Immigration and the Macroeconomy After 2024

Few issues have dominated the political debate in recent years like immigration. The two candidates for president, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, have offered starkly different visions for immigration policy. In this analysis, we consider possible paths for net migration under these agendas and their likely macroeconomic implications. The starting point for our analysis is the creation of a “high immigration” and a “low immigration” scenario for each presidential candidate. These scenarios reflect a combination of the historical record under the Trump administration and the Biden-Harris administration, announced and inferred immigration policies, as well as our judgment of likely developments. They are constructed from the ground up, starting by predicting inflows from specific visa categories, border and parole policy, and entries without inspection. We also predict removals, reflecting both the candidates’ visions and logistical constraints as well as other factors that affect outflows. We provide two scenarios for each candidate given the considerable uncertainty about policy actions as well as responses by migrants. We expect net immigration to be significantly higher under a Harris administration than a second Trump administration. Our Harris, low scenario involves roughly the same net immigration flows as our Trump, high scenario. In the first two years of the Trump, low scenario, in which we anticipate the most acute departure from recent policy, we expect the United States to see net outmigration—that is, the extraordinary case of more people leaving the country than entering. For example, in our Harris, high scenario net migration is 3.7 million in 2025, whereas in the Trump, low scenario net migration is negative 740 thousand. To be sure, immigration flows could be outside the range of our four scenarios. For example, former President Trump has called for immediate mass deportations more than 10 times what we incorporated in our Trump, low scenario. here.