Mass Deportations - Massive Problems
Trump campaigned on mass deportations as a fundamental part of his agenda. He has demonized migrants, lied about their impact on our nation, and pretended that deporting all of them would make life better for American citizens.
Migrants aren’t the source of your problems, but deporting them certainly will be.
It would be impossible to mass deport 10 million immigrants in a single year. An immense number of detention facilities would need to be built immediately, and it would require an astronomical increase in personnel to run those facilities and detain migrants.
To help put that in perspective, we often hear about overcrowded prison systems in America, so full that they require early releases for less serious offenders to make space for new arrivals. The entire US prison population is 1.9 million people. How is America going to create enough facilities to detain 10 million migrants?
Even the cost of deporting 1 million immigrants yearly is challenging to calculate because it is difficult to know how much manpower would be needed. It would cost at least $90 billion annually, almost $1 trillion over a decade. This cost includes increasing detention facilities by 24 times the current number and adding over 1,000 immigration courtrooms. It does not include increased ICE or detention facility personnel.
These costs would be added to the federal debt because we are already running a deficit, and these are only the direct costs.
1 in 6 workers in America are immigrants. 25% of those are undocumented.
17% of the Agriculture workforce is undocumented immigrants, along with 26% of farming specifically and over 50% of hired farmhands.
Also, 15% of workers in construction, 9% in hospitality, 6% in manufacturing, and 6% in transportation are undocumented immigrants.
Immigrants are more likely to be the prime working age of 25-54, whereas native-born Americans are an aging population.
This is because America's birth rate has been below the replacement rate since the 1970s. Without immigrants, America's population would have been shrinking for 50 years, and a shrinking population would destroy our nation's economy.
America has a tight labor market. Millions of Americans aren’t going to jump into the vacancies filled by immigrant round-ups. If 50% of farmhands are suddenly removed, either the farms won’t be able to find people to do the work, so crops aren’t picked, or they will have to increase the pay enough to attract American workers. The price of groceries will rise.
The same goes for other industries. How will it reduce the cost of housing to remove 15% of all construction workers and watch projects grind to a halt?
Migrants contribute directly to our economy and are a significant factor in high GDP growth. In 2022 alone, immigrants added at least $2.2 trillion to the US economy through earnings and productivity increases. Undocumented migrants paid $100 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022, including Social Security, which undocumented migrants pay into but can’t take from.
Not only would mass deportations be costly, but they would shrink our economy and reduce tax revenue, further increasing our debt. Since Social Security is set to begin running out of money in a decade, spending money to remove people who pay into Social Security is a terrible idea.
Finally, there is the economic impact of a shrinking population. Americans are not having enough babies to replace the older generations as they pass on. We rely on immigration for that, and legal immigration rates are too low and the process too slow to make up the difference. If our population begins to shrink, our economy will worsen dramatically.
Mass deportations are not a good strategy for America’s immigration issues. So what are better solutions?
The first is to fund the asylum system, which has a hearing backlog of almost five years. By adequately funding this system and reducing the backlog, migrants who have valid asylum claims will get their approval sooner, ending their limbo, and those who don’t will be deported, reducing the number of migrants in the US.
Second, we must continue to address the root causes of migration. These include easing US sanctions, which increase economic hardship on countries in Latin and South America, improving trade relations with our neighboring nations to increase their prosperity, investing in Mexico, and addressing climate change, which is an increasing cause of displaced populations.
Third, we need to raise the number of work permits given to migrants to cover the number of undocumented workers America relies on today so they can be here legally.
Fourth, we need to improve and expand legal immigration to ensure that enough people can immigrate to the US to keep our population growing. This could be combined with work permits by allowing migrants who have worked in the US legally for several years to apply for citizenship.
America is only going to hurt itself if it doesn’t take an accurate look at our immigration system, its flaws, and everything that immigrants contribute to our nation, particularly with the economy. Mass deportations are the worst possible solution and do nothing to stop the current border issues from continuing.
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/mass-deportation
https://itep.org/study-undocumented-immigrants-contribute-nearly-100-billion-in-taxes-a-year/
