The US is Shrinking. Juan, Do Something About It.

Change in new jobs created in US in 2025, credit Substack.com@paulkrugman

The United States appears to be getting smaller. It hasn’t lost any square miles, to be sure.  (Nor has it gained any.  The annexation of Canada and seizure of Greenland remain Trumpian fever dreams).  Rather: “In the year prior to July 1, 2025, the US Census revealed this week that the population grew by only 0.5%, or 1.8 million people, its lowest growth since the pandemic.” Other researchers even believe the US population is under water and continuing to sink. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-30/trump-immigration-crackdown-could-shrink-us-population-for-first-time]

            This is music to the years of our congressman, Juan Ciscomani, and other docile Donald Trump followers.  They believe that clearing the country of illegal immigrants (along with legal ones caught up in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection’s cruel dragnet) will create more jobs, better housing opportunities and other advantages for native-born Americans.

            Here’s some problems with all that:

• “The main cause for the significant [population] slowdown was a collapse in net migration to 1.3 million from a peak of 2.7 million in the year prior to July 2024.” [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-30/trump-immigration-crackdown-could-shrink-us-population-for-first-time] People from other countries, who could reside in the US legally, are no longer coming. They don’t feel welcome.
• American citizens are leaving, possibly in droves. A Wall Street Journal investigation found that in “15 countries providing full or partial 2025 data…at least 180,000 Americans joined [those deported or who left under a deportation threat].” The Americans who abandoned living in America cited lower cost of living and other personal benefits as reasons to expatriate, in addition to their disenchantment with the direction the US is taking. A university population researcher told the Journal that: “It undercuts this American exceptionalism, ‘we have the best quality of life, we’re the best country in the world, everyone wants to move here.’” [https://www.wsj.com/us-news/americans-leaving-the-us-migration]
• The delusional Trumpian stance that decreasing the country’s population will improve our struggling economy is easily dismissed by economists.  The Census Bureau notes that “on balance, higher immigration tends to reduce the government deficit and support social security payments for the retired.” [https://econofact.org/how-tighter-curbs-on-immigration-impact-the-u-s-economy] In other words, the work of immigrants puts money into the economy. They pay taxes, including Social Security, thus providing benefits for the elderly.
• Now, according to statistics gathered by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, (shown in the chart at the top of this article), job creation in 2025, except for slight increases in the health care field, plummeted. “This indicates that the job market is very close to complete stagnation.…Manufacturing employment, notably, fell. So, Trump’s economy is not exactly delivering the ‘manly jobs’ that he promised.” [https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/making-america-stagnate-again]

People whose help is needed in the economy can’t enter America, or are getting deported when here. Americans who previously expected to live fruitful lives here are leaving for other shores. And all Juan Ciscomani has to say about all of this is to brag about voting for billions of dollars for the Department of Homeland Security to secure the borders.  He leaves out the part where they terrorize minority populations and cause deaths