LOS ANGELES, CA - FEBRUARY 18: A demonstrator wears a Trump campaign-style hat that bears a pro-immigrant message during the Immigrants Make America Great March to protest actions being taken by the Trump administration on February 18, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. Protesters are calling for an end to stepped up ICE raids and deportations, and that health care be provided for documented and undocumented people. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CA - FEBRUARY 18: A demonstrator wears a Trump campaign-style hat that bears a pro-immigrant message during the Immigrants Make America Great March to protest actions being taken by the Trump administration on February 18, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. Protesters are calling for an end to stepped up ICE raids and deportations, and that health care be provided for documented and undocumented people. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

Popular vote loser Donald Trump isn’t hellbent on merely destroying our environment and relationships with long-time allies across the world, he’s also set on running the economy into the ground through his anti-immigrant crackdown. Take it from Robert Kaplan, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas:

Millions of immigrants “are not going out and shopping, they are staying home, they are afraid if they go out they may not come home,” Dallas Fed chief Robert Kaplan said at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

“On the margin — and it’s too soon for the data to pick it up but you hear it anecdotally — I believe we are going to see it, I believe those people are more likely to save than to spend,” Kaplan added. “And those two effects have some muting effect on consumer spending and therefore GDP growth.”

He noted that consumer spending makes up about 70% of the economy, and that low and middle-income Americans in particular, including immigrants, typically are more likely to spend than save their income.

According to Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, Trump’s “pullback in immigration will cut economic growth by an average of a tenth of a percentage point in each year of his term, reducing total economic output by nearly $100 billion by 2021.” But remember, this is the guy whose sole credential when running for president was being a “business man.” Maybe he got that business degree from Trump University?

As Kaplan notes, immigrants are playing a key role in replacing an aging white population. Yes, that means the browning of America, which is no doubt the driving force behind Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller’s nativist agenda to Make America White Again. But unlike their boss, it’s undocumented immigrants who are paying billions in taxes, adding to the Social Security fund, and creating jobs:

Immigrants today are more than twice as likely to start a business as native-born citizens. Despite accounting for only about 13 percent of the population, immigrants now start more than a quarter of new businesses in this country. Fast-growing ones, too--more than 20 percent of the 2014 Inc. 500 CEOs are immigrants. 

According to the Center for American Progress, passing immigration reform and allowing immigrants to finally become American on paper would also add $1.4 trillion to the economy over the next 10 years. Not bad for a group of people Trump likes to accuse of being moochers. America would be wise to listen to the experts, instead of the guy who managed to burn down Trump Steaks after only two months.


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