The Unnecessary Educational Loss from Deporting Dreamers

The Unnecessary Educational Loss from Deporting Dreamers

The number of people registering with DACA is about 800,000. But the number of Dreamers, which have the same circumstances of being brought to the US as children whose parents are undocumented is far larger. One leader on TV said there are two million, but the only estimate that I saw on the web was 1.8 million. These people may be in grade school and do not need to register, or may not have trusted DACA registration, which has now proved to be prescient. Neither President Trump nor Paul Ryan has addressed all Dreamers, but just DACA registrants.

On February 2, 2017, I wrote a post on estimating how much was investigated in the education of Dreamers. Just on K-12, I took the average California cost of education per student at $11,000. Multiplying by 13, gives $143,000 per student. I now want to multiply this by the numbers of DACA and Dreamers to get the value of the education we have invested in these students.

We start with the DACA number of 800,000, most of who are now out of grade school and in higher education or working. Multiplying by $143,000 per student, my iPhone calculator gives 1.14 X 10^11 or $114 billion. Using the full 2 million Dreamers give an investment in education of $286 billion, or almost $300 billion. Many of the high school graduates have gone on to higher education, with even more educational investment.

The US discretionary budget is about $500 billion. So the value invested in educating Dreamers is about 60% of the discretionary budget for a year. Why would Republicans, who always claim that they will limit expenditures and the debt limit, throw away that much talent and monetary investment just to satisfy some notion that all laws have to be obeyed? They are paid to change laws and make new laws every day. The people making the law, the government, of course, just never had to consider such a large class of Dreamers.

By ejecting Dreamers over the next two years, the Administration and Congress are just giving a $300 billion dollar gift to Mexico and other Latino countries. While Trump thought he could get Mexico to build a wall for $12 or $20 billion, he is instead giving Mexico this enormous gift of young and well educated workers, to compete with American firms.

As the Cato Institute calculates, the DACA registrants will contribute a fiscal impact of $60 billion, and an economic impact of $215 billion. I think those numbers would start with the $60 billion as the income alone of the full 2 million Dreamers at the assumed $34,000 per year average salary. The Dreamers are the young workers that we need to shore up healthcare, Medicare, and Social Security.

The US has allowed about a million immigrants a year for decades. The Dreamers are already here, expertly speak English, have been raised with all American values, and are well educated. A survey of DACA recipients shows that those still in school are 52.5% currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree, 13.1% a masters, 19.4% an Associate’s degree, 2.3% a Professional degree, and 3.6% a Doctorate.

Of course, the moral and legal arguments based on the Dreamers having not violated laws themselves coming to America, are persuasive, as well explained in President Obama’s statement. What I have tried to do here is appeal to the fiscal and business instincts of Republicans.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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