What if we only deported 5.5 million, half, leaving the vast majority of DACA children and a lot of other alone.
What would be the impact upon the rest of us?
Assume the cost of your food, especially fruits and vegetables, will go up quite a bit. Guess who are those among the migrant farm workers who pick that stuff.
Perhaps it won’t matter to you, but you might not get your hotel room cleaned and your bed made every day. A significant proportion of housekeeping staff in some parts of the country is undocumented aliens.
Your fast food will slow down — remember, one of the issues with the withdrawn nomination for Secretary of Labor was that a significant portion of his work force at Carls JR. and Hardees was undocumented. That tends to be true throughout the fast food industry.
The cost of lawn and yard services will skyrocket, as will many handyman jobs. A lot of that workforce gets hired from gathering points on an as-needed basis.
The cost of household help will go up …..
By now you are getting the picture.
But it is much more than that. Many of these people spend all they make, which returns revenue to local governments through sales taxes. Many businesses get a substantial portion of their revenue from undocumented aliens.
The cost of labor to business will go up, because many abuse undocumented aliens knowing they cannot complain about what they get paid. That should not happen, but replacing them will cost them more.
Those undocumented aliens pay taxes but by and large do not draw benefits — they cannot get unemployment insurance or SNAP benefits or Social Security. They are barred from participating in Obamacare or Medicare or Medicaid. Yes, their kids can go to public schools and in theory they are entitled to emergency treatment at a hospital to stabilize their conditions.
They have a lower crime rate than do native born White Americans.
I am not an economist, although I have taught both macro and micro economics at a college level to high school students. But I would bet the impact of the loss of even half of the undocumented alien population of the United States might well translate to an important impact upon GDP.
It is also worth noting that the focus in the draft document about using the National Guard is along the border with Mexico, and states that border those. But that ignores how many undocumented aliens are elsewhere. That means the impact would fall disproportional on the economies of some states, in a way that could be devastating either on the state and/or local governments.
Let’s be clear. This is driven by hatred of the other, a blind hatred, that ignores the costs of the policy.
But it is happening. That is clear.
And it will cost all of us economically. That is clear.
Of greater importance, it costs us morally, and in the eyes of the world.
Perhaps it is time to take down the Statue of Liberty?