Overview:

President Donald Trump’s immigration policies are shaking the U.S. economy and hitting immigrant workers — especially Haitians — who rely on humanitarian programs for legal employment. Businesses warn of labor shortages while economists caution that deportations and visa limits could slow growth.

By The Associated Press – Additional reporting and editing by The Haitian Times

Maria, a house cleaner in Florida, used to earn $13 an hour scrubbing classrooms. Every two weeks, her $900 paycheck covered rent, electricity and groceries for herself and her 11-year-old son. But in August, her life collapsed when her employer told her she could no longer work.

The Trump administration had ended President Joe Biden’s humanitarian parole program, which granted temporary work permits to migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

“I feel desperate,” said Maria, 48, who requested anonymity for fear of deportation. “I have five dollars left in my account. I’m left with nothing.”

Her story mirrors that of thousands of immigrants — including many Haitians — caught in President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration. The policy shift is rippling through the American labor market just as hiring slows amid trade tensions and economic uncertainty.

Immigrants have long filled jobs that many U.S.-born workers avoid — cleaning homes, harvesting crops, maintaining buildings. They’ve also driven innovation and entrepreneurship, strengthening the economy that now risks losing their contributions.

“Immigrants are good for the economy,” said Lee Branstetter, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University. “Because we had a lot of immigration over the past five years, inflation wasn’t as bad as people expected.”

Now, deportations and visa restrictions are undoing those gains. Economists Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the Brookings Institution, along with Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute, warned that job growth could soon stall completely. From June through August, hiring averaged just 29,000 jobs a month — a steep drop from the 400,000 per month during the post-pandemic rebound.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office lowered its 2025 growth forecast to 1.4%, citing Trump’s immigration and trade policies.

Haitians losing work permits

At Goodwin Living, a senior care nonprofit in Alexandria, Virginia, CEO Rob Liebreich said the loss of humanitarian work permits forced him to lay off four Haitian employees who had been promoted after years of dedicated service.

“That was a very difficult day,” Liebreich said. “We’re still struggling to fill those roles. We need all these people.”

Sixty percent of Goodwin’s 1,500 workers are foreign-born, and Liebreich fears dozens more could lose their jobs under the new rules.

Enforcement expands rapidly

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed on July 4, allocated $150 billion to immigration enforcement — including funds to hire 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and expand detention centers.

The ramp-up has already sparked international outrage. In Georgia, ICE agents detained 300 South Korean workers at a Hyundai battery plant, many of whom were in chains on video. The arrests angered Seoul and raised concerns about U.S. treatment of foreign investors.

Impact on U.S. farms

Farmers, once among Trump’s strongest backers,  now face crippling labor shortages.

“You got ICE out here herding these people up,” said John Boyd Jr., a Virginia farmer and founder of the National Black Farmers Association. “These are people doing hard work that many Americans don’t want to do.”

Boyd dismissed the administration’s suggestion that U.S.-born Medicaid recipients could replace immigrant farmworkers. “It takes a certain type of person to bend over in 100-degree heat,” he said.

Even the Labor Department acknowledged in an Oct. 2 filing that the lack of available immigrant labor “threatens the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers.”

Message to skilled workers: “You’re not welcome”

Trump has also raised fees for H-1B visas — a key path for skilled foreign workers — from $215 to $100,000, sending what economists call a chilling signal to global talent.

“A $100,000 visa fee is not just a bureaucratic cost — it’s a signal,” said Dany Bahar of the Center for Global Development. “It tells global talent: ‘You are not welcome here.’”

Jed Kolko of the Peterson Institute for International Economics said construction jobs, which depend heavily on immigrants, have already fallen by 10,000 since May.

For Haitian professionals and other skilled immigrants, the policy shift has caused deep anxiety. “The damage is already done,” said one nonprofit worker on an H-1B visa, who is preparing to leave the U.S. for the United Kingdom.

As Trump’s policies reshape the nation’s workforce, Haitian migrants, from house cleaners to health aides, find themselves once again on uncertain ground, bearing the brunt of America’s political battles over who belongs.

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