President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration is already having a positive impact on American workers through increased wages in the construction industry.
In a new report by Fox News, Texas construction companies admitted that Trump’s increased enforcement of immigration was forcing them to pay higher wages to U.S. construction workers.
Fox News reported:
“Half of the workers in construction in Texas are undocumented,” [Stan Marek, CEO of Marek Construction] said. “We do hear that there are a lot of undocumented workers that are leaving the state, going to other states that don’t have the anti-immigrant sentiment and many of them are going back to Mexico.”
Ted Wilson with Residential Strategies, Inc. has run the numbers.
“We’ve seen direct construction costs climb by over 30 percent,” Wilson said, “and a lot of that is directly attributed to what builders are having to pay their subs and trades in wages.”
Meaning, with so few workers out there, construction companies have had to pay more to attract them, which adds to the cost of a home.
The big business lobby and CEOs have long criticized Trump’s immigration crackdown, primarily because their businesses have a direct interest in keeping the pipeline of low-skilled foreign workers coming to the U.S. to drive down the cost of American wages.
Trump’s most recent endorsement of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) and Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) RAISE Act, which would cut legal immigration in half in order to drive up the wages of U.S. workers, has shown a renewed commitment to the economic nationalist agenda that propelled his election.
Under the RAISE Act, overall legal immigration in the first year would be reduced by 41 percent and in 10 years, immigration would be reduced to 50 percent. It would also prioritize legal immigrants who can speak English and have skills needed for the current U.S. economy.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.