Why Trump’s effort to curb immigration could hurt U.S. economy

America’s 21st century job market increasingly demands high-tech skills and knowledge. Yet consider this: Nearly half the new jobs the government foresees emerging by 2026 will require only a high school diploma — or none at all.

Those jobs share something else in common, too: Hundreds of thousands of them likely will be taken by lowskilled immigrants who are willing to do work many Americans will not.

Lost in the immigration debate raging in Washington is the vital economic role played by immigrants who don’t have the education, training or skills the Trump administration and many Republicans in Congress say should be a pre-requisite. Economists say that especially with unemployment at a 17-year low and the growth of the workforce slowing, immigrants — skilled as well as unskilled — are vital to the economy.

“The idea that we only need people with certain degrees — it’s never been true in America, and it’s less true now than it was in the

past,” said Michael Clemens, an economist and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank.

Sixty-three percent of current American jobs — and 46 percent of jobs expected to be created between 2016 and 2026 — require no more than a high school degree, according to the Labor Department. The new positions include lowpaying jobs most nativeborn Americans are loath to pursue — an estimated 778,000 personal-care aides (median pay in 2016: $21,920), 580,000 food-service workers ($19,400), 431,000 home-health aides ($22,600).

Many of those jobs, Clemens said, “will either be done by immigrants, or they will not be done at all.”

Already, foreign-born workers — about 17 percent of the overall workforce — account for 52 percent of America’s maids, 47 percent of roofers and 40 percent of construction laborers and laundry and dry-cleaning workers.

Low-skilled immigrants harvest sweet potatoes and cucumbers in fields in North Carolina. They serve dementia patients in nursing homes. They vacuum offices. They are waiters, cooks and maids at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

The Trump administration and many Republicans in Congress want to reduce the number of foreigners who can enter the United States and establish a merit system for those who do. They argue restrictions on both legal and illegal immigration would protect Americans from potential criminals and from low-skilled immigrants who they say drive down wages for everyone.

Trump “understands what’s broken in our immigration system and what’s holding down wages for American workers,” Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, has said. “I stand ready to work with him and my colleagues to build an immigration system that supports the American worker and boosts our economy.”

The president’s immigration plan, rejected along with similar measures by the Senate this month, would bar immigrants from sponsoring siblings, parents and adult children and end a visa lottery meant to increase diversity. It also would earmark $25 billion for the construction of a border wall to keep Mexicans and Central Americans from crossing illegally.

The administration has also endorsed legislation from Sens. Cotton and David Perdue of Georgia that would favor visa applicants who are well-educated, speak English well and meet other criteria designed to attract immigrants who possess high skills and weed out those who don’t.

Yet the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model, which analyzes public policy proposals, has concluded the Cotton-Perdue bill would reduce economic growth and eliminate 1.3 million jobs by 2027 and 4.6 million by 2040.

Many immigrants say they are confident — or at least hopeful — it won’t come to that.

“I’m optimistic,” said Amara Sumah, an immigrant from Sierra Leone who owns a West African restaurant in Washington D.C. “The American people are generous. The president cannot change the country by himself.”

The fear that immigrants will take the jobs of native-born workers is rooted in a time when most Americans were far less educated. Native- and foreign-born workers used to vie for low-skill jobs. Today’s better-educated American-born workers are much less likely to compete with new arrivals with low skills. Twenty-five years ago, 46 percent of U.S. workers had no more than a high school degree. Only 28 percent had four-year college degrees; now, 40 percent do. Just 33 percent have only a high school diploma or less.

Many native-born Americans tend to shun low-paying, physically demanding work, even when good jobs are scarce. Consider what happened in North Carolina in 2011, when the state still bore scars from the Great Recession. Nearly 500,000 North Carolinians were jobless. The state’s farms needed 6,500 workers to plant and harvest cucumbers, sweet potatoes and tobacco.

Yet only 268 native-born unemployed North Carolinians sought the farm jobs, which paid $9.70 an hour. Of those, 245 were hired. Only 163 showed up on Day One. And just seven kept at the job until the growing season had ended.