On February 3, a group protest was organized entitled “Un Dia Sin Inmigrantes”, or “A Day Without Immigrants” in English.
The protest was a mass walkout, a boycott, where Hispanic and Latino people, citizens and immigrants, were encouraged to not go to work, buy from stores, or go to school, and instead, participate in protests around their cities.
The mass walkout was created in order to battle President Trump’s new immigration policies.
Around 73 percent of workers in agriculture are migrants according to Feeding America. With Trump’s new deportation policies, this number would drop to about 15 percent.
The decrease in workers would create a huge wound in the agriculture business, not only stalling the time it takes for crops to get to the market, but also the amount of crops being produced.
“[The] rhetoric is ‘immigrants are taking our jobs,’ but now the fields are empty because immigrants are the only ones that are willing to do those jobs,” says Mando Royo, a Texan restaurant owner when asked about his missing employers on February 3.
However, the agricultural business isn’t the only sector that took a massive hit with the protest, construction also is carrying the repercussions.
The construction business is made mostly of Hispanic men, making up more than 80 percent of the total workforce.
While Trump talks about bringing in more skilled workers and keeping the ones we have here, the construction business has already taken a hit within just the first 2 months of his presidency.
According to Anirban Basu, chief economist for Associated Builders and Contractors, Trump’s new policies would cost the construction business well over $88 million.
This would not only cause construction to be stalled and take more time, but would also cause construction to be far more expensive.
“Houses already cost so much in California, I can’t imagine how much they’d cost in two years,” says Marisa Diaz, Immigrant Worker Justice Program Director for the New York City-based National Employment Law Project.
A lot of the economy of America has been built by immigrants, the continuation of mass deportation would harm the economy and much of America’s working class.
Un Dia Sin Inmigrantes brought to light many of the injustices that Trump’s policies would bring.
Many of the executive orders and acts, such as his new ICE raids, which would allow ICE to detain any person they find without papers, and the Laken Riley Act, which encourages the mass deportation of any migrant found guilty of not having papers or having any kind of criminal record, including petty crime.
The continuation of criminalization and hatred against immigrants will continue to not only affect the economy negatively, but will continue to leave immigrants at a disadvantage and continue to make the process for citizenship a bigger struggle than it currently is.
“Our Latino community is the heart of our businesses and an integral part of this country,” said La Casita Pupuseria, a Salvadorian restaurant in New York.