Experts worry Trump’s mass deportation plan could damage economy like Great Recession

Just ahead of Election Day, immigration and the economy were still ranked in the top three of U.S. registered voters’ concerns. In August, a Pew Research Center poll revealed 56 percent of them “strongly or somewhat” support “mass deportations of immigrants living in the country illegally.”

But the connection between the people currently living and working without legal authorization in the U.S. and the economy — and the possible economic impact of Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump’s proposed mass deportation plan — is perhaps, say experts, unclear to voters.

“On day one I will launch the largest deportation program in American history,” Trump said in Oct. 27 remarks at Madison Square Garden in New York City. “I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered,” he added, mirroring both his campaign’s “20 Core Promises” and previous comments.

Immigrants without legal authorization to live and work in the U.S. are estimated at 11 million to 13 million, although numbers may be higher. They disproportionately work in “essential” areas of the American economy, including construction (13.7 percent), agriculture (12.7 percent) and hospitality (7.1 percent).

The American Immigration Council, or AIC — a Washington-based nonprofit, nonpartisan organization conducting immigration research and policy analysis — estimates nationally, “mass deportation would remove 1.5 million workers from the construction workforce and 224,700 workers from the agriculture industry … about one million undocumented workers in the hospitality industry … 870,400 in the manufacturing industry; 500,800 in general services, which includes things like auto repair, barber shops, and dry cleaning services; and 460,500 in transportation and warehousing.”

The AIC additionally estimates an impact upon the nation’s gross domestic product — the value of goods and services annually produced and sold — predicting, “Overall, mass deportation would lead to a loss of 4.2 percent to 6.8 percent of U.S. GDP, or $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion in 2022 dollars.” For comparison, the AIC pointed out the economic devastation of the 2007-2009 Great Recession involved a loss of 4.3 percent of the national GDP.

J. Kevin Appleby — senior fellow for Policy and Communications at the New York City-based Center for Migration Studies and former director of Migration Policy and Public Affairs at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from 1998-2016 — told OSV News that a mass deportation would likely land closer to home than some might imagine.

“I don’t think many Americans — or Catholics, for that matter — fully understand what it means to deport every undocumented immigrant from this country, and how it might impact them individually,” Appleby said. “Often, people will talk about deporting immigrants — but they’ll make an exception for their landscaper, or their maid. ‘Don’t deport them — they’re good people; everyone else is bad.'”

Overall, since 2003, undocumented individuals account for 4.4 percent-5.4 percent of the United States employed labor force.

“The reality is the majority of them are good people — and they work hard, and they work at wage levels below what they should be paid for what they do,” Appleby said. “It’s the big lie in immigration — we scapegoat immigrants; we blame them for our social problems. But we’re more than happy to accept their sweat equity; their taxes; their economic contributions.”

He added: “We can’t have it both ways — as a moral matter, you can’t have it both ways.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church instructs, “The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin.”

At the same time, the church has also made clear human laws are also subject to divine limits. St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical “Veritatis Splendor” (“Splendor of Truth”) and 1995 encyclical “Evangelium Vitae” (“The Gospel of Life”) — both quote the Second Vatican Council’s teaching in “Gaudium et Spes,” the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, which names “deportation” among various specific acts “offensive to human dignity” that “are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honor due to the Creator.”

The late pontiff underscored their moral severity in “Veritatis Splendor” by calling them examples of “intrinsic evil,” explaining that, no matter the motives, these acts are “not capable of being ordered to God and to the good of the person.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declined specific comment for this story, telling OSV News through its spokesperson, Chieko Noguchi, that the conference would not “speculate on hypothetical policies of any political candidate,” but “will engage appropriately when public policies are put forth by the officeholders.”

“In upholding the dignity of life, the Catholic Church teaches that we must serve our brothers and sisters in need, which includes welcoming migrants and refugees,” Noguchi said, stating that the bishops’ consistent position has been “that comprehensive immigration reform is needed to fix what has been recognized by both political parties as a broken system.”

In Florida, Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski told OSV News that his Archdiocese of Miami would certainly be impacted by a mass deportation plan.

“Besides dividing families and cutting short the new lives that immigrants have already begun constructing for themselves, there would be a very negative impact on the business economy,” Archbishop Wenski said by email. “In South Florida like much of the rest of the nation, businesses rely on immigrant labor. This is true especially in the service industry — hotels, restaurants, etc. — and in health care,” he added, reflecting the AIC statistics.

Varying immigration protections for immigrants from diverse countries, he said, “could create unnecessary ethnic tensions between the different ethnic or national groups living in Miami, and bring unrest to neighbors and workplaces.”

Archbishop Wenski said deportation doesn’t effectively address unauthorized immigration.

“President (Barack) Obama was known as the ‘deporter-in-chief’ because of his aggressive deportation policies. Deportation wasn’t a good policy under Obama, and obviously didn’t deter unregulated migration,” Archbishop Wenski said. “Why would it be any different with Trump?”

The logistics of a mass deportation plan would also fracture both families and communities, he said.

“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ‘blended’ families in Miami and the rest of the nation: that is, families where one parent may be deportable but not the other, with some children at risk for deportation while others are U.S. born,” he explained. “The social and family pain would be very disruptive, and exacerbate the present tensions and polarization in our communities — and physically apprehending and detaining several hundred thousand people would create a somewhat militarized atmosphere.”

Daniel Graff, director of the Higgins Labor Program at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Social Concerns in Indiana, also questioned the strategic capacity of Trump’s plan, while noting U.S. labor unions have in recent decades evolved on the issue of unauthorized immigrant labor.

“Twenty, 30, 40 years ago, organized labor in this country would have been really strong at wanting to prevent immigration — sometimes legal or illegal — because of the job competition,” he explained. “But now the labor movement recognizes that these people are fellow workers — and that the true way to deal with this is to try to improve jobs.”

Graff recalled 2017’s “Day without Immigrants,” a protest and boycott intended to highlight the importance of immigration while denouncing Trump’s first administration border wall and deportation plans.

“Cities got shut down,” recalled Graff. “So I think it would be a perverse reminder of the centrality of immigrants performing many — especially low-wage jobs — in this country. That’s not the way we want to find out how important immigrant labor is to the country.”

“There’s labor questions, and then there’s immigration questions,” added Graff. “One of the places that I think the Catholic Church is a true pioneer on, is not allowing for the separation of those questions.”

Daniel Di Martino, a doctoral candidate in economics at Columbia University and a graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City, estimates in his recent report “The Lifetime Fiscal Impact of Immigrants” that “the border crisis will cost an estimated $1.15 trillion over the lifetime of the new unlawful immigrants — a cost larger than the entire U.S. defense budget and almost equal to the cost of Social Security in 2023.”

Di Martino’s report further observes, “Mass deportations would significantly reduce the national debt over the long run, but a policy of selective legalization, coupled with mass deportations, would be even more fiscally beneficial, reducing the debt by about $1.9 trillion.”

Nonetheless, as he told OSV News, “If you did deport all illegal immigrants, you would indeed devastate the agriculture industry. … All I’m arguing is that it would reduce the budget deficit, over the long run.”

What’s needed, Di Martino suggested, is vigorously and realistically regulated immigration for low-skilled workers, alongside greater emphasis on paths to citizenship for high-skilled immigrants, coupled with a more efficient processing system.

“The reason people are able to come here, be released and stay — instead of immediately returned to their countries of origin — is that the U.S., under the Refugee Act of 1980, grants everybody on physical territory the rights to claim asylum,” he explained. “Their claim must be heard in an immigration court — or applying to USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), depending on what type of asylum they’re going for — and the problem is, there are only 700 immigration judges or so for over 4 million pending cases.”

Prospective immigrants, Di Martino added, can’t be told, “‘You have to wait in Mexico for five years until your asylum hearing.’ They’re not going to — they’re just going to cross.”

Reacting to studies such as the Manhattan Institute’s, Appleby was skeptical.

“It’s the battle of the studies,” he said.

“Undocumented immigrants don’t qualify for anything. They’ll get treated at the emergency room if they’re on their deathbed — other than that, they don’t qualify for health care; they don’t qualify for welfare benefits; they pay into the system; they don’t get Social Security, or any of that,” noted Appleby. “And they’re working.”

Appleby attributes the national mood to another critical concern flagged by voters.

“When people are struggling economically, they look for a scapegoat — they look for someone to blame. And immigrants are easy to blame,” he said. “Many of them don’t vote; they’re not organized; they have no rights — so attacking immigrants is a no-risk proposition for a politician.”

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