IMMIGRATION

Alternet -  If President-elect Donald Trump were to successfully deport millions of undocumented immigrants, it would cause catastrophic damage to the U.S. economy comparable to the Great Recession, according to a new study. The Hill reported Thursday that Democrats on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee (JEC) conducted the study that looked into the potential impact of removing 8.3 million immigrants from the United States over the next four years. According to the study, deporting immigrants at that scale would reduce employment by 7%, and would lower GDP by roughly 7.4% by 2028. This would reportedly result in zero net economic growth over the course of Trump's second term.

The JEC report also based some of its research off of a claim by Vice President-elect JD Vance, who said that the Trump administration may "start with one million" immigrant deportations as a goal for Trump's first year. If the U.S. removed even just one million migrants per year, it would still reduce GDP by anywhere from 4.2% to 6.8% according to data from the American Immigration Council. The JEC noted that the Great Recession of the late aughts and early 2010s caused a GDP drop of 4.3%.