Description
Former president Donald Trump has promised to carry out the "largest deportation program in American history," a step targeting unauthorized immigrants and endorsed in the Republican Party's 2024 platform. But mass deportations would result in lower US GDP and employment than otherwise through 2040.
We analyzed two scenarios—deporting 1.3 million or 8.3 million unauthorized workers. The low-end number is based on President Dwight D. Eisenhower's deportation of 1.3 million persons in the 1950s. The high-end count is based on calculations that there will be approximately 8.3 million unauthorized workers in the United States in 2028. We compared the results with a baseline US economic forecast of what would happen without such deportations.
Deportation programs of either size would cause lower US GDP and employment through 2040 than the baseline projection. The scenarios differ only by the degree of damage inflicted on people, households, firms, and the overall economy.
In the low scenario, if 1.3 million unauthorized workers are deported, by 2028, US GDP is 1.2 percent below the baseline. In the high scenario, GDP is 7.4 percent lower than baseline by 2028. On the assumption that the baseline GDP growth is approximately 1.9 percent per year, this projection implies that the level of US GDP in 2028 will be almost unchanged from that in 2024—meaning no economic growth over the second Trump administration from this policy alone.
The findings are consistent with PIIE senior fellow Michael Clemens's explanation of why deportation of unauthorized workers reduces employment for workers in the United States. Our model finds that by 2028 in both scenarios, employment measured in hours worked is below the baseline—1.1 percent under the low scenario and nearly 7 percent in the extreme case. Trump assumes employers would replace deported workers with native workers. But historically, employers do not find it easy to replace such workers and instead invest in less labor-intensive technologies. The net result is fewer people employed in key business sectors like services, agriculture, and manufacturing.
Aside from the moral issue of rounding up millions of people, and disrupting their families, workplaces, and livelihoods, Trump's "America first" proposal for mass deportations would raise prices, cost jobs, and harm the US economy.
This PIIE Chart is adapted from Anjali V. Bhatt, Megan Hogan, Warwick McKibbin, and Marcus Noland's blog, "Mass deportations would harm the US economy."
