For a brief moment, President Donald Trump appeared to have finally realized his immigrant roundup went too far. Perhaps arresting the low-paid workers who pick our food, pluck our chickens, wash dishes in restaurants and make the beds in hotels was not such a great idea after all.
You know, deep in his authoritarian heart, he’s a businessman who needs approval. After years of railing at “Biden inflation,” he sure doesn’t want his own Trump brand of skyrocketing prices.
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” he wrote in a post last week on his Truth Social platform.
His about-face apparently came after the Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was able to shake him loose from the clutches of anti-immigration czar Stephen Miller to tell him the raids were bad for bidness.
But on Monday he reversed his reversal and the raids will reportedly continue.
Until the next reversal, that is, because he’s caught in a pickle.
Backing off the raids on farms and hotels angered the MAGA core who want every single one of the estimated 13 million illegal immigrants kicked out of the country.
Sure, it’s a logistic — and humanitarian — nightmare. The holding cells are filled to the brink, immigration courts are backed up and he’s barely started.
Charles Kuck, one of the top immigration attorneys in the Southeast, and a very busy guy these days, said Trump’s goal to deport a million immigrants this year “is a physical impossibility and will create havoc on the economy.”
The roundups will raise prices. “Everyone knows this, but is afraid to say so,” Kuck said.
But the president must feed the anger and fear that built his base and abide by his promise to kick ‘em out.
On the other hand, Trump knows, or some of those who advise him know, that immigrants help drive our economy.
Georgia is a case in point. It’s a state that often strains its shoulder patting itself on the back about how good it is at fomenting business. And immigrants are a big part of that.
The U.S. Census says 11% of Georgia’s 10.7 million residents are foreign born. Those 1.2 million immigrants have an outsized influence, making up at least 15% of the workforce.
As to the number who are unauthorized, I’ve seen guesstimates ranging from 339,000 to 400,000 and it sure might be higher.
The USDA estimates that 40% of the nation’s farmworkers are illegal immigrants. They came to do the jobs that Americans will not do.
“Agriculture currently contributes more than $70 billion each year to the Georgia’s economy,” says the Georgia Department of Agriculture, “and is a cornerstone for many of the state’s smaller and more rural communities.”
Trump-loving communities.
A good chunk of that economic output comes from immigrants performing labor-intensive, backbreaking work.
Georgia has been down this path before. In 2011, the legislature passed HB 87, an immigration enforcement law that critics called the Show-me-your-papers Act. It scared off thousands of workers and forced farmers to let crops rot in their fields.
Gary Black, then the state’s agriculture commissioner, told U.S. senators that incentives to nudge unemployed Georgians to take farm jobs sputtered “because the new workers were too slow and often quit because of the strenuous labor involved,” according to a story at the time.
In December, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce published a study about the “unprecedented challenge (of) finding workers to fill open jobs.”
Georgia was listed in the “more severe” category in the top (or bottom) 12 states, with 72 available workers for every 100 open jobs.
Just this year, the Associated General Contractors of America found that 76% of construction companies just can’t find enough workers. Remember, it’s hard pushing a wheelbarrow in Georgia’s hot summers.
It’s the same story in the poultry and carpet industries, landscaping, housekeeping, restaurants and cab driving. It even includes places where you get your toenails buffed.
That sector, too, is scared. Earlier this month, immigration agents raided a Marietta nail salon and arrested 12 workers.
Credit: ICE photo
Credit: ICE photo
Trump was elected partly on his vow to get tough on immigration. A recent USA Today poll says that 51% of respondents approve of his handling of immigration, while 49% disapprove.
Pretty much everybody agrees on going after those who are violent or commit serious crimes (more than just illegally entering the country.)
When asked if longtime immigrants who have not committed crimes should get deported, only 24% said yes.
Darlene Xiomara Rodriguez, a faculty member at Kennesaw State University and co-founder of the Georgia Immigration Research Center, noted that many immigrant workers “have been nonvisible and have now become visibilized.”
She thinks that debate will, in time, be a good thing. She pointed to a survey from the American Immigration Council that said immigrants in Georgia, including those who are unauthorized, contribute more than $15 billion annually in taxes.
It is certainly clear America needs to have a handle on immigration and a secure border.
But what Trump is doing will lead to a nation of unmade beds, overgrown lawns, sagging roofs and unbuilt homes.
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