The well-worn debate over whether immigrants contribute to the nation’s prosperity or compete with U.S.-born workers can be heard again in discussions on whether Congress should legalize unauthorized immigrants who came to the United States as children ... With the clock ticking towards DACA termination, the various DREAM proposals are drawing significant attention on Capitol Hill and beyond.

In order to assess the likelihood that DREAMers, once legalized, would more fully compete with American workers —particularly Black and other minority populations — it is important to look at the age cohort where the competition would most likely occur. In this case, that is millennials between the ages of 16 and 32, the same ages as current DACA recipients. Our analysis, which we will explain more fully below, demonstrates three salient facts about the DACA/DREAMer cohorts:

  • They represent a tiny share of the millennial population and workforce
  • Their state distribution differs significantly from that of millennials who are White or Black
  • Their employment by industry differs from that of overall Black, White, Asian, and native Hispanic populations.
  • Taken together, these facts suggest that the claims of widespread negative competitive economic impacts being raised by DREAMer legalization critics are unfounded.

The 690,000 unauthorized immigrants who currently have DACA make up about 1 percent of the 74.2 million millennials ages 16 to 32. They also represent small shares of the overall populations in the five states in which they are most concentrated (California, Texas, New York, Illinois, and Florida). Further, the 382,000 DACA recipients who MPI estimates are either working or looking for a job represent less than 1 percent of the 54 million millennials who are in the labor force.

Read the full article about DREAMers and U.S.-born millennials in the job market by Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix at Migration Policy Institute.