The Job Crisis Nobody Talks About: How Fear Destroys More Jobs Than Immigration
- American Jobs Factory
- Jul 30
- 7 min read
Updated: Jul 31
The cameras rolled as another pundit leaned into the microphone, voice rising with manufactured urgency: "If we just deport millions of people, there'll be more jobs for everyone else." The audience nodded. The talking points felt logical. Simple math, right?
But 800 miles away in a major economic hub, a young woman who should have been at the peak of her career was staring at half-finished work orders she couldn't complete.
She wasn't an immigrant. Born and raised locally, worked at the same food processing plant for eight years. She'd earned employee of the month twice, trained new hires, and never missed a day when her youngest had the flu.
But when her coworker—a woman who'd worked the specialized packaging line beside her for five years—was suddenly taken off the street during a neighborhood sweep, everything fell apart. Not just emotionally. Operationally.
Then the rumors started. ICE was planning to raid the plant. The date kept changing—next Tuesday, then Friday, then the following Monday. The raids never came, but something worse happened: people stopped showing up for work.
The missing coworker had been the only person who really knew how to calibrate the vacuum sealing equipment for their biggest client's specific requirements. She'd developed workarounds for problems that weren't in any manual. She spoke fluent Spanish with the truck drivers who delivered raw materials, preventing the miscommunications that had caused expensive delays.
Now this young woman was trying to piece together work processes with no way to contact her colleague. The training manual for the specialized equipment was confusing and hadn't been updated in years. Other workers didn't have the specialized knowledge that management had assumed was common throughout the plant. And with a third of the workforce too afraid to come to work, their biggest client was threatening to pull their contract if quality didn't improve immediately.
The $200 Billion Fear Machine: When Government Chooses Division Over Economics
But here's what makes this story even more chilling: we're about to spend $200 billion to make it worse.
That's not a typo. The new immigration enforcement budget allocates $200 billion to ICE and Border Patrol - more than the combined budgets of the FBI, ATF, DEA, and Federal Bureau of Prisons. If ICE were a military unto itself, it would now have the sixth largest military budget in the world.
To put this in perspective: ICE's current annual budget is $10 billion. We're about to fund them at the level of the U.S. Marine Corps - not as a law enforcement agency, but as an occupying force.
The Hiring Disaster We've Seen Before
History shows us exactly what happens when law enforcement agencies try to grow this fast. After 9/11, Border Patrol attempted to double from 9,000 to 18,000 agents in just a few years. The result? From 2005 to 2012, 2,100 Border Patrol officers were arrested for crime and misconduct - one officer arrested every single day for seven years.
Even by 2017, more than a decade later, the pace had only slowed to one arrest every 36 hours. The agency was still dealing with the corruption, crime, and incompetence that followed their hiring surge.
Why does this happen? Because when you try to grow any organization this fast, you cut education standards, hiring standards, oversight standards, and training standards. You promote unqualified people into supervisory roles they're not prepared for. You create what one expert called "a whole house of cards where across the entire organization, no one is qualified, no one has the training, no one has the supervision."
Who Wants This Job?
After 9/11, federal law enforcement could recruit with patriotic appeals: "Join an elite counter-terror force, be the first line of defense against al-Qaeda."
Today's ICE recruitment is essentially asking: "Are you someone who gets really excited to dress up like you're storming Fallujah in tactical gear with long guns to go round up some roofers in the Home Depot parking lot?"
As one historian put it, this has become "a recruiting pitch for America's worst bullies." The Onion captured it perfectly: "Every trait that made an ICE applicant bad for every other job makes them perfect to be hired by ICE right now."
We're creating a force that attracts people who are xenophobic, racist, sadistic - and then giving them unprecedented power and funding with minimal oversight.
The Steven Miller Effect: When Fear Overrules Even the President
Here's where the story gets even more disturbing. When Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told President Trump that workplace raids were devastating farms, hospitality, and construction, Trump actually agreed. He made a public announcement scaling back workplace enforcement. Policy guidance went out to ICE officers to stand down.
Within hours, Steven Miller essentially said, "The president's not in charge of this policy. I'm the one in charge." ICE revoked the stand-down order. When Trump tried again at a July 4th rally to suggest a different approach, nothing came of it.
Miller's demand for 3,000 deportations per day has forced ICE to abandon targeting actual criminals and go after "the easiest, lowest hanging fruit" - the workers who keep our economy running, the parents dropping kids at daycare, the people showing up to immigration court trying to do things legally.
The Real Cost: When Division Becomes Destruction
While politicians promise that removing workers will create prosperity, the opposite happens. Communities that embrace diverse workforces see wages rise 1.25% faster than those that don't. Cities with integrated teams attract more businesses, create more innovation, and build stronger economies.
But here's what really breaks the system: when we weaponize fear against any workers—whether they're immigrants or lifelong citizens—we create instability that hurts everyone.
This plant didn't just lose workers to deportation. They lost workers to terror. They lost the institutional knowledge that made them competitive. They lost the undocumented expertise that had filled gaps in outdated training systems. They lost the operational efficiency that comes when teams work together over time, developing solutions that no manual could capture.
Most importantly, they lost the fundamental truth that prosperity isn't a zero-sum game.
The Bold Alternative: What If We Built Something Better?
What if, instead of fighting over scraps, we created abundance? What if, instead of treating workers as disposable, we built companies that gave everyone—regardless of background—a real stake in the outcome?
At American Jobs Factory, we're not just talking about this vision. We're building it.
Our model is simple but revolutionary: 75% worker ownership across every company we create. When workers own the business, they don't compete against each other—they collaborate for shared success. When everyone has equity, everyone has incentive to make the whole operation thrive.
Imagine if that plant had been worker-owned. When rumors of raids spread, worker-owners wouldn't have fled in terror—they'd have had too much invested to abandon their stake. When their colleague was taken, her coworkers wouldn't have just lost a teammate—they'd have fought for her because her success was literally their success. The company wouldn't have collapsed from fear—it would have had the resilience that comes from shared ownership and mutual investment.
More importantly, worker-owned companies invest in proper training, updated documentation, and knowledge sharing because workers have a voice in those decisions. They don't rely on outdated manuals or assume knowledge that doesn't exist. They create systems that can withstand disruption because everyone has skin in the game.
This isn't just idealism. It's proven economics.
Worker-owned businesses are 30% less likely to fail than traditional companies. They pay wages 5-15% higher than comparable firms. They create jobs that last because workers have a voice in strategic decisions. And they build the kind of community wealth that lifts entire regions.
Building the Future: 500,000 Jobs, $250 Billion in Shared Prosperity
Our vision at American Jobs Factory goes beyond fixing broken systems. We're creating 50 worker-owned companies that will generate 500,000 jobs and $250 billion in annual revenue—all built on the principle that dignity and shared ownership are the foundation of real prosperity.
These aren't just jobs. They're ownership stakes. They're communities where success is shared, where institutional knowledge is valued and preserved, where fear has no place because security comes from solidarity.
When we build companies this way, we don't need to choose between supporting different groups of workers. We create abundance that lifts everyone. We prove that the economy isn't a pie with limited slices—it's a garden that grows when we tend it together.
The Choice We Face
That young woman eventually found another job, but at lower pay and without the benefits she'd earned over eight years. Her missing colleague was separated from her American-born children and the community she'd helped build. The workers who fled in fear never returned, taking their specialized knowledge with them forever.
The plant closed six months later. Not because of raids that never came, but because of fear that proved more destructive than any enforcement action. Forty-three families lost their livelihoods. The local diner that served the morning shift workers shut down. The gas station across the street lost 30% of its business. The ripple effects spread through that major economic hub like cracks in glass.
This is what happens when we choose fear over facts, division over economic reality.
But it doesn't have to be this way.
Every day, we have a choice: we can keep fighting over a shrinking pie, or we can bake a bigger one. We can keep weaponizing fear against workers, or we can give them ownership. We can keep believing that someone else's success threatens our own, or we can build systems where everyone's success creates more success for all.
At American Jobs Factory, we've made our choice. We're building the future where prosperity grows when we stand together, not when we divide. Not having fear that destroys American jobs.
The question is: what will you choose?
Because the real job crisis isn't about immigration fears and who gets to work. It's about whether we'll build an economy that works for everyone.
And that future starts with believing different.
The Job Crisis Nobody Talks About: How Fear Destroys More Jobs Than Immigration
The Job Crisis Nobody Talks About: How Fear Destroys More Jobs Than Immigration
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