Trump’s mass deportation plan would be an economic disaster

Andres Oppenheimer

One of former President Donald Trump’s leading messages — if not the main one — during this nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention was that, if elected, he will carry out the “largest deportation” of undocumented immigrants in U.S. history. Some in the crowd were holding signs reading, “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!”

What Trump conveniently failed to point out is that deporting many of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country would be an economic and humanitarian disaster.

Trump’s vow to use the police, the National Guard, and perhaps even the military to round up undocumented residents would not only turn the country into a police state — with possible scenes of law enforcement agents rounding up Spanish-speaking people and separating parents from their babies — but would also cause huge labor shortages that would drive up consumer prices.

A new survey of nearly 70 economic forecasters by The Wall Street Journal, not precisely a left-wing newspaper, concluded that “economists see Trump’s plans to raise tariffs and crack down on illegal immigration as putting upward pressure on prices.” The report’s headline was, “Economists Say Inflation Would Be Worse Under Trump Than Biden.”

If you think that you are paying too much at a restaurant these days, or that home prices are too expensive, wait until there are mass deportations of waiters, construction workers and other foreign laborers who do jobs that most Americans don’t want to do. Prices of almost everything would soar.

At his one-hour-and-a-half convention speech, Trump started with a call for national reconciliation, but quickly reverted to his usual inflammatory litany of misleading facts and falsehoods about immigrants.

“The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country,” Trump claimed, adding that the flow of undocumented migrants soared after he left office.

In fact, the flow of migrants rose in 2022 and 2023 in part because during the last year of the Trump presidency we had the COVID-19 pandemic, and many potential migrants stayed home.

Illegal migration exploded immediately after the pandemic was over, and has recently declined substantially. According to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data, illegal crossings in the southern border plummeted by 40% during the first four months of this year.

More importantly, Trump spent much of his speech misleadingly painting undocumented immigrants as criminals. Obviously, undocumented migrants commit crimes, but Trump cherry-picks homicides carried out by immigrants to convey the misleading impression that they are common occurrences.

In reality, virtually all studies show that undocumented migrants commit fewer violent crimes than U.S.-born Americans. In addition, FBI figures show that violent crimes fell last year.

“They’re coming from prisons. They’re coming from jails. They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums,” Trump claimed, as if most of the 11 million undocumented migrants in the country were a public danger. “Bad things are going to happen.”

Furthermore, he claimed that countries such as Venezuela are reducing their crime rates by exporting their criminals to the United States. In fact, most of the estimated 640,000 Venezuelans who have moved to the United States fled their country to escape a bloody dictatorship and an economic crisis, and are anything but criminals.

In his tirade against undocumented migrants, Trump also claimed they are taking jobs away from Americans, including African-Americans and Hispanics.

In fact, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, another source that can’t be accused of a leftist bias, has concluded the opposite: it says there are nearly 9 million job openings in the country, but only 6.4 million unemployed workers.

And most economists agree that, as U.S. birth rates continue to stay below replacement levels, we need more immigrants, not fewer. The U.S. economy depends on migrants to alleviate labor shortages and reduce inflation, they say.

Summing up his grievances against undocumented immigrants, Trump said that his campaign platform “promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country. Even larger than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, from many years ago.”

Eisenhower’s 1954 mass deportation of Mexican migrants, known as Operation Wetback, sent up to 1.3 million people to Mexico. It included large-scale military-style raids in Hispanic communities in which some U.S.-born people of Mexican descent were mistakenly sent to Mexico, historians say.

Summing up, Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants, like much of his platform, is based on fake data. It’s part of his “American carnage” rhetoric that preys on people’s fears for his political gain.

There is no question that America’s immigration system needs to be fixed, and foreign criminals should be extradited. But America badly needs more immigrants to fill existing jobs. Deporting millions of hard-working and tax-paying workers would speed up inflation and make all Americans poorer.