October 10, 2024
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The 2024 election will determine America’s stance on immigration, with implications for science and technology
Both presidential candidates would limit immigration, but Donald Trump would try to implement an extreme anti-immigrant agenda.
This article is part of a series on what the 2024 presidential election means for science, health, and the environment. Editors with expertise in each issue delved into the candidates’ records and policies and the evidence behind them. Read the rest of the stories here.
Immigration is one of the main issues of most concern to voters this election cycle, and in the coming weeks they will have the opportunity to choose between two candidates who promise very divergent views on it. The decision to pull the lever on Kamala Harris or Donald Trump has become a silent referendum on whether to accept a strict but relatively moderate approach, or one of the most extreme anti-immigrant agendas in American history.
The policy debate continues against a backdrop of growing demand for new immigrants, from caring for an aging population to filling jobs that supply newly built semiconductor plants. There is a growing need to grow the workforce at all skill levels in the workplace.
Mass deportations versus strengthening the economy
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The Trump plan, if implemented, would become an almost insurmountable obstacle to achieving this goal. The former president has pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants (and possibly other non-citizens) who are committing crimes, planning to vote illegally, and stealing jobs from US citizens for no reason. Trump has promised to implement “the largest internal deportation operation in the history of our country.”a plan this may include building detention camps for those awaiting deportation.
The use of the National Guard and local police to round up 11 million undocumented immigrants, many of whom have lived in the US for decades, has also drawn comparisons. the construction of concentration camps. Trump boasted at the Republican National Convention in July that this massive commitment would be bigger than a The controversial Eisenhower-era deportation program. The feasibility of a massive anti-immigrant mobilization loses credibility; Trump’s Plan to expel “millions”. He achieved little in 2019. But a serious attempt at a second term would send shock waves through the economy and society as a whole.
“It would be the single most damaging thing in people’s lives, short of the COVID lockdowns,” says Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a bipartisan political group working on immigration and criminal justice reform. As just one example, farms across the nation would be unable to collect produce and livestock 283,000 undocumented workers who now make up 45 percent of the U.S. agricultural workforce. The cascading economic consequences would result in job losses for American citizens: an estimate projects that for every one million undocumented deported workers, 88,000 US citizens will be out of a job.
Harris said he will strive for a more balanced approach based on the political current. He supports a bipartisan bill that supports restrictive border rules to limit asylum seekers from Mexico. That entry it reached almost 250,000 points “encounters” (deportations and arrests) in December 2023, but then dropped dramatically, largely due to an executive order from the Biden administration that limited the rate of entry. Harris’ hard line on border security has been offset by his promise to establish a “earned path to citizenship” for undocumented immigrants living in the country.
Establishing strong border security—while recognizing the value of immigration to the U.S. economy—represented the bipartisanship on the issue that once prevailed in the U.S. until Trump’s first run for president in 2015. “We don’t have a strong center. more,” says Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that studies and makes policy recommendations on immigration. “The real demonstration of this is that over the decades, Senator (Edward) Kennedy in the Senate for the Democrats and (John) McCain for the Republicans replaced the party leaders in each party who defended immigration in one way or another. And they were able to reach an agreement to negotiate and bring their parties.” .
That past era of cooperation has been replaced in the run-up to the 2024 election by anti-immigrant fervor that saw 20,000 legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, who Trump claimed were eating away at their neighbors. ‘animals. These immigrants moved to Rust Belt cities search for unfilled positions in newly created companies makes microchips, auto parts and other goods; Trump has promised to begin their mass deportations if elected. They have temporary legal status that allows them to hold jobs in the US because of the unrest in their country, but Trump wants it. remove their “temporary protected status” designation if he returns to office.
The need for skilled STEM workers
The ugliness of immigrants has drawn attention to the need to fill jobs in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that country It will require a million more STEM workers in 2030 than those needed a decade earlier. CHIPS and the Science ActPassed by Congress in 2022 with bipartisan support, it is spending billions to revive the US semiconductor industry. But a a frantic search is underway computer scientists, engineers and technicians to staff the chip factories.
Both candidates have expressed support for new measures to boost legal immigration, but Trump’s track record as president casts doubt on whether his plans will ever come to fruition. Trump said in a podcast in June that he would issue “green cards” (permanent US residency documents) to US universities to foreign college graduates, but in his former position suggests otherwise. The denial rate for the scarce supply of precious H-1B visas, which are typically granted to skilled workers, it reached 24 percent in 2018When Trump was in office. It dropped to 2 percent in fiscal year 2022 after the courts found its administration managing these visas is illegaldue to a legal solution that led to the drop. During the 2020 pandemic, Trump also issued proclamations banning the entry of almost all classes of immigrants. “His administration was made up of people who tried to make it much, much, much more difficult for the United States to attract and train top talent from around the world,” Schulte says. Since the restrictions were lifted, the growth of foreign-born workers in the labor force It has helped propel the US to a healthy economic recovery without taking away jobs from its workers.
If Trump returns, he will likely pick up where the country left off in terms of immigration policy. of the Heritage Foundation 2025 projectA policy outline, mostly crafted by Trump appointees and former staffers, calls for eliminating the minimum wage levels eligible for H-1B visa applicants.an action that would result in “the exclusion of most foreign-born graduates from these job opportunities,” according to the Niskanen Center, a pro-immigration think tank.
Harris’ plans emphasize balancing border security with the need for new workers, but also represent a tougher stance on the issue than when he ran for president in 2020. The current vice president supports a bipartisan immigration bill that died earlier this year after Trump told Republicans to withdraw their support for the legislation, which would have imposed stricter asylum measures. The same legislation, however, would also provide Issuance of 250,000 additional visas within five years, as well as other measures to promote legal immigration. Harris too Supports Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivalsor DACA, a policy that protects children brought to the US by undocumented parents from deportation.
Any lasting and effective approach to immigration issues will require a complete overhaul of the system…comprehensive immigration reform”, as policy makers say. This would take the form of legislation that regulates the number of people crossing the border, provides pathways to legalization for undocumented people, and allows for more immigration to meet the needs of employers. “Those 11 million people who are here without legal status, it’s in their best interest and in our best interest to have legal status, because then they can contribute more,” Meissner says. Comprehensive immigration reform has not been enacted in decades, despite several failed attempts.
The push to implement such a sweeping change will not come for the next four years. But the Harris campaign platform at least acknowledges that “Our immigration system is broken and in need of comprehensive reform.” Trump’s strategy to deport millions would make that much more unlikely.
