President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to further restrict immigration and roll out “mass deportations” has not been finalized, but the specter of looming policy changes is already reverberating on Main Streets across America.

To veteran restaurateur Sam Sanchez, the effects were plain as day during his visit this week to Chicago’s Little Village, a neighborhood known as the “Mexico of the Midwest.”

“People are afraid of walking the streets right now; there’s a lot of fear … a lot of fear,” said Sanchez, who’s also a member of the American Business Immigration Coalition, which advocates for business-friendly immigration reform. “And that’s where it starts. The employees will start getting worried and say, ‘Should I go to work? Should I take a chance?’ The big concern is that restaurants will close without employees, and this is just one industry: There are millions of people working who are undocumented.”

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Business owners, industry members and economists alike warn that large-scale deportations of undocumented immigrants, along with stricter border measures and the revoking of Biden-era protections, could have a seismic impact on the labor market and US economy. Critical industries such as agriculture, leisure and hospitality, construction and health care could take some of the largest hits...

While proponents of mass deportations have argued that expelling millions of people could help the affordability crisis by curbing demand, that pullback would be overshadowed greatly by the lack of worker supply, economists said.

And there’s little appetite among native-born workers to fill those roles, said Farmworker Justice’s Estrada, who noted a case study of a 2011 effort from the North Carolina Growers Association to hire 6,500 farmworkers. Nearly 270 native-born North Carolinians applied, 245 were hired, and only seven lasted the harvest season...