Thursday, January 16, 2025
Trump's immigration policies could hurt LA's rebuilding
The Los Angeles fires ultimately will be put out. And the rebuilding will begin. Noah Sheidlower and Eliza Relman for Business Insider write that:
"Housing policy and immigration researchers say President-elect Donald Trump's plans for mass deportations could hamper efforts to rebuild the thousands of homes destroyed by the wildfires in Los Angeles and intensify the region's housing shortage.
The extent and scope of possible deportations after Trump takes office on January 20 is still unclear. However, researchers expect even the threat of immigration crackdowns to shrink the available construction workforce."
According to Working Immigrants in 2015, "[a]bout 2.4 million construction workers, nearly a quarter (24.7%) of the industry workforce, were born in foreign countries
The majority (84.3%) of foreign-born workers in construction were born in Latin American countries in which 53.1% were born in Mexico, 6.6% in El Salvador, 5.4% in Guatemala, 4.7% in Honduras, 2.4% in Cuba, 2.1% in Ecuador, and a small percentage in other countries in that area. Europeans made up 7.3% of foreign-born workers in construction, and 6.4% came from Asia."
This all makes sense. Immigrants were important to the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast after Hurrican Katrina in 2005.
KJ
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2025/01/trumps-immigration-policies-could-hurt-las-rebuilding.html