The Washington Submit as soon as once more proved why its journalists know as a lot about good economics as they do about “austere non secular scholar(s)” by arguing President Donald Trump’s unlawful immigration crackdown would in some way trigger inflation to skyrocket. Simply strive unraveling that oxymoron.
Submit writers Andrew Ackerman and Lauren Kaori Gurley bemoaned in a June 15, 2025, pro-illegal immigrant advocacy screed that “U.S. may lose extra immigrants than it beneficial properties for [the] first time in 50 years.” The propagandists railed in opposition to Trump for daring to lastly do one thing about America’s unlawful immigration disaster, stoking concern amongst readers that “[n]et migration may flip adverse, some economists warn, weighing on financial progress and fueling inflation.”
That is coming from the identical rag that handled the Bidenomics catastrophe that instigated the 40-year excessive inflation disaster within the first place as some form of stroke of genius. Anyone make it make sense, please.
Ackerman and Gurley warned that border management would damage the economic system:
A internet outflow of migrants may stoke inflation, a threat economists already anticipate from Trump’s tariff insurance policies. It additionally may renew the kind of labor shortages the nation skilled throughout the pandemic. Long term, it may even have implications for fiscal coverage, with fewer immigrants paying taxes and supporting entitlement applications akin to Social Safety, mentioned one of many economists, Wendy Edelberg.
In fact, Ackerman and Gurley didn’t hassle mentioning the phrase “unlawful,” and solely used the time period “undocumented” as soon as. Telling, isn’t it?
In fact, nowhere did the writers even point out the already extraordinary financial value that the roughly 13.7 million unauthorized folks within the U.S. as of February 2025 already posed to America’s financial well being. As Heart for Immigration Research (CIS) Director of Analysis Steven Camarota acknowledged throughout a Home Funds Committee listening to in January 2024, “Whereas unlawful immigrants typically obtain different providers for his or her U.S.-born kids, even once we estimate the online fiscal affect of simply the unlawful immigrants themselves, excluding their U.S.-born kids, we nonetheless discover they create a lifetime internet fiscal drain of $68,000 on common (taxes paid minus advantages obtained).”
The truth is, Camarota additional estimated that the taxes that undocumented immigrants do pay the federal authorities get canceled out by their consumption of public providers. One other evaluation by the Manhattan Institute discovered that the “the border disaster is predicted to value $1.15 trillion over the lifetime of the brand new immigrants who entered the nation unlawfully, overstayed a visa, or had been paroled.” However did any of that matter to Ackerman and Gurley? Nope. As a substitute, the writers had been adamant about pushing their out-of-context agitprop that “[a]ny lasting immigration slowdown may restrict financial progress, as a result of fewer employees results in a weaker financial output.” In different phrases, don’t do something about unlawful immigration as a result of the economic system wants it!
It is the identical form of frequent sense butchering that occurred when Submit columnist Catherine Rampell put out a nutty piece in 2022 declaring that then-President Joe Biden ought to let extra unlawful immigrants come over the border to — *checks notes*— resolve the inflation disaster. No, you did not misinterpret that.
However like Rampell, Ackerman and Gurley behaved like they had been fully oblivious to the catastrophic financial penalties of unchecked unlawful immigration. Even the graphic they used because the featured photograph for his or her propaganda was simply peak cringe.
(Illustration by José L. Soto/The Washington Submit; iStock)
The Federation for American Immigration Reform identified in a research that “[a]t the beginning of 2023, the online value of unlawful immigration for america – on the federal, state, and native ranges – was not less than $150.7 billion.” This dwarfs the practically $90 billion that unlawful immigrants reportedly paid in taxes that yr.
Right here’s our skilled recommendation to The Submit: deport Ackerman and Gurley’s pathetic excuse of a spin job straight into the paper shredder.
