Trump’s wall ignores the economic logic of undocumented immigrant labor

What started for many as a short-term solution to fill a labor gap turned into a preference for hiring undocumented workers. Recruitment efforts thus intensified, causing a significant growth in the Latino immigrant population in both places. In a rural Georgia county, the Latino population increased 1,760 percent between 1990 and 2010, due to the increase in these recruitment efforts by businesses involved in construction, landscaping, cleaning and food provision.

Why did businesses that rely on low-wage workers develop a preference for immigrants and particularly undocumented ones?

In interviews, employers describe the undocumented Latino immigrants they hire as among the most reliable, honest and hardworking employees they have ever had. As one Georgia employer described it: “I think about, if I had to get rid of the nine Hispanics that I’ve got tomorrow and replace them with locals, to get the same amount of output, I would have to hire fifteen instead of nine and I’d probably have to pay them $1 an hour more each, and that figures up quick. And there’s sometimes that you just can’t find people to do the work.”

Most employers we interviewed began by the late 1990s to organize their businesses around the productivity and discipline offered by an undocumented immigrant workforce.

This view not only contradicts Trump’s assumptions about undocumented low-wage immigrants’ “criminal” character, it sheds light on their role in a range of economic sectors across the country. Over the past two decades, low-wage industries across the U.S. have increasingly recruited and relied on immigrantworkers, many of whom lack documentation.

The economic benefits created by the presence of low-wage, undocumented immigrant workers are experienced not only by the American businesses that hire them, but also by consumers. Where our research was conducted, consumers enjoyed lower-cost housing and a range of cheaper restaurant, landscaping and cleaning services due to their presence. These kinds of economic benefits explain why Donald Trump hired undocumented Polish workersto help build Trump Tower.

The “ideal” worker
People who enter the United States without documents are usually motivated by profound economic need, a need that animates them to embark on a dangerous and uncertain journey. Poverty places them in a position of vulnerability that often proves to be an asset to their U.S. employers. Eager for employment, they often accept difficult, irregular, and low-paying jobs they can do without being fluent in English.

The threat of deportation adds an additional layer of insecurity and vulnerability. Undocumented residents live in fear. That applies even to those who are raising citizen children, who are gainfully employed over many years, who have no criminal record and who pay sales, property and income taxes.They live with a constant threat of deportation and a deep sense of being viewed with suspicion by some in the communities where they live. It is a suspicion often tied to racial animosity. Latino residents are frequently profiled as “illegal” – regardless of their actual legal status or nationality, a trend that affects not only labor markets but whole communities.

The combination of poverty and fear of deportation inspires most undocumented immigrants to tie themselves closely to their employers. They work hard and avoid public spaces. In the words of sociologists Jill Harrison (University of Colorado-Boulder) and Jennifer Lloyd (University of Wisconsin-Madison), undocumented workers become “compliant workaholics” in order to survive. Employers in low-wage industries have found this disciplined, loyal, and flexible workforce very attractive.

The economic power of this process is resistant to border control and physical barriers installed over the last two decades – precursors to the fantasy of an impenetrable wall. It is telling that the steady growth of the undocumented workforce between the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s happened despite a nearly constant growth of spending on border patrol, new barriers, and surveillance. Only in the wake of the 2008 economic crash, which dramatically slowed recruitment processes, did the unauthorized Mexican workforce in the United State start to decline.

Trump, of course, pairs his call for a huge wall with a promise to enforce mass deportation. This is equally unrealistic in economic terms. Economists have estimated that if Trump were successful in removing all undocumented workers, our GDP would fall by 5.7 percent. This is in addition to the cost of such a deportation effort, which is estimated at requiring $400 billion in new federal spending. Finally, there is the human cost of this plan given that in 2012 4.5 million U.S. citizen children have one or more undocumented parents.

While there is a clear economic logic to the presence of millions of undocumented workers in the United States, a logic that I believe we misunderstand at our peril, the current system does not provide justice nor a decent life for low-wage immigrant or nonimmigrant workers.

I believe comprehensive immigration reform would make it possible for undocumented workers to legalize, a place from which they could demand better wages and working conditions. Their improved situation would actually help level the playing field – eliminating the unfair advantage of illegal status in the labor market – for nonimmigrant workers. Legalization and a path to citizenship not only provide an ethical path out of our current situation, they make economic sense as well.

Lise Nelson is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Associate Professor of Geography, Pennsylvania State University. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution / No derivative).