WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is promising the largest deportation effort the U.S. has ever seen if he is elected — a promise he bases in part on the idea that immigrants in the U.S. steal what is legal and illegal he mentions “black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.”
However, government data shows that immigrant workers contribute to economic growth and provide advancement opportunities for native-born workers. And mass deportation would cost U.S. taxpayers up to $1 trillion and could cause the cost of living, including food and housing, to skyrocket, economists say.
Here’s a look at immigration and the US job market and what Trump’s plan would mean for the US economy.
What did Trump say?
Trump, who often uses anti-immigrant rhetoric, made references in his campaign to immigrants who he said took “black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.”
At a recent rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, Trump said, “There is an invasion of people into our country.”
“They’re going to attack black jobs and Hispanic jobs – and they’re already doing that – and they’re also attacking union jobs,” Trump said. “So when you see the border, it’s not just the crime. Your jobs will also be taken away.”
Trump’s rhetoric about jobs was widely condemned by Democrats and black leaders, who called it a racist and offensive way to insinuate that black and Hispanic Americans are taking menial jobs.
Janiyah Thomas, the director of Team Trump Black Media, told The Associated Press that Democrats “continue to prioritize the interests of illegal immigrants over our own Black Americans who were born in this country” and that in the Biden era Employment increases on the labor market have come primarily due to illegal immigration.
The latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey shows that in 2023, native-born Black workers are predominantly employed in management and financial operations, sales and office support roles, while native-born Latino workers are most often employed in management are , office support, sales and service jobs.
Foreign-born black noncitizen workers are most common in transportation and health care, and foreign-born Hispanic noncitizen workers are most common in construction, building, and grounds cleaning.
How has immigration contributed to US growth?
In 2023, international migrants — mostly from Latin America — accounted for more than two-thirds of the population growth in the United States, and so far this decade they have accounted for nearly three-quarters of U.S. growth.
After reaching a record high in December 2023, the number of migrants crossing the border has fallen sharply.
The claim that immigrants are taking job opportunities away from U.S.-born Americans is echoed by Trump’s advisers. They often cite a report by Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a right-wing think tank that seeks to reduce the flow of immigrants into the United States, claiming that foreigners disproportionately drive U.S. labor force growth and reap most of the benefits.
Camarota’s report said there were 971,000 more U.S.-born Americans in the workforce in May 2024 compared to May 2019 before the pandemic, while the number of working immigrants increased by 3.2 million.
It’s true that international migrants have become a major driver of population growth this decade, increasing their share of the total population as fewer children are born in the U.S. compared to previous years. That’s according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey.
Are immigrants taking over the jobs of local workers?
Economists who study the impact of immigrant labor on the economy say that people who are in the U.S. illegally do not take the jobs of native citizens because the roles these immigrants take on are mostly positions that do not want to fill local workers, for example in agriculture and food processing jobs.
Giovanni Peri, a labor economist at the University of California, Davis, conducted a study examining the impact of the 1980 influx of Cuban immigrants in Miami (the so-called Mariel Boatlift) on the employment of black workers. The study found that wages for black and Hispanic workers in Miami were higher than those in other cities that did not see a surge in immigrants.
Peri told the AP that the presence of novel immigrant workers often improves employment outcomes for native-born workers, who often have different languages and skills compared to novel immigrants.
Additionally, there is no fixed number of jobs in the United States, immigrants tend to lend a hand existing businesses survive (and create novel opportunities for local workers), and there are currently more jobs available than there is a workforce available. U.S. natives have little interest in working in labor-intensive jobs in agriculture and food production.
“We have a lot more vacancies than workers in this type of manual labor, in fact we need a lot more of them to fill these roles,” Peri said.
Stan Marek, who employs about 1,000 people at his Houston construction company Marek Brothers Holdings LLC, said he has seen this firsthand.
Asked whether immigrants in the U.S. illegally are taking jobs away from native-born workers, he said: “Absolutely not, definitely.”
“Many of my workers are retiring, and their children will not be working in construction or in the trades,” Marek said. He added that the US needs an identification system that addresses national security concerns so that those in the country illegally can work.
“There aren’t enough workers here,” he said.
Data also shows that when there are not enough workers to fill these roles, companies automate their jobs through machinery and technology investments rather than turning to local workers.
Ethan Lewis, an economist at Dartmouth University, said: “There is a lot of research on the impact of immigration to the US on the labor market. Most of them conclude that the impact on lower-skilled workers is relatively petite and that, if any, jobs exist for people born in the United States. “Workers could be created by immigrants, not ‘taken along’.”
How would mass deportations affect the economy?
Trump has said he will focus on rounding up migrants by deploying the National Guard, whose troops can be activated on a governor’s orders.
Peri says a deportation program would cost the U.S. up to $1 trillion and result in massive losses to the U.S. economy. The cost of food and other staples would skyrocket.
“They contribute enormously to our economy and we wouldn’t have fruits and vegetables, we wouldn’t have gardens,” if deportation efforts bore fruit, he said.
Since workers living in the U.S. illegally account for about 4% of U.S. GDP annually, he estimates that mass deportation would result in a loss of about $1 trillion.
“The cost is unimaginable in terms of lost income and lost production, and there will be logistical costs to organizing it,” he said.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a podcast interview with David Axelrod this month that immigrant labor is “an important source of workforce growth.”
“Overall, it helps the economy grow without taking other people’s jobs,” she said. “It is by no means a zero-sum game.”
