Patricia Lopez: Mass deportations are creating a workforce crisis

The American workforce is now short 1.2 million workers — the result of the harshest, most aggressive campaign ever waged to drive immigrants from this country.

President Donald Trump promised that ridding the country of illegal or unworthy immigrants would usher in a golden age. Deporting millions of immigrants would lead to plentiful jobs, higher wages, less crime and more housing.

The fact is, we need those workers. Republican lawmakers and governors must understand that basic economic fact, even if Trump does not. Immigrant labor drives productivity, creates businesses, and fills labor shortages in an aging nation.

Trump is only a tenth of the way toward his goal of 10 million deportations or more, but the results are already becoming clear. In California and Texas, crops are rotting in the fields for lack of workers to pick them. The Associated General Contractors of America reported in August that worker shortages are now a leading cause of project delays, with 92% of firms saying they are struggling to hire. Of those surveyed, 28% reported having been affected by immigration enforcement.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now deporting people at a rate of about 1,500 immigrants a day, and has deported about 180,000 under Trump so far. That grows to 332,000 with the inclusion of Border Patrol removals at or near the border, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Stephanie Kramer of the Pew Research Center, which used preliminary Census data to calculate the 1.2 million missing workers, said it was unclear how many others left voluntarily but said “we don’t believe that the preliminary numbers … are so far off that the decline isn’t real.”

Trump administration officials may consider those rising numbers a success. But Republicans who care about the economy (and their own political futures) should not. It’s time to craft a more nuanced, dispassionate message that recognizes both immigrants’ contributions to this country and the need for secure borders. Both sides of that equation have been ignored for far too long as this country’s parties go to war over extreme positions that benefit no one.

We’re already seeing the short-term effects. But in the long term, as the U.S. becomes a more hostile and unforgiving place for immigrants, foreign students, tourists and entrepreneurs, this country’s population will become smaller and older, coming to resemble an upside-down pyramid, with fewer young workers supporting a growing number of retirees at the top. The average American is pushing 40 and one in five Americans is over age 65.

We are no longer at the point where we can rely solely on a U.S.-born workforce. Growth in that population has been slowing for well over 20 years and is now declining. According to David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, the U.S. is 35 million workers short of what the Social Security Administration estimates will be required in the 2030s to support that program. In the last decade, he said, the net increase in workers was 7 million — most of them immigrants.

The Pew analysis showed that immigrants make up nearly 20% of the U.S. workforce. An estimated 45% of workers in farming, fishing and forestry are immigrants, along with 30% of construction workers and 24% of service workers. In the health industry, immigrants make up nearly a third of home health aides and more than a fifth of nursing home workers.

For the most part, these are young workers, with decades of productivity ahead of them. An aging nation needs that vitality. The Congressional Budget Office, in a 2024 analysis of the immigration surge that occurred during the Biden years, found that immigration drove GDP growth, filled labor shortages and boosted consumer spending. The CBO projected the surge would add $1.2 trillion to federal coffers over the coming decade and increase nominal GDP by $8.9 trillion.

To be sure, there were downsides as well. The CBO found the surge was expected to have a different effect on state and local budgets, with increased costs for education, health care and housing that went beyond any offsetting revenue.

And that is where the Biden administration erred. Biden wanted a robust recovery after the pandemic. He saw immigration as a turbo-boost. Border crossings escalated dramatically. He gave certain groups of immigrants easier access to temporary legal status, including vastly scaling up existing programs intended for humanitarian relief.

And it worked. A 2024 analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that the resulting unprecedented surge boosted job growth and output. By the time Biden left office, the U.S. economic recovery was leading the world.

But Biden’s methods also created an opening for Trump’s particular brand of xenophobia. Trump’s rhetoric was excessive, but there is little question he tapped into frustrations rising in border states and other areas left to deal with sudden, high concentrations of new immigrants. Republicans’ continued intransigence on comprehensive reform left an unwieldy, outdated system unfit for modern migration patterns.

One partial solution could be the legislation proposed by Wisconsin Republican Representative Derrick Van Orden, which would establish a legal process for undocumented agricultural workers to transition to legal employment status. It’s modest in scope, and both sides will find much to quibble about, but Orden’s bill is commendable in that it both recognizes a genuine need and, importantly, takes undocumented workers out of the shadows, providing them protections they currently lack. Introduced in July, the bill has had no hearings and lists no co-sponsors.

What started with voters’ legitimate desire to expel criminals and secure U.S. borders has morphed into an ever-widening and cruel campaign. We are crossing a line in this country, one with both moral and economic implications.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Patricia Lopez is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. She is a former member of the editorial board at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where she also worked as a senior political editor and reporter.