It has been four months since President Barack Obama announced the November 20immigration directives, which, among other common-sense immigration solutions, build on theDeferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program announced in June 2012. The November 20 directives expand the population eligible for DACA and establish a new policy called the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA. These programs provide eligible undocumented immigrants a temporary reprieve from deportation and the ability to work lawfully for a temporary period of time. A number of entities—including the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security Administration, and theCouncil of Economic Advisers—have analyzed the November directives and found that the policies will produce an array of positive economic and fiscal benefits.
In this column, the analysis of the Center for American Progress zeros in on the estimated potential economic gains specifically associated with DACA and DAPA. In 2013, CAP published a report that estimated the effect of legal status and citizenship for the 8 million undocumented immigrants in the labor force. This column adopts the same methodology, updating it to fit the population eligible for a temporary reprieve from deportation through the three deferred action programs—the original DACA, the DACA expansion, and DAPA.
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