The theory behind mass deportation as a jobs policy is simple: remove workers, open up positions, and unemployed Americans fill them. Reality has been more complicated. Removing people from the country doesn't just shrink the labor supply — it shrinks the customer base too. Every worker deported was also a consumer, and businesses that lose customers don't expand hiring; they contract it.
There's also a mismatch problem that doesn't disappear just because it's politically inconvenient to say out loud. In sectors like agriculture — where nearly a quarter of all farming workers in 2023 were unauthorized immigrants — native-born workers haven't been rushing in to fill the gap even where openings exist. That's not a statement about who's more deserving of a job; it's a description of how labor markets actually clear, and pretending otherwise doesn't change the outcome.
The broader data backs up the disconnect between policy intent and labor market reality: over the past year, American workers have seen slower wage growth, fewer job openings, and a higher unemployment rate — the opposite of what the "deport to create openings" theory predicts should be happening by now.
None of this means immigration enforcement and labor market health are unrelated — they clearly interact. It means the relationship is more complicated than a simple supply-and-demand swap, and policy built on the simple version is going to keep underperforming its own promises. A crackdown that reduces both the labor supply and the customer base at the same time can end up a wash, or worse, for the workers it was sold as helping.
This is where the H-1B fight and the deportation debate actually connect: both are attempts to fix the same underlying problem — American workers losing ground — through blunt, single-lever tools. A $100,000 visa fee and a deportation surge are both simpler to announce than the sector-by-sector, demand-aware policy that the data suggests is actually needed. Simple isn't the same as effective, and six months into this the numbers are the ones keeping score.
Read the original reporting: Why Trump's immigration crackdown isn't boosting hiring (CNN Business).