For insight into how President Donald Trump‘s focus on expediting the removal of illegal immigrants may eventually play out in terms of the U.S. economy, you could do worse than look at the experiences of Florida and Alabama.
In recent years, the neighboring southeast states have passed aggressive laws ostensibly aimed at employers not hiring undocumented immigrants. These laws include fines for hiring them, said Hector Quiroga, a Spokane Valley, Washington-based immigration attorney at Quiroga Law Office.
Alabama was the first Gulf Coast state to do so.
In 2011, the state legislature and governor enacted HB 56, which, among other things, sanctions employers for hiring undocumented workers. The law also requires employers to use what Quiroga described as the “problematic” federal E-Verify employment screening system, which ensures employees are eligible to work in the United States.
Undocumented immigrants were also barred from receiving public state benefits and attending colleges and universities in Alabama. It also became illegal to harbor undocumented immigrants or transport them into the state.
The effects of the new law were almost immediately felt in Alabama’s agricultural sector.
One farmer, Quiroga explained, proved the often-repeated opinion that it is very difficult to find local native workers to fulfill tough jobs otherwise undertaken by immigrants. The farmer could only get three local workers to stay for just one month of harvesting.
Florida is also facing a significant labor shortage following the enactment of its similar SB 1718, which took effect on July 1, 2023.
Quiroga said fearful immigrants started to leave the state before the law took effect. Lawmakers, apparently surprised by the effects of the new bill, even on established immigrant communities, tried to backpedal, but the effects continued.
“Jobs typically filled by immigrants, lawful or otherwise, have gone begging,” Quiroga said. “That’s because immigrant workers are willing to take on jobs that are physically demanding and require skills in jobs that most Americans are not willing to take on.”
Not just agriculture
About 22% of the country’s restaurant industry workforce is made up of immigrants, according to OysterLink, a job platform for hospitality professionals. About 1 in 14 such immigrants may now be in danger of deportation, OysterLink estimated.
That means any replacements will have to come from the native U.S. population, whose wages and demands are typically significantly higher. According to OysterLink, projections show that restaurant wages could rise by an average of $3 an hour, increasing average annual salaries by over $6,500 if such large-scale deportations were to take effect.
While the threat of such deportation is not the only cause of a possible further slowdown in the economy, it does not help an already-pressured situation.
Softening demand across several sectors, general uncertainty about the global economy, and moves toward artificial intelligence and automation, among other matters, are already creating a doubtful environment and leading to caution among employers about hiring practices, said Jason Leverant, COO and president of staffing agency AtWork Group.
However, what helps counter such uncertainty is the availability of a consistent and ready-to-work labor force, especially in such industries as construction, manufacturing, food production, and logistics. Threats of mass deportations will not help that.
“Large-scale deportations and/or aggressive immigration enforcement can severely disrupt the supply side of things, making it even harder for businesses to fill roles that are already difficult to staff,” he said. “The resulting imbalance could cause production delays, increased labor costs, and additional inflationary pressure at the consumer level (things that no employer or consumer wants to see happen).”
System difficulties
The whole immigration system is not helped by its complexities, sources said.
The process of Labor Certification with the Department of Labor, for example, in which employers must prove no U.S. person is being overlooked at the expense of a foreign worker, is getting increasingly long, according to Natalia Polukhtin, an immigration lawyer in Scottsdale, Arizona. This is preventing companies from hiring skilled workers from abroad in some cases.
At the same time, the country is grappling with an acute labor shortage of approximately 1.4 million people, 500,000 of whom are in the construction sector alone, said George Carrillo, CEO of the Hispanic Construction Council.
“Deporting 700,000 to 900,000 undocumented workers would devastate these industries, stalling essential projects and further exacerbating the labor crisis,” he said. “The ripple effect would be profound from delays in homebuilding, which is already strained under rising housing demand, to jeopardizing public safety by slowing repairs to roads, bridges, and clean drinking water infrastructure.”
The threat of such deportations is having a chilling effect on immigrant communities. It is disrupting local economies, forcing some businesses to shut their doors and families to suffer the sudden loss of a primary income earner, according to Nikki Marin Baena, co-founder and co-director of North Carolina-based group Siembra NC.
“Thousands of workplaces depend on over 30 million foreign-born workers, and on the 48 million foreign-born consumers who spend $1.7 trillion and pay $652 billion in taxes,” she said.
Broken system needs fixing, not blowing up
The immigration system may be broken, but it is not going to be helped by threats of, and actual, deportations.
Instead, moves should be made to simplify the system, whether that is for unskilled or skilled workers.
Priyanka Kulkarni, an immigrant who spent several years leading AI initiatives at Microsoft before founding immigration tech platform Casium, knows this from experience.
“As an immigrant founder, I know firsthand how life-changing the chance to build and innovate in the U.S. can be,” she said in an interview with Forbes. “When we make the immigration process more efficient and transparent, we’re not just helping individual companies or immigrants — we’re strengthening America’s ability to attract and retain the world’s best talent.”
So, for skilled or unskilled foreign workers, it may not be as easy as simply offering immigrants $1,000 to self-deport, an idea Trump has floated in recent weeks.
Instead, there should be a political will to refine the system to benefit everyone.
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“We need a functioning, legal immigration process that supports both humanitarian and economic goals,” Leverant said. “If that process is closed or excessively limited, it will likely push employers to automate faster, possibly relocate, or shut down their businesses altogether. None of which is good for long-term economic growth.”
If there isn’t a political will, people with the wherewithal may head to New Zealand instead. Traffic from the U.S. to the Immigration New Zealand site reportedly increased from 691 people to more than 18,600 in the two days following Trump’s election.
Nick Thomas is a writer based in Denver.