New Report Examines Economic Losses Resulting from President-Elect Trump’s Threat to End DACA - ILRC

ILRC, Dec. 13, 2016 - "Following President-elect Donald Trump’s comments that he would end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Immigrant Legal Resource Center released Money on the Table – The Economic Cost of Ending DACA, a report estimating the far-ranging economic costs of ending the immensely successful DACA policy.

Among the report’s findings:

• Ending DACA could cause far-reaching unemployment, leading to the immediate job loss of 645,145 DACA recipients currently employed by businesses in the United States;
• Ending DACA could reduce Social Security and Medicare tax contributions by DACA employees and employers by $24.6 billion over a decade, weakening the Social Security and Medicare trust funds; and
• Ending DACA could cause business and employers to incur unnecessary turnover costs of $3.4 billion.

ILRC’s report employed recent data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, state-of-the-art economic models from the Center from American Progress, a comprehensive survey of over 1,000 DACA recipients, and tax law to estimate the loss of jobs and tax revenue if the DACA program were ended. The report builds upon recent estimates by the Center for American Progress, which measure the loss to GDP of ending DACA at $433.4 billion over a decade."