Deportation vow alarms construction industry
The state’s construction industry is voicing concern that President-elect Trump’s vow to deport millions of undocumented immigrants would cause major labor shortfalls, according to the Texas Standard. “It would devastate our industry, we wouldn’t finish our highways, we wouldn’t finish our schools,” said Stan Marek, CEO of Marek, a Houston-based commercial and residential construction giant. “Housing would disappear. I think they’d lose half their labor.”
Many of the state’s cities are on lists of the country’s fastest growing communities, and companies rely on undocumented labor. A 2022 report by the American Immigration Council and Texans for Economic Growth indicated more than a half million immigrants were working in the construction industry and nearly 60% of that workforce was undocumented.
