The economic repercussions of a Trump presidency.
Donald Trump thinks Hillary Clinton wants to treble the population of the United States in a jiffy: to allow 650 million people to enter the US. Yes, you heard that right: six hundred and fifty million immigrants.
“When you’re working for Hillary, she wants to let people just pour in. You could have 650 million people pour in and we do nothing about it,” Trump said, at rallies, on Sunday. “Think of it. That’s what could happen. You triple the size of our country in a week.”
The Washington Post noted that more than anything else, he is fomenting the fear of immigrants.
“Before we get into the important question of the mechanics of having 650 million people roll up to enter the United States, an exercise that will hopefully make clear just how hyperbolic this particular schmear of hyperbole happens to be, let’s stop and consider the comment. Donald Trump uses hyperbole the way some politicians use touching voter anecdotes — to reinforce a broader political point. He says completely outrageous and completely untrue things because he feels as though they bolster his broader point: Immigrants are risky. Is it true? Not the point. The point is oh no, immigrants,†the Post said.
The population of the planet is about 7.1 billion, meaning that Trump figures one out of every 10 citizens of the world wants to live here for some reason. (About 319 million already do.) The United States would jump from the third-most populous country to … the third-most populous, after China and India.
The Post noted: “Where would those people come from? If literally every person in South America suddenly decided that Reno was a more appealing place to live than Rio, we could see 422 million people slowly make their way up to the United States. Add in everyone from Central America and we’re at nearly 600 million. If every Canadian decided to move south, we hit 633 million, still a bit short. If every non-American in the Western Hemisphere decided to move to the United States, we’d be talking about 677 million people.â€
The Department of Transportation has data on the number of border crossings each month. In July, 12.7 million people crossed the Southern border in personal vehicles or in buses. Six million crossed the border in Texas; 4.9 million in California and 1.5 million in Arizona. So far this year, 83 million people have crossed the border with Mexico.
The Los Angeles Times, in an editorial, put the issue of immigration as the crucial aspect of this elections, and how the new president deals with it would matter a lot. According to the Times, Clinton’s proposals on immigration are far better than Trump’s.
“In terms of where the economy would be four years and 10 years from now, the real difference, the game changer between the two [presidential candidates] is immigration,†said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, a forecasting firm.
By Moody’s calculations, Hillary Clinton’s more open-door position on immigration — including a pathway to citizenship for those already in the country illegally and increasing legal immigration — would add about a quarter of a percentage point to gross domestic product growth annually, on average, over the next decade. That translates to an additional $489 billion to the economy by 2026.
Donald Trump’s plan to stem immigration and deport people who are in the U.S. illegally would have the opposite effect, the firm concluded. Moody’s estimates that his immigration policies would reduce inflation-adjusted GDP by nearly half a percentage point, or about $880 billion, by 2026.
Peter Navarro, a UC Irvine professor and Trump economic advisor, argued that Trump’s immigration plan would also have a positive effect on both economic and wage growth. Removing immigrants here illegally and toughening penalties and jail terms for unlawful entry would translate into more jobs for American citizens, he said.
“With secure borders, labor participation rates will increase and offset any negative impacts of addressing illegal immigration,” Navarro said in an email response to questions.
But economic research groups, on the left, right and center, have generally come to similar conclusions as Moody’s, noted the Times.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated recently that Clinton’s immigration plans would boost economic output from the projected long-run growth rate of 2% to 2.3% a year on average, while Trump’s more restrictive policies would trim GDP growth from 2% to 1.7% over the next decade.
By comparison, the committee said, the sizable difference between Clinton’s and Trump’s tax policies — Trump is proposing a $6-trillion tax cut compared with Clinton’s $1.4-trillion tax increase over 10 years — was almost negligible as far as average annual GDP growth in the next decade, after taking into account factors such as spending and the long-term effects of deficits.
Over the last 15 years the U.S. has been admitting on average almost 1 million legal immigrants a year, two-thirds based on family relations and the rest mostly for employment purposes or as refugees. The last quarter of a century has marked the largest wave of immigrants, mostly from Asia and Latin America, since the mass migration from Europe in the mid-1800s to 1920.
Census figures show that the 43.3 million immigrants last year made up 13.5% of the nation’s total population, the highest since 1910 when the foreign-born share was 14.7%. The share dropped to 13.2% in 1920 — around the time when literacy tests and strict immigration quotas took effect, leading to a continuous decline in the percentage of immigrants, to a low of 4.7% in 1970.