In the News

California stands to lose billions of dollars if DACA recipients are removed from the state’s workforce.

The USC Dornsife Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration and the Center for American Progress use new interactive data to break down the number of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, recipients living in each U.S. congressional district.

The information also illustrates the economic loss of removing DACA recipients from the workforce in regions across the nation. The Obama-era program, which has offered deportation relief and work permits to about 800,000 young immigrants, is being phased out by the Trump administration.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the DACA repeal Sept. 5. Since then, lawmakers have been negotiating a legislative fix to continue to protect the program’s recipients.

On Wednesday, Oct. 18, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made a stop in Los Angeles and called on Congress to pass DREAM Act legislation by the end of the year. She wants to pave the way for citizenship for those brought illegally to the U.S. as youngsters.

She was joined by Reps. Jimmy Gomez, D-Los Angeles, Judy Chu, D-Pasadena and Lucille Roybal-Allard, D–Los Angeles.

California as a whole stands to lose about $12.2 billion in annual Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, the data show.

The number of DACA beneficiaries by congressional district was extrapolated from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services data and the 2010-2014 American Community Survey conducted by U.S. Census Bureau.

State GDP losses were derived by multiplying the number of employed DACA recipients with the losses associated with each unauthorized worker. State-level estimates were then applied to the number of DACA workers by congressional district.

Manuel Pastor, director of the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, said the data will help decision makers get a sense of the number of their constituents who may be affected if legislation is not in place to protect DACA recipients and keep them in the labor force.

“The one thing to point out is that there have been very significant economic gains from the DACA folks,” Pastor said.

In California, the area most impacted is the 40th Congressional District — represented by Roybal-Allard — which includes Downey, East Los Angeles, Commerce, Paramount, Bell, Bell Gardens, Bellflower, Cudahy, and Huntington Park.

An estimated 10,800 DACA recipients live in Roybal-Allard’s district, according to the data.

It’s one of the most Latino districts in the nation, according to data released by the Pew Research Center in 2016.

The district stands to lose about $589 million in annual Gross Domestic Product, or GDP.