Given the results of the election, and Mr. Trump’s statement that deportations will start immediately, there will be a need for facts. I recommend EconoFact’s Immigration page as a start for your analysis.
In addition, McKibben, Hogan and Noland (2024) analyzed the economic ramifications of a couple deportation scenarios: 1.3 mn, and 8.3 mn.
Note the high scenario, with 8.3 mn deportations, implies a much bigger deviation from baseline, almost assuredly a recession if baseline is around 2 percent per annum.
To place this estimate in context, -7.5 pp of GDP was the largest (in absolute value) output gap during the Great Recession.
Note that these calculations assume deportations only of unauthorized immigrants. Project 2025 recommends (pp. 143-44):
Other structural changes should include reimplementation of the USCIS denaturalization unit” — an effort to maintain integrity in the system by identifying and prosecuting criminal and civil denaturalization cases, in combination with the Department of Justice, for aliens who obtained citizenship through fraud or other illicit means. Additionally, USCIS should create a criminal enforcement component within the agency to investigate immigration benefits fraud under Title 8 (perhaps requiring additional legislative and regulatory authorities for the officers themselves) and to prosecute cases through Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys (SAUSAs) with substantive knowledge in the field. Particular attention should be given to addressing increasing incidents of forced labor trafficking in temporary work visa programs.
Estimates such as these are helpful as fodder for the behind the scenes debate. We know that Trump doesn’t necessarily mean what he says on any topic. The border wall was immigration theater, not a serious effort to control immigration. We will now be treated to deportation theater – it will be horrible for immigrants, but maybe not so bad for rich farmers, builders and hoteliers. Maybe we’ll arbitrarily report 100,000 immigrants a year and call it good. Everything is in a cocked hat, everything is up for grabs; it’s a lobbyist’s wonderland. That’s a rotten situation unless you happen to be the guy handing out goodies.
If there is a substantial reduction in available immigrant labor in the U.S., then Mexico, Canada and a few other countries will take up some of the slack in production. I know, I know – tariffs. Well, tariffs aren’t all here is to decisions about production. Fruits and vegetables can be grown elsewhere. Canada and Burmuda and the Caribbean can build more hotels.
Other countries can take up some of the slack in production, not all. As those McKibben, Hogan and Noland pictures suggest, a reduction in inputs (immigrant labor) means a reduction in output. The U.S. will be poorer, and the rest of the world can’t make up the difference, so the world will be poorer. It’s a particular shame that the big economy currently performing best is the one that’s about to shoot itself in the foot. We’re doing something right, and instead of taking advantage of that fact, we’ve decided to start doing things wrong instead.
Just curious if there are economic and social offsets to the massive influx of cheap, exploited labor such as…
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/09/eric-adams-new-york-migrants-cost-00110472
If it’s all about generating a path for temporary workers, doesn’t that already exist? Perhaps that programs just isn’t run very well and should be the focus of reform. I can remember the annual influx of temporary agricultural workers in the 1960s. They would arrive in North Dakota for the early harvest there and then work there way south over the next few months. In the spring, the planting sequence was reversed. When those jobs were done, the workers would return to their homes in Mexico. A lot of that work has now been mechanized.
Now a lot of studies seem to fail to differentiate between legal, vetted immigration and chaotic, illegal immigration. For example,
https://www.ucdavis.edu/magazine/how-does-immigration-affect-united-states
The US absorbs about a million legal immigrants each year and most of them do bring skill sets that positively affect our economy. No one is talking about eliminating that source of immigration. Rather, it should be expanded. There is a difference between having guests for dinner and having random strangers show up at your doorstep wanting food and shelter.
The other side of the coin is the lack of home nation opportunity driving immigrants to enter the US illegally. Most of this is stems from dysfunctional governments south of the border. The US budget for aid to those countries in 2024 is roughly $1 billion specifically to address illegal immigration plus $2.5 billion in general aid.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47721 If the cost of illegal immigration to New York City alone is $12 billion as Mayor Adams suggested, then perhaps the strategy and management of aid is broken as well. Of course, it is difficult to coordinate problem solving with nations whose governments view the US as an evil capitalist empire while they oppress their own people.
Carrot… stick or stick… carrot. What’s the workable strategy?
“If the cost of illegal immigration to New York City alone is $12 billion as Mayor Adams suggested, then perhaps the strategy and management of aid is broken as well.”
Bit of a nonsequitor. $12 > $3.5, so mismanagement? You were sounding reasonable until that slithered in.
Macro, it dosn’t matter if it is one year, three years, or ten years. The point is that it is money not well spent. It is a permanent… ongoing… drag on the economy and society without any semblance of control.
But you want to quibble about numbers… shouldn’t you take it to al least three decimal places? Damn, you want to obfuscate. What is your solution to break the cycle? What do you tell Eric Adams. Keep on spending, Bro?
We don’t need millions of cotton pickers or chicken pluckers. Those are just people for the elite in universties to treat with disdain and condescension. We already have enough marginal people. Oh, but you’re so heartless; you would deny people asylum. No, and besides real asylum seekers are a small minority of those crossing the border illegally. As long as this mess continues, we will become more and more fractious and fractured.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2024-01-20/how-rich-countries-are-responding-to-an-immigration-surge
https://www.hoover.org/research/migration-remaking-europe-there-workable-path-forward-continent
https://www.statista.com/statistics/329256/alien-apprehensions-registered-by-the-us-border-patrol/
Europe is stuggling to deal with the implications of mass immigration even though the illegal portion is much less than the legal immigration. The US has a much larger problem with illegal immigration recently almost three times the legal numbers.
So again Macro, what’s your solution?
“We don’t need millions of cotton pickers or chicken pluckers.”
And you accuse me of obfuscating? We do need millions of workers. For our hospitals, hotels, construction sites, factories…
You toss out numbers to make an argument, then claim numbers don’t matter. You say we don’t need workers, but we’ve just been through what business leaders, shop owners and economists say was a sugnificant labor shortage.
Brucie, you haven’t substantiated a single point in your argument
It’s all propaganda, all regurgitation of political talking points. Heck, with your record for being wrong, the fact that you believe something probably counts as evidence it isn’t true.
My solution? Stop pretending we need drastic solutions. Stop listening to liars and thieves. One of the commonest rhetorical dodges from guys like you, who’ve been caught making specious arguments, is to insist that the other side owes them a solution. I don’t owe you a solution. Yours is wrong. Pointing that out is a step toward avoiding your bad solution. Stopping you is the task I’ve chosen. You don’t get to assign me another one. You aren’t that important.
So, “My solution? Stop pretending we need drastic solutions.”
You’re actually denying the problem? Figures.
As to needing millions of foreign laborers: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNEMPLOY/
Perhaps a better system of matching people out of work with employers seeking those people might be better than allowing chaotic and very expensive illegal immigration. Too bad there no technology… say something like computers and databases… that could do that matching, give unemployed Americans a chance to earn a living, and eliminate a lot of that bogus welfare to non-citizens who just walk into the country.
btw, the numbers I claimed “didn’t matter” was whether the $12 billion for New York City alone was for one or three years given the problem for the US is in the $150 billion per year range. So, yes, you are obfuscating claiming that I didn’t substantiate my points. I provided links to information that does substantiate my points; you provided your opinons.
C’mon, man!
“give unemployed Americans a chance to earn a living, and eliminate a lot of that bogus welfare to non-citizens who just walk into the country.”
these are false arguments bruce. Americans have a chance to earn a living. some choose not to. this bogus welfare to non-citizens is just that, bogus. the magnitude of that problem is very small. your view of America is simply spiteful and petty.
By the way, that’s $12 billion over three years – $4 billion per year – vs $3.5 billion. If you want to make a specious argument with numbers, at least get the numbers right.
Macro, one could argue that the $3.5 billion is mismanaged because, empirically, people are still leaving those countries in droves and heading to the US. It’s as if $3.5 billion = $0. What is being achieved if the US sends money to improve conditions in those countries and then nothing improves and the US has to spend money again when the people from those countries show up at our doorstep (that’s a rhetorical question)?
By the way, if you want to quibble, the $12 billion (or $4 billion per year) is for one city in the US. It doesn’t come close to what is spent nationally.
https://www.newsweek.com/illegal-immigration-costs-us-billions-biden-administration-policy-impact-taxpayer-burden-1866555
The specious argument that the US needs more immigrants so and extra 2-3 million per year coming in illegally in addition to the 1 million coming in legally is even better is like saying the gas tank needs refilling so put the nozzle in the filler line… and then for good measure pour in and extra 20-30 gallons in the interior and engine compartment.
“…one could argue that the $3.5 billion is mismanaged because, empirically, people are still leaving those countries in droves and heading to the US.”
One could, but it would just be more of the same silly argumentation. Tossing in “empirically” doesn’t make it less silly – more, actually.
You don’t seem to understand the difference between emotional balderdash and reasonable discussion. That, or you don’t care and have decided to “perform” reasonable discussion while engaging in balderdash. When you use “facts” to support your view which are not facts, you are responsible for your misstatements. When you imply a logical connection where nine exists, you are responsible for that, too.
I, meanwhile, am not required to ignore your misstatements and logical lapses. You can whine all you want, but your errors are yours. Your argument, based on errors, can’t be made better by insisting that I ignore your lapses.
Bad arguments lead to bad policy. Your argument is bad, so any policy growing out of your argument is likely to be bad. I don’t want bad policy, so I point out the badness of your argument. If you keep rounding up more bad arguments, I’ll keep pointing out that they’re bad.
I’d say that spending billions of dollars to improve conditions in Central and South American countries so that people will stay there and improve their lives and their countries is empirically wasted given the millions of people leaving those countries. Sort of like patching a dam with bubble gum… very expensive bubble gum.
instead, you could let china do so and reap the benefits of its own infrastructure in the western hemisphere. think before you speak, bruce.
An idea popular among Europe’s right-wing is cropping up in the U.S. That idea is remigration:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remigration
The essence of this idea is: “You ain’t from around here, are ya? Go on, git! Vamoose!”
It’s easy to say, as many Trump enablers commonly do, that “the system” won’t allow this or that, or that outrageous ideas are just political theater. We just re-elected a felon to the highest office in the land, folks. A rapist. The guy put babies in cages. It is time to accept that “give ’em an inch, they’ll take a mile” is the appropriate frame for thinking about right-wing extremists under Trump.
If remigration is anything but pure racism, then Elon and the next FLOTUS have to skeedaddle. If it’s pure racism, they can stay.
speaking of extremists, now trump wants the senate to recess so that he can immediately appoint his leadership without senate approval. why? because he believes that even a republican senate will not directly approve his appointments. that is how bad things are going to get this cycle.
it seems that republicans are against any type of checks and balances. the president should be allowed to do anything he wants. taking notes, for when the democrats return to office.
As I recall, it was referred to as self-deportation by right wingers sometime in the past. The idea was to make life so miserable here that immigrants wanted to go home. As usual, cruelty isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. As a practical person, I don’t get it at all.
Couldn’t quite bring yourself to call it Trump’s Final Solution? Trump is a big fan, you know.
Off topic – Ukraine war:
Y’all have noticed the reaction from both Russia and Ukraine to our election? Big push from both sides. The timing of North Korean troopsjoining the war suggests they arrived in anticipation of our election. The UK reports Russia is losing soldiers at a tremendous pace, which is to be expected when a push is on. Russia is also stepping up efforts to push Ukrainian forces out of Karsk.
No conclusions here, just noticing how our politics influence the lives of others.
Off topic, again – housing:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1AnGE
U.S. housing completions are recently the highest at any time outside the mid-2000s housing boom. Starts, meanwhile, are have been weakening. The gap between the peak for starts in this cycle and the recent high in completions is roughly 2 years.
One of the oddities of the Covid supply shock was a giant pile of homes under construction. As you might guess, given the pattern of starts and completions, that pile is diminishing, though it’s still large:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1AnJw
This is some help in dealing with the housing shortage, but not enough. Let’s blame the immigrants – over to you, Brucie.
trump promised me affordable housing with a return to 2% mortgages. so rick and bruce, has the boss told you exactly when he will return us to those 2% mortgages? i would really like to refinance my mortgage, and 2% is a fantastic rate to refinance to. how long am i supposed to wait for this promise to be fulfilled? or was that a reelection lie? please provide a date.
Not likely that 2% mortgages will return any time soon nor will there be “affordable” housing in San Francisco or Manhattan. But if you come to Detroit or Flint or Benton Harbor you will find an excess of affordable housing even with higher mortgage rates. Just because you want cheap housing in high demand locations doesn’t mean you can get it… nor should those places be forced to provide it. No one has a “right” to cheap housing in desirable, high demand areas. You want it? Earn it. Just lke everyone else.
bruce, trump promised me affordable housing and a return to 2% mortgages. when is he going to deliver? or was that a lie? I would certainly like to refinance my mortgage at such an attractive rate, that he promised.
and bruce, “You want it? Earn it. Just lke everyone else.” I have earned it. I will guarantee I am more successful financially than you are. but I want what was promised to me by trump. will he fail to deliver?
bruce hall and rick stryker, when am i going to get my 2% mortgage? trump promised me this. is it a lie, or will he deliver on his promises?
why am I hearing crickets when it is time to deliver? bruce and rick, are we going to see those 2% mortgages, or was that just more fraud perpetrated on the nation by trump?