KY Senate candidate wants to stop all immigration. Economists warn against it
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Senate candidate Nate Morris proposes full immigration moratorium until all undocumented immigrants are deported.
- Economist warns policy could cut GDP growth by over one percentage point annually.
- Critics say proposal is unworkable and risks collapse of industries reliant on immigrants.
U.S. Senate candidate Nate Morris’ biggest policy proposal is also one that divides him from his GOP competition and comes with a big warning label from conservative economists.
The first-time candidate wants to halt all legal immigration into the United States until every single one of the millions of undocumented immigrants in the country is deported. Several economists called the move impractical, with one warning it would be “a complete disaster” for the U.S. economy.
Morris is sticking to his guns.
“We’re full. We can’t handle any more coming into our country,” Morris said. “Why would we take more if we can’t handle what we have?”
There would be no exceptions for worker visas, student visas or any other special designation, Morris said.
The policy has separated Morris from other leading Republicans in the race, including Rep. Andy Barr and former Attorney General Daniel Cameron. All GOP candidates have been working hard to align with President Donald Trump on all matters of policy and politics, as the president’s endorsement is seen as decisive for the nomination.
Morris pointed to the number of unauthorized border crossings under former President Joe Biden — those numbers have decreased during Trump’s presidency — as proof that such a policy is needed. Estimates from the Migration Policy Institute put the number of undocumented immigrants in the country around 14 to 15 million, or about 4% of the country’s estimated 342 million people.
Stan Veuger, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, called Morris’ idea a “pretty unhinged proposal.”
Veuger co-wrote a paper that estimated a 0.3-to-0.4 percentage point drop in GDP growth due to a reduction in migration projected because of the Trump administration’s actions — namely crackdowns at the border and changes in refugee programs.
A moratorium on all immigration into the country, he said, would have triple that effect, bringing down growth by more than a full percentage point because companies can’t bring in talent from overseas and increased family complications.
“It would be a complete disaster. Tons of businesses would go under. The macro impact would be pretty big,” Veuger said. “In mixed-status households, there’d (also) be very difficult choices on whether to move the whole family abroad. So, I think the GDP impact, while big, probably underestimates the real impact on people’s wellbeing.”
When asked to contend with the economic concerns over the moratorium, Morris stood by the idea.
“We’re cutting off all immigration until all the illegals go back. That has to happen because we can’t handle anymore. We’re full, and we cannot process the amount of illegals that are in our country today. Our systems can’t handle it, our schools can’t handle it, our hospitals can’t handle it,” Morris said.
The candidate also told the Herald-Leader that he stands by his policy that the moratorium should stay in place until every single one of the millions of undocumented immigrants in America is deported.
“I didn’t stutter,” Morris said. “I said all of them. So, they all gotta go. Now, what I will say is the president’s been very clear, we have to prioritize these different classes of illegals. Obviously the criminals have to go first, and the president’s made that absolutely clear. And of course, I stand by the president 100% on that position.”
He added that he believes the goal is “feasible and practical” because of the increased funding for deportations and border security included in the recently passed Big Beautiful Bill.
Morris said one of the main reasons he is so focused on deportations — his GOP competitors also are hawkish on the matter — is the lower wages undocumented immigrants generally receive. Though the literature is mixed on the subject, Morris argues a bigger undocumented workforce drives down wages for Americans and Kentuckians.
Jessica Riedl, a conservative economist at the Manhattan Institute, said that there probably is some effect, but there are also tradeoffs.
“Among lower-educated workforces, immigration probably reduces wages modestly relative to a world with no immigrants. However... if we eliminate immigration and deport the current immigrants, the economy will grow slower,” Riedl said. “Innovation will slow, and that will take back some of the wage growth that one would assume occurs from having less worker competition in lower paying industries.”
Lexington-based Republican strategist TJ Litafik said a focus on illegal immigration polls consistently as a top issue for GOP primary voters, but he isn’t sure how the idea of a moratorium plays.
“I just don’t know if it’s something he’ll really get a lot of mileage out of,” Litafik said. “Part of the Republican argument has always been that we’re not anti-immigrant, we’re just against people going about it in an illegal way. When you take that position, it kind of dilutes the argument.”
He thinks Morris’ position is a result of his starting position: relative to Cameron and Barr, fewer people know who he is.
“Absent a Trump endorsement, Nate Morris just has to be the Ozzy Osbourne of the race,” Litafik said, comparing the candidate to the late rock ‘n’ roll legend known for outlandish stunts like biting the head off a live dove.
“He has to take the most extreme positions, and that’s that.”
The think tanks’ take
Not everyone sees the moratorium proposal as practical.
“We would literally never be able to bring an immigrant in again,” Veuger said. “Of course, we’re not going to end up with a zero person undocumented population anytime in the foreseeable future. And so, under his criterion, we would never admit immigrants again.”
Jason Bailey, who leads the left-leaning Kentucky Center for Economic Policy think tank, concurred. He called it “completely unfeasible, not to mention undesirable” because of the reliance of industries like horse racing, agriculture and home building on immigrants.
“It’s completely unworkable, economically crippling and a complete non-starter. We lack the resources and it would shut down entire industries that depend on the workforce,” Bailey said.
Ken Troske, chair of the economics department at the University of Kentucky, did not offer comment on Morris’ specific proposal, but did bring up some of the same themes as Veuger when talking about the effect of immigration on the economy.
Troske mentioned that immigrants are a key part of the workforce for both high-education job markets and those requiring less education, and a future without new immigration could hurt the economy.
With the current birth rate below the replacement rate, Troske pointed out that a stop on immigration could also mean declining population and therefore a declining workforce to contribute to growing Social Security costs for an aging America.
“It would have an impact on the economy, potentially leading to more inflation, potentially having a negative impact on the deficit, and it would potentially force us to make changes to the existing Social Security system, much sooner than we would otherwise have to,” Troske said.
The population aspect of it led Riedl to predict that economic growth would be cut by a third under an immigration moratorium.
“In order to grow the economy, you need more workers making more stuff. If you start deporting immigrants and not letting in any new ones, you’re contributing to labor force growth heading towards zero. You could lose about a third of annual economic growth,” Riedl said.
Morris’ proposal is not exactly in line with the Trump administration’s actions.
The administration has not put forth any plans to put a stop to immigration, instead focusing on border security, deportations and beefing up the Immigration Customs and Enforcement workforce. Trump has even floated working with the agriculture sector, which has raised concern over deportations given the estimated 320,000 undocumented farmworkers in the U.S.
“We can’t let our farmers not have anybody,” Trump said in an interview earlier this month.
Morris’ proposal is similar, though, to one forwarded by the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative Washington think tank best known for its “Project 2025” plan. In a paper published shortly after Trump’s victory, Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center, wrote that immigration should be “paused” when immigration application backlogs are too long.
So, it’s the same idea but implemented for a different reason.
Ries told the Herald-Leader that the moratorium would be lifted when the backlog, which is now north of 11 million, reaches a more reasonable level — say, 3 million — and is on a downward trajectory.
She added that, while she’s not an economist, she had heard similar economic concern about actions the Trump administration has taken in recent months and has yet to see a serious downturn.
“To just keep repeating the same old lines of ‘the GDP,’ et cetera, et cetera, it’s not holding water,” Ries said. “... The sky has not fallen in 2025 as this administration has generally halted refugee admissions programs and has halted illegal border crossings across the southern border. So, I don’t think we should just take at face value any more statements from those who favor open borders or more mass immigration.”
Morris made a similar argument when responding to economists’ critiques.
He said that promises of economic prosperity resulting from the North American Free Trade Agreement, which reduced trade barriers between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, went unfulfilled in places like Kentucky.
“If you look at someone like that economist, I don’t know who it is and I can’t speak for him, but that’s that same kind of person and thinking that led to things like NAFTA. Like, ‘We’re going to lose opportunity if we don’t send some of these jobs overseas and expand globally,’” Morris said. “It didn’t work, and it costs places like Kentucky. It’s destroyed aspects of our culture because we have broken families, we have opioids that have come in, and we’ve had generations of Kentuckians have been out of work because of that thinking.”
