(The Epoch Times)—Republican political fortunes could hinge on the effects of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, according to the authors of a report from the Brookings Institute. A Republican representative from Florida has written a bill she says will enable the country to cross this immigration divide, but the bill must first cross the political divide in Congress.
The authors of the report, “Macroeconomic Implications of Immigration Flows in 2025 and 2026: January 2026 update,” estimate a net migration deficit of 10,000 to 295,000 in 2025.
This is “the first time in at least half a century it has been negative,” the report said. The authors expect that trend to continue in 2026.
“Reduced migration will dampen growth in the labor force, consumer spending, and gross domestic product,” the report said.
Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow at Brookings and one of the report’s authors, said immigration was a driving force in the U.S. labor market in 2024. This also drove strong demand for consumer goods. As the labor pool dries up, so will consumer spending, the report said.
“We’re talking about … between $40 billion and $60 billion in 2025 in terms of reductions in consumer spending. And then, from ’25 to ’26 another reduction of, let’s say, 10 [billion] to 40 billion,” Edelberg said.
David Bier is director of Immigration Studies for the Cato Institute. He said many people may believe that high-profile Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol operations as well as a tightened southern border are the reasons for the decrease.
However, Bier attributed most of the decrease to President Trump ending asylum and refugee programs as well as implementing immigration bans on some countries.
“There’s about 300,000 or so deportations so far this year. You compare that to the number of people who lost their legal, temporary, protected status. … Over 2 million people have had their temporary status eliminated by this administration,” Bier said.
Eduardo Porter, a Mexico City-based journalist, agreed with Bier’s assessment. He said recent polls show that Americans see illegal immigration as a shrinking threat.
He said a July 11, 2025, Gallup poll showed that the percentage of Americans who wanted immigration reduced dropped from 55 percent in 2024 to 30 percent in July 2025.
“At the same time, a record-high 79 percent of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country,” the Gallup website reads.
Porter predicted a difficult midterm election for Republicans.
“I think this will ultimately hurt Trump, that he continues with the policy, with the tactics that we’re seeing in cities like Minneapolis,” Porter said.
Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla., agreed with much of what was said. She said that she sponsored the Dignity Act in Congress to head off the predicted issues but not provide a pathway to citizenship.
She said the biggest obstacle she must overcome is the political divide.
“It’s just that politics always gets in the way because there are groups out there saying, ‘Oh, you’re in favor of amnesty,’” Salazar said.
Salazar said the bill—which she has been sponsoring since 2022—has 31 co-sponsors.
The law would allow illegal immigrants in the country for five years or more without committing further crimes to obtain legal status. They would pay a fine of $7,000 and a penalty of 1 percent of their income for every year they are in the United States.
Not a Path to Citizenship
Under this arrangement, the now legal immigrants would be able to work, travel, bank, and live in the United States without fear of deportation. The law would prohibit them from receiving social services, but they could pay for their own healthcare and other services.
She said this would solve the labor force and consumer spending issues but stressed that the Dignity Act only conferred legal status.
The law would also make it easier to find the gang members, violent criminals, and other candidates for deportation, she said.
The law requires Congress to work on immigration reform and calls on Washington to build diplomatic relations with Latin American countries. Salazar said that the law could boost Trump’s image.
“[President Trump] is going to be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was for communism,” she said.
Gallop “polls” are as reliable as paper shoes in a mud puddle. It isn’t whether people trust or don’t trust their numbers, it’s that nobody gives a tinker’s dam anymore what pollsters claim…we’re onto them. They’re nothing. In my circles, every illegal Trump deports and every ICE agent that shoves some protestor to the ground gets a round of applause. And the “labor pool” whine is BS. Reduce the demand, reduce the need for supply. Reduce the need for supply, reduce the need for labor. There is no plus side to mass immigration and definitely not those from enemy countries and with belligerent oppositional values, like Islam.
The people pushing unbridled immigration are the same fools that pushed abortion on demand, no fault divorce, free love, and the over population hoax that claimed we should not have children because we could not sustain a population size of the very same numbers they now claim we need for labor.
If libtards had a brain, they should have seen the fallacy of their overpopulation claims. Even today, you could take the entire world’s population, divide them into families of four, put them into 2000 SF houses, and all houses would fit into the state of Texas, with about 30% of Texas left over. The fools did not see the problems they were causing when a nation’s population isn’t growing robustly and naturally. But the brainless libs never see past their noses and their gutter-like sex practices.
How does this one sided garbage get published by the Epich Times? You shootings to be fake news? A poll that claims to measure Americans’ support for immigration must distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.. have a poll that asks if U.S. jobs should go to U.S. citizens or not. See where those poll results take you. Maybe to the obvious. The polls are fake—always subsidized by some fake news outlet—not only in the way they identify who to question but also in what the questions are.
So does that ‘consumer spending’ offset the taxpayer costs of supporting them?
How much of that ‘consumer spending’ is from taxpayer funds given to them?
If the least productive people leave the country and more Americans get better paying jobs productivity and profitability will go up not down.