{"id":18231,"date":"2026-06-26T18:33:38","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T18:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=18231"},"modified":"2026-06-26T18:33:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T18:33:38","slug":"immigrants-go-from-white-collar-careers-to-u-s-shadow-workforce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=18231","title":{"rendered":"Immigrants go from white-collar careers to U.S. shadow workforce"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Augusta Saraiva and Alicia A. Caldwell<\/strong> | Bloomberg<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s moves to roll back Temporary Protected Status and other humanitarian programs for immigrants are pushing hundreds of thousands of previously legal foreigners into a shadow workforce, with Thursday\u2019s Supreme Court ruling set to accelerate the shift.<\/p>

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The court\u2019s justices gave the Trump administration the green light to strip protections from more than 350,000 people from Haiti and Syria. Even before that, some 600,000 working adults\u00a0had already\u00a0lost the\u00a0right to live and work in the US since last year as the White House sought to end programs\u00a0for migrants from places including Venezuela, Cuba and Afghanistan, according to the pro-immigration advocacy group FWD.us. At the end of March, it estimated\u00a03 million immigrants in the labor force could face the same fate. Some have been\u00a0in the US for decades.<\/p>\n

Policy changes are rippling through the labor system and go beyond the TPS program, affecting asylum seekers, refugees, green-card applicants, highly skilled workers on H-1B visas and\u00a0recipients of humanitarian protections.\u00a0The result is that, for many, the most immediate threat isn\u2019t deportation, but losing the right to earn a paycheck while they remain here.<\/p>\n

Many of those who lose their legal status may choose not to leave, instead staying\u00a0in the US\u00a0and taking\u00a0off-the-books jobs that don\u2019t match their skill set, according to\u00a0Pia Orrenius, a labor economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn most cases, these people are not going to leave the country,\u201d Orrenius said. \u201cThey\u2019ll likely stay and swell the ranks of the undocumented immigrant population.\u201d<\/p>\n

FWD.us estimated\u00a0that those who already lost status\u00a0had been contributing more than\u00a0$22 billion on average to the US economy every year, and paid more than $6 billion in taxes. The total fiscal impact could surpass $175 billion a year if other protective programs are eliminated, it found.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt hurts economic growth overall, and it particularly hurts the places where you create these huge labor disruptions,\u201d said FWD.us President Todd Schulte.<\/p>

\n<\/div>\n

The Trump administration says\u00a0ending or scaling back programs like TPS \u2014\u00a0something the president has tried to do since his first term \u2014 will eventually translate into better wages and job conditions for American workers.\u00a0\u201cIt is a momentous victory, albeit this should have never taken 10 years,\u201d White House adviser Stephen Miller said in an interview on Fox News,\u00a0referring to the Supreme Court ruling.<\/p>\n

Critics of TPS say\u00a0the program\u00a0was never intended to be anything but temporary, and that extending it for decades in some cases created a false expectation it would be permanent. TPS doesn\u2019t offer a pathway to a so-called green card or citizenship.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s 6-3 ruling\u00a0in favor of the Trump administration\u00a0rejected\u00a0contentions that the administration took procedural shortcuts and engaged in unconstitutional racial discrimination by stripping Haitian and Syrian migrants of TPS. In a separate decision, the court also sided with Trump in a ruling that could make it harder for some migrants to seek asylum.<\/p>\n

Even before the latest crackdown, businesses in industries including construction, healthcare and hospitality \u2014\u00a0all of which depend heavily on immigrant labor \u2014\u00a0were reporting worker shortages. The situation has only worsened.<\/p>

\n<\/div>\n

Goodwin Living, a nonprofit senior-care provider outside\u00a0Washington, DC,\u00a0has lost seven workers since Trump took office last year.<\/p>\n

It took the organization five months to fill just one of the positions, forcing other employees to work overtime and increasing costs for the company, said Chief Executive Officer Rob Liebreich. He\u2019s worried about dozens of other employees who have temporary work authorizations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would hire probably 200 people tomorrow if they were there,\u201d Liebreich said. \u201cWe actually have to decline patients because we don\u2019t have the team members to serve them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karydja, a 26-year-old Haitian immigrant and nurse at a Philadelphia-area hospital,\u00a0is still exploring options in the wake of the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling. She\u2019s already\u00a0spent\u00a0about $13,000 to apply for asylum for herself and her mother,\u00a0but she expects to soon lose her legal right to work.<\/p>\n

Karydja, who like others interviewed for this story asked not to be identified by her full name, is now facing the possibility of returning to a country she hasn\u2019t set foot in for more than a decade. Her\u00a0parents brought her to the US shortly after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people, and she was later granted TPS.\u00a0Conditions in Haiti have only worsened since then.<\/p>\n

Reeling after hearing of the court\u2019s decision, she lamented that in a few days \u201cI have no job anymore.\u201d<\/p>

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Losing status<\/h4>\n

Trump has tried to scale back some legal protections for immigrants since his first term, but his efforts were repeatedly blocked by judges. This time around, the White House is acting faster\u00a0and pursuing more aggressive changes. In Trump\u2019s second term, the Homeland Security Department has moved to terminate TPS for 13 countries including\u00a0Haiti, Ukraine and Venezuela \u2014 which means a\u00a0big chunk of the about 1.3 million TPS holders who lived in the US as of\u00a0last year have either lost their status or are on\u00a0track to lose it this year.<\/p>\n

For many immigrants, the changes making it harder to live in the US have arrived not as a single dramatic event but as a series of bureaucratic blows. Through a host of regulatory moves, the White House had made employment authorization harder to obtain and increased compliance burdens for employers.<\/p>\n

Ken, a 23-year-old\u00a0accounting graduate from Venezuela, learned that the US government canceled his work permit when he failed a pre-employment background check. Freshly laid off from a $60,000-a-year job as a credit analyst, the new reality arrived as he was hunting for his next gig. He had been living and working in the US since 2024\u00a0under TPS, but the car lot where he hoped to work as a salesman said he was flagged as ineligible.<\/p>\n

Ken now struggles to make ends meet delivering food. He left his home in Texas to split rent with his sister in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

\u201cEither way, I\u2019m going to put my best foot forward and try to achieve what I want to achieve in life,\u201d Ken said. \u201cBut the logistics of that certainly gets turned over when these things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ending the protections and accompanying work permissions will open a slew of jobs for Americans, according to Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute that generally advocates for restrictive immigration policies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s in the name: It\u2019s temporary,\u201d Ries said. \u201cIt needs to get back to the original intent and scope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond TPS<\/h4>\n

Trump\u2019s crackdown on legal immigration doesn\u2019t end with TPS holders. The White House is moving to keep pending asylum applicants from legally working as they wait \u2014 oftentimes for years \u2014 for a decision. And so-called Dreamers \u2014 undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children who were\u00a0awarded deportation protections under an Obama-era program \u2014 fear they could be next. That\u2019s on top of the many student and work visa holders, as well as permanent residents, who are facing additional challenges to remaining in the US.<\/p>\n

Angel, 36, grew up in Queens knowing he and his mother didn\u2019t have permission to live in the US \u2014\u00a0he arrived when he was just 4 years old. But after attending college on a track-and-field scholarship, he won permission to live and work in the US through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. He got a job as a bilingual physical education teacher at a public school in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

For 14 years, he lived in the US without any problems\u00a0so long as he renewed his permission every two years and didn\u2019t get in any legal trouble. In February, he submitted his renewal application, as he had done six times prior. But due to delays he\u2019s never experienced before, his work permit expired and a new one has yet to be approved.<\/p>\n

The school where he teaches put him on unpaid leave. He hopes his renewal\u00a0comes through before school starts back up in the fall.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been extremely difficult,\u201d Angel said, to lose \u201ca steady paycheck that provides stability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond the labor market, the recent policy changes are also likely to impact immigrants\u2019\u00a0ability to keep spending. Since Jose Palma, a TPS holder from El Salvador, received a work authorization almost three decades ago, he went from taking on cleaning and truck driving jobs to graduating with an associate\u2019s degree and working as a paralegal.<\/p>\n

Palma, 49, who lives with his wife and four American children in Houston, had plans to buy a new car and renovate his home, which he has now postponed. He\u2019s also shelved plans to throw a big party in October to celebrate his 50th birthday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to spend money because we don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d Palma said.<\/p>

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