AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Trump campaigned on mass deportations. He praised Friday's Supreme Court rulings for helping him advance that goal. But he's also openly worried about losing, quote, "very good longtime workers," and his administration has waffled on some classes of immigrants. There was an email this month instructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices to stop immigration raids at farms, meatpacking plants, restaurants and hotels. Then a call to field offices four days later, first reported by The Washington Post, reversing that guidance. What can account for the initial 180 and the ultimate 360? It could be politics. It could also be economics. Mass deportation is a very expensive policy. David Bier directs immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, and he joins us now. Welcome to the program.
DAVID BIER: Thanks for having me on.
RASCOE: Let's just start with just the cost that businesses will face from losing workers to deportation. How much of an impact will that be?
BIER: Yeah. It's numbered in the trillions of dollars. And when you look at the economic contributions of immigrants, they're about 18% of the total economy. If you look at undocumented immigrants, the CBO estimates that you'd lose about a trillion dollars in output every year if you just remove the people who entered under the Biden administration. So when you start talking about longer-time workers, that cohort is even more productive, and therefore, the costs of getting rid of them are even higher.
RASCOE: Can you talk about, like, what would the cost be? Will it be that, OK, so the workers that leave, there are not going to be workers to replace them? Like, why do we have to lose money because we lose these workers?
BIER: The main issue is that these workers are supporting Americans as managers and more specialized labor where they are making more money. They're in higher paying jobs. They're more productive, and they're more productive because this lower-paid, lower-skilled work is being done by immigrants. That work still needs to get done. What you will see as these people are removed from the economy is a downshift. Yes, some Americans will start doing some of this work, but they'll be moving out of higher paying, better quality jobs. Look, the economy right now, we have had low unemployment for a long period at this point, and really the only way to get new workers right now is through immigration. A hundred percent of the increase in the working-age population is from immigrants.
RASCOE: Are we already seeing some of these impacts because, you know, people have been talking about this for a while. And, I mean, people may look at it and go, well, everything seems fine right now.
BIER: What we've seen already is big shifts in Hispanic American spending habits. People think about immigrants as just being workers and think about it from the employer side of things, but the much more significant effect from immigration on the broader economy is the spending power of the immigrants. So if you pull all of that spending power out of the economy, then you're going to see this major contraction in the number of workers being employed at those businesses frequented by immigrants.
RASCOE: What was your read on the initial U-turn that the administration did? There was that June 13 email to ICE regional offices, and then that about-face days later, saying, no, never mind.
BIER: Yeah. I mean, I was skeptical about the about-face to begin with. The people who are running these agencies and most of the folks in policy positions at the White House, they don't care about the economic effects. You know, it's the same thing that we see so many times with tariffs. These people are absolutely excited and committed to the project the president is allowing them to do.
RASCOE: What about the cost of carrying out these deportation raids? What does that look like in the administration's budget, just the cost of enforcement and deporting people?
BIER: Yeah. So the administration is asking for about $170 billion in increases for law enforcement agencies doing immigration enforcement. That includes almost $50 billion for deportation camps. We're going to be spending - in about four years, if this budget goes into effect at the end of his term, we're going to be spending about 80% of all federal law enforcement on immigration enforcement agencies as the administration gets to spend this money.
RASCOE: So when Trump says things like he's going to do something for the farmers losing farm workers, he's going to try to find some way to help them, what could that possibly look like?
BIER: The most important thing for farm labor right now is a visa that would allow them to do year-round work. That's why so many people came to the country illegally over the last four years, is because there isn't a visa available for people who want to come to the United States and earn money in jobs not requiring a college degree, where the job is year-round. That's the real answer that would benefit the economy and prevent these negative consequences, as well as prevent illegal immigration in the future. But, you know, this administration is too focused on the idea that reducing the number of laborers means that Americans are going to do better, and there's no evidence for that.
RASCOE: That's David Bier of the Cato Institute. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
BIER: Thanks for having me on.
(SOUNDBITE OF MENAHAN STREET BAND'S "THE TRAITOR") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
