WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is promising the largest deportation event the United States has ever seen if elected — a promise he based, in part, on the idea that migrants in the United States legally and illegally steal what it calls “Black Jobs” and “Hispanic Jobs.”

But government data shows that migrant labor contributes to economic growth and provides advancement opportunities for native-born workers. A mass eviction would cost U.S. taxpayers as much as $1 trillion and could send the cost of living, including food and housing, skyrocketing, economists estimate.

Trump, who often uses anti-migrant rhetoric, has referred during his campaign to migrants who he says hold “black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.”

At a recent rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, Trump said, “You are seeing an invasion of people into our country. »

“They’re going to attack – and they’re already doing it – the jobs of the black population, the jobs of the Hispanic population, and they’re also attacking union jobs,” Trump said. “So when you see the border, it’s not just about crime. Your jobs are also being taken away.”

Trump’s rhetoric on jobs has been widely condemned by Democrats and black leaders, who called it racist and insulting for implying that black and Hispanic Americans are taking menial jobs.

Janiyah Thomas, director of the Trump Black Media team, told The Associated Press that Democrats “continue to prioritize the interests of illegal immigrants over our own Black Americans born in this country” and that gains of jobs in the Biden-era labor market were primarily because of illegal immigration.

The latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey shows that as of 2023, native-born Black workers are primarily employed in financial management and operations roles, sales and office support, while native-born Latino workers are most often employed in management. , office support, sales and service jobs.

Foreign-born, non-citizen black workers are most often represented in transportation and health care support roles, and foreign-born, non-citizen Hispanic workers are most often represented in transportation and health care sectors. construction, cleaning of buildings and grounds.

By 2023, international migrants — primarily from Latin America — accounted for more than two-thirds of U.S. population growth, and so far this decade, they have accounted for nearly three-quarters of U.S. growth.

After reaching a record high in December 2023, the number of migrants crossing the border has fallen.

The claim that migrants are taking away job opportunities from native-born Americans is repeated by Trump advisers. They often cite a report produced by Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a right-wing think tank that seeks to reduce the flow of immigration into the United States. The report combines migrant employment figures in the United States legally and illegally to reinforce the claim that foreigners disproportionately drive U.S. labor force growth and reap most of the benefits.

Camarota’s report said 971,000 more U.S.-born Americans were employed in May 2024 compared to May 2019, before the pandemic, while the number of employed migrants increased by 3.2 million.

It is true that international migrants have become one of the main drivers of population growth this decade, increasing their share of the overall population as fewer children are born in the United States compared to previous years. That’s according to the US Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey.

Economists who study the impact of immigrant labor on the economy say that people who are in the United States illegally do not accept jobs from native citizens because the roles these migrant workers assume are most often positions that indigenous workers are not willing to fill, such as agriculture. and jobs in food processing.

Giovanni Peri, a labor economist at the University of California, Davis, conducted research exploring the impact of the influx of Cuban immigrants to Miami in 1980 on the employment of black workers. The study determined that wages for black and Hispanic workers in Miami were higher than those in other cities that did not see a large increase in immigrant workers.

Peri told the AP that the presence of new migrant workers often improves employment outcomes for native-born workers, who often have different skills and language than new immigrants.

Additionally, there is no fixed number of jobs in the United States, immigrants tend to help existing businesses survive, and there are currently more jobs available than workers available to fill them. U.S. natives have little interest in working in labor-intensive positions in agriculture and food production.

“We have many more vacancies than workers in this type of manual labor. In fact, we need many more to fill these roles,” Peri said.

Stan Marek, who employs about 1,000 people at his Houston construction company, Marek Brothers Holdings LLC, said he has witnessed it.

Asked whether migrants in the United States were illegally taking jobs from native-born workers, he said, “Absolutely not, unequivocally.”