What happens if DACA ends?

Each and every business day for 2 years, nearly 1,000 U.S. jobs will be lost

A critical aspect of DACA, and a driving force for much of its success, is that DACA provides recipients access to employment authorization documents, allowing them to pursue employment in the United States, as well as making them eligible for certain benefits like a driver’s license. If DACA ended or renewals were restricted, current DACA recipients would lose their work authorization and all ancillary privileges that allow them to travel safely and take care of vital daily activities, like driving their kids to school or taking family members to doctor’s visits.

Because DACA renewals are granted on a rolling basis, local communities would almost immediately feel the impact if renewals were blocked. An estimated 18,000 jobs would be lost each and every month for two years—nearly 1,000 jobs each business day—at a time when workforce shortages are already hurting families and driving up costs across the country.

If DACA renewals are halted, this means that each month for two years, some 1,500 DACA recipients working in healthcare, including doctors and nurses, 700 educational professionals like teachers and teacher aides, and 600 personal care workers in child or senior care would be forced out of their jobs, which would be devastating to communities across the country.

Even now, the number of people protected by DACA is shrinking. The policy is closed to new applications due to legal challenges, prohibiting some 600,000 Dreamers who should be eligible to receive DACA protections from applying for them. For example, nearly 100,000 new, initial applications for DACA are pending adjudication at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services because their processing has been halted by the courts. Currently, only renewals are being processed, and even then, the rules for age and arrival date have remained unchanged for more than a decade, meaning the DACA policy is largely frozen to new applicants. Consequently, while DACA recipients who received protections early on, many as students, are now building careers, the post-DACA generation of Dreamers is entering adulthood with far fewer opportunities. For example, FWD.us estimates that nearly all of the 120,000 undocumented high school graduates in 2023 would be ineligible for DACA if new applications were being processed.

California, the state home to the highest numbers of DACA recipients, would suffer the highest number of job losses if DACA ended, with an estimated 5,200 total monthly job losses including 500 monthly losses of healthcare workers and 200 educators. More specifically, ending DACA would mean an estimated loss of 200 monthly healthcare job losses as well as 50 educators in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim area alone.

In Texas, the state with the second largest number of DACA recipients, would see an estimated 2,600 monthly job losses, including as many as 200 monthly healthcare job losses and 100 educators monthly. Among other top states of DACA recipients, the monthly job losses would amount to 1,000 individuals in Illinois, 800 in New York, 800 in Arizona, 600 in Florida, 600 in Georgia, and 500 each in Washington, Colorado, Nevada, and North Carolina—with terrible ripple effects for DACA recipients’ families and broader communities.

Each and every day for two years, more than 1,000 additional U.S. citizens—including children and spouses of DACA recipients—will face separation

Economic losses from DACA’s ending would represent only the tip of the iceberg. Because most DACA recipients have lived in the U.S. for two decades or more, losing DACA would hurt families across the country, with far-reaching harm for nearly every community in the U.S. DACA recipients have deep roots in their local communities. Most are in their thirties. They own homes here, have started businesses, and are raising their kids and building their families. Critically, many DACA recipients have children and spouses who are U.S. citizens.

If DACA renewals were halted, DACA recipients could lose their protections from deportation, putting them at immediate risk. With an estimated 1,000,000 U.S. citizens living with DACA recipients—spouses, children, siblings, other family members—this means each day for two years, more than 1,000 U.S. citizen family members will see a loved one at immediate risk of deportation. More specifically, nearly 13,000 U.S. citizen children each month would be living with a parent at risk of being torn from their families and deported to a country they likely don’t even remember. Similarly, nearly 4,000 U.S. citizens have a spouse who would lose deportation protections.

This would mean 2,700 U.S. citizen children in California and a further 2,400 in Texas would have a parent becoming eligible for deportation each month for two years. It would mean that, each month for two years, 1,300 U.S. citizen spouses of DACA recipients in California and 800 in Texas could see their spouses deported. Even these large numbers tell only part of the story. Living with the threat of deportation places an enormous burden on family members and children, compromising their ability to concentrate at work or school and adding terrible stress and fear to their daily lives.