What Older Americans Stand to Lose if ‘Dreamers’ Are Deported
When the Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it would end an Obama-era program that shielded young undocumented immigrants from deportation, Sherwin Sheik quickly sized up the potential toll on his business.

Those executives may have empathy for the beneficiaries of the program, known as Dreamers, as well as a broader interest in more liberal immigration policies to satisfy their labor needs. But the practical effect on their businesses will typically be minimal. The number of workers who benefit from the program is tiny alongside a national labor force of more than 150 million, and the DACA workers are spread out relatively evenly across most industries.

In health care, on the other hand, the economic impact could be significant, depriving patients of help they depend on and driving up costs for families and taxpayers.

Surveys of DACA beneficiaries reveal that roughly one-fifth of them work in the health care and educational sector, suggesting a potential loss of tens of thousands of workers from in-demand job categories like home health aide and nursing assistant.

At the same time, projections by the government and advocacy groups show that the economy will need to add hundreds of thousands of workers in these fields over the next five to 10 years simply to keep up with escalating demand, caused primarily by a rapidly aging population.

“It’s going to have a real impact on consumers,” Paul Osterman, a professor at the Sloan School at MIT and author of a new book on long-term care workers, said of the DACA move.