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ASU Economics professor on DACA students: ‘Arizona tax-payers' wallets would still feel an impact'

Nearly 1,000 DACA recipients in our state currently work as teachers. That number will continue to rise as DACA college students studying education graduate and find jobs in Arizona, which is suffering from a teacher shortage.

Every day, Arizona classrooms are run by teachers, teachers who may be in the United States working under the protection of DACA.

Denis Alvarez wants to be one of them. She's a freshman studying secondary education at Arizona State University and a DACA recipient.

“For someone to be studying education, they really need to be passionate about that," said Alvarez.

She says she doesn't even speak Spanish well enough to teach in Mexico, if she were to go back.

"Why would you want us to leave if we are here to better the education in Arizona and even in the United States”, she added.

Arizona is experiencing a serious teacher shortage and the pattern doesn't seem to have a near end in sight.

Data from a 2017 study by the Morrison Institute for Public Policy shows that Arizona is actually losing more teachers each year than it is producing from bachelor of education programs at its three state universities.

The loss of DACA recipients studying to become teachers would make an even bigger dent in the number of educators willing to work in Arizona.

According to data from the migration policy institute, three-percent of the almost 26 thousand DACA recipients in Arizona are currently either majoring or working within an educational field.

Economics professor Marjorie Baldwin, ASU Economics professor, acknowledges the number of DACA eligible account for less than .5 percent of the overall workforce in the state, not much. But if they were to leave, Arizona tax-payers' wallets would still feel an impact long term.

"These people have been here since they were children… they have gone through the Arizona public schools, the secondary schools, universities. So, we, as tax payers have invested a lot in these students to train them," Baldwin said.

The number of DACA protected teachers is just a fraction of the nearly 60,000 certified educators in Arizona. But every single teacher matters, as many of them are leaving the profession or seeking education jobs in other states.

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