As of late, the topic of illegal immigration is getting as much airtime as Brittney Spears did in the early 2000s. And I hate to burst your bubble, but all those undocumented immigrants are probably doing more good than harm.
Without the influx of ~2 million undocumented immigrants in 2023, labor shortages would have likely caused higher inflation. As the baby boomers retire and the US needs to re-industrialize, labor needs are skyrocketing; this will be putting a heavy strain on industries like healthcare, construction and agriculture, areas where these undocumented workers are heavily employed. Simply put, without these workers, the US economy would be hurting.
Policymakers have obstructed and neglected meaningful immigration reform since the 80s. However, if we could modernize this system (which would take some political creativity currently lacking in DC), we could realize the full benefits of these immigrants minus the constant political bickering.
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Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Austin, Texas. And today we’re going to talk about everyone’s favorite topic this election season: illegal migration. I’ve no doubt on record saying that if the United States hadn’t had the wave of illegal migration that it had in calendar year 2023—about 2 million people—we’d probably be dealing with inflation north of 8% by now.
So I figured that’s worth a bit of an explanation. In most labor markets, you’ve got a degree of liquidity where workers can move from one subsector to another based on the economic moves and remuneration of the day. But for that to work, you can’t be headed states. You see, here in the United States, the baby boomers are in the process of retiring.
Two-thirds of them have already gone. So we have a labor shortage. In addition, the United States is in the midst of a massive re-industrialization wave as we prepare for the end of the Chinese system. Basically, if we want manufactured products, we have to build it ourselves. So demand has never been higher, and supply has been curtailed. We no longer have that pool of labor that can shift from one thing to the other or be tapped and tracked in terms of building booms.
And so anyone who is removed from the system immediately generates a pulse that goes through the entire network, driving prices higher. So yes, there are 2 million people who crossed illegally last year. Most of them are in the workforce, most here in Texas. As for the folks that are residing here illegally, which, based on whose numbers you’re using, are somewhere between 7 and 14 million.
That’s another huge chunk of the labor force that actually outnumbers the number of folks the United States has who might theoretically be looking for jobs. Unemployment in the United States is below 4%; we’re at historic lows right now. So if you were to remove some of the people who are working, we’d feel it immediately. Now, not all jobs are equal.
These illegal migrants do tend to cluster in three general categories. The first one is health care, particularly when you’re talking about something that’s on the edge of a janitorial job, you know, moving people, clearing bedpans, that sort of thing. The second is in construction, especially industrial construction, because, remember, the United States needs to double the industrial plant.
That doesn’t happen without building a lot of stuff. And third, and finally, agriculture, particularly in fresh foods, whether it’s vegetables or tree fruit. These last two are jobs that Americans just don’t want to do, won’t do, or can’t do. They’re hot. They’re heavy, outdoorsy work—certainly not the sort of stuff that today’s youth, especially Gen Z, is really interested in.
And so that just leaves us with the illegal labor pool. If you were to remove that labor pool, we wouldn’t be able to harvest any of our fruits and vegetables. So say goodbye to most of the produce in grocery stores. We certainly wouldn’t be able to build new homes or new industrial plants, so say hello to dependence on China until China is gone—and then you just don’t have stuff.
And if you don’t want to clean your own bedpan when you go into the hospital or retire, well, then, by all means, be against migration. The question, of course, is whether we can amend our legal structure so that we actually have an updated immigration system to process these people in a way that we find a.
At the moment, we haven’t had meaningful immigration reform in this country since the 1980s, and folks on both sides of the political aisle have taken steps at multiple points to prevent that from happening. So if
you were to wave a magic wand to make this all work better, you’d find a way to induce the would-be illegal migrants to actually collaborate with the system.
And that’s a very different sort of legal structure and enforcement and would require a degree of policy creativity we just have not seen in the White House or in Congress for quite some time
