With thousands of people pouring into the streets of Minneapolis to protest the White House’s immigration crackdown, debate over President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policy has reached new heights. Identifying and deporting undocumented, so-called illegal immigrants has been a cornerstone of both of Trump’s terms in office (as it was for his predecessors, with Barack Obama earning the label “deporter in chief” from critics). Trump has argued for years that curbing net migration would protect jobs for American workers and boost domestic wages, ultimately protecting the U.S. economy, flying in the face of reams of economic research that immigration is actually a net positive instead.
Amid renewed tensions over the increased presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in U.S. cities, new data offers striking counterevidence to the administration’s assertions that U.S. immigrants are sucking resources from the economy.
