America Will Shut Down If Trump Deports Millions of Undocumented Workers

The outlook for America is very dismal if Trump carries through on his threats to deport millions of undocumented people – which he made again this week in a TV interview.

Specifically, California’s agriculture will close down if the people who pick the vegetables and fruits are removed from the fields. And, notably, the costs of those foods will skyrocket, even if offset by the missing mouths of those deported.

Since the pandemic, foreign-born workers have taken positions in such sectors as construction, agriculture, technology and health care, fields where domestic labor supply has been a challenge for those looking to hire. Immigrant workers made up 18.6% of the workforce last year, a new record, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

From 2021 to 2023, 1 in 3 workers in California were immigrants, according to the California Budget & Policy Center. Certain sectors, such as agriculture, are closely watching developments on immigration plans, as the industry has increasingly relied on H-2A workers on temporary visas to fill roles in production.

Plus, there would be a ripple effects from deportation, such as the closure of farms in the state and the reliance on importing food from overseas due to a dwindling labor force. That means higher costs to the consumer.

It’s estimated that half of all farmworkers in the country are undocumented. Deporting massive numbers of them will reduce domestic production and increase the nation’s reliance on imports. A 50% decrease in the farm labor supply could very well result in a 21% increase in the prices of hand-picked crops.

If immigrant workers disappeared overnight, the agricultural sector would be devastated and the US could not grow enough food.

Recently, the U-T reported that a recent Brookings Institution study estimated Trump’s immigration policy could reduce 2025 GDP growth by 0.1 to 0.4 percentage points, or by $30 billion to $110 billion.

Wendy Edelberg, one of the authors and a senior fellow at the institution’s Hamilton Project, said that in sectors where there will be significant reductions in labor supply, it will be more expensive for companies to provide goods and services, leading to higher inflation. …

“American companies are going to feel the strain on labor costs, and we’re going to be — depending on the skill level of the individual you are talking about — we’re going to be losing the fight for labor,” Jennie Murray, CEO of the National Immigration Forum, a nonpartisan, nonprofit immigrant advocacy organization, told CNBC.

Also, a quarter of all the workers who process meat, fish and poultry lack lawful status. The price of milk would double without an immigrant workforce.

Also, many undocumented workers are currently employed in the housing industry and if they were deported, what would happen to housing costs then? They would go up, and access to affordable homes and even market-rate houses will be that much more difficult.

One in 5 undocumented workers — 1.4 million people — are employed in construction. That’s more than 10% of the entire labor force. They also account for 32% of roofers. The industry is already facing a worker shortage — and if Trump carries out his deportation scheme, the construction of new housing would grind to a halt. This would send the affordable housing market into a tailspin.

A representative of the Associated General Contractors of America said, “You can’t build things in the United States without people to build them.” A Democratic representative from Texas declared, “The economy would collapse.”

Here’s more:

• More than a third of a million undocumented immigrants work in health care — two-thirds as providers or in supporting jobs.
• 142,000 are employed as child care workers, personal care aides or home health aides.
• 160,000 are employed as cleaners and housekeepers.
• Undocumented workers pay $13 Billion a year into Social Security – even though they’re not eligible for its benefits.
• Undocumented households paid $35.1 Billion in taxes in 2022; $21.5 Billion in federal taxes and $13.6 Billion in state and local taxes.
• With more than 3.4 million undocumented immigrants with a US-born child, a mass deportation program would slash the income of these mixed-status households by half, plunging millions into poverty.

It’s clear that if Trump carries through on his deportation threats, life in California and across the nation will suffer and drastically change for the worse. There would be food shortages, skyrocketing prices, a virtual shut-down of certain industries — and in general, life as we know it will cease. The country will shut down.

And crucially, we’re not even talking about the disruptive nature of the process of deporting millions — the fear and violence — just add all that to the pile.

Cal-Matters agrees with these scary predictions.

Mass deportations promised by President-elect Donald Trump could have a seismic economic effect in California — potentially inflicting billions of dollars in direct damages to a wide range of industries, including small business, agriculture, construction and child care, advocates and academics said.

The impact could also spread outward to other sectors, including growth drivers like tech.

The Golden State relies heavily on the labor of immigrants, whether they’re naturalized U.S. citizens, have temporary visas or are undocumented. More than 10 million, or 27%, of California’s population is foreign-born, according to the most recent U.S. Census data. Roughly a fifth of those are thought to be undocumented; as of 2022, estimates ranged from 1.8 million undocumented immigrants, according to the Pew Research Center, to 2.4 million, according to the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

If undocumented immigrants “magically disappear, you’re going to erase 10% of California production,” said Giovanni Peri, professor of international economics at UC Davis. “We’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars.”

The loss of workers only speaks to part of the financial impact of deportations. Undocumented immigrants also power the state’s economy as consumers and taxpayers.

There may also be indirect impacts from the deportations. The loss of workers in construction, agriculture (including the state’s world-famous wine industry), hospitality and the care economy would have ripple effects on the rest of the state, according to Manuel Pastor, professor of sociology and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

“Behind every software engineer is an army of nannies, food-service workers and gardeners,” Pastor said.

So, bottom line – enjoy these last few days of normalcy. It ain’t gonna last long.

News sources:

SanDiego7NBC

Mother Jones Magazine Oct-Nov 2024