8 million work in U.S. illegally, and that’s not likely to change
Many employers say there are few alternatives to undocumented workers
They make beds in inns across the country. They pick oranges in Florida, strawberries in California and vegetables in Ohio. And they have helped build new subdivisions in Phoenix, Atlanta and Charlotte.
For years, policymakers have talked about shutting off the influx of undocumented workers. But the economy has grown to rely on them.
Ending illegal immigration, say many of those who have studied the issue, could mean that American workers would lose their jobs, companies would close and the economy would contract.
In recent years, though, border security has tightened considerably, a strong economy has driven down unemployment, and many employers, particularly those offering low-paid jobs, say there are few alternatives to hiring workers without legal documents.
President Donald Trump, it turns out, is caught on both sides of the balance between border
security and economic prosperity.
The president has vowed to erect a wall to keep out undocumented immigrants and has ramped up the deportation of those already in the United States. His administration has conducted payroll audits and workplace raids, which have resulted in the arrest of thousands of workers.
But four undocumented workers have recently come forward at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., and the federal E-Verify database suggests that the Trump Organization does not use heightened employment document verification procedures at several other of its properties across the country, meaning that the chances of employing undocumented workers are high.
Like undocumented workers across the country, the former Bedminster employees interviewed by the New York Times said they used counterfeit Social Security and green cards to get hired.
The Trump Organization has vowed to terminate any undocumented workers it finds on its payroll, and the fate of any of its workers who do not have legal working papers remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that at a time of extremely low unemployment, 3.7 percent nationally, Trump’s golf club might struggle to recruit legal workers to replace any undocumented workers who are terminated.
Most undocumented immigrants work
About 8 million of the nearly 11 million immigrants unlawfully in the United States — down from a high of 12.2 million in 2007 — participate in the labor force. They account for about 5 percent of all workers, according to the Pew Research Center.
“Our economy has absorbed these workers, and employers would like more of them, given the low unemployment rate,” said Madeline Zavodny, an economist at the University of North Florida who is an expert on the economics of immigration.
Undocumented immigrants are overrepresented in low-skilled jobs such as farming, construction and child care.
Often, these are jobs their employers have trouble filling with American workers.
Anabele Garcia, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, toils in the vineyards of Sonoma County, Calif., earning about $15 an hour. When the season ends each year, she finds work cleaning houses and wine estates, earning about $20 an hour. Her husband, Jorge Romero, works in the cow pastures nearby.
“We are here to do any work,” said Garcia, 39. “There are no Americans in the fields.”
Raising wages is not a catchall solution
What would happen if all the undocumented immigrants went away?
Steve Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports curbs on immigration, believes that wages would rise and motivate many chronically unemployed Americans to get back to work.
But wage rates are not the main issue, some economists say, because there still would not be enough Americans willing to do blue-collar jobs.
Expectations and status play a role, said Chris Tilly, a labor economist at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Not everybody will do dirty work,” he said.
They might prefer to make a low wage working inside an Amazon distribution center to putting shingles on a roof.
Historically, the regulation of the border with Mexico, the main source of migration, “has always been driven by the needs of the economy,” Tilly said.
That is less true now, under the Trump administration, which has sought to check illegal border crossings by all means possible.
Giovanni Peri, an economist who studies immigration labor at the University of California, Davis, said that with a true cutoff in illegal immigration, the economy would contract.