Acceso usuarios
Kit Johnson
The second Trump administration has pursued an array of immigration enforcement initiatives from denaturalization and visa scrutiny to termination of humanitarian programs and aggressive workplace raids. Legal scholars have sharply debated these measures, but almost entirely through constitutional, statutory, and rights-based frames. This Article exposes a critical omission in immigration law scholarship: the economics of large-scale noncitizen removal. Drawing on major empirical studies of historic enforcement episodes—including Mexican repatriation between 1929-1934, Japanese internment during World War II, Arizona’s immigration restrictionism from 2007-2012, and federal immigration enforcement efforts of 2008-2015—this Article demonstrates that broad noncitizen removals may reduce the employment and wages of U.S.-born workers. These consequences are particularly significant for the state of California, which is home to 10.8 million foreign-born residents who comprise nearly 40 percent of the state’s workforce. Using demographic and labor-force data, this Article shows how the administration’s second-term immigration enforcement initiatives threaten California’s economy by constricting business expansion, reducing complementary U.S.-born employment, depressing wages, shrinking tax revenues, and ultimately suppressing state GDP. Although focused on California, this analysis has national implications. The economic record makes clear that immigration enforcement on this scale undermines— not advances—the economic interests of the country it purports to protect.
