Former President Donald J. Trump shakes hands with Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott while coming on stage after receiving Abbotts's endorsement for president during a rally at the South Texas International Airport in Edinburg on Nov. 19, 2023.
Gov. Greg Abbott demonstrated his fealty to former President Donald Trump and auditioned for vice president this week, but if these two end up running the country, it’s employers who will struggle to fill jobs.
At a campaign event in Edinburg, 30 miles from Mexico, the GOP leaders celebrated border walls, troop and trooper deployments, floating death traps and contempt for immigrants. Both men know nativism plays well with the Republican base.
“I ran largely on the border (in 2016),” Trump told the crowd. “Since these guys got it … you have some real bad people coming into our country.”
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During Trump’s time in office, you had some real good people not come into our country. Immigration is critical to U.S. economic growth, and Trump’s proposed policies, if he wins in 2024, would not only crack down on unauthorized border crossings but stunt the nation’s workforce.
Trump and his campaign aides have trickled out proposed immigration plans, and if implemented, would restrict the arrival of prospective Americans to the slowest pace in history and expel millions of critical workers.
For the first time since the Cold War, Trump would impose an ideological test on visa applicants. He promised earlier this year to block any communists, Marxists or socialists from entering the country.
His administration would reimpose and expand a so-called Muslim ban to restrict arrivals from certain Middle Eastern and African countries. The 13 nations he initially targeted included Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania and Venezuela.
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While in the White House, Trump reduced legal immigration through 400 executive actions. While the policies took a while to get rolling, he took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to crack down.
In the third quarter of 2016, the U.S. issued 318,000 green cards granting permanent residency. Trump reduced that number to 240,000 by the second quarter of 2020, and by the third quarter, he reduced it to only 79,000.
If elected again, Trump’s administration would reimpose strict limits on refugees and terminate resettlement programs. He has promised to enforce “a merit-based immigration system that protects American labor and promotes American values,” but without explaining what that means.
While this may appeal to some Republicans, it spells trouble for the economy. The U.S. does not have enough unemployed people to fill the 9.5 million jobs currently open, Department of Labor data shows. Some of the hardest-to-fill positions are the lowest-paid and unskilled jobs immigrants have historically taken.
A U.S. Census Bureau report released this month shows the U.S. population will shrink without increased immigration. Maintaining the current population is critical for economic growth and funding programs like Social Security and Medicare.
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Trump has promised to exacerbate matters with mass deportations of workers and families already in the country.
The former president told supporters in Iowa he would round up unauthorized immigrants using former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback” as a model. In 1954, federal soldiers, National Guard troops and federal authorities deported 1.3 million people, mostly of Mexican descent.
“We will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” Trump said. To do so, he promised to shift massive portions of the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to immigration enforcement.
Mass deportations would devastate the Texas economy. About 1.7 million people are already here without authorization, and 1 million are employed. An estimated 311,000 construction workers and 152,000 hospitality personnel are working without proper papers in jobs no one else wants or can do, census data shows.
Texas does not have enough unemployed people to perform this labor that we all depend upon. Construction and hospitality companies have begged for expanded worker programs for decades, only to have Republican politicians reject immigration reform.
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Trump also wants to take away birthright citizenship, meaning that people born in the United States would not automatically receive the right to remain. He would also end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects so-called Dreamers from deportation because they came here as children.
Abbott is an enthusiastic ally, spending billions of Texas taxpayer dollars to add to Trump’s border wall and deploy troops to the border. He is also a perfect vice president because he lacks charisma but knows how to raise money.
Chris Tomlinson, named 2021 columnist of the year by the Texas Managing Editors, writes commentary about money, politics and life in Texas. Sign up for his “Tomlinson’s Take” newsletter at HoustonChronicle.com/TomlinsonNewsletter or Expressnews.com/TomlinsonNewsletter.
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