How Trump's Immigration Cruelties May Finally Force Real Reform
Migrants on Trump's 'border wall' at US-Mexico border
It's with some discomfort that I consider the possibility that Trump's radical immigration agenda will lead to better immigration policies. The discomfort comes from the cruelty involved: the roughing up of good people who've been quietly working, the celebrations of brutal incarceration, the racially tinged rhetoric.
Hope comes in the form of changed perspective. Outside of agriculture, the existence of an illegal workforce is no longer openly tolerated. The chaos at the border is stopped. And a resulting labor shortage may force leaders to adopt a rational immigration program that legally admits the workers we need. Such changes would include legalizing the status of many otherwise law-abiding migrants now working without papers.
Politicians from both parties have for decades blocked reform. We can start with George W. Bush, who subscribed to a Republican cheap-labor agenda. (A supportive cry from The Wall Street Journal was "Let there be open borders!") In 2004, Bush called for a temporary worker program that would "match willing foreign workers with willing employers when no Americans can be found to fill the job." Little mention was made about what those willing employers were willing to pay their workers.
In 2013, serious immigration reform cleared the Senate in a bipartisan vote. It offered a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, while requiring employers to check a national database for the right of new hires to work in this country. It was known as E-Verify.
The president at the time was Barack Obama. He pursued a muscular deportation program that removed illegal-migrant criminals. Obama clearly wanted to reassure the public that the bill wouldn't be just another amnesty without beefed-up enforcement. House Republicans brushed off the new policy while members of Obama's own party condemned him as "deporter in chief."
Joe Biden seemed blind to the awful situation on the border. It was political malpractice to believe that the sight of caravans of migrants charging over the border wouldn't alarm the American public. Never mind the need for labor. Toward the end of his term, Biden recognized the political damage the chaos was doing his party and fixed the problem. Calm came over the border before Trump became president again, but it was too late for Biden to get the credit he could have claimed.
But solving that problem without serious immigration reform has created new problems. For one thing, many undocumented workers pay into a Social Security system that will not provide them benefits. These contributions boost the program's trust fund by billions of dollars a year, according to estimates, extending the fund's solvency.
Trump's aggressive deportation campaign has already resulted in a labor shortage and hurt consumer spending, according to the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Immigrants' spending power in 2023 is believed to have approached $300 billion.
Then there's inflation. The construction workforce is heavily made up of immigrants, many undocumented. Losing these workers will hit the supply of housing, already too expensive for many Americans. That could cut economic growth by 0.4 percent.
Donald Trump could continue his campaign to replace solid government statistics with phony economic numbers more to his liking. But there's no hiding the cost of things from ordinary Americans.
Who knows? Trump might force acceptance of higher immigration numbers. Recent history suggests that he still exerts mind control over many Republicans who formerly stood in the way of legally admitting more immigrants, let alone fixing the status of the undocumented.
Add the trade war to a reduced workforce and you have higher inflation flashing in neon. Trump was happy to employ undocumented workers at his various businesses, so he may be open to letting some currently illegal workers stay. After all, he's full of surprises.
Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on The Providence Journal editorial board.
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
