against the same ideas Frey is defending.
Both experts have recently published studies describing three different scenarios that could materialize in the coming years according to different levels of migration.
We asked Frey and Camarota for their opinion on the future of immigration in the U.S. and how it could change the future of America, looking at these three potential scenarios.
The scenarios imagined by Frey and Camarota are slightly different.
Frey uses the most recent U.S. population projections for the period from 2022 to 2051 to determine three scenarios: zero, low, and high immigration.
Camarota does not believe a zero immigration scenario is possible; he imagines a low, medium, and high immigration scenario instead, using Census Bureau 2023 National Population Projections.
For the purpose of comparison, we paired Frey’s zero and low immigration scenario together.
Zero/Low Immigration
With zero immigration, the U.S. population will shrink to 312 million by 2051, according to Frey, while with low immigration—as the one recorded near the end of Trump’s first term—it will grow modestly to 345 million in 2051.
Camarota points to a similar estimate by the Census Bureau, which says the U.S. population will grow modestly by 18.4 million between 2023 and 2060 to 343 million under a low immigration scenario.
While Camarota is skeptical that immigration could ever plunge to zero, Frey argues that it has happened before, in the 1950s.
This time, however, things could be different.
"An absence of immigration over this period will be much more impactful than in earlier years," Frey said.
That is because deaths are expected to begin outpacing births by 2031 and continue doing so every year thereafter.
This will have several noticeable consequences—including the rapid aging of the U.S. population and its workforce, Frey said.
Camarota disagrees, pointing to Census Bureau data estimating that the share of the nation’s working-age (aged 18 to 64) population will drop from 60.9 percent in 2023 to 57.6 percent in 2060 under a low immigration scenario—a minimal difference.
Medium Immigration
Under the medium immigration scenario cited by Camarota, the U.S. population will grow by 34.6 million between 2023 and 2060 to 364 million.
In this scenario, the working-age share of the U.S. population will still fall from 60.9 percent to 58 percent between 2023 and 2060, but less than under a low immigration scenario.
High Immigration
With high immigration, the U.S. population will reach 385 million, according to Frey.
This is the only scenario under which the country will maintain its past growth trajectory, keeping levels close to the growth the nation saw in the early 2000s.
Crucially, high immigration levels will keep the U.S. younger, Frey said, adding an additional 17 million children under age 15 and 50 million more people between the ages of 15 and 64 by 2051.
Over the long run, a higher number of young people in the country "will contribute to the well-being of older populations, including as health care workers or as contributors to the nation’s overall economic productivity, as it will sharply alter the size of the consumer base," Frey said.
Camarota calculates that, with high immigration, the U.S. population will grow by 59 million from 2023 to 2060, reaching 397 million people—an even higher number than Frey’s.
But Camarota thinks that high immigration will not bring more young, working-age people to the U.S.
He calculates that the working-age share of the U.S. population will still fall from 60.9 percent in 2023 to 58.5 percent in 2060—making a small difference compared to the other scenarios he considered.
"With low immigration, the population might start to decline in 25 years, but not by a lot.
But look over at the share of the population that is working age.
What you see is, under that high immigration for this scenario, 58.5 percent of the population is of working age, so you still get a fair amount of aging," he said.
"The difference between the high and the low is not very large.
It’s something.
It’s not nothing, but it’s not if immigration is the secret sauce," he added.
"And remember, that’s 54 million extra people, and in terms of the overall impact on population, if the Census Bureau is right, and you get about a 0.9 percent improvement in the working age share."
Do Immigrants Keep the Country Young—Or Add to Its Aging Woes?
Frey has no doubt when it comes to the role of immigrants keeping the U.S. younger.
"Migrants in general are younger than the rest of the population," Frey told Newsweek.
"People in their 20s and early 30s have the highest migration rate.
These are people in their childbearing age, who might have children after a while of being in the U.S. and makes the age structure of the state a little bit younger."
A graying America with fewer people under 18 and residents aged 18 to 44 means a "severe shrinking" of the country’s labor force age population, Frey said—a drop which could have major economic consequences on the country.
That will include significantly lower workforce contributions to Medicare and the Social Security Trust Fund, which will likely be needed more than ever to take care of the country’s aging population.
"To sort of stop the country aging so rapidly, I do think immigration is quite important," Frey said.
"And I think it could be a hopeful view of the country if we could bring more immigrants to the country," he added.
"I’m not going to talk as if I am a political person, but I do think that in the last two years, during which a lot of people in the country have felt that we have too many immigrants so the immigrants shouldn’t be here or something—I think that’s a bad strategy, demographically, for the future."
Camarota agrees that immigration would help avoid population decline in the U.S., as Frey says—but he strongly believes the role of immigrants in keeping America’s workforce young is misrepresented and overrated.
"If you’re worried that your population might decline, immigration could not only stop that, but it could make the population bigger.
That’s very different from arguing it makes your population a lot younger for that," Camarota told Newsweek.
"This should not come as a surprise, but immigrants are people," he said.
"That means that they arrive at all ages—yes, they add to the working age, but they also add to the elderly.
They age over time like everyone else, and their fertility has dropped dramatically just like everybody else," he added.
"They’re not fundamentally different from the rest of the population."
Immigrant fertility has declined a lot among America’s immigrant population too—and in countries where these migrants come from, Camarota said.
"Their presence doesn’t really change the fertility rate in the U.S., because their fertility isn’t that much higher, and of course most births are still to native-born people.
So they don’t raise the rated averages, they don’t make much difference."
According to data shared by CIS, the immigrant population’s fertility rate was 2.19 in 2023, against 1.73 for the U.S.-born population.
Overall, the country’s fertility rate was still a relatively low 1.8.
Camarota also argues that, while immigrants might add to the workforce, they also have "very high takeup rates for many of our means-tested welfare programs," he said.
"The welfare use rates of the native born are hardly low, the total is 37 percent of all native born households using at least one of the welfare programs; but it’s 53 percent for immigrant households, and that’s a lot," Camarota added.
CIS data shows that the share of immigrant households using one or more welfare programs has been higher than the U.S.-born population since 1986, and through various ups and downs in the following decades, it has remained consistently higher.
"No, it’s not because they’re lazy.
It’s not because they all came to the U.S. to get welfare.
It’s that they’re mostly working low-income people with children and the welfare system helps them," Camarota added.
"So, if you wanted to avoid that situation, you’d have to select immigrants who wouldn’t need all this help for their children—immigrants who arrive with a college education or graduate degree, they tend to pay a lot in taxes and don’t use much in social services, just as you would expect."
An Increasingly Diverse Nation
While disagreeing on the economic impact of immigration to the country, both experts agree that different levels of immigration would also impact America’s ethnic composition.
"The immigrants coming to the U.S. are mostly Hispanic and Asian, and the U.S. population is mostly of European ancestry," Camarota said.
"So, obviously, it’s having an enormous impact on the country’s ethnic competition."
Under a zero-immigration scenario, the foreign-born population will shrink from 46 million in 2022 to just 23 million in 2051, according to Frey—something that anti-immigration advocates in the U.S. would likely be grateful for.
But, according to the demographer’s calculations, under the same scenario the U.S. will also see the biggest numeric decline in the white population (foreseen in every scenario at different levels).
The number of Black and Asian residents will also fall, while that of Latino or Hispanic will rise under every scenario.
Under a low immigration scenario, each nonwhite group will show numeric gains, while the white population will fall by slightly less than under the zero immigration scenario.
The country will be getting more diverse under every level of immigration scenario, Frey said.
What Americans Think
Ultimately, American voters will decide the future of immigration—and the nation’s in general—at the ballot, including the upcoming midterms in November and the 2028 presidential election.
"The election of Donald Trump suggests some fraction of the population was dissatisfied with the level of immigration, certainly illegal immigration.
So you have to take that into account," Camarota said.
"But the bottom line is, if you want to create a lot of benefit from immigration, you’d want a more selective system," he added.
Recent polls show that Trump’s crackdown on immigration and the controversy around the methods used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in U.S. cities like Minneapolis, where two U.S. citizens were shot dead in January, has started putting off some Americans.
An April survey by the Pew Research Center found that 52 percent of U.S. adults believed Trump was doing too much to deport immigrants living in the country illegally, with 84 percent of Democrats and voters leaning Democrat saying so and 19 percent of Republicans or voters leaning Republican saying the same.
Even among Republicans, mass deportations are losing support: in April, 53 percent of Republican voters thought the Trump administration was doing "about the right amount" when it came to deporting illegal immigrants, down from 74 percent in February 2025.
Overall, only 9.5 percent of Americans think immigration is the most important issue facing the nation, according to the latest YouGov poll.
An April poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and Ipsos found that a majority of Americans think immigration has a positive impact on the country’s culture, its economy, and the community, despite the current backlash against it.
Once again, the issue proves very partisan—but overall, the U.S. public as a whole tends to think immigrants provide more benefits than disadvantages.
The midterms might tell us how much weight this carries in Americans’ minds.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: John Fitzpatrick and James Debens
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