What If America’s Immigrants Actually Left?
Originally published by News Americas Now Read the original
By Felicia J. Persaud
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Sun. Sept. 27, 2026: I recently came across a series of brilliant satirical sketches by Cameroon-born creator Leeno Daash, built around a provocative question: What would Europe look like without immigrants? The premise is simple. An angry White man tells a Black immigrant doctor that immigrants should go home because they are taking jobs and ripping off the system.
So the doctor says, “Okay.” And he mobilizes all the immigrant doctors and nurses in the hospital to leave. Suddenly the hospital’s White patients are begging them to come back, and the same man brings his wife to the hospital and is mad he cannot get care for her, as the few White doctors and nurses tell him they all left. Deliveries disappear. Restaurants close. Food becomes ridiculously expensive. Even a soccer team can barely field enough players.
It is satire, exaggerated for comedy. But watching it from America in 2026, I found myself wondering: what if America’s immigrants actually went home? The uncomfortable answer is that we may already be getting glimpses. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, foreign-born workers accounted for 19.1 percent of the entire U.S. civilian labor force in 2025.
They are especially concentrated in occupations Americans depend on every day. Foreign-born workers were more likely than native-born workers to work in service occupations; natural resources, construction and maintenance; and production, transportation and material-moving jobs. Then there is health care. After Temporary Protected Status and related work authorization ended for hundreds of thousands of Haitians this summer, employers and families began experiencing what happens when immigrant workers suddenly disappear.
An analysis of Census data cited by Reuters estimated that about 21,000 Haitian TPS holders worked as caregivers and nursing assistants, collectively serving approximately 77,000 patients nationwide. One New York non-profit serving people with disabilities lost workers after Haitian TPS ended. In South Florida, home-care agencies have reportedly closed, nursing homes have scrambled for workers, restaurants have reduced hours, and employers have struggled to replace experienced Haitian employees. These aren’t theoretical economic models; they are people missing from shifts.
And agriculture presents the same fundamental question. Who plants, harvests, processes, transports, cooks and ultimately delivers America’s food when significant portions of an immigrant workforce disappear? The effects reach far beyond farms. Construction companies, hotels, restaurants, cleaning contractors and other employers are confronting similar questions. The Washington Post reported this month that restaurants, hospitals and construction firms had already begun laying off Salvadoran workers amid uncertainty over their Temporary Protected Status. One small environmental-remediation contractor warned that it could lose a third of its skilled workforce.
And losing workers is only half of the economic equation. Immigrants are also consumers. They rent and buy homes. They shop. They eat at restaurants. They start businesses and pay taxes. Their children attend schools, and their families buy cars, clothes and groceries. When immigration enforcement makes entire communities afraid to leave their homes, local businesses can lose the people on both sides of the cash register.
A March 2026 report by Democratic staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship cited an estimate that small, consumer-facing businesses in Minneapolis could have lost as much as $81 million in revenue in January amid intensive immigration enforcement. Independent academic evidence shows the same phenomenon. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that Orange County lost $58.9 million in economic output over an eight-week period following intensified federal immigration enforcement in 2025. In neighborhoods with high concentrations of foreign-born residents from Latin America, spending fell by an estimated 20 to 25 percent.
So when you remove a worker, you don’t simply create a job opening. You can also remove a customer, taxpayer, tenant, entrepreneur, parent, and neighbor. This does not mean native-born Americans do not perform these jobs. Millions do. Nor does it mean immigration laws should never be enforced. But it does mean that a serious national conversation about mass deportation should include an equally serious conversation about its economic consequences. Because an economy does not distinguish neatly between “immigrant worker” and “American economy.”
The immigrant worker is already part of the American economy. In fact, a NY Times story on Sept. 26th boldly states: “Cattle industry groups in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas and two Republican senators said the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions were hurting operations.” That is what makes Daash’s comedy so effective. He takes a familiar anti-immigrant demand – “go home” or “go back where you come from” – and asks audiences to imagine what happens the morning after everyone actually does.
America is now confronting its own version of that question. Immigration enforcement has expanded dramatically. Temporary legal protections have been terminated for hundreds of thousands of people. Employers in some sectors are already describing staffing disruptions.
Perhaps America’s immigration debate has been asking only half the question. For years, we have debated what immigrants supposedly cost America. Maybe it is time to calculate the other side of the ledger. What will it cost America if immigrants disappear?
Leeno Daash imagined the answer and made people laugh and think. America may increasingly have an opportunity to discover the answer for itself. So before celebrating the prospect of millions of immigrants leaving, perhaps one more question is worth asking: can America afford to live without them?
Felicia J. Persaud is the founder and publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com, the only daily syndicated newswire and digital platform dedicated exclusively to Caribbean Diaspora and Black immigrant news across the Americas.