Although millennials are the first to
virtuously signal their support for granting amnesty to DACA recipients, they are also the demographic cohort most hurt by DACA.
This is an bizarre paradox - why would anyone favor a policy that harms them? Misinformation? Perhaps. Or maybe millennials think
- feel, rather - that they have more to gain (socially) from supporting DACA than they do to lose (economically). This is probably closer to the truth. Some doubtlessly do, but as a group millennials will be the losers in any DACA amnesty deal.
DACA is the acronym for President Obama's
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order, which granted temporary legal status to any illegal immigrant to arrived in America before the age of 16. Roughly 800,000 people enrolled in the program, although the total number of potential
DACA recipients is nearly 2 million. This is how many people would likely receive amnesty in an amnesty deal.
A few notes on DACA recipients: the
average age of DACA recipients is 25, although they range in age from 16 to 35. Fully 20 percent of DACA recipients are older than 30. None of them are children, and very few are teenagers-in contrast to what the media implies.
Furthermore, up to 50 percent of DACA recipients are fraudulent, according to Matt O'Brien, a former manager for the US Citizenship and Immigration Services Agency's investigative unit under President Obama.That's DACA in short. Now to answer the main question: how does DACA hurt millennials?
Dreamers Compete with Millennials for College Admissions & ScholarshipsThe influx of young people into America via illegal immigration, and their absorption into the legal framework via DACA has increased the supply of students, and therefore the demand for post-secondary education. This
necessarily decreases educational opportunities for American students, as adding more competitors decreases everyone's odds. Likewise, it is a (small) reason why educational costs have increased so dramatically in recent decades.
But perhaps
the bigger issue is that many American colleges have adopted patently racist admissions programs that favor ethnic minorities over white students via affirmative action programs. Of course, not all minorities benefit from these programs - East Asian students
are harmed by them even more than are white Americans. But, given that the
vast majority of
dreamers are from Latin America, they generally benefit from affirmative action programs, often at the expense of Americans.
Consider that the
California Dream Act explicitly
grants dreamers state funding to attend college. In total, California spends an additional $67 million in post-secondary educational grants for illegal aliens. Contrast this with the many thousands of American students who don't receive state funding.
How is California paying for this? A good chunk of the money comes from the now
phased-out the Middle Class Scholarship Program -
essentially the state diverted money away from American students to illegals.This should serve as a sharp reminder to millennials that tax dollars always come from somewhere - in this case they went from American students to illegal immigrants. And of course, this isn't just happening in California: some 19 other states have similar tuition programs.
Dreamers vs Millennials in the WorkplaceMillennials are the first generation in American history to be economically
worse-off than their parents. Consider that 1 in 4 millennials are unemployed, and 1 in 3 still live at home. There are two reasons for this: (i) offshoring and automation has changed America's economy so as to prioritize capital over labor, which necessarily reduces employment opportunities, especially for entry-level workers; (ii) immigration has crowded America's cities, increasing housing costs and decreasing wages.
Essentially, millennials are chocked out of the labor and housing markets because of asinine, anti-American government policies. DACA makes a bad problem worse by adding yet more competition to America's labor markets.
A study from the
Center for Immigration Studies examined the economic impact of illegal immigration on American wages between 1990 and 2010, and found that the negative distortion was $1,396 on average - that is, American workers made nearly $1,400 less than they would have were it not for illegal immigration. This is consistent with another study conducted by the
National Academies of Science, which found that immigration lowers wages for domestic workers. Millennials often bear the brunt of this distortion, as they are more likely to work for wages, and are the age cohort directly competing with DACA recipients.
It must also be noted that illegal immigrants are a net burden on taxpayers, consuming far more in government subsidies than they contribute in taxes. This translates directly into higher taxes for American citizens, which includes millennials. Consider that California-home to 10-12 million immigrants- is
America's poorest state. Its poverty rate is double the national average, its income inequality is higher than Mexico's, and it "home" to America's largest homeless population. And yet, in a perverse twist, California is also America's second most heavily taxed state.
In the end, millennials will have to make a choice: will they prioritize their own well-being, or will they surrender the fruits of their inheritance to foreign citizens?
Spencer P Morrison is a JD student, writer and independent intellectual, with a focus on applied philosophy, empirical history, and practical economics. Author of America Betrayed
and the Editor-In-Chief of the National Economics Editorial.
His work has appeared in publications including the Daily Caller, the American Thinker
, and American Greatness.
They are ILLEGAL aliens. Grant them amnesty BY allowing them to leave the country and retain the ability to apply for citizenship legally.
It is THAT black and white.
The so called dreamers do not want to play by the immigration rules so they think that themselves being a tiny minority of the population (who are in the U.S. illegally to begin with) deserve to completely change the laws to expressly benefit themselves. They think they should be rewarded for their parents being criminals and dragging them to the U.S. illegally and hiding them there, robbing them of any secure future or country to actually call home.
Because the dreamers do not actually respect the laws they feel entitled to remain in the U.S. illegally. They aren't even asking for a way to be created for them to apply for citizenship they feel it is owed to them and should just be given to them.
On top of that the last two generations of Americans are generally too stupid to actually be able to think for themselves. They only freak out over whatever bleeding heart news story is thrust upon them en masse by the mainstream media. They love to be told how to think. This is a matter where they are being manipulated in this way. This is made especially easy since the youth are taught that the entire rest of the world owes them whatever they want because they are the special generation to be celebrated.
The world is disgusting,overpopulated, tragically ignorant, and getting worse by the minute.