Immigration crackdown stunts population growth across the U.S. — but not in these Utah cities

A rapid decrease in new immigration slowed or reversed population growth in a majority of U.S. counties last year.

But some Utah areas defied the trend as economic factors continue to push taxpayers from blue states to red ones.

Every state saw a decline in immigration between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025, according to Census Bureau data published Thursday.

This coincides with President Donald Trump sealing the southern border, launching a deportation campaign and limiting legal pathways.

The metro areas with the steepest decline in population growth rates were those along the U.S.-Mexico border, like Laredo, Texas; Yuma, Arizona; and El Centro, California.

But more than 80% of metro areas had slower growth than the prior year, with 9 in 10 counties experiencing lower levels of net international immigration than before.

Under President Joe Biden, America received the greatest number of immigrants in its history, totaling roughly eight million people, according to census data, including a record-breaking 2.3 million in 2023 and 2.8 million in 2024.

In Utah, international immigration drove more than half of the population growth in 2023 and 2024, accounting for around 55,000 people, according to Utah Department of Workforce Services data.

Now that source of population growth has been put on hold.

Border encounters have fallen to their lowest level in more than 50 years, Pew Research found. And Trump has changed immigration policies to allow 30%-55% fewer legal immigrants, too, according to the National Foundation for American Policy.

What population decline means for the U.S. economy

After four years of historic levels of immigration many communities will be relieved to see a decrease in immigration-driven population growth, according to Mark Krikorian, the executive director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

“The size of our population should generally be determined by American moms and dads,” Krikorian told the Deseret News. “Population growth isn’t some goal on its own unless you’re looking at the country as a kind of corporation.”

But Krikorian recognizes the U.S. birth rate of around 1.6 births per woman is not ideal.

In 2025, 65% of counties had more deaths than births, according to the census, leading to a natural decline in population growth that will eventually result in an overall shrinking population.

But he said he believes the solution to a low birth rate is not unmitigated immigration — legal or illegal — which can undermine the market for low-skilled labor and prompt destabilizing demographic change.

Some Utah localities are outliers in that they saw a greater rate of growth in 2025 despite lower immigration. Both St. George and Cedar City were in the top 10 U.S. metro areas for percentage growth, with a rate around 2.5%.

However, high levels of immigration may be necessary to offset a declining birth rate if America wants to sustain government revenue and business growth, said David Bier, director of immigration studies at Cato Institute.

“That’s the only scenario that the census predicts will not lead to population decline,” Bier told the Deseret News. “In the zero immigrant scenario, we’ll end up with population decline within a decade.”

Economists tend to agree that a declining population can be disastrous for a country. Bier called it “a death spiral of lost economic activity, lost revenues.”

Nations around the world with shrinking populations, from France to South Korea, have struggled to fund welfare systems as the number of seniors overwhelm the workforce.

It also hurts the national economy to lose out on the employees, business owners and customers that immigration brings in.

In general, population growth benefits everyone, Bier said.

Blue states lose people — and money

This also applies at the state and city level.

Some states, like New York and California, have entered into a cycle where state economic policies appear to incentivize people to move away — taking their money with them.

New data published by the Internal Revenue Service, tracking tax filings from 2022-2023, found that Republican states with no income tax, like Florida and Texas, continue to have the highest domestic in-migration in the country.

While these states grew by over 110,000 people in 2023, Democrat-led states with the highest income tax rates shrunk. New York lost a net total of nearly 172,000 people while California lost even more: more than 226,300.

This has very real economic costs.

Florida received a net gain of $27.6 billion in adjusted gross income because of all the new move-ins and Texas received $10.3 billion. Meanwhile, $10.6 billion in wealth fled New York and nearly $13 billion left California.

This poses problems for states with massive government programs like California, which faces a $3 billion budget deficit, as it attempts to maintain the same services with shrinking tax bases, said Abir Mandal, state tax policy analyst at the Tax Foundation.

“If you want to maintain those services you’ll have to tax the remaining people higher and that’s exactly what we’re seeing,” Mandal said. “They’re responding not by enacting reforms but by increasing taxes.”

This year, a handful of states like New York and California diverged further from the majority of states, including Utah, which have income tax rates below 5%. New York increased its top rate to 10.9% and California raised its to 14.6%.

The top destinations for people fleeing New York were New Jersey, Florida and Pennsylvania. Californians headed to Texas, Arizona and Nevada. But a significant number also decided to make the move to Utah.

IRS data identifies California as the top origin of inflow to the Beehive State, with 15,310 Californians moving to Utah in 2023. The next most common origin states for Utah transplants were Washington and Idaho.

In 2023, Utah had a net inflow of just over 1,000 people, with around 80,000 people moving in and out of the state. But that small positive domestic migration still meant nearly $500 million in new income arriving in Utah.

The counties that benefitted the most from population growth in 2023 were Washington County, which received $188 million in taxable income, and Utah County, which received $178 million. Salt Lake County lost $400 million.