Alan Zendell, November 13, 2024

Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s designated pick for Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Immigration thinks deporting 11 million migrants is easy. I heard him speak about rounding people up, putting them on buses, driving them to an airport staging area and loading them onto waiting planes. He sounded like a corporate rancher describing taking his herd of cattle to a slaughterhouse. Not an ounce of compassion or understanding that almost all of the people he’s trying to exile are hard-working, decent people who came here because they couldn’t support their families in their home countries.

Even if Stephen Miller were a decent person who cared, his over-simplification of the deportation process has serious problems associated with it. It’s no secret to anyone involved with immigration or migrants that the reason we do not have a workable border and immigration policy is that except for politicians, no one has really wanted one. Too many Americans benefit from our current, relatively unregulated system. This was once true only in the border states, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, but it’s now the case throughout the country.

Four major industries depend on those migrants for their survival. Agriculture, restaurants (the hospitality industry in general,) landscaping, and domestic services could not exist in the form they do today without them. Migrants are a source of cheap labor that cannot be replaced. Migrants’ wages are whatever an employer is willing to pay because there is a virtually endless supply of labor, and migrants don’t get leave or health care benefits, although they pay billions in taxes.

The 2024 election established new minimum wage levels in several states. In California, for example, the corporate minimum wage in 2025 will be either $17 or $18 per hour depending on the size of the business, and locally, minimum wages can exceed $20 per hour. For restaurants, that will mean a culling out of all but the most successful venues with clienteles who can afford to pay the bills. It’s a principal reason that fast food chains like McDonald’s are struggling financially and losing customers. And mid-range, everyday places you take your family to will be hurt most.

Inflation has already caused a nationwide crisis in the restaurant industry with sales far below previous years and many small business owners having had to close their doors. Add in the loss of cheap labor, and the scarcity of Americans willing to work those jobs at all, and politicians, particularly Republicans from whom Trump expects unquestioned loyalty who have built their careers claiming to support small businesses will have some difficult choices to make.

The most noticeable problems will be in agriculture. Can you imagine what will happen to food prices without migrant workers? Paying $18 an hour plus benefits to farm workers will result in an instant inflationary spike that makes 2021 look like a walk in the park. Add to that the scarcity of American citizens available to work those jobs if the migrants are deported. How will farmers plant, harvest, and market their crops? Beyond that, all the people who mow your lawns, repair your appliances, work as orderlies and janitors, and are always available when you need a handyman will not be there anymore.

There are also legal considerations, about which I am hardly an expert, but I’m not sure anyone is when discussing a subject that has few legal precedents. There are human rights issues, conflicts between states and between state and federal policy. Trump expects his hand-picked Supreme Court Justices to abrogate their responsibility to the Constitution and climb aboard the train of loyalists. But he may be in for a surprise. He chose three judges he knew would vote to annul Roe v Wade, but it’s just possible with that issue behind them, Trump may find that his justices, Amy Coney Barrett in particular, actually care about Justice as it is defined in the Constitution.

Trump knows he has to get his big acts done in eighteen months, before the 2026 midterms. The only way he can do that is to find a way to bypass both the Congress and the Courts, in other words, to undermine all the checks and balances in our Constitution. He will undoubtedly try. If there are any responsible Republicans left in Congress, he will not be able to steamroller them into submission. I’m less sanguine about the courts, however. With no accountability to voters, Supreme Court justices hold the most powerful and influential positions in the government.

We can only hope our elected officials and their appointees who swore oaths to uphold the Constitution are up to the task of preserving our democracy.