Gautam, Umesh

We develop a theoretical model to analyze the impacts of deporting undocumented workers and implement it empirically for US vegetable production, which employs low-skilled domestic, guest, and undocumented workers, along with high-skilled workers, materials, and capital. The results show that removing 1,000 undocumented workers leads to a negligible increase in low-skilled domestic employment (59 workers) and an annual wage increase of $57 per worker, indicating very limited but positive labor-market adjustment. In contrast, reduced labor availability lowers vegetable output by $35.07 million and reduces returns to complementary inputs. Moreover, removing half of the undocumented workforce reduces vegetable output by $2.55 billion.