There's a lot to worry about but to keep the worry/analysis grounded, I think it makes sense to review what his administration did last time. And most of the damage was done to those who were illegal or seeking asylum or were from certain countries and seeking to travel to the U.S. It was awful and very disruptive to the lives of many. On the legal business immigration side, the main damage was the result of changes in policy and the way regulations were interpreted and applied. This included doing away with the deference given to previously approved applications when extensions/renewals were sought. This was disastrous, resulting in the denial of applications for people who had been employed in the U.S. by the same employer for years. The Biden administration immediately undid this when it took office. The other major change was in changing/increasing the requirements for getting H-1B and O-1 visas and extraordinary ability green cards. The Biden administration undid some but not all of these changes. There is concern that a Trump administration would undermine the H-1B program as well.

They also divorced the H4 renewal process from the H1B process.

USCIS had consistently renewed H4 visas along with the primary H1B application. Since H1Bs can pay for premium processing this meant both would usually be renewed within a month.

The Trump administration added a completely unnecessary biometrics requirement to the H4 renewal application (even if you had literally got your biometrics done a week ago) which meant the H4 application was now separated from the H1B application and now took at least a year to process.

Considering one can only apply for a renewal 6 months before expiry this led to tens of thousands of H4 visa holders losing the ability to travel, and having their EADs expire forcing them to quit their jobs.

This was a completely malicious action with the only purpose being to make people’s lives worse.

Is there any reason to think that Trump will ramp things up if he gets a second term? Particularly since the Supreme Court is so thoroughly conservative now?

It would make sense to expect some ramp up because immigration is a stronger electoral issue than it was previously, and because a second Trump administration will probably be more coordinated and effective in implementing its goals than the first one was. Given how laden with unintended consequences any change in immigration policy is, though, there are probably some limits on the rate of change that would be possible and politically prudent.

For example, without undocumented immigrants, milk would be a lot more expensive (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/magazine/milk-industry-un...). The current election is showing us quite starkly how significant grocery staple prices are in shaping public perception of a nation's economic health.

Are you saying American voters are tone deaf for prioritizing food availability over ethical sourcing of food?

I mean sure, but I don't think that judgement has any consequence unless anyone grabs a soapbox and starts chastising people for wanting cheaper food. I haven't seen any of the candidates do that yet.

I think even with a soapbox it wouldn’t be terribly effective.

We all know where our laptops and smartphones come from and the questionable-at-best labor practices associated with them, and nearly all of us continue to use them.

(To be clear, I’m no better. If a smartphone was released that was controversy-free but cost twice as much, I doubt I would buy it.)

I think food prices would be the same. People would complain about (and vote around) the prices rising, even if the higher prices were the result of more ethical labor laws.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t fix bad labor practices, I’m just saying that people will invariably be hypocritical about it.

Smartphones/laptops/hardware is slightly different because its manufactured/assembled overseas. The dairy industry is domestically based and acting like its workers are based in the 3rd world. Threatening the population with higher prices if they can't continue to break the law is extortion and it needs to be treated as such. If you can't run a legit business with legal labor, you need to be shut down. Someone else will find a way to do it.

I don't really disagree, I'm against exploitative labor, and I agree that if you can't do things legally you probably shouldn't be in business, especially in an extremely rich country like the US. [1]

I'm arguing that most people are hypocrites on this, and the last two years have proven that they'll blame the current president if their food prices go up. I'm not claiming that this is accurate, I'm claiming that that's what people seem to think.

[1] Exploitive labor is wrong everywhere obviously, but it's much easier to justify a more "relative morality" in a place with much more limited resources.

Agreed, politics is a team sport and someone is going to get the blame on grocery costs or gas prices. Its really the medias fault because people don't have the interest/time/intellect to dig into these issues - its all on headlines/clickbait. Illegal labor practices in farming/dairy/meat processing have been going on forever but they only seem to be front and center every 4 years, or < 3 weeks out from a national election cycle.

This isn't about food availability or ethnical sourcing of food. Apparently the business model of the dairy industry has illegal labor baked into how they do things. They have the gall to threaten Americans with higher prices if their workforce is eliminated. Sounds like extortion to me. This is a problem of crony capitalism.