If elected, Donald Trump plans to carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history”. After pushback on Joe Biden’s border policies, Kamala Harris has embraced border restrictions and the need to maintain limits on asylum seekers. But neither candidate captures the realities of US immigration.
US consumers are accustomed to cheap goods and services, and the economic rationale for large-scale immigration has been largely avoided. In a country that relies on a mobile, low-cost workforce, the loss of migrant workers would trigger productivity losses and a new round of inflationary pricing pressure.
