What ‘mass deportation’ would mean for the economy

Carrying out a mass deportation operation could also result in a decrease in the national gross domestic product, or GDP. A 2016 report found that unauthorized workers contributed nearly $5 trillion to U.S. private sector GDP over a 10-year period, with particularly large contributions in the agriculture, construction, leisure and hospitality. The Congressional Budget Office projects that projected GDP over the next 10 years would be $8.9 trillion higher due to an expected increase in immigration. Additionally, according to the CBO, net immigration will be the largest source of population growth over the next 30 years and will account for all of population growth starting in 2040.

A recent study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics compared the impact of two potential mass expulsion scenarios on U.S. GDP: a low estimate of 1.3 million people, based on the expulsion of that number in 1956, and a high-end figure of 8.3 million, based on the number of illegal workers in the United States in 2022. The Peterson report estimates that in the low-end scenario, U.S. GDP would be 1.2% below the baseline by 2028, and in the high scenario, GDP would be 8.3 million. 7.4 percent below baseline by 2028. The American Immigration Council report, which is based on the proposed removal of more than 13 million people, estimates that this would reduce annual GDP by 4 .2 percent to 6.8 percent.

“It takes people to run an economy,” said Ryan Edwards, an economist and demographer at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-authored the study on illegal workers’ contribution to U.S. GDP. “You don’t have to have a rapidly growing population to have robust (economic) growth, but this is one way to get there. Growth in GDP and national income will be the sum of productivity growth and population growth in the long term.