A broad spectrum of San Diego business, labor, community and political leaders sent a straightforward message this week.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration must stop suspiciously long delays in approving renewal applications for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients that are threatening their ability to work and remain in the country.<\/p>\n
But they had a broader, equally important goal: to remind the public that people with DACA status are a boon to the economy in San Diego and the country at large. Not only should renewals be expedited, they said, but recipients should be given permanent residency status.<\/p>\n
At a Tuesday news conference outside the downtown office of the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS), Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, noted that to qualify for DACA, immigrants must show they are working or in school or in the military \u2014 and, he added, \u201cmost important, you can\u2019t be in trouble with the law.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy definition, people covered by the DACA program are the kind of people we want to join us as Americans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In 2025, the median wait time for renewals was 15 days. In February of this year, it was 70 days, according<\/a> to USCIS data, an increase of more than 400 percent. About 8,000 immigrant \u201cDreamers,\u201d as DACA recipients are often called, reside in the San Diego region and some 500,000 across the country.<\/p>\n \u201cFor more than a decade, Dreamers have strengthened our economy,\u201d said Chris Cate, president and CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and a former Republican City Council member.<\/p>\n He said DACA recipients contribute about $968 million annually to the regional economy.<\/p>\n The DACA boost to the economy is not a new story. But given that Trump is ramping up efforts to undermine the program \u2014 courts so far have blocked him from ending it outright \u2014 it\u2019s a story that needs to be revisited regularly.<\/p>\n In terms of raw dollars and cents, the country would lose a great deal if DACA no longer existed, in addition to negative cultural and societal impacts.<\/p>\n More than 80 percent of DACA recipients are in the workforce, according<\/a> to FWD.us, an organization focused on immigration and criminal justice reform.<\/p>\n Years ago, the Democratic Joint Economic Committee in Congress estimated<\/a> DACA recipients could add $460 billion to the U.S. economy over the next decade. That was based on 2017 data, when there were about 800,000 DACA recipients.<\/p>\n \u201cDACA recipients contributed, on net, roughly $3.4 billion annually to the federal balance sheet\u201d in 2018, according to the American Action Forum.<\/p>\n DACA was created by President Barack Obama in 2012 to give temporary protection from deportation and grant work permits to qualified undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children. Recipients must reapply every two years to keep their status.<\/p>\n The average DACA recipient is 33 years old and has lived in the U.S. for 27 years, according to FWD.us. It\u2019s the only country most have ever really known.<\/p>\n Almost all have graduated from high school, and nearly half have some college education. About a third are married, and a little more than that have at least one child at home.<\/p>\n Public support for Dreamers has been strong for years. A Gallup poll<\/a> released this month found 81 percent of Americans support allowing immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time.<\/p>\n Democrats and independents overwhelmingly were in favor, as were 56 percent of Republicans.<\/p>\n Courts have kept DACA alive amid challenges by the Trump administration and Republican-run states. While judges allowed renewals for existing participants, they blocked any new applications.<\/p>\n The program has been under assault by Trump since 2017, his first year in the White House, when he tried to kill the program. The fate of DACA is still in the hands of the courts.<\/p>\n Trump has said a lot of nasty things about undocumented immigrants over the years, but his tone has been different about DACA recipients, for whom he has expressed empathy while trying to take away their temporary status.<\/p>\n \u201cWe love the Dreamers,\u201d he has said. Just before the start of his current term, he said \u201cwe have to do something\u201d to help them.<\/p>\n But the president, who at times has shown disregard for the Constitution, contends that the Obama-created program is unconstitutional and must be approved by Congress.<\/p>\n At one point, Trump probably could have ordered his compliant Republican congressional majorities to achieve a DACA remedy along with like-minded Democrats, but he hasn\u2019t in recent years. Long-ago efforts to give DACA recipients certainty had bogged down in partisan jockeying between Republicans and Democrats.<\/p>\n