Barack Obama’s decision to launch the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012 changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S.Many immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children were able to get jobs and buy houses. Many got health insurance for the first time thanks to the program that granted them renewable two-year work permits and reprieve from deportation.It also led to the current predicament almost 700,000 DACA recipients are facing: what one president can do, another can simply undo.Donald Trump’s administration ordered the program to close September 2017, and though federal judges halted the move, the program's future remains up in the air.But a team of researchers in California found that the uncertainty about DACA’s future began well before Trump’s move to end the program and that such concerns may be harming the health of the DACA beneficiaries and their U.S.-citizen children.Caitlin Patler, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California Davis, said that DACA’s creation in June 2012 may have allowed recipients to ease up on their fears of deportation and focus on their work and futures. Continue reading...
