Survey finds DACA recipients continue to excel in America

Third-year Hartnell College student Kathy Hernandez feels like as if she’s racing against time.

“I have it in my head, like, I want to finish fast to be able to get a job fast and to be able to get into it fast,” Hernandez said.

A group of conservative lawmakers is setting a deadline for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to make a decision on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

In a joint letter to Sessions, the Texas attorney general issued an ultimatum: If the administration doesn’t end DACA by Sept. 5, there will be a faceoff in court.

“For me, it would be the end of it in school,” Hernandez said.

It would also be the end of the contributions made to the U.S. economy by many DACA recipients.

More than 3,000 of them participated in the latest and largest study to date.

“Five percent of them who have received DACA own their own businesses. When you put it down to 25 or older, that number goes up to 8 percent, which is above the national number, which is 3 percent,” said Patrick O’Shea, researcher at the National Immigration Law Center.

More than 90 percent of the DACA recipients are currently employed and their average hourly wage doubled after they received DACA status.

Researchers are hoping the survey numbers can get their message out loud and clear

“It would be an almost catastrophic idea to eliminate a program as successful as DACA,” O’Shea said.

Top Democrats have called on the president to defend DACA, but a final decision has not yet been reached.