Trump's mass deportation plan could end up hurting economic growth

WASHINGTON, United States — President-elect Donald Trump's hardline immigration proposals -- including a controversial mass deportation plan -- could prove economically damaging, analysts say, with US sectors that rely heavily on foreign workers like agriculture and construction especially hard hit.

US authorities estimate that there are around 11 million unauthorized people living in the United States, the vast majority of whom come from Mexico.

Around 8.3 million unauthorized people were in the labor force in 2022, according to a recent estimate from the Pew Research Center. That was equivalent to just under five percent of the overall workforce.

"Today our cities are flooded with illegal aliens," Trump said on the campaign trail earlier this year, adding: "Americans are being squeezed out of the labor force and their jobs are taken."

The reality, however, is more complex; many of the sectors that could be the hardest-hit have long struggled to attract US workers.

"The construction and agriculture industries would lose at least one in eight workers, while in hospitality, about one in 14 workers would be deported due to their undocumented status," the non-profit American Immigration Council (AIC) said in a recent report on Trump's deportation plans.

The deportations would also impact "more than 30 percent" of plasterers, roofers, and painters, along with a quarter of housekeeping cleaners, according to the report.

A recent joint study by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Brookings Institution, and the Niskanen Center estimated that Trump's immigration plans could curb US GDP growth in 2025 by as much as 0.4 percentage points.

The impact on growth would primarily come from the direct effect of having fewer foreign workers producing goods and services, with an additional, smaller decline in output coming from less consumer spending by those groups.

In such a scenario, the authors said, "legal immigration is slightly below where it was during the pre-pandemic Trump administration, while enforcement and deportation efforts reach levels not seen in recent decades."

A total of 3.2 million people would be deported during Trump's term under this projection, with