Opinion: Trump’s vow to deport millions of migrants is insane and would affect Florida
Likely Republican candidate Donald Trump’s vow to use the National Guard and perhaps even the military to deport millions of undocumented migrants — regardless of whether they committed violent crimes or not — would badly hurt the U.S. economy.
I know that because I live in Florida, where we’re already getting a taste of Trumpian antiimmigration populism.
In a lengthy interview with Time magazine over what a second Trump term would look like, the former president said that he would use the National Guard and the U.S. military to round up and deport millions of undocumented migrants.
Never mind that, under U.S. law, federal troops cannot be used against civilians unless specifically allowed to by Congress. Trump claimed that undocumented migrants “aren’t civilians.” The former president had previously claimed that immigrants “are poisoning the blood of our country,” an expression that was used against Jews and other minorities in Nazi Germany.
FEAR-MONGERING
Throughout the Time interview, Trump repeated his false claim that an alleged invasion of undocumented immigrants is driving up violent crime rates in America, a scare tactic that helped him win the 2016 elections.
In fact, the flow of migrants through the U.S. border has fallen by 40% during the first four months this year, compared with the previous four months, according to U..S. officials quoted by the Bloomberg news agency. The Biden Administration says increased enforcement measures are resulting in fewer border crossings.
And while Trump constantly cherry-picks horrible murders committed by immigrants to claim that foreigners are driving up crime rates, he deceitfully fails to mention that immigrants commit fewer violent crimes than native Americans, according to a Stanford University study. In addition, FBI figures show that overall homicides fell by 13% last year.
In other words, Trump is lying across the board.
Trump also says that deporting millions of immigrants is the right thing to do because America is a country of laws, and undocumented migrants are law-breakers. It’s a weird contention by a man who, in addition to facing 94 criminal charges, defended in the same Time interview as “patriots” and “J-6 hostages” the violent rioters who stormed into the Capitol on January 6, 2021, injuring dozens of police officers and causing at least five deaths.
EXPELLING MIGRANTS
Let’s suppose for a moment that Trump wins the November elections uses the National Guard or the military to round up a sizable part of the estimated 11 million undocumented migrants in the U.S., rather than offering a path to citizenship to those who are not criminals and have paid taxes.
The U.S. economy depends on migrants to alleviate labor shortages, reduce inflation, collect taxes and increase consumption. With national unemployment at only 3.9%, a near record low in recent years, expelling millions of workers would hurt us all.
There are nearly 9 million
job openings in the country, but only 6.4 million unemployed workers, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. With U.S. birth rates falling below replacement levels, we need more immigrants, not fewer.
Massive deportation of immigrants doing jobs that few Americans want to do — such as working in construction, cleaning, hospitality and agriculture — would not only increase labor shortages but drive up prices of almost everything.
We already got a preview of Trump’s antiimmigrant demagoguery in Florida, where Gov.
Ron DeSantis, a Trump wannabe, passed a law in
May last year to make it more difficult for undocumented migrants to work in the state.
To be fair, the Florida economy has been growing, but mostly thanks to the state’s population growth since the pandemic. Many New Yorkers and Californians have moved to the state to work remotely and pay cheaper rents, and less taxes.
But many business owners say the Florida economy would be growing much faster if it weren’t for DeSantis’ anti-immigration laws. Under the 1-year-old state law, businesses with more than 25 employees that hire undocumented migrants face steep fines, and people who transport migrants without immigration papers into the state — even if for medical emergencies — face up to five years in prison.
Jan Gautam, president of IHRMC Hospitality, an hotel services management firm in Orlando, told me that the Florida antiimmigration law has already had a huge negative impact on the hospitality industry.
“As many as 80% of our workers left their jobs overnight and moved to other states after the law was passed,” Gautam told me. “If Trump goes ahead with his plan to deport millions, it’s going to shut down the whole country’s economy.”
Florida has now only 53 available workers for every 100 open jobs, compared to the national average of 73 workers for the same number of jobs, the Chamber of Commerce figures show. That means more expensive labor costs, and more money you have to pay for dining out, or buying food at the supermarket.
One could understand Trump’s desire to deport millions of migrant workers if America had a high unemployment rate, or rising crime rates caused by immigrants. But none of that is the case. What we have is a fear-mongering demagogue who is lying to win votes.