President-elect Donald J. Trump won the White House based in part on his promise to rein in immigration, with policies aimed at sending criminals to their countries of origin to other sweeping measures like mass deportations. During the campaign, Trump promised to end Temporary Protected Status that allows workers from selected countries to come to the US to work. If some of the larger deportation efforts, such as the return of TPS, are successful, experts say there will be a ripple effect in most sectors of the economy, especially construction, housing and agriculture.
Economists and labor specialists are most concerned about the economic impact of policies that would deport workers already in the U.S., both documented and undocumented.
Staffing agents monitor the selection carefully.
“The morning after the election, we sat down as a leadership team and explored what does talent availability mean?” said Jason Leverant, president and COO of AtWork Group, a franchise-based national staffing agency. AtWork provides commercial staffing in highly immigrant verticals like warehouse, industry, and agriculture in 39 countries.
Labor – “talent” in industry terms – is already in short supply. While the worst of the labor crisis caused by the post-Covid economic boom has passed, and labor supply and demand have balanced in recent months, the number of workers available to fill jobs across the US economy remains a closely watched data point. tight. . Mass deportations will exacerbate this economic problem, say businessmen and economists.
“If the proposed immigration policy becomes a reality, it could have a significant impact,” Leverant said, pointing to estimates that the mass deportation program could leave one million potential job vacancies difficult to fill.
How many undocumented immigrants work in the US
There are various statistics offered about the undocumented immigrant population in the United States. The left-leaning Center for American Progress puts the figure at 11.3 million, with 7 million working. The American Immigration Council, an advocacy group to promote immigration, citing data from the American Community Survey, also stated that the number of undocumented people in the United States is around 11 million. The non-partisan Pew Research Center puts the figure at nearly 8 million people.
“There are millions, many millions of undocumented people in the trade; we don’t have Americans to do the work,” said Chad Prinkey, CEO of Built Construction Consulting, which works with construction companies. “We need these workers; all we want is for them to be documented; we want to know who they are, where they are, and make sure they pay their taxes; we don’t want them to disappear.”
Leverant said it remains to be determined how the jobs lost from the mass deportations will be filled.
“Are we attracting talent from one area to another, but others are losing,” Leverant said. “It’s quite important and we have to stay ahead of it.”
Leverant said he’s not worried about losing the 20,000 employees AtWork has sent to various locations because their document status is heavily vetted, but if other companies lose employees, they’ll lean more on staffing agencies like AtWork for existing talent. less supply. And supply and demand dictate workers’ wages, which will be forced up. And it will ripple throughout the supply chain right to the supermarket or sporting goods store.
“Now we are playing the long game, the pain will be felt and we will see the shortfalls, and the slowness and the delays on every front,” he said.
Production cannot go to market because there are not enough workers to distribute, or construction projects are delayed, as a result of a limited labor supply.
Concerns about labor extend beyond skilled labor, technology
There are also concerns about how stricter immigration policies could negatively impact skilled workers.
“It’s more than a low-skilled workforce; it affects workers and technology engineers. We also don’t have enough skilled talent to fill these jobs,” said Leverant, adding that he didn’t think doctors and scientists were being rounded up and taken away, but Limitations the H-1B visa and other generally unwelcoming atmosphere can prevent talent from coming.
Janeesa Hollingshead, head of expansion at Uber Works, the on-demand staffing arm of the ride-share company, agrees that technology will have an impact, once it becomes prologue.
“The tech industry relies heavily on immigrants to fill technical and critical roles,” Hollingshead said, noting that Uber told all tech workers on H-1B visas during Trump’s first presidency that if they went to their home countries for vacation, they might not. . can return
According to the American Immigration Council, during the first Trump administration, the US government’s Citizenship and Immigration Services denied a greater percentage of H-1B petitions than in the previous four years, but many of these denials were reversed, resulting in a lower rate. rejection by fiscal 2020, 13%, versus 24% in 2018. Fiscal years 2021 and 2022 have the lowest rejection rates on record.
Hollingshead said that tech companies in the United States will be forced to find tech talent from a pool of people that is currently neglected in the country.
“U.S. companies need to figure out how to do this or face even more severe labor shortages,” Hollingshead said.
At a Madison Square Garden rally in New York before the election, Trump said: “On Day 1, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to deport criminals.”
“I wouldn’t write off the mass deportation process as rhetoric. We have to take it for what it says,” said David Leopold, chair of the immigration practice group at law firm UB Greensfelder.
However, despite the potential impact on the labor market, in practice, mass deportations may be difficult to implement.
“It’s very expensive to remove 11 million people,” Leopold said, predicting that Trump would use ICE and federal agencies but also rely on local law enforcement to round up immigrants.
In a phone interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker shortly after the election results, Trump invoked the darker rhetoric about migrants that proved successful during the campaign when he said he was not opposed to people coming to the country — in fact, he said more people. will be required if the administration’s strategy of requiring businesses to set up operations in the US is successful. “We want people to come in,” Trump said. “We will have many businesses coming to our country. They want to come to our country… We want companies and factories and factories and car factories to come to our country, and they will come. We need people, but we want people who are not should sit in jail for killing seven people.”
The American Immigration Council estimates that in a long-term mass deportation operation aimed at one million people per year – which refers to the “more conservative proposal” made by supporters of mass deportation – the average cost is up to $88 billion per year, in total. costing $967.9 billion over ten years.
In an interview with NBC News, Trump dismissed concerns about the cost. “It’s not a question of the price tag,” he said. “We have no choice. When people have killed and killed, when drug lords have destroyed the country and now they will return to the country because they don’t live here. … there is no price tag,” Trump said.
Leopold said, depending on the severity of the plan, the changes could reach consumers by increasing prices, supply problems, and limiting access to goods and services.
Home construction and destruction
Nan Wu, research director of the American Immigration Council, echoes the concerns of others about predicting unrest for consumers if deportations rise under Trump.
“Mass deportations will increase US labor shortages, especially in industries that rely heavily on undocumented immigrant workers,” Wu said, citing AIC research that showed the construction industry would lose one in eight workers, citing AIC research that 14 percent of construction . workers in the United States are undocumented.
“The dismissal of many workers in a short period of time will increase construction costs and cause delays in building new homes, making housing cheaper in many parts of the country,” Wu said.
The same, he said, applies to the agricultural industry which will also lose one in eight workers.
“Looking at specific occupations, about a quarter of farm workers, class farmers, and sorters are undocumented workers. Losing farm workers who grow, pick, and pack our food will damage domestic food production and raise food prices,” said Wu.
Figures from the USDA put the number of undocumented farmworkers at 41 percent in 2018, the most recent year figures are available, with California having the highest number.
The AIC estimates that US GDP will shrink by $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion.
The conservative think tank American Compass argues for a “skill-based immigration policy” which it says will require “serious immigration enforcement that prevents people from working illegally. Such enforcement must deal prospectively with the future flow of immigrants as well as grapple with the millions of illegal workers already here, “said in the policy summary.
Among the policy priorities is the mandatory use of the E-Verification system by all employers, along with severe criminal penalties for repeated or intentional violations; short-term work permits are available to illegal immigrants who have been in the country for a significant period of time – but with the establishment of a timeline for when they have to leave the country based on how long they have lived in; and for those who have lived in the US for the longest time, the ability to obtain permanent legal status after paying a substantial fine.
Prinkey said the impact of the mass deportation program would be dramatic. “One of the natural problems with undocumented workers, we don’t know how many are here because they are undocumented. It’s not direct. I wager that half or more of the workers on site are undocumented in certain geographic areas,” he said.
“If you’re building a nuclear facility or colleges and universities, you’re likely to employ some undocumented workers because there’s a higher level of oversight,” Prinkey said. “This is a sector that will shrug and move forward.” He expects the same for union workers.
But there will be a big impact on single-family and multi-family housing construction, according to Prinkey, a sector of the housing market that he thinks could be “paralyzed.”
“There are incredible delays; an average 18-month project can take five years to complete because there are so many bodies involved,” Prinkey said. “It will have less impact on Boston than Austin; in Austin, it will kill every project,” he said.
Despite the dire predictions, Prinkey didn’t think mass deportations would happen. “Donald Trump is a developer; he knows what’s going on. Mass deportations cannot happen without crippling economic impacts,” he said.
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