While one stated purpose of worksite raids is to remove illegal competition from the labor marketplace, the reality is far messier: Studies have found that immigration raids don’t do much to raise wages – and actually deflate them. Even after a raid, employers are no more likely to use federal immigration verification tools like E-Verify during hiring.
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Every new job between 2022-2024 was not, in fact, filled by undocumented immigrants. Studies show actually deporting workers en masse from industries that rely on undocumented labor does little for U.S. workers. Giovanni Peri, a UC Davis economist who has studied the economic impacts of deportations in the 1930s and during the Obama administration, has found doing so actually reduces job opportunities for American-born workers.
That’s in part because many American workers, even those outside of immigrant-heavy industries, rely on the services generated by low-wage, undocumented labor — the costs of which would rise with mass deportations.
“Losing some of these workers and jobs that Americans are moving out of, it shrinks the local economy and there’s a reduction in jobs for Americans,” he said.
There is no evidence, Peri said, that in the face of mass deportations, immigrant-heavy industries would raise their wages to hire American workers instead.
“If there is such a world, it has not been the reality in the U.S. in a long time,” he said.
What does tend to happen, according to a study last year by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, is that raids lead to more job turnover while showing little net change in the employment rate.
“Actions that target employers – audits, investigations, fines, and criminal charges – have larger effects than raids, which target workers,” the study authors wrote.