Americans are not going to like the real world results of Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans | David Penberthy

There are about 12 million problems the US is going to have to work on before Mar-a-Lago drowns in its own rubbish, writes David Penberthy.

The US is about to get a whole lot messier, thirstier and hungrier under the Trump Administration.

Its parks, verges and golf courses overgrown. Its houses unkempt. Its restaurants packed with dirty dishes, their owners desperate to hire short-order chefs and waiters.

Its middle-class children wondering who’s going to change their diaper, make their school lunch, wash their uniforms ahead of Friday night’s ball game.

Its online shoppers wondering where the products they ordered are, or why they now cost more.

This is because the US to a vast degree is carried not just by legal migrants but illegal migrants from Latin America.

Indeed many of the people who voted for the return of Donald Trump have got a Guatemalan lady hidden out the back ironing their clothes.

As anyone who has travelled to the US can attest, you almost need a degree in Spanish to order a drink or a feed in many parts of the country.

Trump’s 2015 rant about those crossing the border – “they’re not sending their best” – ignored the fact that the country has for decades been propped up by cheap and cheerful Latin Americans who work hard and don’t hurt anyone.

For every menacing Sinaloan cartel affiliate or Tijuanan street urchin there are thousands of well-behaved Latinos doing the tough jobs at which white Americans thumbs their noses.

In an economic sense, and many would argue a cultural one, it’s been a two-way success story.

Historically, people from countries such as Mexico have been able to earn more money in the US than they ever would at home, while Middle America has avoided getting its hands dirty or wasting its time on menial chores thanks to the ever-present availability of hardworking Latinos.

Donald Trump’s strong showing among Latino voters has been presented by some as a conundrum. .

It is easily comprehensible when you consider the complexion and history of US Latino communities.

Most of these people fled or left their countries for the very ideological reasons Trump personifies – a belief in reward for effort and that government should be competent, small and let hard workers prosper.

They left socialist dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela and failed states such as Guatemala and El Salvador which have been plagued by civil conflict.

US President Donald Trump speaks to the media after signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on January 23. Picture: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

In their greatest number they came from Mexico, a nation blessed and cursed at the same time, plagued by corruption and bribery and latterly rendered desperately unsafe by a drug war which has claimed more lives than the war in Afghanistan.

When Trump rails against the lack of effective action from the Mexican state in fighting the cartels, his sentiment is in fact shared by many Mexicans both at home and in the US, the same Mexicans who these days are too frightened to live in those border cities where cartel influence is at its most entrenched and brutal.

The drift to the Left by the Democrats was also anathema to predominantly Catholic Latino voters who are more likely to be pro-life and are openly appalled by woke nonsense such as they-them pronouns.

These are hardworking, socially conservative people.

Clearly and obviously there were plenty of American Latinos who did not vote for Trump, in no small part thanks to his craven and indiscriminate demonisation of illegals, best demonstrated by his hysterical claims about the cat-eating Haitians of Springfield.

Having run so hard on the question of illegal immigration, the big question now is what Trump will do in terms of acting against the 12 million-odd undocumented residents of the US.

It’s a staggering number of people and the numbers are made even more impactful when you consider the role they play in so many industries.

With the prospect of mass deportations on the cards, and a ban on birthright citizenship already announced - then blocked by a Federal court - the economic impact of this mass human displacement will be immense.

To get a sense of what it means in an industrial and labour market sense, figures compiled from the US Census Bureau for Goldman Sachs late last year gave an industry-by-industry breakdown showing the proportion of legal and legal immigrants in the US workforce.

In domestic housekeeping the figures are 46.3 per cent legal and 17.9 per cent illegal.

In labouring, 39.3 per cent legal and 16.9 per cent illegal.

In gardening and landscaping, 36 per cent legal and 19.4 per cent illegal.

In crop picking and production, 32 per cent legal and 16.7 per cent illegal.

In dry-cleaning and laundry, 39.1 per cent legal and 13.8 per cent illegal.

Almost every fifth person in the US who cleans your house, tends the gardens, picks and slaughters the vegetables and meat you eat, irons the clothes you wear, fixes the broken things at your house or business, is an illegal immigrant.

Often an illegal immigrant who is prepared to do those jobs below minimum wage.

How do you replace all these people? Is there any way you replace them at the same rate of pay?

The Goldman Sachs data shows that beyond those higher representation categories listed above, illegal immigrants make up between 9 per cent and 13 per cent of workers in construction, food preparation, deliveries, manufacturing, textiles, forestry and mining.

In a symbolic sense, Trump’s first act in the de-Latinisation of North America was his batty declaration that henceforth the Gulf of Mexico will be known as the Gulf of America.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo had a droll take in reply, suggesting that maybe North America be renamed Mexican America given its geographic history.

It’s a fair suggestion. Trump is a lot of things but a student of history he is not.

It is doubtful he knows the original name of the US’s second largest city is El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles, back in the good old days when it was under Spanish then Mexican control.

Anyway, we should wish the President well. God knows what kind of shape Mar-a-Lago will be in six months time.