Expelling Immigrant Workers May Also Send Away the Work They Do<br />Annual interior apprehensions of unauthorized immigrants<br />by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)*<br />Annual interior apprehensions of unauthorized<br />immigrants by agents of Immigration and Customs<br />Most of what we know about the effect of immigration on American-born workers is based on studies of what happens when immigrants arrive.<br />The researchers found that employment and wages in states like Arizona, where apprehensions by Immigration<br />and Customs Enforcement surged, did no better than in states where apprehensions changed little, like Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.<br />Even if the Trump administration were to deploy the 10,000 immigration agents it plans to hire across the nation’s fields to detain<br />and deport farmhands working illegally, farmers are very unlikely to raise wages and improve working conditions to attract American workers instead.<br />It found that the exclusion of Mexican farmworkers “had little measurable effect on the labor market for domestic<br />farmworkers.” Instead, growers mechanized some crops and dropped crops that remained labor intensive.
