Prosperity Reigns Where Immigrants Live
Trump bashes migrants, but he also employs them. There’s a reason he does so much business in states that attract them.
The trouble with walls.
Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images
The hypocrisy of Trumponomics is laid bare by the demonizing of undocumented workers as the Trump Organization profits from them. With so many Trump hotels, residential buildings and golf courses located where migrants are numerous, Employer-in-Chief Donald Trump has enjoyed the economic benefits of immigration. That’s because states with the greatest concentration of immigrants create the most jobs and biggest increase in personal income. Where immigrants are relatively scarce, states generate the fewest jobs and smallest rise in income.
A record 43.7 million immigrants were living in the U.S. in 2016, representing 13.5% of the population, according to the Pew Research Center. That's more than a fourfold increase since 1960, when 9.7 million immigrants represented 5.4% of the total. The relationship between prosperity and immigrants — authorized or not — is definitive, according to data among the 20 largest states compiled by Bloomberg.