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ACCORDING TO LIZ - What is the takeaway from Trump's opera-style “ICE Raid at MacArthur Park” when federal immigration officers and National Guard troops terrorizing kids attending a day camp and pointing guns at healthcare workers helping homeless Angelenos?
The administration claims it wants to deport an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants who live in the United States to secure borders against immigrants who have committed crimes and because unauthorized immigrants are a drain on public resources… even though people in the country illegally tend to avoid the government and don’t collect federal benefits.
Accelerated efforts in wake of Stephen Miller’s deranged demand to deport 3,000 men, women, and children per day took advantage of the protests against indiscriminate ICE arrests where ethnicity counted more than criminality have outraged human rights advocates across California and around the world.
Congressman Jimmy Gomez who represents Westlake blasted:
“They are not going after criminals; they are targeting anyone who is brown or doesn’t fit their idea of a typical American’.”
Would Trump have deported Superman who was clearly in the United States without legal authorization?
As arrests in Los Angeles raids escalate, a federal judge temporarily halted tactics of indiscriminate arrests based on race and denial of detainees’ access to lawyers in a lawsuit that could have national repercussions.
But take a look at repercussions closer to home.
Of California’s 10.6 million immigrants, a recent study found that 2.28 million are undocumented – people without any legal authorization and those with temporary legal protections that could be revoked.
That’s one in five immigrants, 8% of all workers in the state, almost half of whom have been here for more than 20 years.
Undocumented workers pay an estimated $10.6 billion in state and local taxes annually and almost $13 billion in federal taxes, despite being excluded from most federal benefits.
Their direct wages generate almost 5% of California’s gross domestic product, nearly 9% when the domino effect of both the goods and services they produce on one hand and those they buy on the other. Not to mention the indirect impact to the economy when their employers purchase materials used by undocumented labor.
Over a quarter of the state’s agricultural workforce is undocumented, and nearly two-thirds are immigrants of any status. Without undocumented workers, GDP generated by California’s agriculture industry could shrink by $10 billion.
Especially in Los Angeles, between rebuilding in the wake of the January wildfires and the pressing need to provide housing for its soaring homeless population, mass deportation policy will callously disrupt the construction industry which relies heavily on immigrant workers – 26% of whom are undocumented and 61% of whom are immigrants.
The recent raids have led some to stay home, others to flee the country entirely.
Another $10 billion loss.
Almost 11% of all small businesses in California are owned by undocumented immigrants. Small businesses collectively employ almost half of all Californians.
More undocumented immigrants are likely to be of working age and employed than the California-born - 72% as compared to 67%.
They play a huge part in the success of California’s economy, and the majority have deep ties to the state with a decade or more of experience in key industries, including agriculture and construction.
Mass deportations could bilk the Californian economy of $275 billion and send food prices across the country soaring.
Not all disasters are created equal. Some cannot be predicted and only provisions to respond to and recover can mitigate damages. Others like this administration’s xenophobic attacks on Angelenos.
The threats posed by the I.C.E playbook will hit many support sectors on which the City’s economy depends especially hard – hotel housekeeping, construction workers, office cleaners, those in food service, warehousing and manufacturing…
Trump, acknowledging the importance of immigrant labor to industries that affect him or his base, announced he would stop raids at farms, hotels and restaurants.
But the Department of Homeland Security reversed that, and proceeded to raid the largest cannabis growing operation in the world near Camarillo on Thursday, one employing hundreds of people. Given some of the arrested were legal, even more laborers will depart in droves from businesses dependent on immigrant labor for their survival.
California produces three-quarters of the fruits and nuts and a third of the vegetables consumed in the United States and agricultural exports nationally and internationally are a key part of why the state alone is the fourth largest economy in the world.
The consequences of the draconian clampdown on immigrants are multitudinous:
· failure of farms, food left rotting in the fields
· spiking food costs across the country
· the loss of agricultural export income
· damage to supply chains dependent on farm production
· absenteeism from schools and work
· loss of productivity due to trauma and terror after raids on workplaces
· shuttering of ancillary businesses, further negatively affecting employment and the economy
· limited rebuilding in the wake of the January wildfires
· delayed construction of housing for the homeless
· swelling budget-busting building expenditures for the Olympics
· vacationers’ and conventioneers’ safety concerns when considering Los Angeles as a destination
· actual costs of arrests, incarceration, and mass deportation
· loss of international respect
The reality of the global economy and the Californian and local economies is one of interdependence.
Immigrants throughout the history of the United States have created jobs, filled openings which established Americans avoid such as seasonal farmwork, and enlarged local consumer bases.
Business and community leaders in California strongly favor enacting federal policies provide for increased immigration and legalizing the current undocumented workforce. Especially in essential industries.
Other ramifications of Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to urban L.A. are that these men and women are needed by the state to fight real emergencies such as floods and wildfires.
This isn’t about border enforcement or making communities safer. It does not uphold the values on which this country was built.
It’s a blatant display of tyranny on a scale never before seen in our nation.
It is wholesale destruction of one state’s economy to pander to one man’s ego.
Economic data quantifying how much mass deportations would cost the state is drawn from a recent report by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that functions as the research arm of the Bay Area Council, an advocacy organization for businesses across the Bay Area.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno who now resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
