by Aidan Panotes-Bengzon
In Donald Trump’s second presidency, protecting the American economy from the supposed immigrant “threat” has been a major justification for his aggressive anti-immigration policy.
With his “Big Beautiful Bill” formally signed into law on July 4th – a legislation seeking to deport one million immigrants per year – and as narratives of immigrants “stealing” U.S. jobs circulate the media, US Law strays further from the truth. Immigrants are essential to America’s prosperity, and Trump’s deportation plan threatens its success.
Since 2021, America’s immigrant population has skyrocketed, with an estimated average of 1.7 million people per year immigrating to the U.S., a vast increase from before 2020, where the number rested at just 200,000 per year.
In reaction to this surge, President Trump has repeatedly claimed that immigrants will “take” jobs from American citizens. At a North Carolina rally in 2024 Trump claimed that immigrants are “stealing your money, stealing your jobs, and stealing your life,” – invoking this narrative to justify his mass deportation plans.
In truth, this new wave of immigrants does not pose a “threat” to the American economy. Rather, they serve as key contributors to domestic prosperity.
In 2024, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) conducted a report estimating how the immigrant surge would affect the American economy from 2024 to 2034. The CBO found that, between 2021 to 2026, America will hold 8.7 million new immigrants, with an estimated 35% of the total population being lawfully present upon arrival, and the remaining 65% as unlawfully present upon arrival.
Despite the population’s varying legal statuses, as the CBO predicts over its ten-year timeline, the surge will increase government revenues by $387 billion through paying taxes and other fees, and receive $101 billion in government benefits (Medicaid, SNAP, Social Security), which reduces the government deficit by $285 billion.
The immigrant community not only pays nearly triple what they take out of the system, they also offer a multibillion-dollar cushion for government finances.
On top of this benefit, the CBO had found a causal link between this immigration and increased American wages, with the surge increasing nominal gross domestic product (GDP) by $8.9 trillion (or 2.4%) by 2034, with total yearly wages climbing alongside at 3%.
This trend of immigrant-driven GDP growth to yearly wage growth is not mistaken, rather a relationship widely supported by politicians and economists alike.
Senator Chuck Grassley said in response to the CBO’s analyses in 2024, “CBO sees immigration as a positive in the long run to help grow the economy, increase wages, and bring in more tax revenue for the federal government.”
Tarek Hassan, a renowned economist from Boston University, echoed Senator Grassley’s stance that very same year, “More immigrants creates more economic growth, it raises the wages of the people who are already there.”
In essence, the new immigrant wave will actually help the American get paid more – a phenomenon to which the CBO explicitly stated “would not have happened if the surge did not occur.”
However, for the Americans to receive any of these economic benefits from the surge, as the CBO put it, is an outcome entirely “dependent on the actions taken by the U.S. government and by individuals.”
Unfortunately, the Trump Administration’s Big Beautiful Bill will conduct mass immigrant deportations and make immigration to the U.S. more expensive and difficult. This scheme will not only undermine gains from the surge, but will also threaten America and its citizens with an economic crisis.
The legislation aims to deport one million immigrants per year and discourage future immigration, done so by raising naturalization fees, fast-tracking deportations with fewer judicial checks, and increasing ICE’s annual budget by $17 billion, making them America’s largest federally-funded law enforcement agency..
However, what the Trump Administration’s plan had unaccounted for were the painful ripple-effects it will have on the economy and the American people.
In 2024, a team spearheaded by Professor Chloe East of the University of Colorado conducted a study on the bill’s deportation agenda, to which they found that for every one million unauthorized immigrants deported from the U.S., 88,000 American workers will lose their jobs.
Many services rely on the services of low-wage unauthorized immigrant workers, and deporting the community raises business costs, resulting in businesses being forced to cut jobs. Moreover, these job losses would not be temporary, this figure represents a decline in the total number of jobs available for all American workers.
Contrary to narratives claiming that booting immigrants will “return” jobs back to the U.S., aggressively deporting immigrants will actually erase jobs from the country – an outcome which, if the Big Beautiful Bill fulfills its quota in the years to come, may trigger an economic recession in the long-run.
Adding insult to injury, the Trump Administration’s plan doesn’t just shrink the economy, they are eager to pay billions of dollars to make it happen.
Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin warned that “mass removal [of immigrants] would make GDP shrink by 6% ($1.6 trillion) – about a Great Recession-sized hit.” To deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants present in the U.S., and to bar any future illegal entry into the nation, is a scheme which would cost “$400-$600 billion to execute,” Holtz-Eakin stated further.
Expanding immigrant detention facilities, increasing ICE operation funding, the hiring of tens of thousands new ICE agents to account for millions of deportations – these will become billion-dollar costs which will harm GDP, erase American jobs, and threaten a recession. These are all costs the Trump Administration is willing to pay for in the Big Beautiful Bill.
The Trump Administration’s concern over America’s unauthorized immigrant population is not entirely unreasonable, but their overly-ambitious approach – conducting mass deportations and placing harsher immigration barriers – disregards the economic benefits of immigrants and the harm brought upon by their mass removal. It leaves America’s people and economy to bear the burden of their negligent actions.
The government cannot expect to solve the immigration problem immediately. The solution requires a more nuanced approach: fewer, more thorough deportation cases to spread costs over time, softer naturalization processes to incentivize immigration, and overall, moves that safeguard both America’s immigrant community and economy.
In the following months, however, it is difficult to see the Trump Administration’s aggressive crackdown shifting, given their current momentum. The passing of the Big Beautiful Bill provides the administration with the resources necessary to accelerate their plans, and their determination to fulfill them displays no signs of slowing down.
Corrective change still remains within reach for the current administration. If they recognize the importance of the immigrant community and reform their policies to embrace immigration, it will save jobs, protect immigrants, and bring wealth to the economy.
If they do not, wasted growth, lost jobs, and a deep recession wait just around the corner.