How Project 2025’s Plans for Mass Deportations Would Cripple the US Economy
Be Careful What You Wish For
"For every complex problem, there's a solution that is simple, neat….and wrong.
HL Menken
One of the scores of proposals embedded in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump presidency involves treatment of immigration and immigrants. In blunt terms, it calls for the immediate roundup, internment and mass deportation of as many as 11 million people the administration would classify as illegal immigrants.
At over 900 pages, Project 2025 seems truly encyclopedic. Just the sound of it hitting a desk seems to imply, “Dude, this is some very weighty stuff. Somebody put a lot of research into this.” It is a lot of words and work.
But it is NOT research. It is a polemic! It suggests solutions but ignores the consequences. It states “facts” that are opinions. And most importantly and dangerously, it makes clear that when its creators cannot achieve their way through policies that are attractive to voters,they are more than ready to impose them anyway.
Particularly pernicious are the proposed deportation policies and frighteningly, the consequences of their implementation are not understood by much of the public. Take, for example, what mass deportations would do to the nation’s meat processing industry:
According to Friends of the Earth and Foodprint:
The four largest companies …controlled 85 percent of the beef packing industry, 66 percent of pork packing, and 51 percent of broiler chicken processing. Additionally, 85 percent of beef cattle slaughtered took place in just 30 U.S. slaughter facilities (out of nearly 650 total), with more than half slaughtered in 13 plants.
Through mergers and acquisition, vertical integration of supply chains, and government lobbying, a few large companies were able to gradually control almost the entire market. This lack of competition gives meatpacking corporations a free pass to pay farmers and charge wholesalers and retailers whatever they want — and mistreat their workers. In the past few decades, meatpacking companies have disproportionately increased the price of meat they charge wholesalers and retailers, while cutting wages and benefits for their employees.
Small meatpacking operations are simply unable to compete in this unfair market, and so large corporations continue to undercut their prices, utilize low-wage labor, and remain virtually unchecked by federal regulation.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “Immigrants make up nearly 40% of the (meatpacking) industry’s roughly 470,000 workers, with higher concentrations in states like South Dakota, where they are 58% of workers, and Nebraska, where they’re 66%, according to the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute. Estimates on those who entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas vary from 14% to the majority at some plants.
Now imagine that a substantial number of those workers are suddenly interned and/or deported. Wages paid to meat plant workers today are relatively generous - but not because of the generosity of the operators. It’s simply labor supply and demand, and part of the reason consumers are paying increasingly higher costs at the grocery.
In some cases, meat packers have knowingly hired illegals or used third parties to recruit illegals from third-world countries. ConAgra, Inc., for example, one of the nation’s largest food manufacturing companies, paid a fine of $225,000 for knowingly hiring illegals at a chicken processing plant in Kentucky. (Their earnings for 2023 were $12.7 billion so you can imagine the anguish at headquarters at having to pay this.) The plant was shuttered as investigators closed in.
It will not surprise you to learn that meat industry groups and major meat companies spent more than $10 million on political contributions and lobbying efforts in 2023. For some, last year’s spending was an all-time high. Nor should it surprise you that many of the politicians receiving those funds are also among the loudest voices in the battle to bar immigration.
The investigative journalists at Mother Jones recently took a deep dive into how a massive deportation of immigrants would affect multiple sectors of the economy. Among their findings:
· … if 7.5 million workers were deported, inflation would rise by 3 percent in two years.
· The price of services would be almost 10 percent higher by 2029.
,,,,a 50 percent decrease in the farm labor supply could result in a 21 percent increase in the prices of hand-picked crops.
· A mass deportation program would lead to reduced domestic production and increased reliance on imports.
o Pierre Mérel, an agricultural and resource economics expert at the University of California, Davis, says labor-intensive fruit and vegetable harvesting would be most affected. Based on a 2022 study he co-authored, Mérel estimates that a 50 percent decrease in the farm labor supply could result in a 21 percent increase in the prices of hand-picked crops.
· Some 350,000 undocumented immigrants work in health care, with more than two-thirds employed as providers or in supporting jobs. On top of that, more than 160,000 are employed as cleaners and housekeepers.
o “They are the people that pick our crops, prepare our foods, clean our hotel rooms, and empty our bedpans,” says Rebecca Shi, executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition.
· One in five undocumented workers—1.4 million people—are employed in construction. That’s more than 10 percent of the entire labor force, and 32 percent of roofers. With the industry already facing a shortage of about 500,000 workers, Trump’s deportation scheme would grind the construction of new housing to a halt, turbocharging the affordability crisis.
o Joshua Correa, a builder in Dallas, estimates a $300,000 house might cost anywhere from $40,000 to $45,000 more if just a fraction of the immigrant workforce is deported.
A recent NY Times article chronicles the potential labor disaster facing dairy farmers in Idaho (did you know it is the third largest dairy producing state in the US?).
89% of Idaho dairy workers are foreign born.
A growing number of Idaho’s elected officials want to revoke the operating license of any business caught employing undocumented workers. Such bills, if they pass, could ruin farmers like Peter and kneecap the state’s economy: The Idaho Dairymen’s Association estimates that 89 percent of the state’s on-site dairy workers are foreign-born.
Also forgotten in the Project 2025 proposal is the net plus immigrants represent to our economy:
· Social Security: Unauthorized immigrants pay $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, even though they’re not eligible for benefits.
· Taxes: In 2022, undocumented immigrants contributed $96.7 billion in taxes—$59.4 billion in federal contributions and $37.3 billion to state and local governments.
Backers of deportation assert that removing those workers will open new job opportunities for US citizens. In fact, even if there were sufficient legal citizens available to fill those slots (and today’s list of job shortages in critical industries makes clear there are not) most Americans would not take them. And if they did, they would command much higher wages because of the inherent labor shortage created by deportation. That in turn would drive up costs for everyone in goods and services.
Supply and demand. It’s economics 101.
Finding valid answers requires proposals backed by input from experts, debate, and resolution of differences in a deliberative legislative process. Those who try and tell you otherwise prefer a system that favors mandate and dictation- not debate and deliberation.
Simple answers are attractive, neat and simplistic. They often fail to examine the potential for unintended and often highly negative consequences. They are created to make us believe that that big gnarly problems can easily be fixed .