The former president’s calls for mass deportation are celebrated by many on the right who fail to face the facts on just how much they would hurt American workers.
At the Republican National Convention last week, before a crowd of thousands bearing signs reading “Mass deportation now!” among other slogans, former President Donald Trump pledged to end what he called the “greatest invasion in history” taking place at our southern border.
Convention attendees then gave a rousing cheer for a Trump plan that would lose jobs, exacerbate fiscal problems, harm economic sectors like agriculture and construction, make it harder to get eldercare and child care, and probably increase crime.
I’m not making this up.
Trump plans to deport most of the more than 10 million immigrants lacking proper legal documentation in the United States, by using the military and police to send them to camps and quickly evict them. This would reduce crime and open up more jobs, and higher paying ones, for U.S.-born Americans – or so he claims. This, he says, is modeled after President Dwight Eisenhower’s deportation scheme of 70 years ago – except, being Trump, much bigger.
The Republican presidential nominee’s tough “lock ’em up and send ’em back” rhetoric plays well with many voters, and immigration is likely to remain a top talking point in the run-up to November.
But like other Trump proposals that effectively play on grievances – such as imposing across-the-board tariffs to supposedly help American industry or gutting the civil service to ward out members of the “deep state” – the benefits he claims are false and the costs are considerable. Just ask virtually anyone who has studied the matter.
“The argument that Trump has made is these measures would be good for the economy and good for American workers,” notes Natasha Sarin, an associate professor at Yale’s Schools of law and Management, as well as a former deputy assistant secretary for the U.S. Treasury Department. “The vast economic research on this question suggests exactly the opposite. Indeed, the recent work by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (a nonpartisan Washington think tank) suggests that GDP would fall and inflation would rise under Trump’s plan.”
This is in addition, Sarin says, to the “real legal and implementation questions.”
On the economics, the Trump contention that, if you get rid of those “illegals,” then higher wages and more jobs will accrue to American citizens, almost seems rational. Except it’s wrong.
Chloe East is an economist at the University of Colorado Denver who, with several colleagues, did a comprehensive study on the impact of deportations. She concluded that deporting 1 million immigrants would result in 88,000 lost American jobs.
She explains that these immigrants often take low-level jobs, typically those shunned by U.S.-born workers, such as a busser in a restaurant or a construction worker. This enables employers to hire American workers for higher-paid positions, such as a waiter or construction site manager.
“U.S. undocumented workers and U.S.-born workers complement each other in the labor market rather than compete in the same jobs,” East points out. These immigrants also boost local economies by eating out at restaurants, getting haircuts, and using other services, she says.
Michael Clemens, an economist at George Mason University in Virginia, reports how deportations affect subsequent business decisions: “Business owners hit by sudden reductions in labor supply then invest less in new business formation,” he wrote in one of the studies from the PIIE, where he is also a nonresident senior fellow.
Indeed, there’s a negative fiscal impact. Economists have calculated that workers in the U.S. illegally contribute more than $12 billion annually to Social Security, which would be a net loss as they get almost no benefits. They also contribute an estimated $6 billion in federal taxes, though Trump’s plan would add much more to the deficit with the sizable cost of rounding up deportees.
Moreover, if local police are used for these roundups and diverted from their regular duties, there likely would be a spike in crime. One of the myths perpetrated by the anti-immigrant demagogues at the Republican convention is that workers without permanent legal status commit disproportionately more crime. Numerous studies show they commit fewer crimes than U.S.-born citizens.
Trump’s analogy to immigrant deportations under the Eisenhower administration seven decades ago is also misleading. That plan, infamously labeled “Operation Wetback,” was ugly with racial overtones. Trump’s plan would be bigger and worse: “It’s not just mass deportation; it’s mass racial banishment,” says UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernández.
Moreover, as Clemens notes, the Eisenhower administration simultaneously increased the number of temporary, employment-based visas for Mexican workers on a huge scale, negating any adverse economic impact.
If Trump is elected – the probabilities have fallen since President Joe Biden decided to bow out of his own reelection campaign – his deportation scheme would face legal hurdles, though it’s a thin reed to rely on this Republican Supreme Court.
But it’s more than bad economics; with workplace raids, and parents being yanked from their children and sent to concentration camps, massive deportation would be a stain on the moral fabric of this country – one we would struggle to erase, even while Trump’s GOP acolytes herald it proudly.
Washington columnist Albert R. Hunt has covered U.S. politics and presidential campaigns since 1972, previously for the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News and the International New York Times. You can listen to his weekly podcast and read more on Substack.
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