Republicans simply don't understand how the American economy works.
Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy has observed that more than 8 million undocumented immigrants are currently working in the U.S in fields such as construction, agriculture, hospitality, etc. In that sense, they could predict that mass deportations would not open these positions up, but instead lead to 44,000 fewer jobs for U.S-born workers, ultimately causing a 2.6% to 6.2% decrease in GDP over the next decade (Payan & Rodrguez-Snchez, 2025).
www.colorado.edu
The economic chilling effect of Trump's immigration crackdown
The U.S.-born workers most negatively affected, the economists find, seem to be men with "at most a high-school education" who work in sectors that rely on undocumented labor and were hit the hardest by ICE arrests and deportations.
"We find that for every six fewer undocumented workers working in a local labor market, that there is one fewer U.S.-born worker working in that labor market," East says.
www.kpbs.org
The Many Victims of Trump's Immigration Policy -- Including the U.S. Economy
Immigrant workers also contribute some of their wages to Social Security and Medicare, even though they do not receive benefits from those programs. In 2022, immigrants living illegally in the US paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes and $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes. The loss of this tax revenue concerns many economists since the Social Security fund is already expected to experience shortfalls by the mid-2030s.
So removing millions of existing workers, and intimidating millions more, is starting to shrink the workforce, drive up business costs and consumer prices, and reduce the economy's productivity.
thefulcrum.us
More from the article ...