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The Myth of the Great Departure
One idea returns insistently in political discourse: making immigrants leave would free up jobs for Americans and improve wages. History has tested this theory. Several times. The result is always the same. In the 1960s, the end of the Bracero program, which brought Mexican workers to American fields, was supposed to protect national employment. Same scenario: labor shortages, rising costs, falling production. Before that, Operation Wetback in 1954 had already led to the expulsion of thousands of immigrant workers, never succeeding in replacing them with working-class Americans. The cuts to social assistance decided by the Reagan administration in the 1980s had worked no better, forcing the Republican president to sign an amnesty law legalizing millions of undocumented immigrant workers.
The border closure in 2020, during the health crisis, once again demonstrated this dependence. Despite massive unemployment, employers never succeeded in recruiting native workers to replace absent immigrants. The current migration crisis, pushing undocumented foreigners to leave the United States, could eventually cause the collapse of entire sectors. Some political leaders might then attempt to reduce or eliminate EBT cards and food stamps to force the poorest Americans to accept jobs abandoned by migrants, drawing on precedents from the 1980s social cuts and Clinton’ s 1996 reform, which already conditioned aid on work. Such a scenario would aim to replace immigrant labor with forced native labor, but it would provoke a major social crisis and massive political opposition. The departure of immigrants has never created the promised economic windfall. Never.
Flashmag! Edition 169 Fevrier 2026
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