Donald Trump’s plan of deporting all illegal immigrants in the United States would hurt the country’s economy immensely, according to a new report.
Approximately 6.8 million of the 11.3 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. are employed, a report by the conservative think tank American Action Forum found. By rounding up and deporting these individuals, even temporarily, the country’s economic private industry output would decrease between $381.5 billion and $623.2 billion.
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Private-sector employment would fall by 4 million to 6.8 million workers, AAF found. The hardest hit industry would be agriculture, of which 16.1 percent of the industry comprises illegal immigrants, according to data. Construction (12.2 percent) and leisure and hospitality (9 percent) would also be the hard hit.
AAF found that deporting all illegal immigrants would take at least 20 years. However, doing so in just two years, as Trump has proposed, would cause the U.S. economy to shrink by more than $1 trillion.
Trump, the last Republican presidential candidate standing, has made immigration one of the cornerstones of his campaign, calling for a wall to be built between the U.S. and Mexico. He has also called for the deportation of the millions of illegal immigrants in the country.
Read the full report here.
