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Trump’s vow to overturn DACA could cost US billions: report

27 Dec

By Rebecca Savransky

President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to overturn President Obama’s executive order protecting illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children could cost the country tens of billions of dollars, according to a new study.

If the executive order is repealed, about 645,000 people would lose their legal right to work in the country,  the San-Francisco based immigrant Legal Resource Center said, CNN reported.

That loss of work and the process of finding and retraining replacements for these workers could cost businesses about $3.4 billion, the center added.

“Some employers may consider consolidating or shedding these existing positions to proactively reduce some of those [turnover] costs,” said Jose Magaña-Salgado, an immigration policy attorney and the author of the report.

The loss of those workers could reduce tax revenue and decrease payments to programs such as Social Security and Medicare by about $24.6 billion over the course of a decade, according to the study.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) provides work authorization and a temporary halt on deportation to illegal immigrants who arrived as children if they meet certain requirements.

The president-elect said in an interview earlier this month he is “going to work something out” for those undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

“They got brought here at a very young age, they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here,” he said.

“Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/311134-trumps-vow-to-overturn-daca-could-cost-us-billions-report