Trump’s immigration policy puts farms, factories, and construction in the US at risk

Chicago (USA).- Mass layoffs, paralyzed farms, and halted construction are some of the consequences beginning to be left by the President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, whose federal raids and threats are emptying key sectors such as agriculture, construction, tourism, and the food industry, according to business owners and activists. Experts also warn that fear is being used to dismiss without compensation workers with decades of experience and that these policies could hinder the country’s economic growth.

“ICE doesn’t know how a farm operates”

This labor crisis due to Trump’s immigration policy is felt on farms, dairy farms, meatpacking plants, and in general in the food, construction, and tourism industries. “It’s clear to me that those pushing these raids on fields and farms have no idea how a farm operates,” Matt Teagarden, executive director of the Kansas Livestock Association, told EFE. “Losing more than half the workforce in hours, there’s no way to operate a business,” he lamented. Fear causes even workers with residency and employment permits to hide because they have undocumented family members, the business owners agreed. Jim Tobin, president of the National Association of Home Builders, warned that construction companies across the country are reporting absences from their teams, which delays projects and raises costs.

Although the Trump Administration claims it is only targeting undocumented immigrants, who make up 4% of the U.S. workforce, its measures are aimed at legal immigrants such as students with visas, refugees, and beneficiaries of temporary work permits and other protections.

“We import workers or we import food”

Business owners warn that with lower production there will be more inflation. “We have an option here: either we use imported workers or we import the food. We need a significant (immigration) reform to solve the problems with our workforce,” claimed Teagarden.

In Elgin (Illinois), according to activists, a factory laid off 300 people, following a call from ICE.

“It’s a terrible situation, they are taking advantage of the fear of Trump to fire fathers and mothers who have more than 20 years of seniority and experience in the plants,” Cristobal Cavazos, an activist from Immigrant Solidarity and Casa DuPage Workers’ Center, told EFE. In his opinion, the government’s attacks on workers who were considered essential during the covid 19 pandemic, “shows what is wrong in the country”, is a “true weapon of mass destruction”, he affirmed.

“If workers grow, the economy grows”

Uncertainty about the applied immigration policy also contributes to an “economic slowdown,” said Stuart Anderson, from the National Foundation for American Policy. “If you want to have a growing economy, you need a growing workforce,” he stated. A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas warned that this immigration policy will reduce U.S. economic growth by almost one percentage point this year. Economists expect growth to cool to a rate of 1.5% in 2025, compared to almost 3% recorded in each of the previous two years. In 2022, nearly 14% of construction workers were undocumented, compared to 15% in the agricultural sector and 7.6% in the hotel industry, according to the American Immigration Council. “If they don’t show up for work, the production of those industries falls significantly and we see real damage in those industrial sectors,” said Robert Bruno, professor and director of the labor education program at the University of Illinois.

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“A lot of income is lost, a lot of GDP, and there are knock-on effects due to the absence of these workers in their positions,” he added. A similar shortage in the 1940s in the United States led to the Bracero Program, an agreement between Mexico and the U.S. that allowed millions of Mexicans to work legally through temporary labor contracts.

Layoffs in large corporations

The layoffs of experienced immigrants – legal and undocumented – in large corporations such as Disney, Walmart, Amazon, and Nestlé due to pressure from federal authorities, are also beginning to impact the economy, while companies face increasing difficulties in finding replacements. Disney began in May to lay off employees with temporary legal status, and Walmart and Amazon followed. In Illinois, suburbs like Bensenville, Elgin, and Schambourg, near Chicago, are inhabited by people without legal status, who were always hired by large companies like Nestlé without fear of the application of federal labor laws. However, the Swiss multinational recently fired more than 600 employees under federal orders to get rid of undocumented workers, which left people who had stable jobs for many years on the street, and without any compensation.