This commentary is by Gabe Lajeunesse, who serves on state and national boards focused on expanding economic development and protecting displaced populations.
When VTDigger reported that international migration to Chittenden County fell by half last year, it was more than a demographic footnote. It was a warning. According to the census data highlighted in that story, the county gained only 220 international migrants between 2024 and 2025, down from 440 the year before. Combined with natural population loss and domestic out‑migration, Chittenden County ended the year with at least 500 fewer residents.
For a state already struggling with an aging workforce, housing shortages and stagnant population growth, this is not a small shift. It is a structural threat to Vermont’s economic future.
And it is not happening in isolation. According to a recent analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, the United States is experiencing the slowest population growth in modern history.
Natural population increase — births minus deaths — has fallen to roughly 500,000 per year nationally and could reach zero as early as this year. Vermont, with one of the oldest populations in the country, feels these pressures even more acutely.
The MPI report documents a sweeping series of federal actions that have sharply reduced legal immigration across nearly every major category. These include a 75-country pause on permanent visas, a 39-country travel ban, a nearly 50% drop in student visas, and a new $100,000 H-1B application fee that effectively shuts out small employers. Refugee resettlement — historically a lifeline for Vermont communities — has fallen from 100,034 nationally in fiscal year 2024 to just 3,664 between February 2025 and February 2026.
The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants underscored this trend in its April 23 Policy and Advocacy Newsletter, noting that long‑standing legal pathways are tightening nationwide, including efforts to end protections for more than 350,000 Haitians with temporary protected status and a pending Supreme Court case that could leave some children born in the U.S. stateless. These developments illustrate how national policy shifts are constricting lawful immigration channels in ways that inevitably reach states like Vermont.
These national restrictions are now showing up in Vermont’s numbers. The decline in international migration is not because Vermont has become less welcoming. It is because the federal pathways that once brought workers, students and families here have constricted dramatically.
Vermont’s economy depends on people. Our hospitals, schools, farms, manufacturers and small businesses rely on a steady flow of workers, and we simply do not have enough Vermonters to fill the jobs we already have, let alone the ones we hope to create.
International students at the University of Vermont and other institutions are a crucial part of our talent pipeline. When student visas fall nationally, Vermont feels it locally. These students become nurses, engineers, researchers and entrepreneurs. They rent apartments, buy homes and start families. When they stop coming, the long‑term consequences ripple through the entire state.
Refugees and humanitarian migrants have also played an essential role in Vermont’s communities. They have revitalized towns, staffed critical industries and brought new energy to regions facing population decline. When those pathways close, Vermont loses not just workers, but neighbors, taxpayers and future community leaders.
If Vermont cannot attract and retain people, we face a future of shrinking school enrollments,
worsening healthcare shortages, stalled housing construction, fewer small businesses, higher per‑capita tax burdens and declining economic dynamism.
These are not abstract concerns. They are already visible in the data. Chittenden County’s population loss is a preview of what could happen statewide if we do not restore legal immigration and build the housing and workforce systems to support it.
Ronald Reagan once described America as a “shining city upon a hill,” emphasizing that its doors were open to those “with the will and the heart to get here.” That vision was not just moral, it was practical. Reagan understood that newcomers strengthen the country.
Vermont has always understood this, too. We have welcomed refugees from Bosnia, Bhutan, Afghanistan and Ukraine. We have embraced international students, migrant farmworkers and families seeking a better life. They have strengthened our communities, our economy and our culture.
But we cannot do this alone. Vermont’s future depends on a federal immigration system that works — one that is orderly, predictable and aligned with the needs of states like ours.
We can’t rewrite federal law from Montpelier, but we can advocate for the restoration of legal immigration pathways; expand state-level support for refugees, students and workers; build more housing so newcomers can actually live here; strengthen partnerships with employers who rely on global talent; and ensure Vermont remains one of the most welcoming states in the country.
These steps won’t solve everything, but they will position Vermont to benefit when federal policy eventually shifts, as it must.
Vermont can choose scarcity: a future defined by population loss, workforce shortages and economic stagnation. Or we can choose abundance: a future powered by people who arrive ready to build, contribute and renew the promise of this state.
Chittenden County’s numbers are a warning. They are also a call to action. Vermont’s future depends on restoring legal immigration and ensuring that our communities remain places where people want to live, work and raise their families.
