Survey

Tag: Survey

DACA = better jobs, stable families

Written by Aparna Ananthasubramaniam on March 21, 2018.

$460 billion. That’s the estimated value that DACA recipients add to our GDP. In addition to the well-known economic impacts to our country, there is a good amount of research about the positive benefits the DACA program has provided to its 790,000 DACA recipients and their families. MAF was humbled to have the opportunity to help over thousands of DACA recipients with fee assistance grants to make sure cost didn’t stand in the way of protection. We know DACA is crucial but we wanted to hear about it directly from our clients. We invited them in a survey to:

Explain how DACA helped them (442 responses)
Share stories about how DACA helped them, their family or their community. (363 responses)
Share stories about how the administration’s announcement to end DACA had an impact on them, their family or their community. (379 responses)

60%+ said DACA helped them get better quality jobs

DACA has been instrumental in helping our clients access better professional opportunities, from getting better quality jobs to pursuing career goals and educational opportunities. DACA recipients said they found jobs with better pay and improved working conditions, opened businesses or had fulfilling long-term career opportunities. For example, one client, a 20-year old from Texas, told us how DACA enabled her to get a social security number, opening the door to a career in nursing. “DACA has helped me pursue my nursing career. I participated in a CNA program in high school, but after I graduated I was unable to take my test because I did not have a Social Security Number. After being qualified for DACA, I was able to get my CNA license, work as a CNA, and now continue college classes working towards becoming a RN.” – 20 year old, Texas

64% said DACA helped them better support their families

With a median of 4 people to a household, better jobs and educational opportunities mean more stable families. “I am the eldest of four children. My father worked odd jobs just to make sure we were stable. After I received DACA, I graduated high school, I got the chance to go to college, and now I have a well paying job to be able to help my father sustain our family. We went from barely getting by to having what we need to a little more and all thanks to DACA.” – 20 year old, California

48% said DACA gave them a greater sense of belonging to the U.S.

It’s no surprise that DACA recipients experience life in the U.S. as both insiders and outsiders – integrated into society to a certain degree but not able to have the same opportunities and privileges as their peers. Receiving legal and workforce protection often helped unlock dreams and goals. “DACA gave me more confidence in myself. It showed me that the opportunities are right there, all I have to do is work hard and thrive for what I want to become. DACA is an ally to the undocumented students. Not only do I feel safe with DACA but it also gave me a lot of strength on not giving up,“ – 19 year old, California

With the threat of losing DACA, clients are very worried about losing everything in their home and having to start over

Hundreds wrote responses about how tangible their losses would be: loss of financial stability, employment, education, peace of mind, or a sense of confidence and belonging. People are worried about how they’d struggle to adapt to culture and learn the language of their country of birth, if they had to leave.

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Still, many voiced resilience and positivity, expressing confidence in the strength of their communities and certainty that they could find opportunity in what lies ahead, like this 24 year old from California:

“Speaking of all the 800,000 dreams and DACA applicants, we’re not afraid. We don’t give up this easily. We represent the future of this country. We are the U.S. and we are helping this first world nation succeed economically and financially. We’ve worked so hard to be where we stand at this moment. Our parents left everything behind for us to have a better future, a better education, a better life. The decision [to rescind DACA] has made us stronger than ever and it has given us the tool to not stop reaching our goals.”

DACA: 44 States & 70 Countries

Written by Aparna Ananthasubramaniam on February 26, 2018.

In September 2017, MAF launched the nation’s largest DACA fee assistance program serving 7,600 Dreamers across the country. In a series of blog posts, we’ll share information about who we served and what we’re learning about the financial lives of DACA recipients after launching a survey to thousands of DACA clients.

MAF’s DACA fee assistance program supported 1 in 10 DACA recipients in California in fall 2017

When the current administration announced that DACA was ending, MAF pivoted to respond to an urgent need. Within days, we launched a DACA Renewal Fee Assistance program to provide grants of $495 to individuals eligible to renew their DACA work permit by the October 5 deadline. Within 4 weeks, we helped 5,078 DACA Recipients (by January of 2018 that number rose to 7,600). In September and October 2017, we helped nearly 7% of all those who submitted an application to USCIS to renew their DACA – and 1 in 10 DACA recipients who lived in California.

We provided emergency relief to high-need clients: 89% of 2017 DACA fee assistance applicants came from low-income families

Mirroring the national distribution of all DACA recipients, 57% of MAF’s clients who we served in 2017 identify as female and the typical fee assistance recipient was 23 years old. Around 89% of recipients came from low income¹ families; the median annual household income was $24,000 for a household of 4.

Get to know MAF’s 2017 DACA fee assistance recipients:

DACA recipients served came from 44 states and hailed from 71 countries:

Listening to community is crucial to good program design

Even though the DACA fee assistance program was time-limited, we knew that we wanted to continue to build programs to support this community of DACA recipients and their families. In addition to capturing demographic data for each client, we fielded a survey² – in English and Spanish – to all 5,078 fee assistance applicants who applied in 2017 to better understand their emerging needs.

This survey builds on past research and drills down into financial needs and aspirations

Building on past research about DACA recipients conducted by Tom Wong and United We Dream, our survey was designed to ask applicants questions to learn about:

How receiving DACA had helped them
How our respondents used DACA to support their families
Applicants’ top financial concerns for themselves and their families
Our respondents’ personal, financial, and career aspirations
Applicants’ experience with and feedback on different aspects of MAF’s program

At the end of the 2-week survey period, we received 447 responses for an 8.8% response rate. About 6% of those responses (26 responses) were in Spanish.

In general, our survey respondents closely matched our applicant population, with a few exceptions. Similar to other online surveys of this community, we received higher a survey response rate among females: 63% of people who responded to our survey were female, compared to 57% of MAF’s clients. We also tended to receive more responses from a slightly older age group: 55% of survey respondents were over 23 years old compared to 45% of MAF’s clients.³

Sharing insights means using community voices to move financial services forward

This survey gave us rich insights about our program applicants – their dreams and their fears. In the following blog posts, we will be sharing insights we heard and the data points we collected. We’ve also been using the data to inform our own work. We are excited to share these insights as part of our ongoing strategy to listen to the communities we serve – and share their stories with the partners we work with. In upcoming blog posts, you’ll get to learn more about how our programs are meeting the needs we uncovered through research.

Based on this survey data, we’re launching new programs to help clients access quality employment, pay for immigration-related application fees, and build credit and financial security.

¹ “Low income” here means that the recipient’s household income is below 80% of the Area Median Income for households of the same size in their county. Data for Area Median Income comes from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2017 database.
² We conducted the survey in October 2017 with a 12-item instrument that included eight closed-ended and four open-ended items. We sent an initial email to all clients and one follow-up email reminder those who hadn’t completed the survey.
³ We are only reporting on statistically significant differences with at least a medium effect size.