Abstract
Across the United States, millions of workers report low wages, poor working conditions, a sense of economic precarity, and a loss of dignity. Some politicians have blamed undocumented immigrants for this degradation of work and proposed mass deportations as the solution. There is little evidence, however, that mass deportations will help American workers and scarcely any consideration of whether alternative strategies might be more effective. In this data brief, we review recent research showing that deportations hurt U.S. born workers and present new evidence demonstrating that more attention to labor standards enforcement can help U.S. workers. Zeroing in on the practice of " wage theft " —the failure of employers to pay workers the full amount they have earned and to which they are entitled—we show that workers in states with stronger labor laws and more vigorous enforcement practices are significantly better off than those in states with weaker labor standards enforcement. Labor enforcement agencies at all levels of government are woefully under-resourced—especially in comparison to immigration enforcement agencies. The federal government's budget and policy priorities, in short, are not aligned with the problem it ostensibly wants to solve. If we really want to help U.S. workers, we should prioritize labor standards enforcement, not mass deportations.