Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump pledged to drastically reduce not only illegal but also legal immigration. His wish to entrust this task to former police officer Tom Homan – the architect of the separation of more than 4,000 children from their immigrant parents between 2017 and 2021 – was a step in this direction. The Trumpian narrative can be broken down into three points: The fight against delinquency (the migrant being automatically associated with the criminal); the preservation of a mythologized (White) American identity; and, specifically, economic efficiency. These three objectives are interrelated, as the immigrant worker is presumed to take the work of "real" Americans. In reality, the prospect of deporting the (approximately) 11 million illegal immigrants and their children, even if they are legal immigrants, is proving to be not only ethically and practically problematic but also an economic aberration.
In 2022, there were 30 million immigrants in the country's workforce (i.e. 18%), including 8 million illegal workers indispensable to many economic sectors. Undocumented immigrants account for up to a third of employees in agriculture, construction, leisure, catering, home services, and personal services, not least because they are the only ones willing to take on certain low-skilled jobs. However, many of them are in high demand because of their level of qualification: In the US, a third of immigrants have a higher education diploma (the same proportion as US citizens), which leads them to occupy jobs with high added value: banking, new technologies, fundamental and applied research, etc.
A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, an independent research center, showed that between 1990 and 2015 immigrants concentrated 16% of inventions and 23% of innovations. What's more, they more often create their own businesses, and thus jobs, which also benefit Americans: Two-thirds of the leading artificial intelligence companies were founded by immigrants, a significant proportion of whom were initially undocumented.
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