Trump's plan to kill DACA could cost the economy $433 billion in lost growth, study finds

A new study has found it could cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars if President-elect Donald Trump follows through with his promise to kill DACA, an Obama program that allows some young undocumented immigrants to temporarily live and work here.

If Trump ends the program, some 645,145 workers would lose their work permits, costing the U.S. economy $433.4 billion in lost growth over a decade, according to analysis by the Center for American Progress.

“At a time when the U.S. economy is finally emerging from the Great Recession, a loss of this magnitude is something the nation cannot afford,” Philip E. Wolgin, managing director for the Immigration Policy team at the Center for American Progress, wrote in his report.

Wolgin calculated his estimates based on extrapolations from a previous study by the Center for American Progress, which found that deporting 11 million unauthorized immigrants would cost the U.S. economy slightly more than $4.7 trillion over a decade.

More than 741,000 young undocumented immigrants have benefited from Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provides renewable two-year visas to qualifying immigrants.