High food prices were a big problem for the Biden administration. It will be interesting to see if the problem reoccurs under the new administration. Here’s Bloomberg, discussing a recent crackdown on illegal aliens in Florida:
The law, SB1718, requires businesses to use a federal system called E-verify to confirm that every employee can work legally in the US — or face $1,000-a-day fines. On Jan. 13, DeSantis proposed toughening the laws further by requiring county sheriffs to help federal agents arrest and detain migrants.
There’s a shortage of people willing to harvest fruit and vegetables — known as stoop work — and farmers fear it will worsen if Trump imposes a Florida-style crackdown across America.
“A lot of people left Florida for Georgia, north, scared,” DiMare said as he walked one of his fields this week. “Farmers had to let their crops rot.”
The article suggests that the expulsion of undocumented workers could lead to fruit and vegetable production moving to other countries, where labor costs are lower:
There’s a wave of populism currently sweeping the globe. But as noted in a previous post, populists face some uncomfortable trade-offs. It’s popular to expel undocumented workers. It’s popular to put tariffs on imports. It’s popular to run massive budget deficits. It’s popular to have expansionary monetary policies.
So what’s not popular? Inflation.
Housing is another area where rising prices have impacted living standards. It also happens to be an area where mass deportations could impact supply:
The Department of Homeland Security estimates that there are as many as 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, and around 90% of them are of working age. Furthermore, undocumented workers account for nearly 14% of the construction workforce, according to the American Immigration Council, meaning Trump’s deportation plans could hit the sector hard.
Garland explained that if the proposed deportations happen, he expects the cost of labor and supplies for homebuilders would continue to rise, which may reduce the already slim supply of homes.
To be clear, none of this means that deporting undocumented workers is necessarily a bad idea. There are costs and benefits to almost any policy. But as President Biden discovered with his green energy policies, voters tend to focus more on the costs than the benefits. Something to think about.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Jan 30 2025 at 9:14am
Here in Bethesda, almost all yard care workers are Lation. 80% (maybe more) of construction workers (and we have a lot of high-rise construction going on right now) are as well. I have no way of knowing what the percent of undocumented are but there are reports of targeted enforcement going on right now. Whether this will lead to worker shortage and possibly increased prices for services is an open question.
Student
Jan 30 2025 at 11:49am
A couple of random related data points…
1.) There are about 2.1 million farms in the U.S. Nearly 1 million farms—or 48 percent of the total — had GCFI [gross cash farm income, a measure of annual sales] of less than $10,000, and collectively accounted for less than 1 percent of production.
Of those 2.1 million farms, just 63,500 had sales of $1 million or more per year. Yet, that group, amounting to 3% of farms, accounted for 51% of the value of all farms’ sales of agricultural products.
– “Three Decades of Consolidation in U.S. Agriculture,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service (https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=88056)
2.) The share of hired crop farmworkers who were not legally authorized to work in the United States grew from roughly 14 percent in 1989–91 to almost 55 percent in 1999–2001; in recent years it has declined to about 40 percent. In 2020–22, 32 percent of crop farmworkers were U.S. born, 7 percent were immigrants who had obtained U.S. citizenship, 19 percent were other authorized immigrants (primarily permanent residents or green-card holders), and the remaining 42 percent held no work authorization.
– Also from the ERS, https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor#:~:text=In%202020%E2%80%9322%2C%2032%20percent,percent%20held%20no%20work%20authorization.
Scott Sumner
Jan 30 2025 at 1:58pm
Thanks for that useful info. My only comment is that I don’t think it’s all that useful to draw a line at $1 million in revenue. A normal family farm with $500,000 in revenue is similar to a family farm with $1.5 million, and very different from a part time farm with $5,000 or a corporate farm with $50 million in revenue. (Of course incomes are far below revenue.)
Student
Jan 30 2025 at 9:59pm
I don’t disagree. I am just saying 3% of farms produce ~50% of sales.
42% of farm workers are undocumented. Employment skews large firm.
Jose Pablo
Jan 30 2025 at 3:01pm
To be clear, none of this means that deporting undocumented workers is necessarily a bad idea.
What would be the benefits of doing so?
It is certainly terrible for those being deported. So, from an utilitarian perspective, any potential benefits would need to outweigh the immense individual suffering caused—not just by the deportation itself but even by the constant fear of being removed while simply trying to live a normal life.
I fear that what makes mass deportation popular is not a rational cost-benefit analysis but rather the satisfaction some people derive from witnessing the suffering of others. It gives them a sense of superiority, a feeling that they are “better”. Particularly so when those suffering are the “non-us” (though some of our neighbors and, definitely, most of our “in-laws” could also do the trick).
Sometimes, I don’t like humans
Mactoul
Jan 31 2025 at 12:46am
How can such a calculation be made? Plus, any utilitarianism that neglects the political dimensions is neglecting the very point of deportations–that the deportees are undocumented non-citizens
This is entirely a prejudiced understanding of the matter. There is no basis on which such a claim can be made.
Alexander Search
Jan 31 2025 at 9:57am
What is citizenship? Why is citizenship important?
Is it like ownership? Collectively, Americans own America, not just a car each and a house or two, but all of it? Californians share ownership of Texas and Texans share ownership of California, and Americans, as a group, are reluctant to sell any of it to others?
Is it like club membership? Only Member Americans get to use the swimming pools and golf courses in Club America? Possibly because they’ve bought membership passes or belong to respected families?
Is it like a company rewards program? Americans, after registering at Store America, get 10% off when they buy U.S.-made products and pay 10% more when they buy things from Store America’s rivals?
Is it like a birth certificate, proof of some ancestral connection? America is one big family reunion? Americans fight at Thanksgiving, but they get annoyed when people without blood ties crash the party?
Is like employment? Americans have filled out the paperwork and gotten ID badges from the boss, so they’re allowed past the front door?
Is it like gang membership? Americans have beef with other gangs, so they brawl with others for bragging rights and territory?
Is it like social arrangements in the past? Communication and travel are limited, and human labor is valued, so Americans mainly stay, and are encouraged to stay, within one territory, under the protection and administration of a single figure? Relative isolation protects Americans from non-Americans who might travel into their territory?
Is it like logistics management? Americans register their names in a central database, and administrators dutifully track them so they can allocate resources to all Americans in an orderly and efficient manner?
Is it like fandom? Americans have similar recreational interests, and their fondness for those interests, bordering on obsession, manifests itself as performative conflict? Team Edward gets into a rap battle with Team Jacob? Americans’ mascot pretends to beat up other teams’ mascots on the field of play?
Is it like confirmation or conversion into a religious community? Americans are committed to truth and understanding, and so they wholly dedicate themselves, by avoiding distraction from others, to self-improvement?
Is citizenship like any of the analogies above? Should it be? What should citizenship be like and why?
Mactoul
Feb 1 2025 at 12:13am
Political distinctions such as citizen/alien, friend/enemy, neighbor/stranger are universal, intuitive and fundamental. The analogies you provide are derived from the fundamental political distinction.
Ownership, in particular, is logically posterior to possession of a territory by a people. Only when a people are secure in possession of a territory, can the individuals claim ownership of parts of the territory.
Jose Pablo
Feb 1 2025 at 10:31am
are universal, intuitive and fundamental.
they are universal, intuitive, and fundamental—not because they have any logical or moral foundation, but simply because they happen to exist.
That was precisely my point. They are arbitrary, based solely on the use (or the threat of use) of force—an atavistic remnant of our simian tribalism, one we would be far better off abandoning.
It matters little what country Mahler, Tolstoy, or Confucius were born in. We are all poor, tortured souls, condemned to die from the moment we are born, conscious from an early age of our doomed and inevitable fate. And we share this anguish only with our fellow humans. This relentless suffering, imposed upon us by gods too cruel to describe, can only be understood by others of our kind. We are all brothers in this senseless pilgrimage through space and time.
Borders—what absolute relics of a time when we still wandered on all fours.
And yet, how many of us remain attached to them? For so many, they are the only source of collective meaning to fall back on when their struggle to find individual purpose has failed. And yes, so it has been since the dawn of civilization—even as some of us continued to evolve.
Mactoul
Feb 1 2025 at 10:51pm
Moral foundation?
Your claim is based on what system of morality? And what grounds the morality you prefer?
Hankering after human perfectiblity doesn’t have good track record. Not in Soviet Union and not in America– you get mutilated children.
Alexander Search
Feb 5 2025 at 12:56pm
So shared citizenship is based on whether people know each other and like each other?
That seems emotionally contingent. And impractical.
You don’t know me now. Am I a legal alien? You get to know me, and we have a few beers. Does that make me your fellow citizen? But, eventually, I say something stupid, so you get irritated with me. Is my citizenship stripped from me at that point?
Is the modern idea of citizenship really so much like who sits next to who in a school cafeteria?
Scott Sumner
Jan 31 2025 at 12:12pm
My view is that we should not deport illegals who have been here a while and are working and have not broken the law. I was merely indicating that this post was not an argument for any specific immigration policy, it was trying to show the economic implications of mass deportation (which I am fairly confident will not occur.)
Jose Pablo
Feb 1 2025 at 10:38am
I hope you’re right!
Even in a (primarily) economic blog, it is difficult to ignore the immense and painful human consequences of deportations (or the threat of them).
One can’t help but wonder—what is the ultimate goal of all this? What “greater good” is being pursued?
I simply fail to see it.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Feb 2 2025 at 7:10am
It hard to think of any benefits from shrinking the labor force.