Whether we like it or not, the United States has spent a long time building an economic infrastructure that depends heavily on illegal immigrant labor.
In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid $75.6 billion in taxes, including $46 billion in federal taxes and $29 billion in state and local taxes. They also paid $25 billion in Social Security taxes, $6 billion in Medicare taxes, and $2 billion in unemployment insurance. They aalso can't access most social services, so they pay to support benefits they don't receive.
The proposed plan to deport over 10 million+ illegal immigrants would have a devastating impact, not just on the 4 million mixed families that will potentially be separated, but on the U.S. economy itself.
What follows is a chronicle, a small sample from a barrage of warnings.
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"A paradox has settled across California’s velvet green fields and orchards. California farmers, who are some of the most ardent supporters of Donald Trump, would seem to be on a collision course with one of the president-elect’s most important campaign promises. Trump has pledged to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants across the country, including, he has said in recent days, rounding up people and putting them in newly built detention camps.
If any such effort penetrated California’s heartland — where half the fruits and vegetables consumed in the U.S. are grown — it almost surely would decimate the workforce that farmers rely on to plant and harvest their crops. At least half of the state’s 162,000 farmworkers are undocumented, according to estimates from the federal Department of Labor and research conducted by UC Merced.
Without sufficient workers, food would rot in the fields, sending grocery prices skyrocketing."
"California farmers were big Trump backers. They may be on collision course over immigrant deportation." latimes.com. November 25, 2024.
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Leaders in the construction business, including Republicans, are worried that Donald Trump’s plans to carry out a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants will crater their industry, given its reliance on migrant workers.
“We will absolutely have a labor shortage,” developer George Fuller, mayor of McKinney Texas, a Dallas suburb that’s undergone a construction boom in recent years, toldThe Wall Street Journal. “Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, these industries depend on immigrant labor.”
Builders are praying they don’t get hit with the kind of dramatic workplace raids the Trump administration has talked about reinstating, Stan Marek, CEO of a Houston interior contracting company, added in an interview with the paper. These businesses are “putting their heads down and hoping like hell it doesn’t happen,” he said.
Studies suggest roughly one-third of U.S. construction workers are foreign-born, and that undocumented workers make up some 13 percent of the overall construction business.
Mass deportation would likely have a similar impact on states like California, Nevada, Washington, and Massachusetts, which also have large shares of migrant workers in the construction industry.
"Construction industry ‘hoping like hell’ Trump won’t crack down on undocumented labor force." independent.co.uk. December 3, 2024.
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A close international friend of my family who graduated from a U.S. college with a great degree and who has a great job stateside (and who recently married a dual citizenship student she met at the same college), is concerned about her future (renewing paperwork is complicated and hard). However, it was a family member at college who is studying engineering in the U.S. that she worries about more. She wrote to me,
'International students are struggling to find an internship/job right now. All companies are avoiding international students, so it's been discouraging for them."
For those of you not familiar with dynamics in higher education, over 1,000,000 international students attended U.S. colleges in 2024. Higher education institutions often recruit international students, as they provide better cash flow (they get fewer tuition discounts). Last year, international students contributed $44 billion to the U.S. economy and supported almost 400,000 jobs. About 400,000 are illegal immigrants. For the record, undocumented students are often charged out-of-state tuition are not eligible for federal financial aid.
A Newsweek article noted the following:
University of Colorado Denver professor Chloe East told BBC News: "All international students are worried right now. Students are incredibly overwhelmed and stressed out right now as a result of the uncertainty around immigration. "A lot of students have concerns about their visas and whether they'll be allowed to continue their education..."
The University of Massachusetts issued a travel advisory in November, urging its international students and faculty to "strongly consider" returning to campus from winter break before Trump returns to the White House on January 20. "Given that a new presidential administration can enact new policies on their first day in office (January 20), and based on previous experience with travel bans that were enacted in the first Trump Administration in 2016, the Office of Global Affairs is making this advisory out of an abundance of caution to hopefully prevent any possible travel disruption to members of our international community," the statement read.
"Donald Trump's Mass Deportation Policy Has 'Overwhelmed and Stressed' Students." newsweek.com November 26, 2024.
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Trump's promise to enact mass deportations could result in a "massive loss of revenue" for farmers who rely on immigrant labor to stay afloat, Newsweek reported Monday. "The idea of mass deportations is frightening and scary, just on a humane level," dairy farmer Jennifer Tilton Flood reportedly said. "With regards to our community, mass deportations could affect our entire dairy industry throughout the U.S."
About 950,000, or nearly 45 percent, out of an estimated 2.2 million farm laborers in the U.S. are undocumented immigrants, Newsweek reported. Flood argued businesses and churches should expect a "catastrophic nightmare" to come as U.S. Customs and Border Protection came under Trump's control. "There is a great chance for families to be broken apart," said Flood. "A lot of my team are raising Americans at home, and so it's tough. There is a lot of concern and there's a lot of panic."
Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign national press secretary, has reportedly said her boss' administration will dedicate itself to "the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers and human traffickers in American history." warn such a mass deportation effort could come with a hefty price tag of up to $315 billion, according to the report.
Restaurant owners say they're afraid of the cost to their businesses. "If these workers are deported, restaurants will close, leading to massive losses in revenue and a significant downturn in the economy," Sam Sanchez, a National Restaurant Association board member, told Newsweek. "Many of these individuals are good, law-abiding citizens who worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic but were ineligible for unemployment benefits," Sanchez added. "We need policies that ensure these essential workers can stay and continue contributing to our economy."
"Farmers panic that Trump policy could cause 'catastrophic nightmare': report." rawstory.com. November 18, 2024.
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"The National Association of Home Builders estimates that at least 1.5 million homes need to be built to meet growing demand. There is a need for more construction workers, as well: There were 282,000 construction jobs open as of September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Jim Tobin, the CEO of the NAHB, told CNN that immigrant labor has helped fill those job gaps. “Immigrant labor is really important for our ability to continue to build homes affordably,” said Tobin. “Anything that would have an impact on the labor supply, and, in this case, the immigrant labor supply, does give us concern about our ability to meet the housing needs of the country...”
More than one-third of construction workers in the labor force are foreign-born, according to the US Census Bureau’s 2023 American Community Survey. In some states, that share is much higher: In California, New Jersey and Texas, more than half of construction workers are immigrants. In New York, where Garcia works, 46% of construction workers are foreign-born. “The majority of employees in construction are Hispanic and most don’t have documents,” Garcia said of his experience working in construction.
“Evidence suggests that undocumented labor is a complement to domestic labor: an indirect outcome of deporting undocumented construction workers is net job loss for US-born workers, especially in higher-skilled occupations,” according to a study published by three housing economists that was released in March.
Jennie Murray, CEO of the National Immigration Forum, said a policy of mass deportations would be “short-sighted.” “People who went to the polls cared about the economy and immigration. But those two are inherently linked,” she said.
"Here’s how mass deportations could change the housing market." cnn.com November 19, 2024.
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"It is unclear how exactly the deportations will play out and how families will be impacted. But a recent study by the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration advocacy group, estimated that up to 4 million mixed-status families — where some members are undocumented and some are U.S. citizens — could be separated...
In Tucson, Arizona, the Coalición de Derechos Humanos, a group of more than 10 nonprofit organizations, is helping undocumented and mixed-status families create “emergency packets” ahead of potential mass deportations. The idea, organizers say, is partly based on past experiences where parents have been detained or deported while their children were in school. “We had cases where they made calls. We had cases where they were not able to get in touch with the mother, their friends,” said coalition co-founder Isabel Garcia.
The “emergency packet,” which coalition members are helping families make in local workshops, will include key documents such as a power of attorney for parental authority, family emergency contacts and a child’s school records."
"Trump’s mass deportations could split 4 million mixed-status families. How one is getting ready." nbcnews.com November 22, 2024.
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For most of the last 40 years, the “golden triangle” of southwest Kansas meatpacking towns — Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal — have thrived and grown while most other rural communities across the state struggled to survive. If Donald Trump keeps his promises, that prosperity could take a hit, along with hitting the dinner tables of Kansas Citians.
We’ll have to see how his policies affect the meatpacking plant Walmart plans to open in Olathe next year. Those meatpacking plants are built on a foundation of migrant labor: Latinos mostly, but also Africans and a lot of other newcomers from across the world. Trump’s vows to deport millions of undocumented migrants — to be carried out by the American military, no less — threaten that foundation."
"Migrants beef up small-town Kansas. Mass deportations could hit us all in the wallet." https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-
commentary/article295997344.html#storylink=cpy November 24, 2024.
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Aggressively enforcing a country’s immigration laws might well be a good idea. But aggressively pursuing illegal immigrants who are already in the country is another matter, and if it is done in a way that discourages immigrants more broadly, the United States could lose one of the key advantages that it has over many of its advanced-economy peers. With demographic trends putting downward pressure on the populations of Europe, Japan, and many other countries, the US must be careful to not join them. Additional workers who can preserve the size of the labor force need to be found somewhere.
"Trump's Impossible Economics." project-syndicate.org. November 25, 2024.
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For companies in Springfield and in nearby communities that depend on Haitian labor, Trump’s comments could prove damaging. The Haitians who filled thousands of jobs at area packaging and auto plants have helped rejuvenate once-blighted neighborhoods and contributed to the local economy in myriad ways.
While many food products lining the shelves of Springfield’s Caribbean stores are imported, many items – bread from Florida and pinto beans from Nebraska – are American. Chicken, beef and eggs served at Haitian restaurants are regularly sourced from local farms.
Recently, a Haitian community organization bought a former fire station it hopes to turn into a facility for English language classes, drivers’ education and a meeting spot. “I pay thousands of dollars in income and property taxes every year,” said Payen, “and – because I work with Haitians to file their taxes – I see their W-2s and so on. If these people leave, that money is gone from the city and the local economy.”
"Haitian immigrants flee Springfield, Ohio, in droves after Trump election win." the guardian.com.
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"There’s a lot that people don’t understand about the role of immigrants in the U.S. economy. It is something like maybe 8 million undocumented workers in the United States, something like 5 percent of the workforce. You say, OK, that would be pretty bad if we lose that, but how bad could it be? And the answer is that they are not evenly distributed. There are certain occupations that are really very heavily immigrant, certain jobs that are very heavily filled by immigrants, many of them undocumented.
Top of the list would be food. Agricultural workers, about three quarters are immigrants and probably about half of them are undocumented. Meat packing is probably between 30 and 50 percent undocumented immigrants. So the whole food supply chain is reliant on people who are going to be rounded up and put in camps...
Vance keeps on saying that all the jobs are going to immigrants and if we can get rid of the immigrants, those will be more jobs for Americans. That workforce isn’t there. We have essentially full employment among native-born Americans. There is no reserve of Americans to take these jobs, by and large jobs that native-born Americans would be very reluctant to take...
[We] used to say that immigrants are relatively low formal education, they must be competing with Americans that also have relatively low formal education and therefore depressing their wages. And it took some time for it to sink in that immigrants just take very, very different jobs. They just bring a different set of skills, a different set of preferences. There’s very little head-to-head competition. In fact, immigrants are really complements to American workers, even American workers without college degrees....
A lot of the people have roots here. It’s not that they can just pick up and go back to their old life in Central America. They’ve been here for years. They have families. So this is going to be much, much harder to make happen than they think....
I’ve been looking a little bit of a dress rehearsal for some of this in DeSantis Florida, where he’s done a crackdown. The results for Florida agriculture have already been disastrous."
"Transcript: Paul Krugman on How Badly Trump Voters Have Been Scammed." November 13, 2024, new republic.com
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Construction is the industry that employs the most undocumented workers, at 1.5 million, according to estimates from the Center for Migration Studies of New York, a pro-migrant think tank. If accurate, that would mean undocumented immigrants account for about 15% of the national construction workforce. In some states, that share is much higher, with half of construction workers in Texas reportedly undocumented, for example.
The evidence that immigration is a major factor in housing costs is mixed. While there is reason to believe that higher immigration levels can drive up local rents in a city, the recent post-pandemic surge in home prices began before illegal immigration levels jumped.
Undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. are not qualified for conventional mortgages. However, they can purchase homes with cash or use an obscure, unconventional type of mortgage. Between 5,000 and 6,000 mortgages of this kind were issued last year, according to estimates from the Urban Institute. At the high end, that would account for about 0.1% of all new mortgages issued for the year.
“The number of homes that are purchased by undocumented individuals is not even a blip on a radar,” says Gary Acosta, CEO of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals. Conversely, Acosta points out that foreign buyers living outside the country bought about 54,000 homes worth $42 billion last year, according to National Association of Realtors® data.
“That has a bigger impact on price points,” he says. “Subtracting a small number of undocumented people who are living here and working here, who may be in the homebuying marketplace, is not even going to be a fraction of that number.”
"How Trump’s Plan for Mass Deportations Could Affect Home Prices." realtor.com November 12, 2024.
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A report from the American Immigration Council (AIC) pegs the cost of a one-time deportation operation at $315 billion. ICE currently has only 41,000 beds. Detaining immigrants is estimated to cost $167.8 billion. CNN reported this week that Trump’s associates have been working with the private sector to detain and deport the undocumented population, citing sources familiar with the discussions.
AIC’s estimate of $315 billion is conservative and does not account for long-term costs of a sustained operation “or the incalculable additional costs necessary to acquire the institutional capacity to remove over 13 million people in a short period of time—incalculable because there is simply no reality in which such a singular operation is possible.”
Assuming 20 percent of the undocumented population would “self-deport”, the AIC estimates the costs of a multi-year campaign at $88 billion a year and $968 billion over a decade…
U.S. born Americans, who work for undocumented entrepreneurs, are also at risk of losing their jobs. Kagan says the “devastation to the Nevada economy and to Nevada’s families and communities is something that I don’t think anyone alive has any lived experience to calculate, to understand.”
An analysis from the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy concludes that mass deportation adversely affects society because businesses do not replace the deported workers. “This is because they do not find U.S. workers who want to do the jobs; they turn to machines to replace the workers, depending on the industry, or because they reduce operations, resulting in layoffs, elimination of positions, or salary reductions,” writes Maribel Hastings of America’s Voice, an immigrant rights organization.
AIC projects gross domestic product would decline by 4.2 to 6.8% as a result of mass deportation. Tax revenue for the federal government, buoyed by $46.8 billion in annual federal income tax paid by undocumented immigrants, would plunge, as would state and local coffers across the country, which receive $29.3 billion a year from the undocumented population.
Undocumented immigrants also contribute $22.6 billion annually to Social Security and $5.7 billion to Medicare.
A study released this year from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning, nonprofit think tank, found undocumented immigrants paid nearly $100 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022. Undocumented immigrants would contribute another $40.2 billion more per year in federal, state and local taxes if the population had legal permission to work, pay taxes, and receive the benefits.
In Nevada, undocumented immigrants paid a total of $507.1 million in taxes in 2022, with more than half, $271.9 million, in the form of sales tax, the study said.
"Nevada unprepared for Trump’s mass deportations." nevadacurrent. com. November 15, 2024.
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- Removing undocumented residents from mixed-status households would reduce median household income from $41,300 to $22,000, a drop of $19,300, or 47 percent, which would plunge millions of US families into poverty.
- If just one-third of the US-born children of undocumented residents remained in the United States following a mass deportation program, which is a very low estimate, the cost of raising those children through their minority would total $118 billion.
- The nation’s housing market would be jeopardized because a high percentage of the 1.2 million mortgages held by households with undocumented immigrants would be in peril.
- Gross domestic product (GDP) would be reduced by 1.4 percent in the first year, and cumulative GDP would be reduced by $4.7 trillion over 10 years.
“Mass Deportations Would Impoverish US Families and Create Immense Social Costs.” Center For Migration Studies. cmsny.org
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Khanna says the research on the connection between immigration and employment for native born workers is “quite mixed.” Mass deportation can result in an increase in employment for the very lowest educated workers that might be competing for jobs with undocumented immigrants, Khanna says. But overall there is a negative impact on the labor market and economy due to a number of factors.
One is that undocumented immigrants take jobs that are largely in sectors like construction, child care and elder care, areas where native U.S. workers are less likely to seek work, Khanna says. Peter Simon, a teaching professor of economics at Northeastern, notes that the sectors where undocumented immigrants mostly find employment are vital to the U.S. economy, which is largely driven by the service industry, not agriculture or manufacturing.
“People who build houses, people who are in lawn care, people who do daycare, people who put on roofs — all of these kinds of services are just going to go,” Simon says. “You’re not going to be able to find a plumber, an electrician or anybody who can do this kind of work.”
Mass deportation would hit the child care industry particularly hard, Khanna says, which could cause massive ripple effects nationwide for “the labor force participation of native women who rely on these child care centers.”
Workers in those industries who are citizens would also be affected by mass deportation. “Imagine a construction site where a lot of construction workers are undocumented immigrants, and the supervisor of all these workers is a native worker,” Khanna says. “When all the workers go away, then you don’t need the supervisor either, so this can have a negative impact on native workers’ employment in this way because these are complementary labor inputs.”
The sudden loss of millions of people could also impact local economies because there would be fewer people who are eating at local restaurants and paying for goods and services provided by local businesses.
“It will trickle down very quickly. It won’t just trickle down; it will flood down pretty quickly in terms of the loss of GDP,” Simon says. “That’s what’s going to cost the country. Our growth rate right now is not bad. It’s around 3% or 4%, which is historically about average but lately it’s above average. That’s going to take a hit, and we’re going to feel the difference.”
Coupled with the birth rate in the U.S. sitting lower than what is needed to maintain the country’s workforce and Trump’s proposed tariffs that could hike prices for consumers, Simon says it wouldn’t take long “before the country finds itself in a recession.”
“These tariffs and this deporting idea, it’s just going to exacerbate what could be a bad situation already,” Simon says.
“Mass Deportations Are A Day One Priority For Trump. Economists Explain How It Could Lead To A Recession.” Northeastern Global News. news.northeastern.edu November 18, 2024.
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In a recent survey, a majority of Ohio economists said that mass deportations would harm the state’s economy...
In Ohio, the group Policy Matters on Monday reported that the state’s 580,000 immigrants contribute $53 billion in annual economic output. And the state’s economists seem mostly to agree that removing a big chunk of them will cost the state on balance.
Scioto Analysis last week published a survey of 20 economists asking about the effect of mass deportations. When asked if the move would significantly reduce the state’s economic output, 14 said yes, three said no and three were uncertain...
Jonathan Andreas echoed some of his colleagues in explaining why he thought expelling the undocumented wouldn’t give much relief to the safety net.
“We can only deport people who are not here legally and they are ineligible for social services except kids can get public education and most of the kids of undocumented immigrants are US citizens by birth,” he said. “Furthermore, undocumented workers typically pay payroll taxes even though they don’t get any credit for it, so they subsidize Social Security and Medicare.”
"Experts: Mass deportation will hurt at least one red state's economy." alternate.org. December 9, 2024.
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