Immigration to the U.S. Was Once Seen as a Land of Job Opportunity. Now, it’s the Focus of Substantial Economic Decline
Edited by Juliette Calderon, Aliza Susatijo, Amelia Cantwell, and Owen Andrews
The Trump administration has marked a decisive shift towards surveillance, immigration crackdowns, and the strengthening of several federal agencies to accelerate a mass deportation agenda. The administration has targeted international students, created barriers to acquiring visas, and detained immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for decades without a criminal record. Not only does this bypass checks and balances of the executive branch and agencies’ authority, it also undercuts the crucial role immigrants play in our economy. Immigration crackdowns have resulted in a sharp drop in U.S. population growth. This raises additional alarm bells for the economy, as immigrants make up a large portion of the American workforce. It’s important to analyze how Americans who have been relatively welcoming towards immigrants in the past are becoming advocates of strict immigration policy today.
Immigration to the U.S., however, has always been contentious. Mass migration to the U.S. began with technological advancements in steam technology that decreased travel costs for immigrants. As immigration rates increased, the U.S. researched how this influx was affecting American society and the economy. The Dillingham Commission in 1907, consequently, led to the creation of literacy tests, country-specific quotas, and general immigration regulations. These policies tended to favor immigrants from Northern and Western Europe due to xenophobic sentiment in the U.S. The first federal immigration law to explicitly target a nationality was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Immigration quotas were not eliminated until the 1960s. In 2010, immigration rates returned to the same level that was seen with mass migration in the 1850s to 1920s. Because the number of immigrants who want to enter the U.S. exceeds our capacity, undocumented immigration and deportations have been on the rise in recent decades.
Strict immigration policies will make the U.S. less innovative and poorer. The recently implemented $100,000 fee to acquire an H-1B visa is a clear example of a loss in economic competitiveness and a decline in the “brain drain” to the U.S. As America loses this specialized labor force, innovation will be diminished, and the foreign workers we depend on will begin to look elsewhere. The need for firms to adjust their course of action, modify the outsourcing of their labor, and develop a completely new talent strategy is a consequence that will not only cost firms but also the American economy in the long term. The H-1B visa was formerly seen as a symbol of innovation, pride, and the “American dream” to foreign workers. Yet now it’s a cautionary symbol of anti-immigration administration.
With unemployment rates already hovering at a low level, a drop in the American population and immigrant workforce creates a question of how low-skill jobs will be filled. Undocumented immigrants comprise 19% of the construction industry. The labor shortages exacerbated by immigration crackdowns will slow production and raise prices for consumers. In 2023, there were 48 million immigrants in the U.S. who contributed $1.7 trillion to the economy and paid $652 billion in taxes. Additionally, undocumented immigrants, who have been claimed to produce a “net drain,” contributed $90 billion in taxes. Despite this significant contribution to funding Social Security, Medicare, and insurance benefits, immigrants are barred from enrolling into these social programs.
The agricultural industry has been hit the hardest by Trump’s immigration agenda, as 68% of farm laborers were immigrants from 2021–2022. For decades, the U.S. farming industry has suffered from labor shortages and greatly relied on labor from Latin American countries. Farmers express their worry that native-born Americans will not fill jobs that require such physical labor. Economists predict these immigration barriers will worsen the US economy later on, with our annual economic growth reducing as much as one third by 2035. Gross domestic product will decline due to fewer people in the workforce available to produce goods for the domestic market.
Most importantly, federal agencies utilizing violence and aggression to carry out deportations have altered our current political landscape and changed the trajectory of U.S. immigration policy. A neighborhood in Chicago with a high concentration of Hispanics has turned into a ghost town and caused a slowdown in economic activity, as residents fear Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. In the midst of the Trump administration ramping up immigration barriers, 79% of Americans view immigration as a positive for the U.S. To achieve a balanced immigration policy that is widely demanded, tighter reforms need to be implemented to promote work permits, expand visas while granting means for legal status, and narrow asylum criteria. Although Trump’s agenda remains rigid, popular sentiment among Americans says otherwise and provides a sense of hope for many.