STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
OK, if President-elect Trump succeeds in deporting millions of people from the United States, his administration will not be the first.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Yes. In fact, the U.S. has deported millions of people in the past, and that gives us a chance to answer a question - when you deport a lot of workers who are not citizens, does that improve the job market for people who are and other people in the U.S. legally?
INSKEEP: NPR immigration correspondent Jasmine Garsd has been studying that. Hi there, Jas.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: Hi.
INSKEEP: What does the history show here about this idea, which is one of the reasons that the new administration gives for a mass deportation?
GARSD: Yeah, so the Obama administration did a historic number of deportations - more than 3 million removals. I spoke to economist Chloe East at the University of Colorado in Denver. She studied the effects of many of those deportations.
CHLOE EAST: So we see really clearly that when there is an increase in deportations in a county, that does not lead to more job opportunities or higher wages for U.S.-born workers.
GARSD: Her work also focused on something we rarely hear about, which is immigration as a way to create new jobs for American-born workers.
INSKEEP: How could immigrants, whether they're here legally or illegally, create jobs for American workers?
GARSD: So let me give you an example. Earlier this year, I was interviewing business owners in Florida. And the owner of one roofing company told me, if I could hire more immigrant workers to do the roofing, then I could take on more jobs, which means I would need to hire a manager. I would need to hire and expand my accounting team. And all those jobs would go to U.S. citizens. So we don't talk about this a lot, but economists do talk about this trickle-down effect.
INSKEEP: OK, so that doesn't mean that it is right or proper, that you have to agree with people coming here illegally or through asylum or anything else. But in any case, it doesn't seem to cost Americans jobs. It may actually add American jobs if there are more people here and working.
GARSD: Exactly. So what professor East says is that for every half a million people deported, she estimates there were 44,000 fewer jobs for American-born workers.
INSKEEP: The presidential campaign also touched on the idea that people here illegally are using resources, taking up housing, that this affects citizens. Are there findings about that?
GARSD: We don't know what mass deportations are going to look like, right? But I wanted to bring it down to the day to day. We know immigrant labor is inextricably linked to our food supply. So consider farm workers in California, where a lot of U.S. vegetables come from. Now, over 90% of those workers are foreign-born, mostly undocumented. I asked professor East what could happen to, for example, the price of tomatoes, most of which come from California.
EAST: Mass deportations in the Central Valley in California would reduce the number of people who are able and willing to pick tomatoes and also reduce the number of people who will drive the trucks from the tomato farms to the grocery stores. And when there are fewer of both types of workers, there will be fewer tomatoes at the grocery store at all, which will make the price of tomatoes go up.
GARSD: So basically, what she's saying is, if you're worried about the price of food now, you should be worried about mass deportations.
INSKEEP: NPR's Jasmine Garsd, thanks so much.
GARSD: Thank you.
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