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Maria I worked to clean schools Florida For $13 per hour. Every two weeks, he received a $900 pay check from his employer, a contractor. Not much — but the rent on the house she and her 11-year-old son share, with a family of five, is enough to provide electricity, a cellphone and groceries.
It all ended in August.
One morning when she arrived at work, her boss told her that she could no longer work there. The Trump administration ended President Joe Biden’s humanitarian parole program, which provided legal work permits to Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans as well as Nicaraguans like Maria.
“I feel desperate,” said Maria, 48, who asked to remain anonymous about her ordeal because she fears being detained and deported. ”I don’t have money to buy anything. I have $5 in my account. “I have nothing left.”
President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration is putting foreigners like Maria out of work and moving American Economy and job market. And this is happening at a time when appointments are already taking a hit amid uncertainty over Trump’s unregulated trade policies.
Immigrants do work – cleaning houses, picking tomatoes, painting fences – that most native-born Americans would not do, and for less money. But they also bring the technological skills and entrepreneurial energy that have helped make the United States the world’s economic superpower.
Trump is attacking immigration on both ends of the spectrum, deporting low-wage workers and discouraging skilled foreigners from bringing their talents to the United States.
And he is targeting an influx of foreign workers, which would ease labor shortages and put downward pressure on wages and prices at a time when most economists thought controlling inflation would require extremely high interest rates and a recession – a fate the United States avoided in 2023 and 2024.
“Immigrants are good for the economy,” said Lee Branstetter, an economist at Carnegie-Mellon University. “Because we had so much immigration over the last five years, the increase in inflation was not as bad as many people expected.”
More workers filling more jobs and spending more money also helps drive economic growth and create more jobs. Economists fear Trump’s cap on deportations and even legal immigration will have a counterproductive effect.
In a July report, researchers Wendy Adelberg and Tara Watson of the centrist Brookings Institution and Stan Weuger of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute calculated that the loss of foreign workers would mean monthly U.S. job growth “could be close to zero or negative over the next few years.”
Hiring has already slowed considerably, averaging just 29,000 per month from June to August. (The September jobs report has been delayed due to the ongoing federal government shutdown.) By contrast, during the post-pandemic hiring boom of 2021-2023, employers added a stunning 400,000 jobs a month.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, citing Trump’s immigration and trade policies, cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth this year to 1.4% from 1.9% previously expected and 2.5% in 2024.
‘We need these people’
Goodwin Living, an Alexandria, Virginia nonprofit that provides senior housing, health care and hospice services, had to lay off four Haitian employees after the Trump administration terminated their work permits. The Haitian was allowed to work under the humanitarian parole program and earned a promotion at Goodwin.
“It was a very difficult day for us,” said CEO Rob Liebreich. “It was really unfortunate to have to say goodbye to them, and we’re still struggling to fill those roles.”
Liebreich is concerned that another 60 immigrant workers could lose their temporary legal right to live and work in the United States. “We need all those hands,” he said. “We need all these people.”
Goodwin Living has 1,500 employees, 60% of whom are from foreign countries. It has struggled to find enough nurses, physicians and maintenance staff. Trump’s immigration actions are “making it harder,” Liebreich said.
ICE action
Trump’s immigration ambitions, intended to roll back what he calls “invasion” at the US southern border and secure jobs for US-born workers, were once viewed with suspicion because reaching his goal of deporting 1 million people per year would require funding and economic disruption. But the law that Trump signed on July 4 — and which Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — suddenly made his plans seem plausible.
The legislation injects $150 billion into immigration enforcement, setting aside $46.5 billion to hire 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and $45 billion to increase the capacity of immigrant detention centers.
And his empowered ICE agents have shown a willingness to move fast and break things — even when their aggressiveness conflicts with other administration goals.
Last month, immigration officials raided a Hyundai battery plant in Georgia, detaining 300 South Korean workers and showing video of some of them in chains. They worked to get the plant up and running, bringing expertise in battery technology and Hyundai processes that local American workers did not have.
The incident enraged South Koreans who protested Trump’s effort to entice foreign manufacturers to invest in the US. South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung warned that other companies in the country may be reluctant to bet on the US if their employees do not get visas immediately and risk being detained.
Sending Medicaid Recipients to the Farm
America’s farmers are among the President’s most loyal supporters.
But John Boyd Jr., who farms soybeans, wheat and corn on 1,300 acres in southern Virginia, said the immigration raids — and their threats — are hurting farmers already struggling with low crop prices, higher input costs and the fallout from Trump’s trade war with China, which has stopped buying American soybeans and sorghum.
“You’ve got ICE here, rounding up these people,” said Boyd, founder of the National Black Farmers Association. “(Trump) says they’re murderers, thieves and drug dealers, all these things. But these are the people in this country who are doing the hard work that many Americans don’t want to do.”
Boyd ridiculed U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ suggestion in July that U.S.-born Medicaid recipients could go to farms to meet work requirements imposed by the Republican Congress this summer. “People in the city aren’t coming back to the fields to do this kind of work,” he said. “It takes a certain type of person to hunker down in 100-degree heat.”
The Trump administration itself acknowledges that the immigration crackdown is causing farm worker shortages, which could result in higher prices at supermarkets.
“The near-complete cessation of the flow of illegal aliens, combined with the depletion of the available legal workforce, would result in significant disruption to production costs and threaten the stability of domestic food production and prices for American consumers,” the Labor Department said in an Oct. 2 Federal Register filing.
“You are not welcome here.”
Jed Kolko of the Peterson Institute for International Economics said job growth in businesses that rely on immigrants is slowing. For example, construction companies have shed 10,000 jobs since May.
“Those are short-term impacts,” said Kolko, the Commerce Department official in the Biden administration. “The long-term impacts are more serious because immigrants have traditionally contributed more than their share to patents, innovation, productivity.”
Particularly worrisome for many economists was Trump’s sudden announcement last month that he was raising the fee on H-1B visas, intended to lure hard-to-find skilled foreign workers to the United States, from $215 to $100,000.
“The $100,000 visa fee is not just a bureaucratic cost – it’s a signal,” said Denny Bahar, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. “It tells global talent: ‘You’re not welcome here.'”
Some people are already packing.
In Washington, DC, an H-1B visa holder, a Harvard graduate from India, who works for a nonprofit that helps Africa’s poor, said Trump’s signal to employers is clear: Think twice about hiring H-1B visa holders.
The person, who requested anonymity, is already preparing paperwork to fly to the United Kingdom. “Unfortunately the damage has already been done,” he said.
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Wiseman reported from Washington and Salomon from Miami.
AP writers Fu Ting and Christopher Ragaber in Washington contributed to this report.