Donald Trump's plan to kick 11 million undocumented immigrants out of the United States over the course of two years sounds impractical. How impractical?
Well, for starters, it would eviscerate the economy and reduce the country's GDP by hundreds of billions of dollars. So: pretty impractical!
That's the conclusion of a report released today by the center-right think tank American Action Forum, which quantified just how much labor and productivity would be lost if Trump's plans became reality. The group's conclusions are terrifying—and they're supposed to be. This week, Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, leaving #NeverTrump moderate GOPers with the unenviable task of convincing their more conservative colleagues that a Trump presidency would be a disaster for their own pro-business agenda.
Relying on data rather than morality, the AAF paints a picture of a dystopian future under President Trump in which deported immigrants would leave a gaping hole in the American economy—a hole that not even the sum total of unemployed lawful US residents would be able to fill.
In 2012, roughly 6.8 million workers in the US were undocumented, according to some estimates. The report breaks that figure down by industry and compares the results to Bureau of Labor Statistics data to arrive at a best guess of how many jobs those industries would have to fill with lawful residents to fill the gap. Even if every single unemployed lawful resident filled the jobs left by undocumented immigrants, the report found, the economy would still lose a net total of 4 million workers. That loss of labor equals a productivity decrease of $381.5 billion. Industries like agriculture and construction would be hit hardest, but even the tech industry would stand to lose nearly $21 billion.
Then there's the massive amount of money the federal government would have to spend to actually arrest and transport 11.3 million people out of the country in two years. The report estimates the forced deportations would require roughly 85,000 new apprehension workers; about 48,000 more immigration detention personnel; 31,000 new federal immigration attorneys; and about 1,250 more immigration courts. That's in addition to more than 300,000 new detention beds; about 17,000 chartered flights; and nearly 31,000 bus trips each year.
So yeah, not so much making America great again as making America super-broke. As both Hillary Clinton and the #NeverTrump set begin looking ahead to the general election, the implausibility of all this will, no doubt, emerge as a frequent talking point. And yet, if primary season has taught us anything, it's that fact-checking and number-crunching hasn't worked so far to bring Trump down.
