Experts say any path a future Trump administration picks would be complicated and costly, due to both the billions of dollars needed to fund mass deportation and the significant ripple effects that would hit the economy.
The estimated amount of taxes undocumented immigrants pay annually, according to the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
According to Zeke Hernandez of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, such estimates show that undocumented immigrants make a significant contribution – something governments would miss out on if they’re deported. But Hernandez, author of “The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers,” argues that talking about the taxes these immigrants pay only paints part of the picture.
“The other tax that governments miss out on, which is usually not talked about, are the taxes that businesses would have paid had they been able to expand and grow. … When a business can’t hire and has to either contract or not grow, it will have less profits and less revenue, and therefore pay less in corporate taxes,” he says.
Critics of illegal immigration argue that the cost to US citizens is far outweighed by any taxes undocumented immigrants pay. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which argues for increasing immigration restrictions, estimates Americans pay more than $150 billion annually due to illegal immigration.
The organization also argues that mass deportation would make more jobs available for Americans.
But Hernandez says history has shown that’s not the case.
A study based on an analysis of deportations that occurred during the Obama-era “Secure Communities” program, for example, indicates 88,000 US-born workers would lose jobs for every 1 million unauthorized immigrants deported.
Why would deportations hurt US-born workers?
Businesses end up investing less in growing or creating new companies, and more in technologies that replace lower-skilled workers, Hernandez says.
The recent study provides a telling example, he says, of how large-scale deportation efforts have ripple effects beyond immigrant communities. The economic impact of mass deportation, he says, would amount to “utter disaster.”
“We Americans, we, the country, we, in our communities, would be significantly damaged,” he says.
