Builders warn Trump's mass deportation plan would drive up home costs
Category: News & Politics
Via: hal-a-lujah • yesterday • 9 commentsBy: Jing Feng and Nicole Acevedo
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Both presidential candidates promise to build more homes. One promises to deport hundreds of thousands of people who build them.
Former President Donald Trump's pledge to "launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country" would hamstring construction firms already facing labor shortages and push record home prices higher, say industry leaders, contractors and economists.
"It would be detrimental to the construction industry and our labor supply and exacerbate our housing affordability problems," said Jim Tobin, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders. The trade group considers foreign-born workers, regardless of legal status, "a vital and flexible source of labor" to builders, estimating they fill 30% of trade jobs like carpentry, plastering, masonry and electrical roles.
Either I make half as much money or I up my prices. And who ultimately pays for that? The homeowner.
Nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants were living in the U.S. as of 2022, the latest federal data shows, down from an 11.8 million peak in 2007. The construction sector employs an estimated 1.5 million undocumented workers, or 13% of its total workforce — a larger share than any other, according to data the Pew Research Center provided to NBC News. Industry experts say their rates are higher in Sun Belt states like Florida and Texas, and more pronounced in residential than in commercial construction.
For Brent Taylor, home building has been "a very, very difficult industry the past few years, and it seems to only be getting worse." His five-person, Tampa-based business hires subcontractors to perform all the labor, and if those firms' employees "show up on my jobsite because they work for that company, I don't know if they're legal or not," he said.
The labor pool is tight already, with the U.S. construction industry still looking to fill 370,000 open positions, according to federal data. If work crews dwindle further, "now I can only do 10 jobs a year instead of 20," Taylor said. "Either I make half as much money or I up my prices. And who ultimately pays for that? The homeowner."
Workers at one of Brent Taylor's construction sites removed debris Friday from a bathroom that recently sustained hurricane damage in Indian Rocks Beach, Fla.Bob Croslin for NBC News
Rhetoric or reality?
Trump hasn't detailed how his proposed "whole of government" effort to remove up to 20 million people — far more than the undocumented population — would work, but he has made it central to his housing pitch. The Republican nominee claims mass deportations would free up homes for U.S. citizens and lower prices, though few economists agree. The idea has also drawn skepticism on logistical grounds, with some analysts saying its costs would be "astronomical."
Doubts also run high among homebuilders that Trump would deliver on his promise.
You'd lose so many people that you couldn't put a crew together to frame a house.
"They don't think it's going to happen," Stan Marek, CEO of the Marek Family of Companies, a Texas-based specialty subcontracting firm, said of industry colleagues. "You'd lose so many people that you couldn't put a crew together to frame a house."
Bryan Dunn, an-Arizona based senior vice president at Big-D Construction, a major Southwest firm, called "the idea that they could actually move that many people" out of the country "almost laughable." The proposal has left those in the industry "trying to figure out how much is political fearmongering," he said.
But while Trump has a history of floating outlandish ideas without seriously pursuing them — like buying Greenland — he has embraced other once-radical policies that reset the terms of political debate despite fierce criticism and litigation. That is especially true with immigration, where his administration diverted Pentagon money to build a border wall, banned travel from several Muslim-majority countries and separated migrant children from their parents.
Trump has emphasized his deportation pitch on the stump, at times deploying racist rhetoric like claiming thousands of immigrants are committing murders because "it's in their genes." This month he accused immigrant gangs of having "invaded and conquered" cities like Aurora, Colorado, which local authorities deny, saying they need federal assistance but want no part in mass deportations. Still, recent polling has found broad support for removing people who came to the U.S. illegally.
"President Trump's mass deportation of illegal immigrants will not only make our communities safer but will save Americans from footing the bill for years to come," Taylor Rogers, a Republican National Committee spokesperson for the campaign, said in a statement, referring to undocumented people's use of taxpayer-funded social services and other federal programs.
Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that the former president's remarks about genetics were "clearly referring to murderers, not migrants."
Tobin said the NAHB has real concerns about the deportation proposal but is engaging with both campaigns. It has called on policymakers to "let builders build" by easing zoning and other regulatory hurdles and improving developers' access to financing.
We have to have a serious conversation in this country about immigration policy and reform, and we can no longer delay it.
"The rhetoric on immigration, it's at 11," Tobin said. "We have to have a serious conversation in this country about immigration policy and reform, and we can no longer delay it."
Marek, who has long advocated for more ways for undocumented people to work legally in construction, said reforms are decades overdue. As an employer, "I do everything I can to make sure everybody's legal," he said, even as the industry's hunger for low-cost labor has created a shadow economy that he says often exploits the undocumented workers it depends upon.
"We need them. They're building our houses — have been for 30 years," he said. "Losing the workers would devastate our companies, our industry and our economy."
'The math is just not there'
There is evidence that foreign-born construction workers help keep the housing market in check. An analysis released in December 2022 by the George W. Bush Institute and Southern Methodist University found U.S. metro areas with the fastest-growing immigrant populations had the lowest building costs.
"Immigrant construction workers in Sun Belt metros like Raleigh, Nashville, Houston, and San Antonio have helped these cities sustain their housing cost advantage over coastal cities despite rapid growth in housing demand," the authors wrote.
Construction laborers work on a job site in the Tampa-area, Fla., on Friday.Bob Croslin for NBC News
But builders need many more workers as it is. "The math is just not there" to sustain a blow from mass deportations, said Ron Hetrick, a senior labor economist at the workforce analytics firm Lightcast. "That would be incredibly disruptive" and cause "a very, very significant hit on home construction," he said.
Private employers in the field have been adding jobs for the past decade, with employment levels now topping 8 million, over 1 million more since the pandemic, according to payroll processor ADP. But as Hetrick noted, "the average high school student is not aspiring to do this work," and the existing workforce is aging — the average homebuilder is 57 years old.
Undocumented workers would likely flee ahead of any national deportation effort, Hetrick said, even though many have been in the U.S. for well over a decade. He expects such a policy would trigger an exodus of people with legal authorization, too.
"That's exactly what happened in Florida," he said.
Past as prologue
Last year, the state's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, enacted a series of restrictions and penalties to deter the employment of undocumented workers. Many immigrant workers hastily left the state even before the policies took effect, with social media videos showing some construction sites sitting empty.
"These laws show that they have no idea what we do," said Luciano, a carpenter who is originally from Mexico and has worked on residential builds across South Florida for the past decade.
"No one else would work in the conditions in which we work," the 40-year-old said in Spanish, asking to be identified by his first name because he lacks legal immigration status, despite living in the U.S. for over 20 years. Workers on jobsites "have an entry time but no exit time," often logging 70-hour weeks in rain and extreme heat, he said.
Taylor recalled fellow Florida builders' panic at the time of the statewide crackdown but said he reassured them, "Look, just give it six months. We don't have enough people to enforce it, so they're coming back."
While immigration policies affect his business, Taylor said he is "not a one-policy voter."Bob Croslin for NBC News
Republican state Rep. Rick Roth, who voted for the measure, later conceded that Florida was unprepared for the destabilization it would cause and urged immigrant residents not to flee, saying the law "is not as bad as you heard."
Some workers returned after realizing the policies weren't being rigorously enforced, Taylor said: "Sure enough, now things are more normal."
DeSantis' office didn't respond to a request for comment.
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When Arizona in 2010 enacted what were then some of the toughest immigration restrictions in the country, Dunn was working in Tempe as an executive at a construction management firm. As the legislation rolled out, he said, "a lot of people moved away, and they just never came back."
By the time much of the law was overturned in 2012, he said, "Arizona had a bad rap" relative to other states that "were a lot more open and just less of a hassle to go work in."
Dunn, a Democrat, said he's "definitely" backing Vice President Kamala Harris, but other construction executives sounded more divided. Marek, a "lifelong Republican," declined to share how he's voting but noted that "a lot of Republicans aren't voting for Trump."
Taylor also wouldn't say which candidate he's supporting but praised Trump's ability to "get things done."
"There are many other issues with the economy that we are fighting daily that have nothing to do with immigration reform," he said. "I am not a one-policy voter."
Jing Feng
Jing Feng is a producer at NBC News covering business and the economy.
Nicole Acevedo
Nicole Acevedo is a reporter for NBC Latino.
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For anyone who has sought to have a construction project done on their home, this should be as obvious as the nose on your face. Mass deportation is a catastrophic concept in this financially thriving country.
This is but one industry that would be affected by a mass deportation agenda.
We are back to the middle of the 19th century where democrats will support slavery if they think is will hurt trump, the are supporting illegals taking Jobs, Jobs that Americans will do, just not for slave wages without protection, this is tantamount to slavery.
laughable gibberish as commentary ...
Hilarious. Republicans supporting massive financial decline as a reasonable trade off for the removal of brown people who in no way whatsoever consider their earnest labor to be slavish.
Hilarious. democrats supporting big business making more profit off of slave labor.
It’s not slave labor, as evidenced by the fact that they risk their lives and upend their families to be here. Did African slaves sneak onto boats to get here? Why don’t you make an effort to give a logical response?
"Either I make half as much money or I up my prices. And who ultimately pays for that? The homeowner."
What a profound observation. We need unfettered illegal immigration to protect the profit margin. Wonder how Habitat for Humanity builds so many houses?
The issue of illegal immigration only confirms the liberal roots of chattel slavery. Exploiting labor is a humanitarian endeavor, after all. Contractors using illegals to pay substandard wages and undercut competition is the epitome of social progress. And consumers get to feel the enlightened tingle through lower prices.
Yes, indeed, liberalism has always been about the money. American liberals have been exploiting producers, consumers, and government since the founding of the United States. It is the democratic thing to do, after all.
Voluntary slavery? Can you back that up? I have had dozens of contractors who barely spoke a word on English do construction on houses that I have owned, and they are clearly not upset with their jobs. They sing and laugh while working their asses off. Quite a contrast to the lazy American thieves that call themselves contractors and show up late or not at all, and act like we are here to serve them.