Why immigration policy changes are causing long-term financial harm to US citizens – Center for Retirement Research
Detention and deportation of immigrants is putting their American children behind
We must exercise caution before arresting, detaining, and deporting immigrant parents of US citizens. Separating a parent from their child is a big act. Among the basic things to consider: Is this parent not authorized to be in the US?
Consider the story of Gustavo Adolfo Aguilera Aguero, a man with no criminal record. Aguilera Aguero and his wife entered the country legally in 2023 using the US One application. Given a work permit, Aguilera Aguero was employed in the roofing industry and, at that time, his wife gave birth to a child named Jacob. Citizen under 14th To make amends, Jacob was separated from his father when he was accidentally arrested in March 2025, probably because of his tattoos. Despite the mistake, Aguilera Aguero was taken to a high-risk prison, before being released from his native Venezuela. I am not aware of the damage to a child’s mental health caused by this type of forced separation. But I know a thing or two about financial damage. And it can be great.
You see, instability due to parental incarceration and alienation falls under the category of something called “Childhood Experiences, or Aces. The Great Literature Is About Aces Limity People’s Purpose to Work Productively in Society. Before people start their careers, aces reduce their chances of getting a college degree, one of the best predictors of career earnings. When they get older, those with ACES experience higher rates of unemployment and other problems at work and struggle to stay employed. Instability at work is restricted at home – those with aces have low marriage rates and high divorce rates. And while these may sound like individual problems, they manifest themselves in ways that cost society: high rates of social dependency and low domestic product.
But despite the large amount of research on the impact of ACES, little is known about their chilling influence on people’s lives. In particular, as a retirement researcher, I am also working on a working paper on how various aces affect the accumulation of wealth over labor. When children with aces approach their 60th birthday, how much damage is done to prepare for retirement?
The analysis used the National Longitudinal survey of youth 1979 Cohort (NLSY79) to follow a sample of more than 5,000 people who were teenagers in 1979 through their late 50s or 60s. In the NLSY79, parental separation can result from divorce, death, or other circumstances (eg living with grandparents, parental care, etc.). While our research may not reflect well on what happened to Jacob – and we don’t know how this story will play out – at least it gave us a sense of how the finances of people with aces differ from those without them.
To this end, Figure 1 shows how the Median Net Enther fits in Agers 54 to 61 for people with and without ACES. Because families who receive aces are different from those who do not, the analysis controls for factors such as gender occupation, race, parental education and parental income. The figure shows that all aces are associated with the lowest value, even accounting for items. Those who experience a separation from a parent have a net worth of more than $28,000, or 23 percent, lower than their counterparts who do not.
Difficulties in interpreting this result are noted – Many factors may differ in families with aces that we cannot control despite our efforts. However, we found that much of the wealth gap appears to be linked to these children retaining less education, earning and working less in their lives, and spending more time divorced. The great books I mentioned above document the effects of parental separation well.
This problem does not go away. In the Supreme Court that allows the current administration to revoke the legal status of more than 600,000 VeneZans, it seems that many people come here legally – as happened to Aguilera Aguero – soon. Is it worth doing long-term harm to our citizens by deporting a parent who came here legally but, through a policy change, lost their protected status? Our government seems content to deal with well-intentioned parents, regardless of the harm to their children.
