The other side of the deportations chart: how many people were admitted to live in the United States legally. The headline is lawful permanent residents (green cards) per year; the sharper presidential lever, refugee admissions, is broken out below, because the refugee ceiling is set by presidential determination each year.
Lawful permanent residents (green cards) admitted per year, averaged over each term.
Clinton
785K
Bush
1,041K
Obama
1,064K
Trump I
991K
Term average hides the collapse to 707K in FY2020, when COVID closed consulates
Biden
1,074K
Highest full-term average; FY2024's 1.36M is the highest year since FY1991 (1.83M)
Trump II
1,320K*
FY2025 only, and that fiscal year straddles the Biden and Trump II administrations, so it is not a clean Trump II figure
Refugee admissions: the presidential lever
Unlike green cards, the refugee ceiling is set directly by the president each year, so this is where administrations diverge most sharply, by nearly ten to one.
President
Refugee ceiling (avg)
Actually admitted (avg/yr)
Clinton
~99,600
~89,400
Bush
~72,500
~47,700
Obama
~76,400
~69,700
Trump I
~50,750
~29,500
Biden
~97,500
~49,200
Trump II*
7,500–17,500
~7,700
Trump I set the ceiling to a then-record-low 15,000 (FY2021); Trump II suspended the program entirely in Jan 2025 and set a 7,500 ceiling for FY2026, the lowest in the program's history, allocated primarily to Afrikaners; an emergency determination in May 2026 raised it to 17,500, and the FY2027 ceiling, set on Sep 25, 2026, is also 17,500. The honest counter-fact: Biden set 125,000 ceilings for three straight years but only filled a fraction, because resettlement capacity had been dismantled and was slow to rebuild.
Green-card totals are set by law and logistics, not annual presidential choice. Lawful-permanent-resident numbers reflect statutory category and country caps, consular throughput, and the adjustment-of-status backlog; more than half of recent green cards go to people already living in the United States, not new arrivals. COVID consulate closures, not policy, drove the FY2020–21 dip. The refugee ceiling is the exception: it is a direct presidential determination, which is why that table shows the clearest presidential fingerprint. FY2025 straddles two administrations, and FY2026 green-card data does not yet exist.