Argument Essay

The Nation.16 April 3, 2017

HOW TRUMP’S ASSAULT ON

IMMIGRANTS

WILL DAMAGE THE ECONOMY

The key sectors in which we can expect growth are dependent on immigrant labor.

by HERMAN SCHWARTZ

The Nation. 17April 3, 2017

Deporting millions of undocumented immigrants will only make things worse. Economic growth requires a large workforce and increasing productivity. But the American population is aging, so we need more young workers. The number of Americans over 60 is expected to increase by more than 22 percent during the current decade, reducing our annual growth by 1.2 percent. And productivity has slowed down markedly in the past 15 years.

Aging has cut our birth rate as well. In 2015, the United States saw its lowest population growth since the Great Depression—and whatever growth we did have was from immigrants. In 2014, immigrant women accounted for about 900,000 US births, more than tri- pling the 1970 number, while births to US-born wom- en fell by 11 percent. The foreign-born accounted for 23 percent of all babies during that period.

Trump’s harsh assault on undocumented immigrants will damage us in many key areas. Much of our recent growth has been in service occupations like retail, hospi- tality, home care, and health care; the Labor Department expects demand for home health-care aides in particular to rise by 40 percent in the next decade. Over 40 percent of undocumented immigrants are in these occupations.

These immigrants also comprise most of the laborers in agriculture and related industries, like dairy farming. Agriculture Department surveys in 2007 and 2009 found that almost half of these workers were undocumented, and the fi gure is higher in other sectors. “If you only have legal labor, certain parts of this industry and this re- gion [California’s Central Valley] would not exist,” says

fruit farmer Harold McClarty. Many local businesses in these areas—restaurants, clothing stores, insurance agencies—would close. As one Washington, DC, restau- rant owner put it, “Honestly, without immigrants, the restaurant industry wouldn’t exist.”

To spur growth, Trump plans to spend many billions on roads, sewers, and other infrastructure; housing is also recovering. This will require many construction workers, and there aren’t enough now—about 200,000 construc- tion jobs are unfi lled today, a rise of 81 percent in just the last two years. This has slowed the revival of the housing market as well as the overall economy. The shortage of construction workers will get worse because of Trump’s immigration policies—which, ironically, could even frus- trate the construction of his “beautiful wall.”

Trump’s policies have also dismayed many in the tech sector and in science, medicine, and academia, all of which depend heavily on highly educated and skilled im- migrants. For example, 42 percent of doctor’s-offi ce visits in rural America are with foreign-born doctors, because immigrants must work in medically underserved areas like small towns, poor cities, and rural regions in order to stay here after their residencies or internships expire. Trump’s revised travel ban could immediately degrade patient care: Currently, more than 12,000 doctors in these communi- ties are from two of the countries covered by the ban—al- most 9,000 from Iran and 3,500 from Syria.

American universities and students will also suffer from Trump’s exclusionary policies. We now have about 1 million foreign students, 5 percent of our total enroll- ment; Iran alone accounts for more than 12,000. Apart from academic contributions, foreign students pay full tuition and other fees. Loss of this income would prob- ably force a tuition increase for American students, since most universities, especially the public ones, are already fi nancially strapped. A ban on foreign faculty and stu- dents will also undermine our educational and research capacities, threatening our leadership in these areas.

O pponents of immigration claim that immi- grants take jobs from Americans and drive down wages. There is some truth to this, but not much. American citizens simply don’t want many of the jobs now held by immigrants. “No

feasible increase in wages or change in conditions would be enough to draw native-born Americans back into the fields,” says Jeff Marchini, a fourth-generation radicchio farmer in California, and farmers in Florida and else- where agree. This also holds true for our construction- worker shortage. These jobs pay an average of $27 an hour, but American workers don’t want them—they are hard, unpleasant, and not steady.

Trump’s deep cuts in refugee-acceptance programs also undermine his rosy promises of economic growth. Refugees have helped revitalize cities like Buffalo, New York, which have struggled with obsolete industries and dwindling popu- lations for decades. Nonetheless, Trump insists that he will deport millions of undocumented residents, and in early February, immigration agents began by arresting 678 people in 12 states. Although the DHS insists this was “routine,” many of those arrested were minor offenders or even people

P resident trump has promised to add millions of “good jobs” to the US economy and to raise the gross domestic product by more than 4 percent annually, at one point asserting: “I think we can do better than that”—as much as 6 percent. “This is the most pro-growth, pro-jobs, pro-family plan put forth in the history of our country,” he proclaimed.

At the same time, the president has vowed to deport up to 3 mil- lion undocumented immigrants and to curtail future entries, branding immi- grants as “gang members,” “drug dealers,” and “bad hombres.” After his January 27 travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries was blocked by the courts, Trump devised a toned-down version applied to six of them—even though his own Department of Homeland Security has concluded that “country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorism.”

Trump’s economic promises verge on the delusional. Most economists think even his 4 percent boast is unrealistic, and any hopes for economic growth will be undercut by his deportation plans. In 2016, GDP grew by only 1.6 percent; since 2009, capital growth has increased by only 1.1 percent. We may get a tem- porary surge from tax cuts and infrastructure spending, but the Congressional Budget Offi ce estimates in its January 2017 Budget and Economic Outlook report that from 2017 to 2027, GDP will grow at an average annual rate of only 1.9 percent. New York Times economics reporter Nelson Schwartz describes Trump’s 4 percent target as “audacious at best and fanciful at worst.”

Trump’s promise to restore good manufacturing jobs to the Rust Belt is also dubious. Because of globalization and automation, few such jobs will return. For example, Trump boasts that he saved 1,000 (actually, fewer than 800) jobs at the Carrier air- conditioning plant in Indiana, but in a few years automation will kill many of those jobs anyway. By 2011, the auto industry was producing just as many cars as before the Great Recession, but with 30 percent fewer workers because of the increased use of robots and computers. As the Times’s Eduardo Porter concludes, “No matter what [ Trump] does, he cannot bring back the coal jobs of yore or the old labor-intensive manufacturing economy.”

R E

U T E

R S

/ B

R IA

N S

N Y D

E R

; P

H E

L A

N M

. E

B E

N H

A C

K V

IA A

P ;

A P

P H

O T O

/ C

H A

R L IE

R IE

D E

L ,

B R

YA N

C O

X ;

R E

U T E

R S

/ S

T E

P H

A N

IE K

E IT

H ;

R E

U T E

R S

/ J

O S

E L

U IS

G O

N Z A

L E

Z

“Honestly, without immigrants,

the restaurant industry wouldn’t exist.”— Washington, DC, restaurant owner

Herman Schwartz,Herman Schwartz, a professor of law a professor of law at the American at the American University, is University, is the author of the author of Right Wing Right Wing Justice: The Justice: The Conservative Conservative Campaign to Campaign to Take Over the Take Over the CourtsCourts (2004). (2004).

The Nation.18 April 3, 2017

But on its own, that movement will not dismantle a struc- ture that demands such an oversupply of MRAPs (mine- resistant, ambush-protected vehicles) that they end up parked in the lots of over 500 police departments.

Such an effort will require that some of the younger leaders coming up in contemporary justice movements make the struggle against militarism central to their program, not just their analysis. Those organizers who make this their life’s labor will fi nd ways of exposing the cost and waste of imperialism, organizing against those who profi t from it, and offering a clear choice between global military expansion and a democracy that serves its citizens. Perhaps their work will be framed by the prof- it made from killing, or by the costs of our globalized military, or by the disastrous consequences of foreign en- tanglements. Perhaps it will target particular institutions that benefi t from the corrosive connections between racism, militarism, and oil; perhaps it will expose how a culture of violence abroad is manifested in a culture of violence at home. Perhaps it will be led by veterans, or by refugees, or by women, who bear the brunt of so much American violence. All of these directions, and more, will have to be attempted, tested, grown—and supported by funders, many of whom, after Obama’s election, turned away from a focus on war and militarism. (For its part, the Colombe Foundation is launching a new fund to sup- port such organizing.)

Whatever shape this organizing takes, it will run into the question that faces all oppositional politics: What al- ternative is on offer? This dilemma is particularly acute when it comes to American empire, opposition to which can easily devolve into a nativist isolationism. There is a long history to that trend—many leaders in the Anti- Imperialist League of the late 19th century were as rac- ist as the imperialists, arguing that the browner popula- tions of the Philippines and Puerto Rico didn’t have the racial composition required for liberty.

There are two possible alternatives to American global hegemony, whose decline has perhaps been pre- maturely declared but is nonetheless on the wane. In one, the nativist impulse prevails and we have an even larger military, contained in a nation surrounded by walls and protected by travel bans. In the other, the United States embraces a true internationalism, working to build institutions to which it will also be accountable. At the moment, it may be diffi cult to imagine this latter path. But these past months have given us a glimpse of the consequences that await us if we fail to capture the anger that so many harbor toward an American empire that exacts such terrible costs and benefi ts so few.

Nothing is promised in politics. Movements rise and fall, truth-tellers often lose, xenophobic nationalists sometimes gain power, cowards frequently prevail. There is no determined arc to our history; no guaranteed results have been foretold. But at no moment over the past half- century has there been such an opportunity to ask wheth- er our empire serves our democracy or undermines it. The question is whether those committed to a less brutal, less violent, more just, more equal country can muster the imagination, anger, courage, and energy to seize it. ■

whose only offense was being undocumented: 26 percent had no criminal re- cord other than their illegal entry, which under US law is a misdemeanor unless repeated. None of them would have been deported under President Obama’s “serious crimes” policy.

In fact, immigrants commit fewer crimes than the native- born: Only 820,000 of the 11 million undocumented have any criminal record, and only 690,000 have committed serious crimes. The Obama administration relied heavily on local cooperation to apprehend the latter, but many of these communities are now in sanctuary cities. They will certainly not cooperate, which poses what one Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervisor calls “perhaps [ the] biggest challenge” for the agency.

The difference between the Trump program and Obama’s is illustrated by Guadalupe García de Rayos, a 35-year-old Phoenix wife and mother of two American-born teenagers. Rayos, who has lived here for 21 years, was convicted of using a fake Social Security number eight years ago—a com- mon offense among the undocumented—in order to become a janitor at an amusement park. Obama’s DHS allowed her to stay despite a deporta- tion order, but required her to check in annually with ICE, which she did. When Rayos showed up at ICE’s offi ces in early February, however, she was arrested and promptly deported to Mexico. Her family is now without a wife and mother. And according to DHS Secretary John Kelly’s February directives on deportation, all undocumented immigrants are deportable [see Julianne Hing, “ICE Amps Up,” March 20].

One group not intended to be affected by the directives so far are the Dreamers, 750,000 young people who were brought here as children and are currently in school or in the military. Under Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, they have temporary but renewable permission to stay and work. That can easily change, however: The new directives state that deportation relief must be determined on a case-by-case rather than class basis. Also, the Dreamers provided the federal government with personal information under a promise of privacy, but Trump’s DHS directives abolish privacy rights for all undocumented immigrants.

Among the directives’ most frightening provisions is an expansion of the “expedited removal” procedure—quick deportation without a judicial hear- ing. Under Obama, this procedure was used only for those here less than two weeks and found within 100 miles of the border. Kelly’s new orders extend it to people anywhere in the country who have been here for up to two years.

Over 10 million immigrant families have at least one undocumented member, and as a result of these directives, the immigrant community is ter- rifi ed. In New York, Florida, New Jersey, Arizona, and elsewhere, immigrants are staying off the streets and out of the stores and shopping malls, which is already dam- aging local economies. Children are being kept home from schools; exploited workers have become even more vulnerable; and law-enforcement offi cials worry that the immigrant community will no longer cooperate with them.

However, it’s unlikely that Trump will be able to deport several million immigrants, at least in the fore- seeable future, given the dire shortage of immigration agents, judges, and courts. Kelly does plan to hire thou- sands of new ICE and Border Patrol agents, but that will take time and many billions of dollars. And congressional Republicans may balk at the latter, especially since Trump hasn’t indicated where the money will come from.

Trump’s economic and immigration policies are dis- honest, stupid, and cruel. His deportation and exclusion orders violate a principle fundamental to every civilized society and honored until now by both Democrats and Republicans: keeping families together. If stone and met- al could cry, the Statue of Liberty would be weeping. ■

(continued from page 15)

Among the most

frightening of Trump’s

new deportation directives

is the expansion of “expedited removal.”

Copyright of Nation is the property of Nation Company, L. P. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.