The mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would hurt Connecticut citizens, regardless of their legal status, according to a new study.
The research is from Connecticut Voices for Children and the Immigration Research Initiative.
They found that there are around 150,000 undocumented immigrants in the state. In 2022, they paid more than $400 million in taxes.
Emily Byrne, who leads Connecticut Voices for Children, said deporting 10% of them would result in a loss of $41 million in tax revenue.
“While we realize that no community should be reduced to economics, it happens to be a thing that most Americans are paying attention to, and so our hope is that by highlighting these very quantifiable economic and fiscal risks such as tax revenue, labor shortages and increased consumer costs, we’ll help more people understand the consequences of punitive immigration policies,” Byrne said.
The study also found that Connecticut would lose manual laborers. Nationally, 13% of construction workers are undocumented. More than 30,000 of Connecticut’s construction workers, 25% of the state’s sector, are immigrants.
In Connecticut, 11,000 janitors and cleaners, 7,000 landscaping workers, 1,000 nail technicians, and 11,000 maids and housekeepers are immigrants with and without legal status. Additionally, 35% of cooks in the state are immigrants.
Losing workers from the farming, restaurant and construction would drive up prices for consumers, according to the study.
“Deportation or immigrants losing jobs actually has a negative impact on citizens who are working and on their employment prospects as well,” Byrne said.
President Donald Trump (R) has promised mass deportations since he started campaigning in 2015.
In the first 50 days of his presidency, ICE said it had made more than 32,000 enforcement arrests.
The department did not reply to a request for updated numbers. But Newsweek recently reported that numbers were over 100,000, a figure WSHU could not independently verify.
