During the campaign trail, a lot was said about the mass deportation plan that then Republican candidate and now president-elect Donald Trump pushed as the backbone of his immigration policy. But one often overlooked aspect of deportations has to do with the massive effect it would have on the U.S. economy, as undocumented immigrants fill a large percentage of jobs in sectors like agriculture, services and construction.
Construction specifically figures to be severely hampered by deportations as undocumented immigrants make up around 1,5 million jobs, equivalent to around 13% of the total workforce, according to an NBC News report released in October. "They're building our houses — have been for 30 years," said the CEO of a Texas-based specialty subcontracting firm to the news outlet. "Losing the workers would devastate our companies, our industry and our economy."
On Thursday, USA Today released a report that further explains the potential consequences for the construction industry. One of the main sources consulted was the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) which explained through its Chief Advocacy Officer Ken Wingert that "any mass deportation is going to have an impact on the economy" and that "the construction and housing sector is probably going to have an outsize impact versus others". He also added the following:
"We think that we need a comprehensive immigration strategy and reform and hope that Congress will get back to that when they come back in January. We're in favor of getting more workers into the workforce overall to try to help ease this housing supply crunch that we're in"
The report revealed that immigrants, documented or not, have kept construction labor costs well below what they would be with a mostly native-born workforce:
"A recent Labor Department analysis shows that as of 2020, foreign-born workers earned less than native-born workers. In the economy as a whole, across all industries, immigrants of all kinds earned roughly 12% less, but in construction specifically, they earned 24% less than native-born workers"
USA Today also consulted Michael Lukens, the executive director for Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, on the matter. "Mass deportations would cripple the construction and housing market," Lukens said. "It would cripple the agricultural market. It would be incredibly expensive and it would destroy the economy. And it's not acceptable on any level, both the human level and the economic level."
The report concludes with an ominous warning about the perils of deportation for the housing market:
"In a country that needs millions of additional homes, according to various estimates, taking away any of the workers that build it will only make the crisis worse"
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