The State Department announced on 14 January 2026 that it will stop issuing immigrant visas to applicants from 75 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, plus 10 countries in eastern Europe—85 jurisdictions in total. The Department of Homeland Security justified the suspension by labelling immigrants from those countries as a "high risk" of welfare reliance and as a "public charge."

What countries are affected?

The 75-country bloc spans the African continent, most of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. The State Department added 10 eastern European states to the suspension list, bringing the total to 85 nations.

Why is the DHS justification contested?

Most immigrants have been disqualified from cash assistance since 1996. Those who use programs such as SNAP and Medicaid do so at lower rates than the US-born population. Undocumented immigrants, barred from most federal benefits, remain net fiscal contributors.

Immigration scholar Heba Gowayed wrote: "As an immigration scholar, I was immediately struck by the falsehood of this economic justification."

What pattern connects the 85 countries?

Nearly every country on the suspension list was restricted under the 1924 Immigration Act, also known as the Johnson-Reed Act. That law governed admissions for four decades before the civil-rights movement secured its abolition in 1965.

Representative Albert Johnson of Washington, the law's architect, was an open eugenicist who boasted about participating in Ku Klux Klan violence against South Asians. He framed immigration as a defence of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant demographics.

How did the 1924 law reshape admissions?

The Johnson-Reed Act capped total immigration at one-fifth of the pre-World War I figure. It anchored national quotas to the 1890 census, allocating roughly nine-tenths of slots to northern and western Europe.

Key restrictions included:

• Asia barred entirely, with narrow exceptions for the Levant
• African admissions capped at 1,200 people per year
• New "illegal alien" category created
• First US visa requirement imposed
• Funding for the original Border Patrol allocated later in 1924

How does today's rhetoric compare?

President Trump has claimed immigrants are "poisoning the nation's blood." He has also said he prefers "the nice people" of Sweden, Norway and Denmark over people from what he called "filthy, dirty, disgusting" countries such as Somalia.

Calvin Coolidge, who signed the Johnson-Reed Act into law, declared that "America must be kept American." The Ku Klux Klan, a proponent of the legislation, used the same phrase. The 1924 bill passed with more than 80% support in both chambers of Congress.

What demographic shifts followed?

Immigration collapsed under the quota regime:

• 1920s: 13% of the US population was foreign-born
• 1970: under 5% foreign-born; the Census recorded the population as 87.5% white

Today, 15% of US residents are foreign-born, and the country is 57.8% white. The Census projects a majority-non-white population by 2045.

Who is shaping the current policy?

Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, is the lead architect of the Trump deportation framework. Leaked emails reviewed by the Southern Poverty Law Center show Miller has praised Coolidge and the four-decade era the Johnson-Reed Act produced.

Trump has said there is "no price tag" on mass deportation. The federal government has spent $410 billion on border enforcement over the past two decades.

What does the history show about refugees?

In 1939, more than 900 Jewish passengers aboard the SS St. Louis were forced back to Europe. Nearly a quarter later died in Nazi camps.

The US did not admit Jewish refugees until 1948, when the Displaced Persons Act capped admissions at roughly 200,000 people. President Harry Truman signed that bill reluctantly, denouncing its restrictions as antisemitic and xenophobic.

Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that the United States was "the one state" that "simply excludes the immigration of certain races."

Where does the policy go from here?

Gowayed's analysis frames the visa halt alongside the Johnson-Reed Act and urges organising across racial lines.

"We can recognize too that the work of that movement continues, that the white supremacy it fought is enduring, and that we need to organize and protest," she wrote.