President Donald Trump is pushing up wages for millions of Americans by ending the federal welcome for millions of illegal migrants, says a pro-migration economist at a Washington, DC, think-tank.
“We’re going to see stronger wage growth in some occupations, stronger wage growth in the agricultural sector, stronger wage growth for home health workers,” said Wendy Edelberg, a “senior fellow” at the elite-funded Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.
But the loss of deported migrants will have “pretty modest economic effects” on the overall size of the nation’s economy, she told Bloomberg on July 11.
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“I think those [economic effects] are dwarfed by just the visceral effect” as business reacts to the sudden cut-off of expected migrants, she said. “We may have … more people leaving the country than entering … for the first time in many decades,” she said.
Edelberg’s admissions come amid multiplying reports of wage gains for millions of ordinary Americans who have lost wages, housing, and wealth amid the vast inflow of migrants caused by federal policy since 1990. Many of those Americans pulled the lever for Donald Trump in November 2024, and he immediately choked off the supply of new migrants.
For example, the Associated Press reported on July 13:
Rachel Blumberg, CEO of the Toby and Leon Cooperman Sinai Residences in Boca Raton, Florida, has already lost 10 workers whose permission to stay in the U.S. came under a program known as humanitarian parole, which had been granted to people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. She is slated to lose 30 more in the coming weeks with the end of TPS for Haitians.
“I think it’s the tip of the iceberg,” says Blumberg, forecasting further departures of employees who may not themselves be deported, but whose spouse or parent is.
Blumberg got less than 24 hours’ notice when her employees lost their work authorization, setting off a scramble to fill shifts. She has already boosted salaries and referral bonuses [emphasis added] but says it will be difficult to replace not just aides, but maintenance workers, dishwashers and servers.
On June 6, knlvradio.com reported the huge JBS meatpacking firm had signed a deal that gives pay raises, paid sick leave, and a pension plan to 26,000 meatpacking workers. The article was headlined “Groundbreaking Union Contract Brings Major Gains for JBS Workers Across the U.S.”
“I’ve been working at JBS for 10 years, and when I got the news about the pension, I was excited,” said Thelma Cruz, who works at the JBS Pork plant in Marshalltown, Iowa. “My husband also works here, and when we retire, we will both get pension checks every month.”
“Thanks to @POTUS’s pro-growth, America First policies, real wages for hourly workers are up nearly 2% in the first five months of @realDonaldTrump’s second term — the strongest growth in 60 years,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tweeted in June.
“Under [President Trump], native-born workers have accounted for ALL job gains since January. American Workers First!” the Labor Department declared on July 7.
Many of the Americans who are getting higher wages will be voting in the 2026 midterm elections.
Edelberg, like many other progressive and business-backed libertarians, bitterly opposes Trump’s immigration policies, which are now re-leveling the labor market after roughly 5 million American men were pushed out of jobs and to the sidelines since 2000.
For example, progressive Greg Sargent at The New Republic declared on July 11 that “one of our favorite observers on this issue [is] Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us.” But FWD.us was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, Ron Conway, and other West Coast consumer-economy investors to accelerate the colonialism-like extraction of human resources from poor countries.
In contrast, a growing number of elites are calling for less legalized migration to help promote prosperity, innovation, and fairness.
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