At one time, most Americans were farmers. By late 20th century, the vast majority of farmers had moved to the city for jobs in manufacturing and services. More recently, China is going through the same sort of transformation, as hundreds of millions of people move from the countryside to the city. This has contributed to an astounding increase in Chinese productivity.
A recent article in the Financial Times discussed the effects of deporting undocumented workers:
According to a survey carried out by the National Council of Agricultural Employers in 2020, just 337 US-born workers applied for the 97,691 season agricultural jobs advertised between March and May that year.
Critics of immigration often suggest that the so-called “shortage” of workers is a myth, and that if firms paid more there would be plenty of Americans willing to take these jobs. But how much more? Suppose you raised wages enough to double the number of US-born workers applying for jobs, that would still represent less than 1% of the required workforce. Now suppose you raised wages enough to increase the number of US-born workers 10-fold. You’d still only be meeting about 3% of the demand for agricultural workers.
To be clear, I’m not denying that there is some wage that would be high enough to produce 97,691 US-born applicants. But that wage is likely to be far too high to allow for the profitable production of most labor intensive crops. Fruit and vegetable fields might be replaced with wheat fields.
You might argue that farmers could raise food prices to cover the extra labor costs. But that would lead to American produce being replaced by imports from other countries.
You might argue that we could raise food prices and put tariffs on imported food.
I don’t doubt that it would be possible to produce some mix of policies that resulted in lots of US-born workers leaving their factory jobs in big cities and moving back to the countryside, where they’d start picking fruits and vegetables. There is some policy mix that would reverse the tides of history and begin to move us back toward our agrarian past. But while we are doing that, I’d expect the Chinese to continue moving millions of people from the farm to the city. Ask yourself this question: Has a country ever become a great power by encouraging its population to move from the city to the countryside?
Here’s a prediction: The mass deportation that everyone is talking about will never happen:
“If there is a significant enforcement event on a big farm or meatpacking plant that happens to be in a red state, you will have business owners in that state saying — this is not what we had in mind,” said Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute.
READER COMMENTS
steve
Mar 6 2025 at 10:50am
It has been my prediction all along that the deportations will focus in blue states and cities, which seems to be the case so far. I suspect that we will get a small increase in the total number of deportations but it wont be the big numbers advertised and they will, except for some very televised events, avoid productive areas in red states. The Texas Tribune has been tracking illegal immigrant employment in Texas. It runs at about 50%. ICE could go to any constructions site in Texas and easily find a huge number of illegals, but it would hurt their economic numbers so they dont do it. You just get Abbott doing showy stuff at the border now and then.
In fact, the norm now in Texas is becoming to not directly hire illegals but do it through an agency ie a rented office with a computer and one or two people running things. If caught with illegals a company just claims the agency cleared them. The “agency” gets shut down but no one goes to jail. The same people then start a new agency. Rinse and repeat. Anyway, there is no mystery about where illegals are working. Besides construction restaurants, hospitality, nursing homes, etc.
Also, the latest leaked rumor is that Trump is going to take away legal status for Ukrainians who fled here so that they can be deported. What a guy!
Steve
Craig
Mar 6 2025 at 3:26pm
“In fact, the norm now in Texas is becoming to not directly hire illegals but do it through an agency ie a rented office with a computer and one or two people running things.”
Another reason is for purposes of trying to avoid worker injury claims. Brief anecdote, colleague in SoFlo had fields and one female worker didn’t like portajohns (guys can be disgusting I suppose) so she runs off into the treeline. Told not too but persists, she gets bit in behind by snake which could’ve been funny but for fact snake venomous.
Worker’s comp? Nope that was a $250k settlement.
Craig
Mar 6 2025 at 3:27pm
And she was fine btw.
Matthias
Mar 6 2025 at 6:54pm
She got 250k$ compensation in settlement? Seems pretty good to me.
Craig
Mar 6 2025 at 8:16pm
Well, think hospital bill in the US, right? Also for any personal injury case the wild card is pain and suffering, each case can be unique, perhaps there were circumstances that made her case worse than normal? Also the amount cited to me 250k seems consistent with being up to some insurance company’s policy limits. In the US if she were a regular employee paying taxes, the injury happens, workmen’s comp covers it, but here there’s no workmen’s compensation so she effectively becomes a business licensee who business owners invite onto their property for commercial reasons, and in this capacity the property owner owes a higher duty of care than, say, to a trespasser or even a social guest.
Since this was my colleague I didn’t challenge the reason why the woman went off, to mem that is likely the aggravating factor; the facilities were so filthy that the woman wouldn’t use them, a woman I emphasize because a man doesn’t really care, but women really don’t like doing that. I’m inferring this but to me that’s the only reasonable explanation for why she refused to use the portajohn. To me, that fact gives you some insight into the relative filth of the facilities offered. Then of course it becomes foreseeable that one might seek alternatives and, for a woman, a secluded alternative where reptiles might lurk and then that implicates things like the ‘duty to warn’ (business licensee here) and in FL one will note frequent signs warning of snakes, gators, etc.
And yes, she lived, honestly don’t know how badly she was hurt by the bite. That can obviously vary.
Jose Pablo
Mar 6 2025 at 12:43pm
“Deportation for he cameras” is, also, a very expensive business.
https://www.wsj.com/video/exclusive-trump-administration-suspends-military-deportation-flights/AB91D8A6-385B-473C-9ACC-E7F0F304C250?page=1
Reducing illegal immigration is extremely simple: just allow any permanent resident to hire foreign workers at will, with no more red tape than hiring an American worker.
By doing so, you both shrink the scope of government intervention and expand individual liberty, hitting two (or more) birds with one stone.
No one is actually harmed by this. Except, perhaps, those with inflated nationalistic egos and a baseless sense of property rights over land they don’t even own
Craig
Mar 6 2025 at 12:52pm
Of course the farms wouldn’t be able to low ball them then. You get $22/hr to pluck chickens now for Tyson. You get $15 to work McDs and Walmart whicb are essentially the ’employers of last resort’
So I’d suggest $12/hr is probably yhe floor below which they get paid only because of a lack of status.
Jose Pablo
Mar 6 2025 at 1:19pm
Another bird killed with the same stone!
In any case, this is an issue between the farmer and the workers. They are both fully grown-ups.
Warren Platts
Mar 8 2025 at 10:55am
Answer: So what? Isn’t that what international trade is for? Anyways, there was that Bracero Exclusion experiment that was documented by Clemmons et al. not too long ago. True, wages for ag workers didn’t go up (much). But what happened was farmers became more automated. New machines for tomato farming were invented. The labor productivity of tomato workers in terms of tons per hour increased by a factor of 10. Overall production increased by at least two if I remember correctly. This also led to a boom in food manufacturing as Americans. If ketchup made by mechanized farmers & factory workers is USA’s comparative advantage, so be it.