The United States could lose tens of billions of dollars if President-elect Donald Trump decides to rescind an executive order that gives temporary protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, a new study finds.
The Immigrant Legal Resource Center report said that repealing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has helped hundreds of thousands of people legally work, enroll in college and get valid driver's licenses, could result in financial losses in many different ways, CNN reported.
The firing of some 645,000 people who have lost their right to legally work would cost businesses about $3.4 billion to find and retrain replacements, the study finds.
Moreover, not only would the tax revenue that these workers generate be lost, but there would be a loss of an additional estimated $24.6 billion over a 10-year period in payments no longer made by them and their employers to Social Security and Medicare.
The report advised the Trump administration to leave DACA fully intact and "the billions of dollars in tax contributions resulting from the program should be reinvested in our nation's workers and retirees, not left on the table."
It is unclear exactly what form Trump's policy towards DACA will take.
Despite harsher rhetoric on the campaign trial, Trump said last month in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" that he would deport undocumented immigrants who have criminal records as a first step, and only then decide what to do about those who have been law-abiding after illegally entering the country.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said earlier this month that "we should have something that balances the concerns of all parties involved and make sure that we don't pull the rug out from under people" who came here illegally as young people and have been living in an uncertain legal state ever since, The Hill reports.
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