Border wallTrump’s wall ignores the economic logic of undocumented immigrant labor

By Lise Nelson

Published 1 November 2016

Donald Trump portrays undocumented immigrants as invading “criminals” supported and abetted by the Mexican government is, and who pose a dire threat to the nation. Trump’s call for building a wall assumes that the cause of undocumented migration originates in Mexico, in the Mexican government, or in the criminal intent of migrants. A border wall makes intuitive sense if you assume the cause of undocumented migration is external to the United States. This is a belief that ignores not only the ease of breaching such a wall, but more fundamentally the economics of low-wage, undocumented labor migration that generated these flows in the first place.

In the final weeks of his campaign, Donald Trump has reiterated his call to build a wall between Mexico and the United States. A Pew Research survey shows his supporters are united by, perhaps more than any other issue, anti-immigrant sentiment.

To him, like many of his supporters, this wave of invading “criminals” supported and abetted by the Mexican government is a dire threat to the nation.

Put aside for a moment the racist dimensions of this rhetoric. The wall argument assumes the cause of undocumented migration originates in Mexico, in the Mexican government, or in the criminal intent of migrants. A border wall makes intuitive sense if you assume the cause of undocumented migration is external to the United States.

This is a belief that ignores not only the ease of breaching such a wall, but more fundamentally the economics of low-wage, undocumented labor migration that generated these flows in the first place.

Over the last two decades, U.S. recruitment of workers without documentation has drawn millions over the border even as we have invested billions in policing, barricades, and surveillance on that same border.

My research, like that of others, sheds light on the day-to-day incentives employers have for recruiting undocumented workers. The cumulative effect of these recruitment practices, which occur in nearly every geographic region of the country, is to invite large-scale migration across the U.S.-Mexico border. It is a draw that is highly resistant to our efforts to stop it. From this perspective, the origins of the current situation, in which 6.4 percent of our workforce lacks documentation, lie north of the border as much as south of it.

A preference for the undocumented
My colleagues and I have conducted research in U.S. communities where undocumented Latino immigrants live and work, including interviews with their employers. We focused on small businesses in rural Colorado and Georgia. We investigated how and why entrepreneurs in construction, landscaping and low-wage service industries began actively seeking to hire undocumented Latino immigrants starting in the mid-1990s even though immigrant workers were largely absent from these places prior to that time.