Pro-Mass-Migration Voices Try Playing the Inflation Card (Again)

Forget runaway government spending. The biggest threat of another cycle of inflation is the incoming Trump-Vance administration’s effort to remove millions of illegal aliens from the United States (many of whom have only recently shown up here), according to the usual Greek Chorus of cheap labor apologists.

Topping that list is Lawrence Summers, who served as Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton and head of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama. Summers warns that President-Elect Donald Trump’s promise to deport illegal aliens would be “inflationary.” On X, Summers asserted that “if you’re talking about deporting millions of people, that is an invitation to labor shortage and bottlenecks. I hope Trump will get the message from this election and adjust his program so that it is not inflationary.”

Singing harmony, economist, New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate, Paul Krugman, also argued that “[i]f workers are deported, the food industry will probably have great difficulty replacing them (…). The industry will have to offer much higher wages — and, of course, these higher wages will be passed on in higher prices.”

Not to be outdone, the Wall Street Journal ran this alarmist headline: “Farms, Meat Plants Brace for Trump Immigration Crackdown.” The article warns that without an army of illegal workers “food will rot,” which of course would mean even higher prices at the supermarket. Never mind that existing law provides the agricultural industry unlimited access to H-2A guestworkers.

These alarmist reactions clearly show that the pro-mass-migration lobby views immigration as a tool to keep down wages. It is quite the admission, and, because it directly undermines the interests and standard of living of working Americans, it is misleadingly sold to the average American as a way to keep inflation in check.

Although, under Biden-Harris, high inflation has coincided with historically high illegal immigration, open-borders voices have attempted to attribute decreases in the rate of growth of inflation to mass migration in general. Steven A. Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies undermined these claims by convincingly arguing that the impact of mass migration on prices would have been “very small.” In the case of illegal aliens, any deflationary impact would likely be even slighter given that most work in lower-skilled, lower-wage occupations (although this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t significantly depress or stagnate wages in those particular jobs). That impact may be admittedly higher in agriculture, where a significant section of the workforce is indeed composed of illegal aliens, but even in that sector the free market can fill the gaps, such as by incentivizing previously cheap-illegal-alien-dependent employers to finally automate and focus on hiring American workers at higher wages. Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni told Breitbart News “I see no reason why the adjustment would not happen almost immediately.”

While intentionally exaggerating the supposed inflationary impact of the U.S. simply enforcing its immigration laws, open-borders voices continue to resort to what is essentially a form of one-sided “creative book-keeping.” Americans are treated to studies that inflate illegal alien tax contributions while completely ignoring any fiscal burdens imposed by illegal aliens. Similarly, illegal aliens are viewed only as labor units – who supposedly keep prices down – while the demand they undoubtedly exert on the prices of everything they need, most notably housing, is absent from the analysis.

Pro-mass-migration voices know that, after years of high prices, the last thing the average American wants is even more inflation. Hence, the desperate “removals = inflation” narrative. However, that special pleading is not only misleading, wrong, and manipulative, but also ignores the elephant in the room: our laws. Residing and working in this country without authorization is illegal, and the legal remedy is the removal of law-breaking foreign nationals to their homelands. It is also what the American public voted for on November 5, when they replaced an administration which has subverted our immigration laws with one that is pledged to enforcing them.