Although the effects of the 1924 immigration restrictions are difficult to untangle from other developments
— wars, technological advancements, the baby boom
— wages rose for U.S.-born workers in places affected by the immigrant restrictions.
But only briefly.
Employers avoided paying more by hiring workers from Mexico and Canada,
countries not subject to immigration caps;
American-born workers from small towns migrated to urban areas
and alleviated shortages.
Farms turned to automation to replace the missing labor.
The coal mining industry,
which was powered by immigrants now barred from entry,
shrank.
And today?
Construction wages have been rising,
even as home building has been sluggish
— a potential indication that deportations in the immigrant-heavy industry are bidding up salaries.
The union representing workers in the pork processing industry sees an upside, too,
even though it opposes deportations
and won wage increases after President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s immigration surge.
“I will certainly bring it up at the bargaining table
that the way to solve a labor shortage is to pay more money,”
said Mark Lauritsen,
head of the meatpacking division at the United Food and Commercial Workers Union International.
The same is true in landscaping.
Immigrant crews, working outside,
were an easy deportation target over the summer.
Come spring,
said Kim Hartmann,
an executive at a Chicago-area landscaping firm,
the labor force could be 10 to 20 percent smaller.
"It’s going to be much more competitive to find that individual
who’s been a foreman or a supervisor
and has years of experience,”
Ms. Hartmann said.
“We know that drives costs up.”
But there are limits to how much customers will pay for decorative shrubs,
and they may opt to go without.
One 2022 study examined the expulsion of tens of thousands of Mexicans from the United States in the early 1930s.
Contrary to the policy’s intent,
unemployment rose and wages were depressed for native-born workers,
possibly because sectors that depended on immigrant labor
— agriculture, construction and manufacturing
— suffered so much that they contracted.
The lesson of the last period of intense restriction is that
employers have an array of ways to adjust,
said Leah Boustan,
an economics professor at Yale
who studies the history of immigration.
“The menu is other sources of labor, and machinery,” she said.
“It’s not obvious that you’re going to pick the guy down the street relative to these alternatives.”