Douglas Turner Ward (1930-2021) wrote a searing play, “Days of Absence,” that imagined life in a small Southern town where all the Black residents disappeared overnight. Predictably, the white townspeople could not walk and chew gum, neither at one time nor at the same time.

They couldn’t boil water, feed their children or even care for themselves.

The fictional town teeters on collapse without its Black labor backbone.

The play ends when, the next day, one of the missing Black residents reappears and claims to know nothing about the disappearance.

“Days of Absence” won a Drama Desk Award in 1965 and a Tony Award in 1966. It caught the attention of the Ford Foundation, which awarded Ward a grant he used to establish the Negro Ensemble Company. This sardonic, unresolved play is a metaphor for people who remain invisible while serving our food, cleaning our homes, driving buses and trains, and making life comfortable for those too busy or self-important to notice.

Where is the 21st-century Douglas Turner Ward, the playwright or author willing to write about the days of absence that immigrant workers might stage to remind us of their essential place in our economy? In agriculture and hospitality, in science and medicine, and in so many other fields, we will be the losers if the 47th president’s plan to deport 3,000 people a day succeeds.

If Immigration and Customs Enforcement meets that quota daily, more than a million people a year could be removed. They are housekeepers and construction workers, childcare providers and health care aides. About one in five U.S. workers is foreign born, and about a quarter of those are likely undocumented. 

Many have lived here for years, building lives for themselves and their families. Few receive public assistance; most work under the radar, paying taxes and getting no benefits.

What would we do without immigrants, documented or not?

Which construction sites would stall? Which hotels would struggle with labor shortages when housekeepers and landscapers are gone? Which elders would lose caregivers? Which children would lose parents and perhaps end up in foster care? How will mass deportations change the way we live, and does it matter?

Yes, the rule of law must be respected, and those here illegally have neglected to resolve their status. But most are not the “dangerous criminals” the president rants about. Since launching his first campaign in 2015, he has used immigrants as a prop, calling Mexicans rapists and criminals and smearing Haitian immigrants with vile lies. 

Now, he questions President Biden’s mental fitness — but who is checking his?

Deporting millions is an inflationary move by someone who claims he can tame inflation.

Who will replace the workers we deport, and will they accept the same wages? Appeasing his base, the president has said farm and hospitality workers wouldn’t be deported — only to reverse himself days later, posting, “Our federal government will continue to focus on the remigration of ‘aliens’ (quotes mine) to the places from where they came, and preventing the admission of anyone who undermines the domestic tranquility of the United States.”

Who really disturbs domestic tranquility with harsh, inhumane rhetoric and absurd raids on schools, churches and graduations? Who weakens the economy with tactics that drive up wages in industries that rely on immigrant labor? Who incites hate and fear, even against legal immigrants, while distracting us from economic promises left unfulfilled? And who turns every speech into a sideshow?

Meanwhile, note the contrast between his low-turnout parade and the millions who rallied for the No King protest.

Imagine a world without immigrants. What would it mean for you? Of course, everyone should have legal status, but bipartisan efforts have twice produced legislation offering a path to citizenship — and Congress has refused to act. Denied a legal path, millions now live in limbo and fear.

What would we do without immigrants?

The writer is an economist and author.