Without the DREAM Act, hometowns of anti-immigrant legislators will lose millions in revenue
newsdepo.com
The most anti-immigrant members of Congress and other political wannabes won’t even acknowledge the basic humanity of undocumented immigrant youth, but that doesn’t change the fact that immigrant youth are a part of their communities, making contributionWithout the DREAM Act, hometowns of anti-immigrant legislators will lose millions in revenue
The most anti-immigrant members of Congress and other political wannabes won’t even acknowledge the basic humanity of undocumented immigrant youth, but that doesn’t change the fact that immigrant youth are a part of their communities, making contributions as business owners and taxpayers. Immigrants are more than their taxes, but when the Trump regime is hellbent on smearing these families as “welfare queens” (so it’s immigrant youth taking taxpayer-funded golfing weekends?), we’re going to talk about the fact that immigrants help keep Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and Steve King’s state and district running: When Sessions was senator, he accused then-President Barack Obama of executive overreach for enacting DACA. But as the CAP data shows, his home state of Alabama would lose $188 million in GDP annually from removing DACA workers. Sessions’ birth town of Selma, Alabama, which lies in the 7th congressional district, would see a drop of $21.8 million once it takes away DACA from the 500 current recipients and 700 DACA-eligible people. Overall, roughly 4,803 people are current DACA holders in the state of Alabama, the American Immigration Council reported, while another 4,000 residents could have aged into DACA had they been given the chance to proceed with the program. Rep. King has long led the charge to dismantle the DACA program, including introducing House bills to end the program during the Obama years. Earlier this year, King tweeted a controversial photo of him holding a beer out for federal immigration agents after they deported a DACA recipient. If DACA ends without a solution, the 4th district which he represents stands to lose $53.8 million once it strips away DACA from the district’s 800 DACA recipients, according to the report’s data. Sessions should already know that anti-immigrant platforms are a disaster for all Americans. When Alabama enacted what was at the time the most anti-immigrant law in the nation, crops rotted in the fields when immigrant and Latino workers fled the state. In King’s Iowa, Asian, African, and Latino workers “have filled jobs at pork, egg and turkey plants.” New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno—fresh off launching a racist Willie Horton-style ad attacking immigrants—is also from Iowa, and her home district stands to lose nearly $50 million without DACA recipients. Overall, the national GDP stands to lose an estimated $460 billion from Trump ending DACA, including $71 million from his home district. Meanwhile, gains from passing the bipartisan DREAM Act could be as high as a cumulative $1 trillion. Passing DREAM isn’t just morally the right thing to do, it also makes simple economic sense. Read more