Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump promises the biggest deportation event the U.S. has ever seen if he is elected.
apnews.com
Are immigrants taking native-born workers’ jobs?
Economists who study immigrant labor’s impact on the economy say that people who are in the U.S. illegally are not taking native citizens’ jobs, because the roles that these immigrant workers take on are most often positions that native workers are unwilling to fill, such as agriculture and food processing jobs.
Giovanni Peri, a labor economist at the University of California, Davis, conducted research that explores the impact of the 1980 influx of Cuban immigrants in Miami (the so-called Mariel Boatlift) on Black workers’ employment. The study determined that the wages of Miami’s Black and Hispanic workers moved above those in other cities that did not have a surge of immigrant workers.
Peri told the AP that the presence of new immigrant labor often improves employment outcomes for native-born workers, who often have different language and skill sets compared to new immigrants.
In addition, there are not a fixed number of jobs in the U.S., immigrants tend to contribute to the survival of existing firms (opening up new opportunities for native workers) and there are currently more jobs available than there are workers available to take them. U.S. natives have low interest in working in labor-intensive agriculture and food production roles.
“We have many more vacancies than workers in this type of manual labor, in fact we need many more of them to fill these roles,” Peri said.
Stan Marek, who employs roughly 1,000 workers at his Houston construction firm,
Marek Brothers Holdings LLC, said he has seen this firsthand.
Asked if immigrants in the U.S. illegally are taking jobs from native-born workers, he said, “Absolutely not, unequivocally.”
“Many of my workers are retiring, and their kids are not going to come into construction and the trades,” Marek said. He added that the U.S. needs an identification system that addresses national security concerns so those who are in the country illegally can work.
“There’s not enough blue-collar labor here,” he said.
Data also shows when there are not enough workers to fill these roles, firms will automate their jobs with machines and technology investments, rather than turn to native workers.
Dartmouth University economist Ethan Lewis said, “There is a vast amount of research on the labor market impact of immigration in the U.S., most of which concludes the impact on less-skilled workers is fairly small and, if anything, jobs for U.S.-born workers might by created rather than ‘taken’ by immigrants.”
How would mass deportations affect the economy?
Trump has said he would focus on rounding up migrants by deploying the National Guard, whose troops can be activated on orders of a governor.
Peri says a deportation program would cost the U.S. up to a trillion dollars and would result in massive losses to the U.S. economy. The cost of food and other basic items would soar.
“They are massive contributors to our economy and we wouldn’t have fruits and vegetables, we wouldn’t have our gardens,” he said, if the deportation effort comes to fruition.
Since the labor force made up of people in the U.S. illegally makes up roughly 4% of U.S. GDP annually, he estimates that mass deportation would result in a roughly $1 trillion loss.
“It’s a cost that is mind-boggling in terms of income loss, production loss and there will be a logistical cost to organize this,” he said.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said this month in a podcast interview with David Axelrod that immigrant labor “is an important source of labor force growth.”
“On balance, it helps the economy grow without actually depriving other people of jobs,” she said. “It’s not in any way a zero-sum game.”
