Iowa and Iowa State researchers - and top state business executives - team up to reach consensus opinion:

[torbee]

Donald Trump's deportation policies will be a disaster for the Iowa economy:

BUSINESS

What would Trump's mass deportationsmean for Iowa's economy? Nothing good,experts say
Donnelle Eller and
Kevin Baskins
Des Moines Register

Published 6:07 a.m. CT Jan. 15, 2025 Updated 9:40 a.m. CT Jan. 16, 2025

President-elect Donald Trump’s announced plan for a massive roundup and deportation ofimmigrants could hit Iowa hard, damaging rural towns' economies, leaving livestockproduction hamstrung and slowing meat processing and other manufacturing, sayeconomists, worker and business advocates and labor analysts.

Perpetually short of labor, Iowa is the leading U.S. producer of pork and eggs and a topsource of beef, turkey and milk. At
large meatpacking plants scattered across the state and inlivestock operations, immigrants are a major source of labor.

Any loss of workforce could be felt nationwide, leaving U.S. consumers facing pandemic-likeprice hikes at grocery stores, the experts say.

"Ag will be significantly impacted, because we rely on immigrant labor," said Chad Hart, anIowa State University agricultural economist. “We learned during COVID-19 that evenslowing production down can have dramatic impacts that are felt by consumers across thenation.”

But it's not just agriculture that faces worker losses if Trump carries out his policy. With anestimated 35,000 undocumented workers in the state, mass deportations would ripple acrossIowa construction, health care, hotel, restaurants and other industries, experts say.

"Undocumented workers are not unemployed," said Joe Enriquez Henry, president of the Latinos United of Iowa chapter in Des Moines. Many "are working in sectors that aredominated by big business interests."

The Trump's administration also may target legal immigration with programs Kaiser FamilyFoundation research shows could include ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival
program, cutting aid to immigrants, ending birthright citizenship and limiting refugees.

Even though Iowa has one of the highest labor participation rates in the nation, it’s declining,and business leaders and advocates complain the state lacks both skilled and unskilledworkers, with nearly 50,000 open jobs.

Foreign labor helps fill the gaps, picking up jobs that many U.S. workers don't want, experts said. Iowa's
population would have shrunk over the past decade if not for the growth of Hispanicand other populations that aren't part of the non-Hispanic white majority, according to David Peters, an ISU professor of agricultural and rural policy who has analyzed populationchanges between the 2010 and 2020 U.S. Censuses.

The impact is clear in communities that are home to meatpacking plants, where immigrantshave boosted the population, Peters' research shows. West Liberty is among them, with aneconomy that's thriving, said Mayor Mark Smith.

The east-central Iowa town of 3,900 is home to West Liberty Foods, a producer-ownedturkey processor. The town is one of six Iowa cities where the majority of the population ispeople who primarily identify as Hispanic. Many of the state's estimated 50,000undocumented residents are building new lives after leaving "troubled parts of the world,"said Smith, who tries to help them gain citizenship.

Most Iowa business and political leaders, however, “completely deny the fact that at least aportion” of their profits and economies “rely on undocumented labor," says Erica Johnson,executive director of the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice. And possible raids on places ofbusiness put state and local communities' economies at risk, she said.
"Iowa communities are facing real threats to their economic livelihood," said Johnson, whoseDes Moines group is helping workers, families, cities and towns to prepare for the possibilityof mass deportations.

Leaders of groups like the Iowa Association of Business and Industry and the Iowa BusinessCouncil said they support deporting immigrants with criminal histories, which Trump hassaid are his chief target.

At the same time, though, they recognize the need for additional workers and have pushedfor a more streamlined process to bring immigrants legally to the U.S. to work.
“I don't how many meetings we've had with people from Washington and every place elseabout immigration reform and wanting to do everything we can in this country to help speedup legal immigrants to help them become citizens,” said Mike Ralston, the outgoing ABIpresident.

Without immigration, Iowa’s population growth and workforce expansion would stagnate,“reducing the state’s ability to attract businesses, grow its economy, and sustain essentialservices,” University of Iowa economist Amil Kumar said.

“A reduced workforce would strain existing workers and challenge the state’s economicresilience,” Kumar said.

ISU Economist Peter Orazem sees the decline in Iowa's workforce participation rateaccelerating in the coming years as more aging workers retire.

"I do not see Iowa suddenly becoming more attractive to people in other states, and we havebeen a net exporter of educated labor for years,” he said. “In addition, Iowa’s economy hasbeen flat for almost two years and so we are not in a position to raise wages sufficiently toattract people from faster-growing states.

“The lack of labor force growth has been holding back the Iowa economy since the pandemicrecovery began," Orazem said. “Few states are more dependent on increasing immigration togrow or even maintain their workforces than Iowa."

Joe Murphy, the Iowa Business Council’s president, said increased immigration could bring“economic innovation and economic opportunity to our state that's going to create moreopportunities and expand Iowa's business competitiveness.”

Ralston said he hears many stories about the trouble Iowa companies encounter findingworkers. He recalled one ABI member so desperate for workers that he told him “we'll takeanybody if they're here legally and want to come. We will help them learn English on theclock so they are getting paid while they do.”

 

[torbee]

Ex-Principal CEO 'a little frustrated' by business' low profile indebate

But Johnson, the director of Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, said the businesscommunity’s support for immigrants has been “a whisper in a moment of time,” limited tothe occasional opinion piece or listed as a legislative priority.

“It has not produced actual results,” she said. “Business leaders have not been consistentlystrong enough in our state to let our members of Congress know and presidential candidatesknow that mistreating immigrants and bashing immigrants and scapegoating immigrants inIowa is not a winning solution.
“We’d like to see business leaders hold public officials accountable,” she said.

Retired Principal Financial CEO Larry Zimpleman said he would like to see Iowa’s business community take a more active role in supporting immigration to fuel Iowa’s future workforce.

“To be honest, I’m a little frustrated by that,” Zimpleman said of business’s quieter advocacy.“I’m still in touch with some of those business leaders … and what I hear is that they suggestthat they are having conversation with legislative leaders about this issue, and they're makingtheir views known, but they're consciously trying to keep kind of a low public profile aroundit, and I don't know if that just kind of reflects the time we live in or what."

Adrian Halliez, a Drake University political science professor, said business leaders mayperceive advocating for immigration as a risk.

"At a time when the rhetoric around immigration successfully infuses the topic with thoughtsof crime and economic resentment, would a company risk attracting the attention of theadministration, and potential boycotts if they get called out at the state, or even worse,national level?” Halliez said.

Past raids have had harsh effects
Tyson Foods, JBS Foods, Prestage Foods and other large meat processing companiesoperating in Iowa didn’t respond to requests for comment about Trump’s immigration plans.
In November, Tyson CEO Donnie King, whose Springdale, Arkansas-based company employsabout 9,000 workers at meatpacking plants in Storm Lake, Waterloo, Columbus Junction, Council Bluffs and elsewhere, told analysts that “there's a lot that we don't know at thispoint” about Trump’s policies
He added, “We’ll control what we can control.”

Iowa meatpackers have been immigration targets in the past: In 2006, Immigration andCustoms Enforcement officers raided a Swift & Co. pork processing facility in Marshalltown,arresting 90 people. And In 2008, ICE officers raided Agriprocessors in Postville, a beefpacking plant, arresting nearly 390 workers.
The Kosher plant later fell into bankruptcy and closed before being purchased and reopened.

Storm Lake Mayor Mike Porsch said he was too young to remember much about 1996 raidsthat swept up 70 workers at IBP Inc. pork plants in Storm Lake and Waterloo, now owned byTyson. Today, the company employs about 3,000 people in Storm Lake at its pork and turkeyplants, drawing an array of immigrants to the town of 11,300.

They're important to the northwest Iowa community’s economic and cultural vitality, Porschsaid. They own homes and businesses and are community leaders in Buena Vista County, thestate’s most diverse, with about 67% of the population made up of Asian, Black and NativeAmerican residents and those who identify primarily as Hispanic. They may be of any race.

“If there’s mass deportations, it could be a real hit,” Porsch said.

Livestock producers call for easier foreign worker visa system Iowa’s reliance on foreign labor is evident in the growth of the nation’s seasonal agriculturalH-2A visa program that enables foreign residents to work in the U.S., typically for 10 months,although the length can be extended.

Over the past decade, the number of foreign workers Iowa companies employ has aboutquadrupled to 4,523. Nationally, the number has tripled to 384,865, U.S. Labor Departmentdata shows.

Pork, dairy and other livestock groups have pushed the federal government for years to expand the seasonal worker program, making it year-round.

“We’re not a seasonal industry. Pigs are born year-round. It’s not like a crop that you harvestonce a year,” says Maria Zieba, the National Pork Producers Council’s government affairsvice president.

The industry also relies on TN visas, a program that enables professional workers fromCanada and Mexico to work in the U.S. It’s part of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

With Trump threatening to levy hefty tariffs against Mexico and Canada, he could jeopardizethe program and billions of dollars in annual trade for pork producer, Zieba said.

Last year, Mexico was the largest foreign buyer of U.S. pork, acquiring $2.4 billion. Canadawas fourth largest after China and Japan, at nearly $900 million, according to the U.S. MeatExport Federation.

And U.S. producers look to Mexico for veterinarian technicians who carefor sows and their piglets, Zieba said.

It’s training that’s not widely available in the U.S., she said.

“If the United States decides to withdraw from USMCA, that would be catastrophic to theindustry,” she said.

Meatpacking towns aren’t the only ones who’ve looked to immigrants.

As rural Iowa has emptied, small towns have welcomed immigrants to help grow theirpopulation, in part to help save the local schools that give the communities much of theiridentity, said Abigail Gaffey, an ISU community development specialist in Sioux City.

“The biggest fear that a lot of these small communities have is that they’re going to lose theirschool,” Gaffey said. “So that’s one of the things that motivates them.”

“A lot of communities are very welcoming, their churches, are welcoming, their social groupsare welcoming. The schools may put in an extra effort with new students, so I thinksometimes we get a bad rap."

She noted that smaller communities sometime struggle with an influx of immigrants"because the change can seem like it's so large.

“If we get several families moving in at one time, it changes the way their community looksand people can sometimes have angst with that,” she said.

But immigrant workers also have been key to helping Iowa communities struggling torecover from last year’s floods and tornadoes, she said. Deportations could hurt those efforts.

"I get nervous about losing the Hispanic population we have now, because that is the vastmajority of our construction workforce in particular. They're huge within that sector and thatsector's been struggling to keep people hired," she said.

Nationally, the construction industry faces about a half-million-worker shortage, accordingto Associated Builders and Contractors. The group's goal is to "work with the administrationand Congress on creating a visa system that allows people who want to contribute to societyand work legally in the construction industry to do so.”

Storm Lake’s Porsch would like to see U.S. leaders make it easier for Iowa’s undocumentedresidents to become citizens.

“It takes years, and it takes a lot of money,” he said, for a group that has little of either tospare. “There's got to be a simpler way.”

People who are law-abiding, “willing to work hard, pay taxes and be part of the community”should have a pathway to citizenship,” he says. “They’re coming here for a better way of life.”

 

[Jimmy McGill]

Trumps policies will only benefit the 1%

 

[McLovin32]

That's crazy. I wonder why people haven't been mentioning this for months and months and months and months.


Oh wait, they have been, and dumbass rural folks ignored it. They deserve whatever disaster comes from it.

 

[Tiny Hands Trump]

Oh no, the consequences of our own actions.

 

[Whiskeydeltadeltatango]

There seems to be an excessive amount of typos and fat fingering in that article.


Yes, we need to address the immigration system.

 

[ISUBryce]

That's crazy. I wonder why people haven't been mentioning this for months and months and months and months.


Oh wait, they have been, and dumbass rural folks ignored it. They deserve whatever disaster comes from it.

Until anything changes, I'm going to assume everything was a lie and nothing is going to happen, much like the first Trump presidency.