NEW YORK, June 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is stepping up deportation efforts in California with immigration raids at restaurants, traffic stops and routine legal check-ins, but economists warn that, long term, fewer immigrants could take a hit to the economy, prompting labor shortages and slowing economic growth.
"Immigrants play a huge role in the California economy," USA Today on Friday quoted Giovanni Peri, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis, as saying. Without immigrants, "there will be less economic growth. Less opportunity, also, for local companies and American workers."
The country's economy has become "very immigrant dependent," according to Christopher Thornberg, founding partner at Beacon Economics, a Los Angeles research and consulting firm.
About 479,000 U.S.-born workers were added to the labor force over the last five years compared with 3.6 million foreign-born workers, according to an October report from the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan research organization.
The report pointed to a spike in immigration and retirements, coupled with a slowdown in U.S.-born working-age population growth.
In California, immigrants make up roughly one-third of workers and comprise an outsized share of the workforce in physically intensive sectors like construction and agriculture.
