President Trump has made no secret of his disdain for non-white immigrants, branding them as "poisoning the blood of our country" and labeling them "not human" and "animals" in a series of inflammatory remarks. His 2024 campaign promised "the largest domestic deportation operation in American history," and his administration has followed through aggressively.
In January, the Department of Homeland Security touted 2025 as a record year: 675,000 deportations, 2.2 million "self-deportations," and sweeping travel bans, refugee program suspensions, and restrictions on green cards and work permits. While the figures were inflated, the agency pledged 2026 would be "another historic record-breaking year." On May 22, the administration required green card applicants to apply from their home countries, disrupting hundreds of thousands of vetted individuals already living in the U.S. on temporary visas.
The Economic Reality Behind the Rhetoric
This anti-immigrant crusade rests on stereotypes and fearmongering, but the data tells a different story. Immigrants commit violent crimes at far lower rates than native-born Americans and consume less than half the means-tested welfare benefits. As the libertarian Cato Institute notes, "the typical lifetime abuser of welfare was born in this country."
In 2022, immigrants paid $59.4 billion in federal taxes and $13.6 billion in state and local taxes, plus billions more into Social Security and Medicare—programs from which most are excluded. Roughly 30 million foreign-born workers, both documented and undocumented, make up nearly 20% of the U.S. labor force. Last year saw the first negative net migration in at least 50 years, a trend that will worsen labor shortages and slow growth.
Critical Contributions Across Industries
Immigrants are the backbone of several key sectors. About a quarter of U.S. STEM workers are foreign-born, and they are more likely to obtain patents in computing, electronics, and medical devices. More than 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. The U.S. faces a shortage of 65,000 physicians, and roughly one-quarter of U.S. doctors graduated from foreign medical schools, often serving in underfunded rural and urban "healthcare deserts." After urgent appeals from over 20 medical associations, the Trump administration reversed a freeze on visa extensions that had caused hospital staffing crises.
Immigrants also make up more than a quarter of the long-term-care workforce and large shares of nurses, aides, and childcare providers. With childcare costs consuming over 10% of median family income, the country will need an additional 160,000 childcare workers over the next decade—a gap unlikely to be filled without immigrant labor.
In agriculture, about two-thirds of farmworkers are non-citizens. Immigrants provide roughly one-third of workers in meat processing, commercial bakeries, and food processing, and they constitute more than one-third of the hospitality workforce. The American Hotel and Lodging Association is lobbying to lift the cap on H-2B visas to address shortages of housekeepers, line cooks, and janitors. In construction, immigrants account for 26% of the workforce, rising to over half in trades like roofing, painting, and flooring. Cutting immigration will drive up construction costs and push homeownership further out of reach.
None of this suggests the U.S. should abandon border enforcement or stop deporting violent criminals. But mass deportation and sweeping restrictions on legal immigration are not just cruel—they are economically self-destructive. Support for Trump's immigration policies has fallen sharply in recent months, as more Americans recognize the damage being done to the economy and to the country's founding ideals.
For related coverage, see our analysis of the Trump administration's controversial federal worker NDA proposal and the executive order on childhood vaccine schedules.
