The irony of America’s dependence on immigrant labor
By ABHINAYA KASAGANI — akasagani@ucdavis.edu
America’s reluctance to admit immigrants into the country stems from their reluctance to acknowledge that their economy has been dependent on immigrant labor for decades. While there has been a recent influx of several half-baked and outdated ideas about how the immigration crisis should be resolved, or whether there’s even a crisis to be resolved to begin with, one fact remains true: America’s economy relies on the contributions of immigrants.
Our economy has, for decades now, remained dependent on immigrant workers — whether in the agricultural sector, construction, healthcare or technology — and yet we, as a nation, refuse to acknowledge how much we depend on this very work. Instead, we hide behind a reluctance to welcome or even acknowledge immigrants, concealing how essential they really are.
While some claim that Donald Trump is playing a game of four-dimensional chess that is beyond the comprehension of the ordinary person, others recognize this lack of dimension and substance for what it is — “the land of the free” once again choosing to be heavily self-congratulatory despite having done nothing to earn that praise. The National Immigration Law Center notes that anti-immigrant policies — in what is ironically referred to as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) — cut “health care, nutrition and tax benefits while expanding detention and enforcement” in an attempt to position immigration as a threat, rather than a resource.
53.3 million immigrants lived in the United States in January 2025 — the largest number ever recorded. However, “in the ensuing months, more immigrants left the country or were deported than arrived,” according to the Pew Research Center.
While politicians continue to make grandiose claims about securing the border and protecting American jobs, they fail to note the irony of the matter: Very few Americans want the jobs that immigrants are willing to take. Entitled Americans remain resistant to jobs they deem undesirable, resorting to the creation of unfounded claims that immigrant policies allow for job theft.
Out of the roughly 2.6 million people working in the agricultural sector, 1 million workers are primarily noncitizen immigrants. On top of this, roughly 3.3 million immigrants of the total immigrant population work in the construction industry, often underpaid and underprotected. Millions of immigrants also operate within white-collar industries and professional jobs in the tech sector or as business professionals, educators and health services professionals. The American Immigration Council, through new data analysis, confirms the extent to which immigrants are contributing billions of dollars to the U.S. economy.
Despite this dependence, national discourse attempts to claim full ownership of the country’s successes and attribute partial responsibility for their failures to immigrants. The reluctance to admit that the U.S. is dependent on immigrant labor — in an attempt to strengthen their political posturing as a self-sufficient nation — is cause for concern. The social exclusion of immigrants allows the federal government to ensure it profits off of cheap workers, while simultaneously refusing to integrate immigrants into its national identity. Millions of immigrant families live in fear of deportation, poor working conditions, deprivation of basic human rights and lack of access to healthcare and education. To this day, no concrete solutions are being considered on the matter.
The U.S., for whom democracy claims to be built on “liberty and justice for all,” seemingly handpicks who it decides is deserving; excluding the rest by refusing them any extension of justice. This reluctance hasn’t grown overnight, and the country’s persistence is interesting to note — the image of a “self-made” nation, years later, still depends on an invisible collective force that makes individual success possible.
“Go back to where you came from, but please don’t go too far — we need you;” this, as a sentiment, can’t sustain a developed nation built on the labor of others. Only when America stops pretending that immigrants aren’t its backbone, or that they rely on them in order to survive, can they truly deliver on the promise of freedom and fairness they have always stood for. Otherwise, we will be left debating whether or not there is a crisis to be resolved when millions of livelihoods are at stake.
Written by: Abhinaya Kasagani— akasagani@ucdavis.edu
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