As lawmakers in Congress calculate the political risks of making a deal to protect so-called Dreamers, a new study the New American Economy finds hidden political strength in their family members, particularly in Texas.
The report found that roughly 2.5 million U.S. citizens live in the same household as someone who benefits from former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, with the Trump administration is ending in March.
Of those, more than 750,000 can vote, nearly 100,000 of them in Texas alone.
“While DACA recipients themselves cannot vote, their citizen family members and friends can,” the report noted. “As DACA recipients live in virtually every community and work in virtually every industry in the country, this pool of DACA-motivated voters is vast.”
The figures gain more resonance in Texas and California, the two states with largest undocumented populations. Unsurprisingly have the largest numbers of eligible voters living with individuals who qualify for DACA.
In 2015, Texas alone was home to more than 436,000 U.S. citizens who lived with at least one person who was DACA-eligible, including 99,000 who already had voting eligibility.
Read the full story from the Houston Chronicle: “Study: Don’t mess with ‘Dreamer’ families – they vote, and there’s lots of them”
Read the NAE Report: One Collateral Risk of Eliminating DACA: Angering an Important Pool of Voters
