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The early numbers are in. I’ll admit to being very surprised. People really do seem to be self-deporting! And more than just a few. The recently released stats on population, labor force, and employment level all point to the same phenomenon. Foreign-born people are leaving. The numbers from March to May of 2025 show a decline in all three metrics. Foreign-born population down about 1 million. Foreign-born labor force down about 800,000. Foreign-born employment level down about 635,000. Better still, the decline in foreign-born employment level is almost exactly offset by native-born. Employment for native-born shows an increase of about 635,000. And best of all, average wages from March to May increased 0.6% - that’s double the inflation for the same time frame.
Now I suppose it’s possible a portion - maybe even a large portion - of these population/labor force/employment level changes result from people lying on the surveys. That’s certainly possible. Maybe even probable. If a million illegals really left, and native-born people took over the jobs they left behind, I’d expect the employment/population ratio to go UP. But it didn’t. Conversely, it went down. So it well could be that this is phony fanfare. But even lying on the survey shows a step in the right direction. It would indicate that it’s becoming known among the illegal population that the game has changed and you can no longer be illegal with impunity.
Discussion (7)
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We'll know for sure after more time. I wonder how many are taking that $1000 self-deportation payment. Show me the receipts!
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How many would want to be on the lists of those who took those payments? $1000 is not a lot of money to any family that has set itself up with an American income, when being on one of those lists could come back to bite them in the future.
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Why would that be? From what's been said, if they take the deal and "self-deport" they can apply for legal return. If they don't, they can't.
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I've suggested that's how it should work, but I don't know that anyone else has. They'd need something more than my say-so or Trump's to take it seriously.
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From what I've read, that is specifically how it works, and how it was presented. "Leave on your own, and you can apply to come back legally. If we catch you, you never can." The $1000 is an incentive for using that revised app.
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