“I finally felt a sense of peace,” said Rebecca Shi, CEO of the American Business Immigration Alliance.
The breathing time did not last long.
On Wednesday, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin announced: “For industries that have violent criminals or intentional vandalism (immigration law enforcement) efforts, there will be no safe space. Work-site enforcement remains the basis for our efforts to protect public safety, national security and economic stability.
Flipflop’s confused businesses are trying to figure out the government’s actual policies, Shi now says: “One more fear and worry.”
“It’s not a way to run a business when your employees are at this level of stress and trauma,” she said.
Trump’s campaign promises to deport millions of immigrants working illegally in the United States – a problem that has long inspired his Republican base. A few weeks ago, when White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller provided U.S. immigration and customs law enforcement with a quota of 3,000 arrests per day to U.S. immigration and customs law enforcement, quotas for U.S. immigration and customs law enforcement increased in the first five months of Trump’s second semester.
Suddenly, ice seemed to be everywhere. “We saw ice sheet agents on the farm pointing assault rifles at cows and evacuating half of the workforce,” said Shi, whose coalition represents 1,700 employers and supports the increase in legal immigration.
An ice attack left the New Mexico dairy shop with only 20 workers, 55 years old, “You can’t turn off the cows,” Beverly Idsinga, executive director of the New Mexico dairy producer
Claudio Gonzalez, a chef at Izakaya Gazen, a small Tokyo neighborhood in Los Angeles, said many of his Hispanic workers, whether they are legally in the country or not, are working due to concerns that they will target ICE. His restaurant is several blocks away from a series of federal buildings, including the Ice Detention Center.
“Sometimes they are too scared to make the transition,” Gonzalez said. “They feel like it’s based on skin color.”
In some places, the problem is not ice, but rumors on the ice. During the cherry harvest period in Washington state, many foreign-born workers stayed away from the orchard after hearing reports of imminent immigration attacks. Typically one operation with 150 pickers dropped to 20. That’s OK, there’s actually no sign of ice in the orchard.
“We haven’t heard of any real attacks,” said Jon Folden, manager of Orchard’s farm collaboration Bluebirds in the Wenatchee Valley in Washington. “We’ve heard a lot of rumors.” ”
Jennie Murray, CEO of the National Immigration Forum, said some immigrant parents fear that their workplace would be raided and dragged away on the ice while their children were in school. They asked themselves, and she said, “Did I show up and then my sophomore took off the school bus and didn’t have parents to raise them? Maybe I shouldn’t be at work.”‘
The horror story is conveyed to Trump through business advocacy and immigration reform groups such as the Shiite Alliance, as well as members of Congress. Last Thursday, the president posted on his Truth Social Platform “Our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business have been saying that our very positive policies for immigration are taking up very good, long-term workers and those jobs are nearly impossible to replace.”
This is another case where Trump’s political agenda crashes Smack into economic reality. With the U.S. unemployment rate below 4.2%, many businesses are urgent for workers and immigrants provide them.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, less than 19% of foreign-born workers are employed in the U.S. in 2023.
“For me, the target of the people who attacked these are targeting farms and feedlots and people on the dairy team don’t know how the farm works,” Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, said in a virtual press conference Tuesday.
Chief Economist Torsten Sip Ate Apollo Global ManagementIt is estimated that undocumented workers account for 13% of U.S. farm jobs and 7% of hotel businesses such as hotels, restaurants and bars in January.
Pew Research Center found last year that 75% of registered voters in the U.S. (including 59% of Trump supporters) agreed that undocumented immigrants mostly fill jobs that U.S. citizens don’t want. Large numbers of immigration allow the United States in 2022 and 2023 To overcome the outbreak of inflation without falling into recession.
In the past, economists estimated that if the economy is not hot and inflation is not ignited, U.S. employers will not have more than 100,000 jobs per month. But, Brookings economists Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson calculated that monthly job growth could reach 160,000 to 200,000 due to immigration without adding pressure.
Now, Trump’s deportation plan and the uncertainty around him are suppressing businesses and the economy.
“The reality is that a large part of our industry relies on immigration labor – skilled and hardworking people have been part of our workforce for years. When suddenly suppressed or raided, it slows down the schedule, raises costs, and makes it harder to plan ahead and makes it easier to make Florida’s Florida’s Patrick Murphy said. “We are not sure what the rule will be or how it will be implemented from one month to the next. This uncertainty makes it really hard to run a forward-looking business.”
Douglas Holtz Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now president of the conservative American Action Forum think tank, added: “Ice has detained people who are legal here, so now legal immigrants are afraid to go to work…all of which goes against other economic goals that the government may have. Neither immigration nor economic policies are shelved.
