The U. S. government U. S. It has been suffering for nearly a decade about what to do with immigrants who arrived illegally when they were young with their parents, and this debate shows no signs of slowing down. entered the country illegally in the last twenty-three years can not be legally employed, discharge driver’s license or maximum government benefits.
In 2012, the Obama administration created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which created a path for this cohort to legally paint after graduating from the best school.
The decree proved controversial. After Donald Trump tried, and failed, to devise a bipartisan plan to make it bigger, his administration tried to cancel it. In 2020, the Supreme Court rejected the annulment.
However, in July, U. S. District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled that DACA was illegal and that the proper source position for the program was Congreso. Su ruling, which he suspended pending an appeal, put the lives of existing DACA members in limbo. for members of Congress to redouble their efforts to succeed in some kind of permanent legislative solution for this cohort that would allow them to continue to obtain education and gainful employment, which would improve the jobs and wages of American citizens and increase GDP and taxes. income too.
Earlier this year, members of Congress signed into law The Dream Act of 2021 that would expand DACA coverage beyond the initial cohort of young people who arrived before 2007. The House of Representatives has already passed a law.
We have completed several studies that read about the economic effect of making DACA permanent or extending it to cohorts of immigrants in the long run. Our last one implemented the method we developed in the past in those previous studies to estimate the economic effect on extending DACA protections to those who reached the age of 16 or 17 before 2007 or when they were young with their parents after 2007.
Again, we found that such protections would serve to elevate the educational attainment of this cohort, as they would particularly increase their returns to higher education. With a greater proportion of this organization completing high school, attending school and earning a bachelor’s degree, we that the profits of this organization and the tax bills they would generate would also increase.
Our research estimates that implementing this law would increase this cohort’s revenue through about $26 billion over the next decade, while expanding tax revenues to $20 billion. .
The estimates for the recent maximum cohort are lower than we estimate for the previous ones, just because the maximum for this organization is much younger, which means that overall they will spend far fewer years running the ten-year budget window. the economic gains that would accrue for this organization – and for the country – would come beyond the next decade.
Since these young people had no choice in resolving to immigrate and perhaps only vaguely the country of their birth, we gain nothing by banning them from applying legally: they have no preference to leave the country and we do not seem to need them. country to take the draconian measures that would be mandatory to expel the majority of this group.
In fact, nearly three-quarters of the U. S. population is not in the U. S. U. S. They seem to be taking steps to help this cohort get a trail to stay legally in the country and get legal employment.
There is also little evidence that this organization accepts, on the net, jobs that in a different way would accrue for U. S. citizens. Instead, giving them the opportunity to obtain and use a school education will make them more productive and reduce reach. to those competing for jobs with low-income Americans.
In addition, since knowledge shows that foreign-born staff are much more willing to move to work, we warn that DACA recipients would help decrease employment in the less urban spaces of the country where skills shortages persist.
Our research suggests that giving legal prestige to this next generation of Dreamers would be a win-win outcome: beyond the massive gains that would result for this cohort, the entire U. S. economy also has an interest in letting them paint legally in this country. Dream Act 2021 is a law we all support.
Kevin McGee, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, is a co-author of this paper.
Ike Brannon is a former senior economist in the U. S. Treasury and Congress.