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A short post on Trump’s mindless ICE raids to capture immigrants.
Immigrants are not stealing American jobs (1, 2). The unemployment rate since quite some time has been very low although it may deteriorate soon as Trump is throwing economy into slowdown and paralysis. I’ve already talked about mindless tariff policies and trade wars which are creating huge uncertainty, supply shocks and disruption in economy. For now ‘TACO’ is wishful thinking that’s giving interim relief to businesses and investors that things will work out. I don’t how long that will hold water.
But now, Trump is opening a new front to disrupt businesses by these mindless ICE raids to capture and deport illegal immigrants (by the way, ‘illegal’ is not the right word. A more correct term for it is undocumented). Anyway, you know the usual rhetoric of Trump regime. Immigrants are doing crimes in America, foreign gangs have infiltrated America to do violence, immigrants steal American welfare resources and jobs, immigrants eat your pets (bleh) etc etc. All this is nonsense rhetoric which has been repudiated by countless analysts.
As i mentioned, undocumented immigrants don’t steal American welfare resources, instead they contribute to American economy. They do work, they pay taxes (direct or indirect), they spend - all contributing to economic activity. Undocumented Immigrants also work low paying jobs that Americans avoid (domestic work, construction, agriculture, food packaging etc). Overall, the immigrants (both documented & undocumented) in US economy are built into this niche creation that improves overall efficiency of US labor market.
But what will happen if you start raiding businesses to capture undocumented immigrants? The business will panic, they will avoid hiring undocumented workers (which never was any problem), the immigrants will also avoid taking jobs. Overall, if the crackdowns against immigrants is bad enough, it will slowdown immigration to America - both legal and otherwise. Even, small scale random crackdowns on businesses will create an environment of fear and uncertainty that will disrupt businesses.
What will be impact on construction and agriculture sector? The businesses will suffer and they will try to fill gaps left by undocumented workers with American workers. Some gaps may be filled while other will remain unfilled. Will the wages rise? Not necessarily if all this economic mess also cause price rise. The real wages may not show much improvement. We don’t know what will be the loss in production in the economy. We don’t know what will be the loss of productivity in economy. All this makes one think - What is even the purpose of these ICE raids? Sending national guard to LA, creating all the unrest and disruptions - What is purpose to all this? Now think - What was the purpose of ‘liberation day’ tariffs?
You can’t find any rational and logical meaning to Trump’s policies.
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