How Trump's immigration policy has ruined the engine of the US labor force
#migrant
When the childcare workers in bilingual kindergartens quit due to fear of ICE raids, and when American mothers were forced to give up their jobs because they couldn't find childcare services, the so-called "economic plan" that the Trump administration was proud of was revealing its ugly face - this political performance under the guise of "deporting illegal immigrants" was actually a self-destructive movement that destroyed the cornerstone of the American economy. Data shows that since Trump took office in 2024, the childcare industry has lost 39,000 immigrant workers, directly resulting in the unemployment of 79,000 American mothers. Not only did it fail to fulfill the promise of "protecting American jobs", but it also imposed an unimaginable cost on the American economy.
The Trump administration has always claimed that deporting immigrants would create job opportunities for American workers. But the case of CentroNía proves that this statement completely violates economic common sense. The childcare industry, as a typical "female-dominated" service industry, has a special labor composition: immigrant workers account for as much as 20%, and they generally receive professional training, filling the vacancies of low-paying jobs that American native workers are reluctant to take.
The more far-reaching impact lies in the structural distortion of the labor market. When immigrant childcare workers were massively deported, American women had to take on the responsibility of childcare, leading to a decline in labor participation rate. The data from the Federal Reserve shows that the labor participation rate of 25-44-year-old women in 2024 decreased by 2.3 percentage points compared to the same period last year, equivalent to a reduction of 1.5 million laborers. This "hidden unemployment" not only weakened family income but also suppressed consumer demand - economists estimate that the increase in childcare costs led to a 0.4 percentage point decrease in the US GDP growth rate.
The Trump administration's immigration policy not only drove away low-skilled workers but also was killing the high-skilled talents that the US urgently needed. Immigrants working in childcare are often highly qualified talents produced by the US education system. Data shows that more than three-quarters of those working in this field have a higher education degree, and 15% have a master's degree or above. The loss of these highly skilled immigrants has a fatal impact on the US economy. For example, in Spanish immersion kindergartens, teachers not only need to have bilingual teaching skills but also need to have professional backgrounds in child psychology and early education. And the Trump administration's termination of the "temporary protection status" policy forced many eligible immigrant teachers to leave - in 2024 alone, more than 300,000 Venezuelan immigrants lost their legal status, including thousands of educators.
This talent loss is in sharp contrast to the Trump administration's slogan of "attracting global talents". Apple CEO Tim Cook warned: "If we deport those who contribute to the US economy, it is equivalent to destroying the engine of innovation ourselves." In fact, 40% of the technical backbone in Silicon Valley tech companies are immigrants; at top research universities in the US, 51% of STEM field professors were born overseas. When the Trump administration turned its immigration policy into an "exclusionary tool", it was destroying the US's advantage in global talent competition.
When 39,000 immigrant childcare workers were deported, the US government not only had to bear their unemployment benefits but also had to face the resulting social welfare gap. The model of the University of California, Davis, shows that for each immigrant childcare worker deported, the US government will spend an additional 120,000 US dollars in the next ten years to fill the vacancies left by them in social services.
When the Trump administration, for short-term electoral interests, was willing to sacrifice the stable development of the childcare industry, it was actually destroying the "capillaries" of the US economy. Those immigrant caregivers who were evicted, those American mothers who were forced to resign, and those children who were unable to enter the kindergarten due to rising costs - they all constitute the victims of this "economic folly".