Maria worked cleaning schools in Florida for $13 an hour. Every two weeks, she’d get a $900 paycheck from her employer, a contractor. Not much — but enough to cover rent in the house that she and her 11-year-old son share with five families, plus electricity, a cellphone, and groceries.
When she showed up at the job one morning, her boss told her that she couldn’t work there anymore. The Trump administration had terminated President Joe Biden’s humanitarian parole program, which provided legal work permits for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans as well as Nicaraguans like Maria.
“I feel desperate,’’ said Maria, 48, who requested anonymity to talk about her ordeal because she fears being detained and deported. “I don’t have any money to buy anything. I have $5 in my account. I’m left with nothing.’’
President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration is throwing foreigners like Maria out of work and shaking the American economy and job market. And it’s happening at a time when hiring is already deteriorating amid uncertainty over Trump’s erratic trade policies.
Immigrants do jobs — cleaning houses, picking tomatoes, painting fences — that most native-born Americans won’t, and for less money. But they also bring the technical skills and entrepreneurial energy that have helped make the United States the world’s economic superpower.
Trump is attacking immigration at both ends of the spectrum, deporting low-wage laborers and discouraging skilled foreigners from bringing their talents to the United States. And he is targeting an influx of foreign workers that eased labor shortages and upward pressure on wages and prices at a time when most economists thought that taming inflation would require sky-high interest rates and a recession — a fate the United States escaped in 2023 and 2024.
“Immigrants are good for the economy,’' said Lee Branstetter, an economist at Carnegie-Mellon University. “Because we had a lot of immigration over the past five years, an inflationary surge was not as bad as many people expected.”
More workers filling jobs and spending money has also helped drive economic growth and create still more job openings. Economists fear that Trump’s deportations and limits on even legal immigration will do the reverse.
In a July report, researchers calculated that the loss of foreign workers will mean that monthly U.S. job growth “could be near zero or negative in the next few years.”
Hiring has already slowed significantly, averaging a meager 29,000 a month from June through August compared to 400,000 added monthly during the post-pandemic hiring boom.
Goodwin Living, a Virginia nonprofit, faced workforce shortages after Trump terminated humanitarian work permits for employees from Haiti. CEO Rob Liebreich expressed concerns as the organization struggled to fill roles.
The Trump administration's immigration ambitions, aimed at reducing what Trump terms an ‘invasion’ at America’s southern border, have led to legislation that has significantly boosted immigration enforcement budgets. This crackdown not only disrupts lives but also poses challenges to sectors like agriculture, previously reliant on immigrant labor for various roles, from farming to health care.
Experts indicate that the removal of a significant portion of workers can exacerbate existing labor shortages, ultimately hampering economic productivity and growth.
When she showed up at the job one morning, her boss told her that she couldn’t work there anymore. The Trump administration had terminated President Joe Biden’s humanitarian parole program, which provided legal work permits for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans as well as Nicaraguans like Maria.
“I feel desperate,’’ said Maria, 48, who requested anonymity to talk about her ordeal because she fears being detained and deported. “I don’t have any money to buy anything. I have $5 in my account. I’m left with nothing.’’
President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration is throwing foreigners like Maria out of work and shaking the American economy and job market. And it’s happening at a time when hiring is already deteriorating amid uncertainty over Trump’s erratic trade policies.
Immigrants do jobs — cleaning houses, picking tomatoes, painting fences — that most native-born Americans won’t, and for less money. But they also bring the technical skills and entrepreneurial energy that have helped make the United States the world’s economic superpower.
Trump is attacking immigration at both ends of the spectrum, deporting low-wage laborers and discouraging skilled foreigners from bringing their talents to the United States. And he is targeting an influx of foreign workers that eased labor shortages and upward pressure on wages and prices at a time when most economists thought that taming inflation would require sky-high interest rates and a recession — a fate the United States escaped in 2023 and 2024.
“Immigrants are good for the economy,’' said Lee Branstetter, an economist at Carnegie-Mellon University. “Because we had a lot of immigration over the past five years, an inflationary surge was not as bad as many people expected.”
More workers filling jobs and spending money has also helped drive economic growth and create still more job openings. Economists fear that Trump’s deportations and limits on even legal immigration will do the reverse.
In a July report, researchers calculated that the loss of foreign workers will mean that monthly U.S. job growth “could be near zero or negative in the next few years.”
Hiring has already slowed significantly, averaging a meager 29,000 a month from June through August compared to 400,000 added monthly during the post-pandemic hiring boom.
Goodwin Living, a Virginia nonprofit, faced workforce shortages after Trump terminated humanitarian work permits for employees from Haiti. CEO Rob Liebreich expressed concerns as the organization struggled to fill roles.
The Trump administration's immigration ambitions, aimed at reducing what Trump terms an ‘invasion’ at America’s southern border, have led to legislation that has significantly boosted immigration enforcement budgets. This crackdown not only disrupts lives but also poses challenges to sectors like agriculture, previously reliant on immigrant labor for various roles, from farming to health care.
Experts indicate that the removal of a significant portion of workers can exacerbate existing labor shortages, ultimately hampering economic productivity and growth.
