Another Deadly Consequence of Trump’s Deportation Campaign

(Composite by Hannah Yoest / Photos: Shutterstock)

DONALD TRUMP, STEPHEN MILLER, and the rest of the MAGA faithful want you to believe their crusade against immigration will make America a happier, healthier place.

A new research paper suggests they are dead wrong.

The paper finds that higher immigration literally saves lives—and suggests that, by extension, lower immigration costs lives.

The reason is health care for the elderly. The paper finds that when a community attracts more immigrants, seniors are less likely to end up in health care institutions and, ultimately, less likely to die. It also shows that influxes of immigrants mean influxes of health care workers—both high-skilled (doctors, nurses, etc.) and low-skilled (home health aides, nursing home staff, etc.).

The arrival of those low-skilled workers in particular could be important, the researchers who wrote the paper say. When there are more of these care workers around, seniors and people with disabilities are more likely to live at home rather than in assisted-living facilities, nursing homes, and other congregant settings. And for those who do end up in such facilities, the staffing levels there are likely to be higher. Overall, the paper finds, allowing immigration to go up by about 325,000 people a year—an increase of more than 25 percent over the current legal limit—would reduce deaths by 5,000 annually.

Of course, more immigration is not exactly in vogue with the current administration, which is trying to block new immigrants and expel many who are already here. But just as the new study shows that it’s possible to model how more immigrants will lead to fewer people dying, it’s also possible to model the inverse: how fewer immigrants will lead to