Illinois’ 7th and 13th congressional districts may look different on a map, but their histories are deeply connected. The 7th District was shaped by the Great Migration, when Black families built communities on Chicago’s South and West sides while powering the city’s industrial and service economy. The 13th District, stretching across Springfield, Decatur and surrounding towns, has long anchored the state’s agricultural and manufacturing base. Both districts were built by working people who believed steady work should lead to stability, dignity and care for their families.

That promise is now under strain.

Across Illinois, health care access and economic stability are increasingly undermined by federal immigration enforcement policies that remove workers from communities, disrupt care networks and spread fear far beyond those directly targeted. These actions are not only about immigration. They are meant to destabilize the systems families rely on every day.

Immigrants make up nearly one quarter of Illinois’ workforce and are essential to industries that keep communities healthy and functioning. In the Chicago region, an analysis by WBEZ and the Sun-Times shows that roughly 65% of home care workers in 2024 were not U.S. citizens. These caregivers allow older adults to remain in their homes, reduce hospital admissions and support working families who depend on reliable care.

When immigration raids or prolonged delays in work authorization suddenly remove caregivers, nursing aides, food service workers and hospital support staff, the consequences are immediate. Home care agencies cancel shifts. Clinics and long-term-care facilities face staffing shortages. Families are forced to choose between missing work and leaving loved ones without care. As the American Hospital Association has warned, staffing instability directly undermines patient access, increases wait times and drives up health care costs.

The economic effects follow quickly. Immigrant households contribute billions in consumer spending and tax revenue, sustaining neighborhood business corridors and downstate town centers alike. When enforcement actions sweep through a community, fear suppresses economic activity almost overnight. Restaurants lose customers. Small manufacturers cut hours or production. Local governments collect less revenue just as demand for health care and social services rises, a dynamic highlighted in regional analyses by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

That pattern was clear in September, when federal agents carried out a militarized raid on a Chicago apartment complex, detaining 37 immigrants, most without criminal records. Business owners in surrounding neighborhoods saw sharp declines in foot traffic, and workers avoided hospitals and clinics for fear that seeking care could put them at risk of detention.

Avoided care has consequences. Fear of enforcement reduces preventive care use, increases uncompensated care and shifts higher costs onto hospitals, insurers and taxpayers. 

Those costs are ultimately passed on to everyone.

We have heard this concern repeatedly while campaigning across both districts. Small business owners understand that fear is bad for business. When workers are terrified, turnover rises, productivity falls and long-term investment stalls. No economy grows under those conditions.

Illinois faces a choice. 

We can continue allowing raids, delays and political games to destabilize our workforce and health care system or we can choose strength and growth. Federal backlogs that leave longtime residents waiting years for work authorization are not abstract administrative failures. They are economic bottlenecks that worsen staffing shortages, especially in health care, and drive up costs across the system, as reflected in U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data on foreign-born workers in essential industries.

Stability matters. When people have secure work authorization and legal protections, they are more likely to seek preventive care, remain employed and contribute consistently to the tax base that funds hospitals, schools and infrastructure. Communities become healthier. Businesses plan for the long term. Local economies grow stronger.

Unfortunately, too many elected officials have failed to act with that clarity. Last January, some Illinois members of Congress voted for the Laken Riley Act, legislation that expanded detention based on accusation rather than conviction. We know that detention-heavy approaches increase public costs without delivering corresponding economic or public safety benefits.

Illinois cannot build a healthy economy on fear. We cannot staff hospitals, care for seniors or grow local businesses while workers are driven into the shadows and families are afraid to seek care. Every raid, every delay, every act of political cowardice weakens our health care system and costs all of us more.

The choice is no longer abstract. Either we build stability and shared prosperity or we accept a cycle of disruption that keeps Illinois sicker, poorer and less secure than it needs to be.

Anabel Mendoza is a lifelong Chicagoan, an immigrant rights organizer and a candidate running for Illinois’ 7th Congressional District. Dylan Thomas Blaha is an Illinois Army National Guard captain, a former cancer research scientist and a progressive candidate running for Illinois’ 13th Congressional District.

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