C (5:33)

Yeah. And this has always been a big part, or at least not always this whole year, as Donald Trump has ramped up these deportations, there's been all these conversations about, you know, rule of law concerns. You know, the. There are, you know, not insignificant arguments on the, on the Republican side about, like, well, look, these people are in the country illegally. They have been forever. Are we just going to, like, accept that as the status quo indefinitely for like the rest of time, or are you at some point going to start deporting people on the other side? There are these arguments about how they've been here. You know, they're embedded in these communities, they're generating economic activity by going to. And all of these are only heightened. Obviously, these concerns are only heightened when it comes to these people who are not here illegally. Right. I mean, there are policy questions, like, fine policy questions to ask about TPS. Joe Biden, during his term, did dramatically expand the TPS program. There are a lot more people here under TPS today than there were in 2020 when Biden took office. So it's not completely beyond the pale for Donald Trump to, in theory, tighten up that program somewhat. But I think one of the other things here is that it's not just about these. I mean, like, it's really bad for these people, that this stuff is happening for these people who, like you say, got in line and did things correctly. But one thing that I saw you posting about just today was this new report, I think, from the Penn Wharton Business School about just sort of like the overall economic activity that is likely to be lost just from these, basically from the Trump administration ripping up these people's work permits. Can you talk a little bit about that?

D (7:10)

Yeah. So, like I said, you know, I do want to center the pain of all of this on the actual immigrants whose lives are being destroyed, but it's not only them who will be affected. So if you look at the Penn Warden budget model's analysis on all of this, they're the ones who had done this calculation that like, 700,000 TPS holders are going to lose their ability to stay here. And of those about, about a half a million, 550,000 have work permits right now and will lose their ability to work legally. And so that's going to lead to big labor shortages in sectors like construction. There are a lot of TPS holders who are in construction. There are a lot of TPS holders who work as home health care aides. Like there are a lot of members of the Haitian immigrant community, for example, who work as home health care aides or in other kinds of critical care work to take care of lots of patients, including American born ones. You know your grandma might lose her ability to have to have a qualified legally working person caring for her bonework.

E (8:15)

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D (9:46)

So there are, you know, big impacts to local economies, to particular industries, into the economy writ large. The three states that will be affected the most, according to this report, are Florida, Texas and New York. Because there are big immigrant communities in those places where again, we're talking about a population of people who currently have legal status who are losing their legal status and therefore their ability to work. I should mention, by the way, that there is some litigation challenging a number of these policy changes. For example, there have been a bunch of attempts by the Trump administration to take away this kind of, this special status from Venezuelans and there's been litigation over that. So it's not a done deal yet. But it certainly makes it much riskier for these people to continue working and contributing to their communities and caring for your grandma and building homes and, and, you know, serving food and all of the other occupations and industries that this population of immigrants, immigrant workers, are currently concentrated in. So, yeah, it will be felt. And, you know, when we had big labor shortages a few years ago coming out of COVID part of the reason why at the time was that we had a big decrease in immigration. And again, in certain sectors where there is a larger limit immigrant labor force, you really felt that you had less lawful immigration also for a while, less undocumented immigration as well. That eventually reversed. But there was a period of time when there was just very few people crossing over the border, even legally, and that had impacts on the economy. There was a lot of talk at the time of how come no one wants to work anymore? And the problem was, literally, there were fewer people coming into the labor force, regardless of whether people wanted to work or not. There were just fewer bodies. So we saw this happen before. And one other change that I didn't mention, by the way, in terms of, like, bureaucratic policies that have kind of gone under the radar, is that until now, I should say when people try to get their work permit renewed, because depending on what visa you're on, you have to get it renewed every so often. You know, every few years, there has been a really long lag time between when you file, like when you file the paperwork to get it renewed and when it, you know, like when it actually gets processed. And there was a really long lag time during the pandemic because all government services, like lots of private sector services were backed up. And the Biden administration said, okay, we're just going to, like, automatically renew you or at least give you a grace period until we get around to figuring out the paperwork. And the Trump administration said, no, if we don't get. If we haven't processed your paperwork by the time your visa runs out for, you know, and we don't get it, we don't send you back the renewal in time, too bad. Like, you're just. You're going to lose the ability to legally work. So they're probably going to be a lot of people who are just stuck in this, like, very slow bureaucracy who, again, are doing everything right. Let's say the administration hasn't taken away their legal ability to work officially, but they can de facto take it away to work by just slowing things down so much that they never actually process people's paperwork. The upshot being like again, you're going to have even more workers who lose their ability to continue being employed legally because the Trump administration has is either slow walking their paperwork or deliberately saying, never mind, you're, you know, we are rendering legal, we are illegalizing you or de documenting you. That you're going to see a lot more of that in the months.

C (13:41)

Yeah, well, one of the things I have a hard time wrapping my mind around with all of these things is it's not like, it's not like this is the same thing as deportation. Right? At least, at least in kind of like a proximate short term way. These are still people who are here, who are going to be here. Maybe some of them will self deport if they lose their work permits or whatever, but not necessarily. And so if you're weighing sort of like, even from the point of view of the Trump administration, it's a little hard to wrap your mind around some of this stuff where you're basically removing the economic benefits to the country and even to your own voters of having these workers here and productive and contributing, but not actually, you know what I'm saying, from the point of view of the Trump administration, even the good stuff about having them here is the stuff that you're getting rid of. I wanted to ask a little bit as well about another thing I hate to make you speculate about what Donald Trump is thinking, but this is another thing I have not been able to really wrap my mind around is that when you talk about this sort of push and pull between more migration and less migration and thinking about it in terms of economic activity, obviously from the point of view of illegal immigration, they've been pretty straightforward. They think in their view, if you're in the country illegally, it doesn't matter how much economic behavior or activity you're putting into the pot, you need to go, you're out of here. But when it comes to these people who are currently legal, but who various parts of the MAGA coalition would rather not be, it seems like Trump has taken sort of diverging paths because I'm thinking of like the fight over the H1B visas that we, that we just saw a couple weeks ago, where Trump kind of siding with the tech companies in his coalition, the tech bros in his coalition basically declined to do what some MAGA types like Marjorie Taylor Greene wanted to do and really clamp down on the number of H1BVs as we were giving out to foreign workers in tech. Things like that, so is there a way that, to make this all make sense that in this one case he's going with the more economic generation?

D (15:41)

Genuinely, I think he has no idea what his own administration is doing. He has outsourced all of this to Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller is anti immigrant. Again, not just anti undocumented immigrant. He is anti immigrant, period. That's why he is putting in place all of these policies that de document documented immigrants. And I think Trump just has no idea. It's not only about skilled worker visas, which by the way, under Stephen Miller have been much harder to get. Whatever Donald Trump is saying on podcasts and the like, you know, it doesn't matter what he's saying. What matters is what the administration is doing. Yeah, yeah, not only on, on those kinds of visas. You may recall that a few months ago, again, amid all of these like lurid videos of ICE raids and CBP raids at workplaces, Donald Trump said something along the lines of, oh, we're not, we're going to like not, we're not going to raid Home Depots and restaurants because, and farms because we know it's really important for the employers in those industries to have these reliable, loyal workers. Meanwhile, he said this, but the administration was continuing to do those things. So I think Trump just has no idea what's going on under his own roof. And not that that absolves him of any responsibility. Obviously the buck stops with him. But even on the isolated kinds of ideas that he has that seem, I don't want to even say compassionate, seem more, I don't know, rational. Right? Like why are we pulling the agricultural workforce out of, out of commission at a time when we're concerned about high grocery prices? Like that's a very rational, rational, self interested way to think about his policies. He might say those kinds of things, he might want those kinds of things, but he is doing nothing to execute them. Stephen Miller is in charge. And Stephen Miller really understands this system in a way that is effective and also dangerous. He knows all of the different bureaucratic hurdles that he can throw up for skilled workers, for student visas, for agricultural visas, for asylum. See, like every one of these, like nitty gritty categories of immigrants, of work permits, of visas. He understands all of the mechanisms available to destroy them. And he's doing that whatever it is his boss wants. He's doing it because he is single mindedly focused on doing it, on getting immigrants out of this country and keeping new ones away from this country.

C (18:26)

I know what you mean when you say Trump doesn't know what's going on under his roof. But also in another sense, I feel like the stuff going on under his roof is the one thing he is really attentive to. All the bric a brac on the walls in the Oval Office and the East Bar. Well, yes, the brick ballroom construction and the flag pull outside and the patio and all that stuff. He is way on top of some of the policy stuff. Not so much. But yeah, I take your point there. I think we can leave it at that. We're going to keep following the story. Catherine's going to keep following this story. Thanks, Catherine, for coming on and talking us all through it. Thanks to you all out there for watching. Head over to the bulwark.com, subscribe to Receipts Katherine's economics focused newsletter. She's been hitting home runs in her first few already. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.

F (19:08)

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D (20:00)

What do you think makes the perfect snack?

H (20:02)

Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.

D (20:06)

Could you be more specific?

H (20:07)

When it's cravinient. Okay, like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the street at a.m. p.m. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at a.m. pM.

D (20:17)

I'm seeing a pattern here.

H (20:18)

Well, yeah, we're talking about what I.

D (20:19)

Crave, which is anything from ampm.

H (20:21)

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