Understanding the Current Crisis in Public Administration: Part 6 – Excuse Me, America, but Your Contradictions Are Showing

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Erik Devereux
October 24, 2025

This is the sixth column in a series on the current crisis in American public administration that is rewriting much of what we think about American government government (first column, second column, third column, fourth column, fifth column). The series invokes plate tectonics as a metaphor for thinking about what has transpired with the federal government since January 20. What matters most are the subterranean forces slowly building up immense pressures which ultimately are expressed in seemingly rapid shifts in the public landscape. Among these pressures are contradictory public policy goals that from the 1970s forward yielded the chaotic current political context for U.S. immigration policy.

Legal and undocumented immigration into the U.S. mostly has been a story of employers seeking access to inexpensive labor to work in dangerous, dirty and often temporary jobs that documented workers usually will not do. One noteworthy example is the use of Chinese workers to build the transcontinental railroad in the late 1800s. Another side to immigration has been employers using that labor supply to weaken or eliminate emerging unions in various industries such as heavy manufacturing. An example of this occurred in the Pittsburgh region in the early 1900s when the steel companies began importing a labor force from Central and Eastern Europe to replace a rapidly unionizing workforce of Scotch Irish descendants who were confronting Carnegie, Frick and other industrialists over wages and workplace conditions in the mills.

But none of that compares to the influx of workers from Mexico and Central America that began in the 1970s at the behest of agriculture and construction. The Trump Administration has tried to promulgate a different narrative but the facts are clear: the substantial influx of undocumented Latino workers into the U.S. occurred because employers sought to depress wages and suppress unions. Also contributing to this process was the growth of jobs that documented workers avoid such as picking crops or tending to the menial work in construction, landscaping, restaurants, daycare and eldercare centers. At the time, there did not appear to be much attention to this question: What happens if these same workers remain in the U.S. and have children? Well, we have the answer—a country becoming increasingly diverse with a rapidly growing share of the documented population identifying as Hispanic/Latino.

This is the reason why the Trump Administration is challenging (probably unsuccessfully) the principle of birthright citizenship placed into the Constitution immediately after the Civil War. The contradiction between the economic motives behind immigration and the political consequences of immigration will be arbitrated by the Supreme Court within the next year. For those engaged in the argument about whether economics causes politics or vice versa, this should make for an enlightening case.

Hopefully, there is a question forming for you right now: Does not this attack on undocumented workers (and their progeny) threaten to undermine the very fabric of the American economy? Great question! We are going to live the answer in real time.

I have direct knowledge of a natural experiment that speaks to the matter. In the early 1980s, an organizing effort in the Phoenix, Arizona region yielded the first ever union labor contract between U.S. agricultural companies and undocumented Mexican workers employed to pick citrus crops such as lemons (you can learn more here). The consequence of that contract was significant improvements in workplace conditions and much higher wages. The organizers of this effort, including my father, expected that this upgrade to the terms of employment inevitably would result in documented American workers taking those jobs in the orchards away from Mexican nationals. No such thing ever happened. Citizens and those with Green Cards would not pick lemons under any conceivable conditions.

If that experiment speaks to the present situation, then we can look forward to widespread disruptions across numerous service industries that Americans have come to rely on every day. Those legally eligible to replace undocumented workers in those industries are unlikely to agree to do that. Where the country goes from there is entirely uncharted territory that could include a huge increase in demand for undocumented workers and/or the near collapse of services such as restaurants, daycare centers, nursing homes, lawn maintenance companies and cleaning for commercial buildings. Wow.

These contradictory policies and their ensuing consequences are pushing public administrations to the brink of systems failures along multiple dimensions. Where I reside in Chicago, we are witnessing a federal agency willfully disregard the 1st, 4th and 14th Amendments while waging open warfare with local governments in the region. This all bodes very poorly for the longer term future of the entire country. The leading voices in public administration have argued for centering our work around the broadest possible conception of the public interest. Now we can see the unfortunate consequences of ignoring such sage advice and instead using the levers of power to enhance public policy contradictions rather than resolve them.

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Author: Erik Devereux is Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy, Management and Analytics at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He has a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Political Science, 1985) and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin (Government, 1993). He is the author of Methods of Policy Analysis: Creating, Deploying, and Assessing Theories of Change (available for free here). Email: [email protected]. More content is available here.

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