Ep. 88 – Deportations didn’t cause the economic doom Democrats predicted

Okay, what I would like to do today is go back, go back.

No, not to my childhood when the teenagers listening were not yet alive, but go back just a couple of years ago.

President Donald Trump, less than a couple of years ago, President Donald Trump has just won his second term.

And one of his big pushes, especially this second term, was mass deportations.

He wanted to remove illegal immigrants from the country in big, big numbers.

And, you know, there's even even talks about cracking down on people who were here legally through things like the temporary protective status, at least.

And we've seen him do that throughout the course of his term.

Now, Democrats at the time warned that there would be dire consequences for this.

This is a report from The Guardian newspaper in December of twenty twenty four.

Donald Trump's vow to carry out the largest deportation campaign in American history would separate families and hurt the economy, witnesses testified during a Tuesday Senate hearing from December of 2024.

The president-elect, the Guardian wrote, has outlined an aggressive second-term immigration agenda that includes plans to declare a national emergency and deploy the U.S. military to round up and expel millions of people living in the country without documentation.

That's illegal immigrants.

If you remember our question five of the grade eight, what do you mean by that? When you read the newspaper, people living in the country without documentation, what that means is illegal immigrants, but they're trying to hide it from you to make you more sympathetic to them.

Again, this is from The Guardian.

Trump has also vowed to end humanitarian protections for millions of people who fled violence, conflict, or other disasters in their home countries.

The hearing, convened by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, set out to explore the economic and human toll of a large-scale deportation operation.

All right, this is a quote from Aaron Mecklin, sorry, Recklin Melnick, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan American Immigration Council.

He said, the president elects, that's Trump's, mass deportation plans would crash the American economy, break up families and take a hammer to the foundations of our society by deporting nearly 4% of the entire US population.

Ooh, sounds bad.

An analysis by his group estimates it would cost nearly $1 trillion to carry out Trump's mass deportation plan and slash the annual GDP by nearly 4.2% and 6.8%, a level on par with the recession of 2008.

That was also known as the Great Recession.

asked how Trump's plans could affect Americans financially.

Reckland Melnick said it would exacerbate inflation and cause food prices to rise.

All right, let's have a pause point.

Looking back at this prediction, which of the grade eight questions would you ask? And as a reminder, the grade eight questions are questions that we put into our mental toolbox.