I believe people who are in the United States illegally should leave.

But after allowing the American construction industry to become dependent on immigrant labor for more than four decades, does it make sense for the federal government to remove that workforce faster than we can replace it?

I don’t think it does.

In the summer of 1978, I was 14 years old. My father and uncle taught me how to frame houses. By 19, I was running framing crews.

By 22, I could show up on a jobsite and see several multigenerational businesses working alongside one another. Fathers and uncles taught sons and nephews how to frame houses, finish concrete, install siding, hang drywall, roof houses, paint and perform dozens of other jobs.

That’s how many of us learned the trades.

Then something changed.

As I moved from framing into new-home sales in 1985, I began watching Hispanic workers move into many of these trades. Over the following decades, immigrant labor became an increasingly important part of the American construction workforce.

Today, the numbers are remarkable.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, immigrants represented 26.3% of America’s construction workforce in 2024 and about one-third of workers in the construction trades. Immigrants now account for 57% of drywall installers, 53% of roofers, 53% of painters, 43% of construction laborers and 35% of carpenters.

Pew Research Center estimates that unauthorized immigrants alone represented about 13% of America’s construction workforce in 2022.

So let’s acknowledge two things at the same time.

A nation has the right to enforce its immigration laws.

And the American housing industry has become heavily dependent upon immigrant labor.

Both can be true.

For decades, America’s immigration policies allowed an enormous immigrant workforce to develop inside the construction industry while fewer American-born young people followed their fathers and uncles into many of the residential trades.

Whatever combination of immigration policy, education policy, economics and cultural change produced that result, we now have to deal with the workforce we actually have—not the workforce we wish we had.

You could offer me $1 million to remove your appendix.

I’d love to have the money.

But you probably wouldn’t survive the surgery.

Why?

Because I don’t know how to remove an appendix.

The same principle applies to skilled construction labor.

We can say that American-born workers should replace undocumented workers. I agree that we should be training Americans for these jobs.

But you cannot hand the average 20-year-old a blueprint, a circular saw and a nail gun on Monday morning and expect him to frame a house by Friday.

The problem isn’t simply wages.

The problem is skills.

Those skills have to be taught.

Someone has to teach a young worker how to lay out a wall, cut a roof, finish concrete, hang and finish drywall, install siding or flash a window.

And that takes time.

Meanwhile, the housing industry is already struggling with affordability.

The Home Builders Institute has estimated that shortages of skilled construction labor cost the home-building industry billions of dollars annually through longer construction times and lost housing production.

Now imagine rapidly removing a substantial portion of an already scarce workforce.

What happens to construction time?

What happens to labor costs?

What happens to housing production?

And ultimately, what happens to the price of a house?

I support enforcing our immigration laws. I also support doing it intelligently.

President Trump and border czar Tom Homan have repeatedly emphasized removing dangerous criminals. That is where enforcement should begin.

After that, I would prioritize people who are dependent upon the state before removing someone who has spent 20 years getting up at 5 a.m., going to a construction site and working 60 hours a week.

Not because that worker has a legal right to remain here.

But because America needs time to replace the worker.

Use that time.

Expand vocational education. Rebuild high-school construction programs. Encourage builders and trade contractors to establish apprenticeships. Teach another generation of American kids how to frame, finish concrete, install siding, hang drywall, roof houses, wire houses and install plumbing.

Then enforce the law in an orderly way while that workforce develops.

For more than 40 years, the federal government allowed the American economy to become increasingly dependent upon immigrant construction labor.

Now government wants to rapidly remove some of the very workers the economy has come to depend upon.

It reminds me of a drug dealer who creates an addiction and then suddenly announces that the supply ends tomorrow.

Maybe ending the addiction is the right decision.

But cold-turkey withdrawal still has consequences.

America can secure its border, enforce its immigration laws and rebuild an American construction workforce.

Those objectives aren’t contradictory.

But rebuilding that workforce will take years, not weeks.

Deportation may be the policy. Preparation needs to be part of the policy too.

Jay Knight is a Georgia residential developer and the author of Zoned Out: How Cities and Counties Make Homes Unaffordable. He began working in residential construction as a framing laborer in 1978.