U.S. Economy Will Lose Billions of Dollars As TPS Ends For Millions Of Migrants, Experts Say

The Trump administration has vowed to curb down immigration, revoking temporary protections to millions of migrants from around the country. As the date for their protected status to finalize nears, experts estimate the U.S. economy will lose billions of dollars due to a decreased participation from immigrants.

The new estimate comes from fwd.us, a bipartisan political organization that researches immigration and the criminal justice system. According to a recently-published analysis, the U.S. economy will lose $13.4 billion through the annual contribution to the economy through immigrant's spending power.

At the same time, the U.S. will likely also miss out on at least $3.2 billion in annual combined federal, payroll, state and local taxes from the migrants who are losing protections in September.

But this is not the only way that potential economic losses can be measured. In fact, the organization also looks at how the workforce around the country could be impacted with the recent immigration policy changes.

According to the study, the industry that will be the most impacted will be leisure and hospitality, where around 73,000 people will lose protections, while 370,000 will remain protected. That is followed by the construction industry, which will likely lose around 60,000 employees, while around 558,000 will likely remain employed. Other industries that will likely face high job losses include manufacturing (46,000), health services (44,000), wholesale and retail trade (36,000) and business services (34,000).

Temporary protections in the U.S. can include Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), Temporary Protected Status (TPS), humanitarian parole, U or T visa application backlog protections, a Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) application deferral, or an active asylum claim. As of January 2025, an estimated 6.4 million immigrants had temporary protections.

By comparison, as of Sept. 2025, an estimated 928,000 immigrants will have lost all of their temporary protections, while an estimated 5.5 million immigrants will continue to have some form of protections.

One of the most significant losses in the temporarily protected immigrant population include the Temporary Protected Status for Afghanistan, Cameron, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Venezuelan nationals.

TPS status is usually awarded to migrants who come from countries ravaged by political, economic or humanitarian crises. Upon revoking such status for millions of migrants earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security pointed out that they believed the crises in some of those countries had improved, and that temporary protections were not meant to last decades.

"Temporary Protected Status was designed to be just that— temporary," Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a press release about the end of TPS for Honduras.

Instead, DHS has urged migrants to self-deport once their status comes to a close, which could give migrants the opportunity to come back to the U.S. through other legal means.

"Take advantage of a safe, secure way to self-deport which includes a complimentary plane ticket, a $1,000 exit bonus, and potential future opportunities for legal immigration," the DHS said in a press release earlier this month.