If something approaching civil war occurs in the US, as many Americans now believe, the most immediate cause may be President Trump’s move to deport huge numbers of people, upwards of 10 million just since 2021, who have crossed the border illegally and unvetted. This population swelled as the feckless Biden administration left the border largely unguarded. Talk of resistance to “mass expulsions” is already becoming common in the mainstream media, with some suggesting that migrants will be victims of government “atrocities”. Numerous Democrats, notably Denver’s mayor Mike Johnston, have advanced plans to block federal agents with a “Tiananmen Square”-style occupation.
This from a city that has the highest per capita presence of new migrants, while a neighbouring city has seen apartment complexes taken over by Venezuelan gangs. Virtue-signalling protests against deportations may also be repeated in other cities, including Boston, Los Angeles (which alone has nearly a million undocumented migrants) and Chicago. In California, the state is allegedly threatening to take pensions and even imprison police who help federal agents. Yet since these same places tend to rely on federal transfers to pay for migrants’ housing and other needs, something in jeopardy under Trump.
Many Democrats seem utterly incapable of embracing a secure border or recognising the dangers of hosting a large, undocumented, largely poor foreign-born population. Indeed, during the campaign, vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz even suggested that, if Trump built a wall, he would build “a ladder factory”, presumably so that migrants could climb over it, while embracing progressive policies to allow undocumented migrants to get free college education and access to driver’s licenses.
Talk about tone deaf. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who wish to reduce immigration has soared from under 40 per cent to over 55 per cent since 2003, although many still embrace legal migration. Roughly 60 per cent of Americans and a majority of Latinos support mass deportations. Not all Democrats have drunk the open borders Kool-Aid. New York mayor Eric Adams last year suggested that mass migration could “destroy” the country’s pre-eminent city, and has even spoken in favour of having NYPD officers help immigration officials arrest undocumented felons. Among the grassroots, largely from existing African-American or Latino communities in cities like Denver, New York and Chicago, many blame undocumented border crossers for higher costs for hotels, and competition for social services, parks and hospital care.
This pushback also reflects economic reality. The Congressional Budget Office has warned that the recent “surge in immigration”, much of it undocumented, will coincide with slower wage growth. Low income American workers also have to compete with migrants for living space, jobs and social services. In addition, roughly half of all Latinos, notes Pew, associate the current wave with increased crime in their communities, including the rise of gangs taking over apartments in New York.
The key dilemma facing the Trump administration will be how to end mass migration without alienating its new supporters in America’s minority communities. We are likely to confront sorry scenes of families – many of them simply seeking a better life – being hauled out of their homes, something that may not play well among Latinos and political moderates.
To secure the border, Trump’s operatives need to proceed cautiously and with a sense of humanity. A good first step, besides building Trump’s cherished wall, would be plans being put in place to expel an estimated 435,000 migrants with criminal records. Outside the far-Left, progressive judges and the fever shops of the universities, this will likely have strong support. Trump has also expressed interest in legalising “the dreamers”, children who came illegally to the country, but have grown up here.
It gets more complicated from there. Many millions of “illegals” have been here for decades, and have paid taxes, started businesses and families. They would constitute an asset for any country. Finding ways to give these migrants a reasonable possibility of staying here, perhaps after a return to their native country, makes sense. If he proceeds cautiously, particularly with the evenly divided House of Representatives, he could build wide support for his approach to the border.
Perhaps a more complicated challenge for Trump may come from businesses, which still constitute a key GOP constituency. Many firms in the service sector and agriculture depend on undocumented workers; one possible solution would be to establish a modern version of the Bracero programme, allowing workers – but not their families – to work in sectors, like agriculture, where the supply of citizen labour is seen as highly limited. Immigrants are also heavily represented in industries such as construction, trucking, retail and manufacturing, where immigrants make up 20 per cent or more of the total workforce.
Legal immigrants, rather than being seen as a threat, could be an important asset in Trump’s drive to reindustrialise the country. As many as 600,000 new manufacturing jobs are expected to be generated this decade which cannot be filled.
By 2030, there will also be a projected shortage of 510,394 registered nurses and 40,000 doctors in primary care nationwide. Already, 28 per cent of physicians are immigrants, as are 24 per cent of dentists, and 38 per cent of home health aides. In Michigan, while immigrants accounted for just 8 per cent of all workers and 9 per cent of healthcare workers, their share was three times as high – 28 per cent – among physicians and surgeons.
Even Trump’s newly acquired allies in the tech economy will resist radical changes in immigration policy. In Silicon Valley, in 2018 nearly three quarters of the tech workforce were estimated to be foreign, many on H1B visas. Although this programme has been abused by employers, sometimes at the expense of American workers, it would be very difficult, and politically damaging, for Trump to shut it down and retain tech business support.
At the end of the day, closing the open border is a necessity, as even the Biden administration, in its dotage, has finally recognised. Yet at the same time, given demographic pressures, legal – particularly skilled – immigrants remain critical for growing the economy. It will be Trump’s challenge to maintain this economic lifeblood while working to reverse Biden’s record of undermining public safety and the credibility of our institutions.
This piece first appeared at Telegraph.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Ted Eytan via Flickr under CC 2.0 License
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