A new report from the Council suggests Midwestern states are unprepared for President Obama's new immigration policies.
States in the Midwest are not uniformly prepared to implement immigration policies advanced by President Obama, potentially jeopardizing $650 million in additional tax revenues for their cash-strapped governments, according to a new report by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
In fact, Midwestern states have much to gain from successful implementation of the President’s executive action. Full participation from an estimated 579,000 eligible undocumented residents in the Midwest region could generate $652.3 million in tax revenues over the next five years. Illinois alone stands to increase its tax revenues by $347 million based on an estimated 281,000 eligible undocumented residents.
The report highlights actions and opportunities that state and city government agencies, immigrant-serving nonprofits, and legal service providers could adopt and embrace to ensure they are poised to support applications from hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers eligible for the President’s Expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). Specifically, the report notes structural and other limitations that would compromise states’ ability to realize potential tax revenues from newly legal workers.
