The rapid growth in daily expenses for working Americans has been fueled in part by the administration’s cruel and chaotic mass detention and deportation agenda
If you’ve noticed that your trips to the grocery store have been getting more and more expensive lately, it’s not just you. Among the daily living increases that are hitting families all across the country are food prices, which “last month rose at their fastest pace in three years,” CNN reports. “Prices jumped 0.6% in August from the month prior, according to the latest reading from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and they are up 2.7% from a year ago.”
You can blame the administration’s chaotic and destructive policies for the pain in your wallet. This rapid growth in expenses and headaches for working Americans has been fueled in part by its mass detention and deportation agenda, which has ensnared farmworkers workers who feed us in rain or shine, sustain our food supply and help keep prices low, and form the backbone of this billion-dollar industry.
“Immigration raids have hurt major growing areas, leaving crops unharvested at California farms and scared off workers at dairy farms in New York and other states,” CNN said, noting shortages within the agricultural industry as the administration’s raids have been ramping up in both size and callousness. “Since January, 1.2 million foreign-born workers have left the labor force,” the report said. “Agricultural employment dropped 6.5% from March to July, a loss of about 155,000 workers, reversing two years of growth.”
That’s a figure that bears repeating: agricultural employment saw a loss of more than 150,000 workers over a five month period, reversing two years of growth seen toward the second half of the previous administration. And when half of all farmworkers lack legal immigration status – in some parts of the country that number could be as high as 75% – this is now playing out in our grocery bills. Experts warn this drastic loss in farmworkers “will also chill investments” down the road.
“If you’re thinking of a new orchard, greenhouse, or warehouse,” said William Masters, a professor of food and nutrition economics at Tufts University, “you wouldn’t do that now because you would not get workers.”
Look to similar distress when it comes to finding affordable housing. Like agriculture, the construction industry depends heavily on the labor and skills of immigrant workers. And like agriculture, this industry has been hemorrhaging laborers, which will ultimately mean higher housing costs for all of us, as leading economists noted last month. In their August report, Michael Ettlinger, Robert Lynch and Emma Sifre of Economic Insights and Research Consulting noted that employment in construction has dropped in the ten states with the highest reliance on unauthorized workers.
In Alabama, construction site superintendent Robby Robertson has seen the effects of anti-immigrant policy firsthand. He said he lost money after immigration raids in nearby Florida scared off his own workers. “Even though nearly two months have passed since then, he said a little more than half of his workforce has come back,” Common Dreams reported. “I’m a Trump supporter,” Robertson noted. “But I just don’t think the raids are the answer.”
In a June policy report, FWD.us estimated that working Americans could end up paying “an additional $2,150 for goods and services each year by the end of 2028, or the equivalent of the average American family’s grocery bill for 3 months or their combined electricity and gas bills for the entire year.” Home rental and ownership costs could see an increase of more than 6%, while food costs could see an increase of nearly 15% as the vast majority of Americans say they’re stressed about grocery prices.
“Only 14% say it’s not a source of stress, underscoring the pervasive anxiety most Americans continue to feel about the cost of everyday essentials,” the AP reports. 78-year-old Esther Bland told the AP that without the help of food banks, “groceries would absolutely be a major source of stress.” But food banks are also facing a crisis.
This annual increase in daily living costs “would represent a tax that would erase many American families’ annual savings, and amount to one of their bi-weekly paychecks each year,” FWD.us continued. “Unlike past periods of inflation, Americans have not been saving at the same rate as earlier years, and can’t as easily absorb these price increases, squeezing American budgets even further.”
Compare the kitchen table issues facing working Americans to the massive piggy bank that’s been extended to ICE, which is now the highest-funded law enforcement agency in our nation’s history following passage of the Big, Ugly Budget this past summer. Overall, the legislation allocates $170 billion to immigration enforcement. That’s enough money to build 7,000 new elementary schools. How about feeding our nation’s schoolkids? $170 billion would pay for full bellies for a full decade. $170 billion could also help end homelessness by providing housing for every unhoused American 17 times over.
But instead, this staggering sum will be directed towards making the masked, seemingly unaccountable ICE agency more funded than the FBI, DEA, ATF, U.S. Marshals, and Bureau of Prisons combined. None of this will make us safer, either.
“FBI agents reassigned to round up immigrants have had to walk away from investigations into violent predators who target and exploit children online,” as MSNBC reported. The Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) division alone, which focuses on combating terrorism, child exploitation, and human trafficking, has lost its entire unit – all 6,000 special agents – to the administration’s obsession with non-white people.
Even with a looming government shutdown, the mass detention and deportation infrastructure is protected while essential services for Americans will get suspended. That’ll mean national uncertainty, furloughed federal employees, and suspended services that help working families access healthcare and benefits – but deportation flights to dangerous regions, family separation of U.S. citizen children and their parents, and profits for private prison executives will continue on.
