The evolution of the immigration policy has companies

Washington (AP) – Farmers, cattle breeders and hotel and restaurant directors sigh of relief last week when President Donald Trump ordered a break to immigration raids which disrupted these industries and frightening workers born abroad.

“There was finally a feeling of calm,” said Rebecca Shi, CEO of the American Business Immigration Coalition.

This respite did not last long.

On Wednesday, the deputy secretary of the Department of Internal Security, Tricia McLaughlin, said: “There will be no safe spaces for the industries which house violent criminals or will deliberately try to undermine (application of immigration).

Flipflop has disconcerted companies trying to understand the real government of the government, and Shi now says “there is fear and concern once again”.

“It is not a way to manage business when your employees are at this level of stress and trauma,” she said.

Trump campaigned on a promise to expel millions of immigrants illegally working in the United States – a problem that has long triggered its GOP base. The repression intensified a few weeks ago when Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff of the White House, gave American immigration and the application of customs a quota of 3000 arrests per day, against 650 per day during the first five months of Trump’s second term.

Suddenly, the ice seemed to be everywhere. “We have seen ice agents on farms, pointing to assault rifles on the cows and removing half the workforce,” said Shi, whose coalition represents 1,700 employers and supports increased legal immigration.

An ice raid has left a new-mexic dary with only 20 workers, against 55. “You cannot deactivate the cows,” said Beverly Idsinga, executive director of dairy producers in New Mexico. “They must be milked twice a day, nourished twice a day.

Claudio Gonzalez, head of Izakaya Gazen in the small district of Tokyo of Los Angeles, said that many of his Hispanic workers – whether in the country legally or not – have recently called the work because of fear that they are targeted by ice. Its restaurant is a few pâtés of houses from a collection of federal buildings, including an ice detention center.

“They are sometimes too afraid of working their quarter work,” said Gonzalez. “They have a little impression that it is based on the color of the skin.”

In some places, the problem is not ice but rumors of ice. At the time of harvesting cherries in the state of Washington, many workers born abroad remain away from orchards after hearing immigrant immigrant raid reports. An operation which generally employs 150 pickers is 20. It does not matter that there was no sign of ice in the orchards.

“We have not heard of real raids,” said Jon Folden, director of Orchard for the Blue Bird farm cooperative in the Washington Washington River Valley. “We have heard a lot of rumors.”

Jennie Murray, CEO of the National Immigration Forum Immigration Plaidoyer group, said some immigrant parents feared that their workplaces are searched and that they will be transported by ice while their children are at school. They wonder, she said: “Do I introduce myself and then my second year student leaves the school bus and has no parent to raise them? Maybe I should not come to work.”

Horror stories were transmitted to Trump, members of his administration and legislators at the congress by advocacy and immigration reform groups like Shi’s Coalition. Last Thursday, the president posted on his social platform TRUTH according to which “our great farmers and people of the hotel and leisure said that our very aggressive immigration policy has very good long-standing workers, with these jobs almost impossible to replace.”

It was another case of Trump’s political agenda that slams in economic reality. American unemployment is low at 4.2%, many companies are desperate for workers and immigration provides them.

According to the US Census Bureau, workers born abroad represented less than 19% of workers employed in the United States in 2023. But they represented almost 24% of jobs preparing and serving food and 38% of jobs in agriculture, fishing and forestry.

“It is really clear to me that people who push these raids that target farms and food courses and dairies do not know how farms work,” Matt Teagarden, CEO of Kansas Livestock Association on Tuesday, during a virtual press conference.

Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, estimated in January that undocumented workers represent 13% of American farm jobs and 7% of jobs in host companies such as hotels, restaurants and bars.

The Pew Research Center found last year that 75% of us had registered voters – including 59% of Trump supporters – have agreed that undocumented immigrants mainly occupy jobs that American citizens do not want. And an influx of immigrants in 2022 and 2023 allowed the United States To overcome an inflation epidemic without tipping in the recession.

In the past, economists have estimated that American employers could not add more than 100,000 jobs per month without overheating the economy and triggering inflation. But economists Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of Brookings Institution calculated that because of immigrant arrivals, monthly employment growth could reach 160,000 to 200,000 without exerting prices upwards.

Now, Trump’s deportation plans – and the uncertainty that surround them – weigh on businesses and the economy.

“The reality is that an important part of our industry is based on the work of immigrants – of qualified and working people who have been part of our workforce for years. When there is a sudden repression or raids, it slows chronologies, increases costs and makes it more difficult to plan in advance, “Patrick Murphy, director of investments at Florida Building Construction and a former democratic member of the Congress. “We are not sure from one month to the next what the rules will be or how they will be applied. This uncertainty makes it very difficult to exploit a prospective business. ”

Add Douglas Holtz Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now President of the Conservative American Action Forum reflection group: “Ice had held people who are legally and therefore now legitimate immigrants are afraid of going to work … All this goes against other economic objectives.

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AP Jaime Ding staff in Los Angeles; Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas; Lisa Mascaro and Chris Megerian in Washington; Mae Anderson and Matt Sedensky in New York and the journalist of Associated Press / Report for America Jack Brook in New Orleans contributed to this report.