Trump Visa Restrictions Tighten Economic Grip on Latin American States

The Trump administration has expanded the use of visa restrictions — including cancellations, processing freezes, and blanket country-level suspensions — as a diplomatic coercion instrument across Latin America and the Caribbean. The mechanism punishes governments that resist US migration and foreign policy demands, but the economic harm lands primarily on ordinary citizens rather than the political elites being targeted.

The developmental consequence is concrete. Remittances account for more than 20% of GDP in Honduras, El Salvador, and Haiti — with smaller but significant shares in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. Visa restrictions that reduce documented labour migration to the US directly compress remittance flows, removing what functions as the primary social safety net and poverty alleviation mechanism in these economies, one that dwarfs US bilateral aid to the region. The policy's logic is coercive, but its blunt instrument cuts the income of the people it is nominally meant to help by pressuring their governments.

What to watch is whether the visa restriction strategy actually changes government behaviour on migration cooperation — the stated objective — or whether it accelerates undocumented migration by removing legal pathways, creating the precise outcome the policy claims to prevent.