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The Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda is leading to labor shortages across the country and, some speculate, a drop in international tourism.
Nationwide, the World Travel & Tourism Council estimates that the U.S. will lose more than $12 billion in international tourist spending this year. In June, international visitors to the popular tourist destination, Las Vegas, were down 13 percent compared to the same time last year, and overall visits were down more than 10 percent.
“If you tell the rest of the world you’re not welcome, they are going to listen,” Ted Pappageorge, secretary treasurer of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Las Vegas, told The Guardian. “Our members are telling us that they’re quite nervous, and that’s why they’re calling it a Trump slump.”
In addition to growing anxiety about drops in tourism, many of Las Vegas’s workers also fear they could lose their legal status to work in the United States. Immigrants make up almost 25 percent of Nevada’s workforce.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration attempted to remove Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations for several countries, including El Salvador, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Cameroon. Temporary Protected Status allows people from countries experiencing upheaval, through war, natural disaster, or other crises, to legally live and work in the United States.
“After 25 years in this place, what would I do if they separate me from my children, from my wife, from my life I had built from scratch?” Nery Martinez, an immigrant from El Salvador and bartender at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, told The Guardian. “Those things hurt not just me and people like me, but also hurt citizen children, the community and the economy we help sustain.”
In addition to launching attacks on TPS, the Trump administration also eliminated a program that authorized people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to temporarily live and work in the United States if they met certain requirements. A federal court temporarily blocked the administration from ending the program, but, in May, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the Department of Homeland Security to terminate legal status and revoke employment authorization for the program’s participants.
A coalition of labor unions, including the AFL-CIO, have condemned the administration’s attacks on the program, stating that it will “end humanitarian parole for more than 500,000 immigrants — all of whom are here legally, and many of whom are union members.” Ending the program will also lead to labor shortages that will create “punishing work conditions, including excessively long shifts and safety hazards,” the groups warned.
The Guardian reported that a GE Appliances plant in Louisville, Kentucky lost 125 workers in the spring “due to programs cancelled as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown,” according to an employee.
“In three different buildings, on a couple of different shifts, stewards reported that they lost production so they weren’t able to make all the products they were supposed to make,” said Jess Reese, a replacement operator at the plant and organizer for IUE-CWA Local 83761. “It was hard to cover certain job tasks on the assembly line, and so that created chaos, and it was just hard to get things done.”
Workers were also pushed out of a Kraft-Heinz plant in Holland, Michigan, which has led to mandatory overtime and dangerous working conditions. Tomas Torres, a maintenance mechanic of 13 years, and president of RWDSU Local 705, told The Guardian he has been working 12 to 14 hour days.
“I’m tired. And you catch people falling asleep on the line, and it’s a big safety issue,” he said.
“We had people there for 20 years, and all of a sudden they get notification their immigration authorization is revoked,” he told The Guardian. “And they can’t be there anymore, and that just puts a strain on everybody.”
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