Why Deporting Illegal Immigrants Will Cause The US Economy To Crumble

As the reality show of politics continues, Donald Trump is still running for president of the United States in 2016, primarily on a platform of radical immigration reform.

In addition to his ridiculous idea of building a wall between America and Mexico, his latest promise is to create a deportation force to ship off all unauthorized immigrants.

I will focus on unauthorized Mexican immigrants in this article, since Trump seems to conveniently forget they only make up about half of the 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants. They are also the primary race he targets when discussing immigrants.

Let’s put aside his hate-fueled, racist rants and really look at the facts.

Undocumented workers still work.

Yes, their social security numbers are fake. But they work, which means they get paychecks.

Taxes are withheld from each and every paycheck they get -- taxes they never file for a return on.

Often, unauthorized Mexican immigrants remain undocumented because they don’t plan to stay in America. They come to America for a few years to make as much money as they can.

They send the money home to their families or save it. They then return to Mexico, considerably more wealthy than they were when they came here.

What this means is every single undocumented worker in America who works -- which is an estimated 5.1 percent of the American workforce -- pays into a system he or she will never benefit from.

As of 2012, that was 8.1 million people paying taxes into the American economy, not to mention spending American dollars at American businesses on American products and services.

Undocumented workers in America continuously pay into a system they don’t cash in on. They don’t usually stay here long enough to draw social security.

They can’t apply for Medicaid or Medicare.

Yes, there is a federal fund of $2 billion for emergency healthcare services, but considering the $11.84 billion being paid into the system by the undocumented workers, they are still contributing far more than they are spending.

They contribute a grand total of almost $10 billion dollars per year, to be exact.

Wiping 8.1 million taxpayers quite literally off of the American map will detrimentally affect our economy. And this is not even counting the hundreds of billions of dollars that the process of deporting 11.3 million people will cost us.

Who is going to pay those taxes when they aren’t being contributed anymore? If the top 2 percent don’t want to contribute more already, who does that leave to pay the tab for the deportation of all those taxpayers?

We will, the other 98 percent of legal citizens of the good ol’ USA.

We are the ones who will have to pick up that slack.

I’ve been in the food and beverage industry for 23 years, and as the director of a chain of bars, I can tell you first-hand the percentage of documented American citizens lining up to apply for positions like dishwashers and line cooks is around 1 percent.

These positions are heavily applied for by Mexican immigrants, and if I were to stop hiring them and only hire American citizens, I would never be able to keep those positions staffed.

The Mexican immigrants I’ve worked with over the last two decades have always been extremely hard workers, and usually work two or three jobs at a time.

They pay more into the system than legal Americans do.

You might ask, “What about day workers?”

Well, in 2006, there were approximately 117,600 day workers in America.

Even if that number doubled in the last nine years, you are still looking at a very small, insignificant number of unauthorized immigrants who are not paying income taxes, but still spending American dollars at American businesses on American products and services.

People come to America for a better life and better opportunities.

The more people that move here, the higher the demand for services and products becomes. This means more jobs are created.

Each immigrant who moves here pays for transportation, food, clothing and shelter, not to mention the fact that the reality of shipping off 11.3 million people is inhumane and downright disgusting.

America is already seen as the big bully of the world. Do we really want to “make America great again” by being selfish and heartless? Do we really want people to stop moving here completely?

Even if you don’t care about being selfish and heartless, the numbers don’t lie. The deportation of undocumented workers in America comes down to simple math.

Do you want to really hurt the American economy? Go ahead.

Deport them, and watch the economy crumble right before your eyes.

Oh, and be sure to blame Obama for it afterward.