By STEPHEN GROVES, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations and other hardline immigration measures will result in roughly 320,000 people removed from the United States over the next ten years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday in a report that also projected that the U.S. population will grow more slowly than it had previously projected.
Trump’s tax and spending law, passed by Congress and signed in July, included roughly $150 billion to ramp up his mass deportation agenda over the next four years. This includes funding for everything from an extension of the United States’ southern border wall to detention centers and thousands of additional law enforcement staff. The CBO found that 290,000 immigrants could be removed through those measures, and an additional 30,000 people could leave the U.S. voluntarily.
Coupled with a lower fertility rate in the U.S., the reduction in immigration means that the CBO’s projection of the U.S. population will be 4.5 million people lower by 2035 than the nonpartisan office had projected in January. It cautioned that its population projections are “highly uncertain,” but estimated that the U.S. will have 367 million people in 2055.
Lower immigration to the U.S. could have implications for the nation’s economy and the government’s budget. The report did not directly address those issues, but it noted that the projected population would have “fewer people ages 25 to 54 — the age group that is most likely to participate in the labor force — than the agency previously projected.”
Democrats in Congress have been warning that mass deportations could harm the U.S. economy and lead to higher prices on groceries and other goods.
In the White House, Trump has said he wants to see a “baby boom” in the U.S. and his administration has bandied about ideas for encouraging Americans to have more children. But the CBO found no indication that would happen.
“Deaths are projected to exceed births in 2031, two years earlier than previously projected,” it noted.
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