42 percent of American farm workers have no work authorization, because they cannot get it. The United States sets quotas on how many people can get work visas, far below the number needed to fill the available jobs. This leads not to American workers working on farms but to poorly educated migrant laborers filling the unfilled jobs in the United States.
H.R. 1603 would have started to solve this problem in 2021. It passed the House but was not introduced in the Senate, so it died.
So here we are in 2025 and it looks like a certainty that the increasing deportations under the Trump administration is going to cause fewer people to come to the United States. Many undocumented workers are going to leave the United States, and those jobs will not be refilled.
There is also a highly problematic legal issue regarding how ICE is doing deportations. The people who are being deported are not being given a trial, which is unconstitutional. They are not receiving a warrant for the arrest of the suspected undocumented immigrant, and it is very clear that they need a warrant if they are going to literally pick someone up off the street. This is unconstitutional. ICE has been issuing its own warrants for many years, and this is pretty clearly unconstitutional.
This image from Statista does a great job at showing where these workers are.
The immediate response will be a rapid decrease in the ability of the United States to build new buildings. Expect housing to get even more expensive in response.
We will see an immediate decrease in the number of people working in agriculture, which will cause food shortages and increase prices. Worried about the price of eggs? Now the price of EVERYTHING you eat will increase. Crops will again rot in the fields because of a lack of workers, just like in Trump’s first term.
If you plan on going to a hotel, expect that there will be less staff at every hotel you go to. This will lead to jobs being half done. I hope you like dirty sheets!
So remember how every politician in the last 30 years, especially Trump, has been going on about increasing manufacturing? Well 5% of manufacturing jobs are going to go away under this self-deportation which will lead to less manufacturing at home, again fueling inflation.
Between the tariffs, the deportation of people, and loss of public sector employment, you should expect this will be a very bumpy economic ride!
7.5 million undocumented workers leaving the United States will create major economic repercussions. The reduction in labor will cause a drop in aggregate supply, increasing prices.
As America’s economy drags for the next two years his popularity will continue to decline. This will likely lead to Democrats winning the midterms and hopefully impeaching him and Vance.
This is the best case scenario. Our next president has five main jobs:
- End Trump’s tariffs.
- Restore public sector employment as much as possible.
- Pass immigration reform.
- Ukrainian NATO accession.
- Universal health care.
If this occurs, we can recover.
But what if we don’t? I think as long as we have extremist republican presidents like Bush and Trump they will continue to move us down the path of fewer people being willing to work in or even visit the United States. This is devastating to our economy. It cannot last forever. Let’s see what happens when people stop wanting to work and study in the United States. Let’s see these industries which are dependent on migrant workers collapse. Let’s see the economic consequences.
After this exercise in insanity we can do real immigration reform which will allow real pathways for people to be here legally.
This is not my preferred method. I want to see the law change so people can come to the United States legally. I want it to be easy for someone who gets a job offer to get a work visa to be here. I want the exploitation of undocumented immigrants to end.
But unfortunately I don’t see any other way right now. Things are going to get worse before they get better.
But once they do, here are some specifics on immigration reform which I want to see:
- End numerical caps on immigration and work visas.
- Anyone with a valid job offer can get a work visa. The work visa must be from a registered American business and they need to report taxable income within 2 months of the person entering the country.
- Undocumented immigrants currently living and working in the United States should have the right to get a visa to stay here as long as they have not committed any serious crimes.
The cause of illegal immigration is due to a couple of factors. America has a stronger economy compared to Latin America, and the War on Drugs has been devastating to so many communities in Mexico.. This attracts workers seeking stability and higher wages from Latin America. Latin American economies are kept down primarily because of endemic corruption.
In order to prevent this immigration leading to spiraling housing prices, we need to build more housing in this country. The easiest way to do this is to turn surface parking lots into multi-story mixed-use housing.
Fighting drug addiction is honestly quite simple, and that is to ensure everybody has access to health insurance. Source 1, Source 2, Source 3
We have a system right now which denies employment to people struggling with addiction, and since health care is often tied to employment, it becomes very difficult for people who are uninsured or on Medicaid to get the treatment they deserve. Drug addiction is cruel. This must change.
If you don’t want immigrants to come to the United States the best answer would be to advocate for Mexico to stamp out corruption and improve their economy. End the war on drugs, and instead focus on rehabilitation to drive down the cost of drugs, draining the cartels of money. Reducing the power of cartels will reduce violence in Mexico. Less violence in Mexico and Central America will naturally lead to fewer Mexicans seeking a better life in the United States. Fewer Mexicans seeking a better life in the United States means less illegal immigration, but also a shortage of workers in industries which rely on them without systemic visa reform.
This is why the United States needs to change our work visa laws to prevent a massive labor shortage in farming and hospitality. I want to see drug addiction be curtailed. I want the cartels to lose. I want the war on drugs to end. But a major consequence of this without fixing our immigration laws is a massive labor shortage in the United States. Once we have a Democratic trifecta we need to fix the work visa issue immediately which is the only way to end illegal immigration without causing a severe worker shortage.