In Texas, the immigration debate has long been framed as politics, but now it’s being reframed as survival — survival for the businesses that feed the Lone Star State.
A recent report in the New York Times finds restaurant owners, farmers and industry groups in Texas breaking across traditional political lines and warning that immigration crackdowns are driving away workers, raising costs and threatening whether some businesses can continue to stay open at all.
In a state where undocumented workers make up a significant portion of the labor force, the question really isn’t abstract anymore: What happens to the Texas economy if that workforce disappears?
Jesus Jiménez, who reports on North Texas for the New York Times, joined Texas Standard to discuss. Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: As a very memorable line from this story, you’re talking with a Texas restaurant owner who says this moment now feels “worse than the pandemic.”
Could you say a little bit more about what specifically has changed on the ground to make things in the restaurant business feel that dark and gloomy?
Jesus Jiménez: Yeah, it’s been a number of things. One, we’ve just seen food costs go up over the past few years. And so costs are up and sales are down.
Last year, only 50% of restaurants in Texas reported that they were profitable. And that is actually higher than the national standard, which I believe was about 42% of restaurants nationally last year who said they were not profitable.
Is all of that due to what’s happening with immigration enforcement? Surely it’s not. You mentioned the inflation, for example, right?
Yeah, it’s not all due to that, but labor is another thing that restaurant owners and farm workers are struggling with that, you know, even immigrants who are documented and have some form of legal status have been afraid to go to work, afraid to go out. I’ve heard from a lot of restaurant owners who have said that the immigration raids that we’ve seen across the country have created sort of a chilling effect.
And so in Texas, we haven’t really seen the sort of LA-style, Chicago-style immigration raids, but they are happening seemingly every day across the state — and in some instances, at even higher rates.
And so all of this is creating this culture where suddenly you have people who are afraid to go work, are afraid to go out. And so they’re dealing with that on top of the increase in food costs and other things like that.
This seems like an unusual alliance of business groups in Texas. Together what are they pushing for and how closely are they working together in pushing for it?
Yeah, there’s a mix of things that they are pushing for. One is just work permits for restaurant workers, and also maybe farm workers, and that would just allow employers to be able to hire people legally and not be as worried about immigration coming to your restaurant or place of business.
There’s also a piece of proposed legislation called the Dignity Act, and that is a bit more all-encompassing than just work permits. I believe there’s about an amount of $7,000 in restitution, immigrants had to have been in the country for some amount of years, obviously pass a background check… And so that’s a bit more expansive.
I’ve heard from some restaurants owners who are saying, you know, we just love the work permit and figure out the rest of it.
And so there’s been pros and cons to this. Some people say that, you know work permit without a pathway to citizenship is unfair to immigrants who have been in the country for very long. And there’s also opposition from people who are saying any form of work permit for undocumented immigrants is amnesty and goes too far.
How uniquely exposed is the Texas economy as you see it?
One thing that I think surprises some people out of Texas is that, by some estimates, about one in 10 members of the Texas workforce are undocumented. And that’s not to say that one in 10 members of Texas workforce is not showing up for work. But that is a significant portion and that’s just undocumented immigrants.
Immigrants overall make up an even larger portion of the Texas economy. And so if you’ve got this chilling effect or people are afraid to go out, afraid to work, I think it affects the economy a lot.
And I had one restaurant-owner who told me it’s not just that they’re afraid to go to work or afraid to go out. If they’re not going out, they’re not spending money. And if they are not spending money, then that’s hurting them too. So it’s twofold.
And some restaurant-owners are having a hard time convincing their employees to go to work and you also have clients who are now afraid to go dine out because they don’t want to be caught up in some sort of raid or immigration enforcement effort.
Well, there’s obviously a tension here because there are calls for more enforcement on the one hand, certainly among Republicans backing the Trump administration, and then you have business demands for labor on the other.
Are policymakers engaging with that contradiction or sort of avoiding it?
Yeah, there is a sort of mixed bag. I talked to some members of Congress who have co-sponsored the Dignity Act bill, and it is a mixed, fairly balanced proposed piece of legislation. I think the last I checked there was 20 Democratic lawmakers and 20 Republicans.
I talked to one of the congresswomen who had introduced the bill who said they’re being very targeted and very just focused on making sure that whoever is co-sponsoring this piece of legislation is making it a balanced process.
What they want is for every Democrat, one Republican to go on board. And they believe that with more bipartisan support, then they’d be more likely to be able to achieve some sort of legislation.
Jesus, let me ask you something, just sort of bottom-line for listeners: If nothing changes, what does this look like for Texans in everyday terms when it comes to, say, for consumers? How does this hit home?
You know, I think part of it is hard to predict, but I heard a good story the other day, which is that people were going to a restaurant in Texas and they stepped in and there was plenty of empty seats and places where they could sit down, but the restaurant didn’t have a lot of staff. And so they had to just section off a piece of the restaurant so they could seat as many people as they could serve without being too swamped.
And I think you might see more instances like that. You might go to a big-chain restaurant, and you’ve got a whole wing of the restaurant that’s available, but you only have so many servers to be able to seat so many people and serve them at the same time.
And so you’ll see a mix of that and maybe also higher prices for food if business owners are struggling.
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