Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals Program Research Articles

Voices of fear and uncertainty: Exploring the employment struggles of female DACA recipients

AbstractThis qualitative study explores the employment experiences of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients in the United States during the Trump administration and the COVID‐19 pandemic. Through in‐depth interviews with nine female DACA recipients, this study examines the ways in which the Trump administration and COVID‐19 impacted the employment and sense of security of DACA recipients. The findings suggest that the uncertainty surrounding the future of the DACA program and delayed renewals for DACA recipients work authorizations had significant implications for their employment and livelihood. These findings provide important implications for counselors, future research, and advocacy.

The impact of COVID-19 and anti-immigration policy on an undocumented student in the United States: a qualitative case study

Background The change of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has significantly impacted DACA students’ mental health in the United States. The study aimed to conduct a qualitative case study for understanding the effects of DACA program on one undocumented college student’s life during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods We conducted a two-component qualitative case study, the online survey and the subsequent in-depth interview, with a DACA college student, Leah (pseudonym), in California who was in an ongoing fear of deportation before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and General Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) in the online survey to measure her level of depression and anxiety. QSR NVivo was used to analyze the verbatim transcription. Results Leah’s anxiety and depression level just before the Supreme Court’s decision to the DACA termination in June 2020 was higher than during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. Leah’s concern still remained due to the uncertain legal status in the United States even after the presidential election. Conclusions During 2020-2022, the anti-immigration policy, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the presidential election has impacted a DACA student’s mental health status. However, because of the unstable legal status and fear of deportation in the United States, our participant’s anxiety and depression level maintained high. From our participant’s standpoint, more policy support is needed to sustain her legal status, financial stability, and mental health during the pandemic.

¡No Vengan! Immigration Art in the Post-Trump Era

¡No Vengan! Immigration Art in the Post-Trump Era Maria Liliana Ramirez (bio) ¡No Vengan!, Sergio de la Torre, July 20–October 17, 2021, Santa Ana Exhibitions, Santa Ana, California. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Sergio de la Torre, ¡No Vengan! Santa Ana Exhibitions Gallery, Santa Ana, California, 2021. [End Page 177] On June 7, 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris embarked on her first international visit to Guatemala. There, she warned undocumented Guatemalan migrants: "do not come" to the United States, or you will be turned away at the border. Accompanying her warning, Harris also encouraged migrants to find alternative legal pathways for migration.1 Her speech was a jarring contrast to President Joseph Biden's presidential campaign, which had promised to provide a path to citizenship in order to undo the harsh border practices implemented under the Trump administration and to reshape the US as a nation welcoming to immigrants. Throughout her speech Harris tapped into xenophobic ideologies that criminalized undocumented immigrants in contrast to immigrants who enter the US through legal pathways, a foreshadowing of the Biden administration's discriminatory political strategies toward undocumented immigration at the US/Mexico border. Over a year since Harris's speech, there continues to be no legal pathway to citizenship for undocumented people, as many refugees remain "stuck" in Tijuana hoping for asylum, deportation centers operate at full capacity, and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) is on the brink of being terminated. This review analyzes Sergio de la Torre's ¡No Vengan! at Santa Ana Exhibitions (S/A/E) in the national context of political uncertainty regarding undocumented immigration in the US and histories of belonging for undocumented communities in Santa Ana, California. I argue that ¡No Vengan! provides a space for political critique toward the Biden administration and the larger Democratic Party, which is typically viewed as pro-immigrant. However, this opportunity was cut short by the paucity of public events and interactions with visitors in the gallery. Moving forward, the gallery needs sustained efforts in community collaboration in order to successfully present the next exhibition. For those who did make it into the gallery, more robust interpretive text would have helped situate the visitor in the posture of truly engaging with the work. In response to Harris's speech, de la Torre's ¡No Vengan! ("Do Not Come!") shares the disillusionment felt by undocumented immigrants and ally activists alike toward the Biden administration's handling of immigration. De la Torre is a Mexican photographer, filmmaker, and performance artist based in San Francisco, California, whose work has centered on issues of migration. In 2007, he cofounded, with Chris Treggiari, Sanctuary City Project at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where he asked participants to answer the following questions: "What is a Sanctuary? What would you tell an immigrant?" Over the past five years, Sanctuary City Project has posed the same questions in a series of exhibitions and presentations at schools throughout California, [End Page 178] receiving over three thousand responses from a diverse array of the state's population. De la Torre along with Treggiari then transformed these responses from diverse audiences into large-scale posters. Inspired by concrete poetry,2 which plays with the arrangement and typographical effect of words to create graphic patterns, de la Torre brings art and ideas into public spaces across San Francisco and in ways that can travel easily across borders at a faster pace than he or his collaborator can. In addition to exhibiting the posters in museum spaces, Sanctuary City Project has engaged the public beyond museum spaces by taking a bicycle print cart, and displaying billboards and banners across the city. De la Torre brought in selected pieces from Sanctuary City Project into ¡No Vengan!, a move that should have been the first thing that caught people's eyes because they are colorful and corresponded with the major themes of the exhibition. Yet, what immediately tapped into the city's national and local histories of displacement and belonging was the title of the exhibition boldly displayed on the windows of S/A/E. It is important to note that S/A/E opened its doors...

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and birth outcomes in California: a quasi-experimental study

BackgroundThe Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program provides temporary relief from deportation and work permits for previously undocumented immigrants who arrived as children. DACA faced direct threats under the Trump administration. There is select evidence of the short-term impacts of DACA on population health, including on birth outcomes, but limited understanding of the long-term impacts.MethodsWe evaluated the association between DACA program and birth outcomes using California birth certificate data (2009–2018) and a difference-in-differences approach to compare post-DACA birth outcomes for likely DACA-eligible mothers to birth outcomes for demographically similar DACA-ineligible mothers. We also separately compared birth outcomes by DACA eligibility status in the first 3 years after DACA passage (2012–2015) and in the subsequent 3 years (2015–2018) - a period characterized by direct threats to the DACA program - as compared to outcomes in the years prior to DACA passage.ResultsIn the 7 years after its passage, DACA was associated with a lower risk of small-for-gestational age (− 0.018, 95% CI: − 0.035, − 0.002) and greater birthweight (45.8 g, 95% CI: 11.9, 79.7) for births to Mexican-origin individuals that were billed to Medicaid. Estimates were consistent but of smaller magnitude for other subgroups. Associations between DACA and birth outcomes were attenuated to the null in the period that began with the announcement of the Trump U.S. Presidential campaign (2015-2018), although confidence intervals overlapped with estimates from the immediate post-DACA period.ConclusionsThese findings suggest weak to modest initial benefits of DACA for select birthweight outcomes during the period immediately following DACA passage for Mexican-born individuals whose births were billed to Medicaid; any benefits were subsequently attenuated to the null. The benefits of DACA for population health may not have been sufficient to counteract the impacts of threats to the program's future and heightened immigration enforcement occurring in parallel over time.

Ready to Stay: A Comprehensive Analysis of the US Foreign-Born Populations Eligible for Special Legal Status Programs and for Legalization Under Pending Bills

Ready to Stay: A Comprehensive Analysis of the US Foreign-Born Populations Eligible for Special Legal Status Programs and for Legalization Under Pending Bills

Intensified Liminal Legality: The Impact of the DACA Rescission for Undocumented Young Adults in Colorado

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program provides qualifying undocumented immigrant youth with significant benefits. These benefits exist in a state of tension because they are temporary, making the status of DACA recipients precarious. In this article we draw on survey and interview data collected with DACA recipients in Colorado, along with community stakeholder interviews and observations to examine the liminally legal experience of recipients, both before and after Donald Trump’s announced intention to terminate the program. Focusing on their experiences of precarity across educational, economic, and emotional spheres, we document the negative and lasting consequences that the loss of DACA status would have for them. Given the rapidly shifting legal context of the DACA program, we argue that liminal legality varies in intensity based on political context and place. While undocumented young adults are acutely aware of the uncertainty of this moment, we also show how they are demonstrating resilience in the face of increasingly harmful immigration policies. The liminal legality of DACA status, which has worsened in the recent political context, underscores the urgent need for a permanent legislative solution.

The Life-Course Timing of Legalization: Evidence from the DACA Program

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was created to mitigate some of the harmful consequences of undocumented immigration status. Although research shows that the DACA program promoted employment outcomes for the average DACA recipient, life-course theory and immigrant integration theory suggest that the program may differentially affect younger and older recipients. Using data from the American Community Survey, the authors test whether DACA was associated with different education and employment outcomes for younger and older Mexican immigrants. The results indicate that DACA was associated with increases in the likelihood of working among younger but not older DACA-eligible individuals and with greater decreases in the likelihood of school enrollment among younger DACA-eligible individuals. These results suggest that policy makers should ensure that opportunities to permanently legalize status are available to immigrants as early as possible in the life course.

“Druggies Drug Dealers Rapists and Killers”

We analyze the forty-fifth president’s public discourse to characterize the narrative he consistently articulated about unauthorized immigrants. We initially undertook this analysis on behalf of the legal defense of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) grantees, to provide scientifically rigorous and replicable evidence that the president’s executive action to rescind the DACA program was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. This is a critical discourse analysis of a large sample of his public discourse about immigration, from his first day as a presidential candidate to the day that he attempted to rescind DACA. We inductively analyzed thirteen speeches and 6,963 tweets that revealed an anti-immigrant narrative. We attempt to definitively demonstrate that he articulated racist statements about immigrants and Latinos, hence expressing constitutionally impermissible racial animus. Beyond our formal statement, we offer an explanation based on cognitive science and US history as to why his discourse resonates so well with a sizeable portion of the US electorate.

Supreme Court Upholds DACA Program in 5-4 Decision, but Peril Remains

Supreme Court Upholds DACA Program in 5-4 Decision, but Peril Remains

Sheltering in Place in a Xenophobic Climate: COVID-19 and Children in Immigrant Families.

* Abbreviations: CIF — : children in immigrant families COVID-19 — : coronavirus disease DACA — : Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ICE — : Immigration and Customs Enforcement LEP — : limited English proficiency SDH — : social determinant of health TPS — : temporary protected status WIC — : Women, Infants, and Children Program Like many health conditions that disproportionately impact vulnerable populations of color, we expect that the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic will inequitably affect the health and livelihoods of immigrant families. One in 4 children (>18 million) in the United States lives in an immigrant family, in which the child or ≥1 parent was born outside the United States.1 Among children in immigrant families (CIF), >7 million live in “mixed-status” families, meaning ≥1 parent is not a US citizen.2 Before the COVID-19 pandemic, immigrant families faced increasingly restrictive policies and discrimination. Regardless of legal status, CIF experience increased health and social risks compared with peers in nonimmigrant families, including lower rates of health insurance coverage and higher poverty levels.3 The COVID-19 pandemic amplifies existing inequities and introduces new ones as immigrant families navigate school closures, lack of health insurance and paid leave, and decisions to seek medical care or public services amid ongoing immigration enforcement. Additionally, immigrant families are more likely to live in multigenerational households,4 heightening the risk of COVID-19 for multiple family members. Families with limited English proficiency (LEP) must decipher rapidly evolving public health directives, such as “shelter-in-place” orders and recommendations for mask-wearing, without multilingual and culturally relevant messaging. Underlying these challenges is the implicit presumption of a safe place in shelter-in-place and social distancing directives. For immigrant families seeking safe haven in the United States, “place” may include violence and abject poverty, both in home countries and at the US border. For CIF in US communities coping with persistent fears of immigration enforcement and family separation, … Address correspondence to Rushina Cholera, Duke University School of Medicine, 200 Morris St, 3rd Floor, Durham, NC 27701. E-mail: rushina.cholera{at}duke.edu

Dreaming of the Future: Reflections of a Latina College Student Receiving DACA Protection in the Trump Era

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program provides legal protection to enhance access for a narrow subcategory of undocumented immigrants. Following the presidential election, a series of actions have pushed many of these recipients into limbo, leading to uncertainty and fear for these young students. This case study examined the intersectional identity and experiences of a first-generation Latina college student who is an undocumented immigrant and has received protection under the DACA program.

The Infiltrators

Reviewed by: The Infiltrators by Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera J. Felix Gallion (bio) The Infiltrators. Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera, 2019. Baked Studios. 95 mins. Having been described as a “docufiction” and “docu-thriller” on last year’s film festival circuit, and even as a riff on the heist film genre by the filmmakers themselves, The Infiltrators is an eclectic mix of cinematic forms that bucks conventional description within established varieties of documentary. The film follows a group of DREAMer activists and members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance (NIYA) who in 2012 purposely surrendered themselves to Customs and Border Patrol in order to gain access to the Broward County Detention Facility in South Florida. Their original goal was to “infiltrate” the facility in order to contact Claudio Rojas, an undocumented individual from Argentina who was suddenly detained and threatened with deportation, and try to secure his release. Once inside, however, they soon discover that their advocacy and connections to the outside world could help countless more detained within Broward. [End Page 189] The film’s main action—dealing with armed guards, smuggling things in and out of what is essentially a prison, stopping government planes on the tarmac— is the stuff of blockbuster movies, and, visually, directors Rivera and Ibarra use a few scripted, big-budget tropes to emphasize the danger and drama of the whole infiltration endeavor, such as opening the film with shots of the US-Mexico border as seen from a high-tech night-vision camera and scripting a smuggling scene that’s as nailbiting as anything in a Hollywood production. But The Infiltrators is not so much a thriller or heist film as a kind of ghost story. Millions haunt this film—particularly the nearly 1.3 million Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling on whether or not the Trump administration can end the program and the estimated 10.7 million undocumented individuals who live with a constant fear of arrest, confinement, and deportation. It is the relationship and solidarity between these groups that the film’s genre-bending tries so valiantly to represent. The titular “infiltrators,” Marco Saavedra and Viridiana Martinez, represent the former and the particular relationship DREAMers have to media representation and to the law leading up to the implementation of the DACA program. The film makes it clear that the thought of surrendering to immigration officials is only made possible by the limited protections from deportation Saavedra and Martinez achieved due to the media coverage of their activism with NIYA. For Saavedra and Martinez, it is the paradox of being able to live and advocate for themselves and others because they are openly undocumented that necessitates an action like gaining access to a detention center. Once inside Broward, Saavedra and Martinez’s experiences are implicitly compared to those of other non-DREAMer detainees, including the aforementioned Claudio Rojas, arrested and detained without warning; Maria Soledad, a Venezuelan political asylum seeker; Neema Mukun, a Congolese woman whose attempt to flee an abusive husband lands her in detention for three years; and Ashan, a Sri Lankan migrant detained for more than two years. These individual stories give us glimpses into the scope of the Obama-era deportation apparatus, but Rivera and Ibarra also use them to demonstrate the complex relationship detained migrants have to both legal and media representation. In transporting us to the heart of a detention center, Rivera and Ibarra show us how these spaces are designed to function as representational “black boxes.” With the media and general public denied access to these privately run centers, and with migrants often being moved between them with no notice given to their families or loved ones, detained migrants are depicted as living specters with few ways to communicate with the greater public and government officials on the outside. For NIYA and the directors, the terrible irony of all this is that they are trapped in a system that denies them basic legal rights yet invokes classical liberalism’s “right to privacy” as a means [End Page 190] of blocking access to anyone with interest. Saavedra describes this liminal position best: “You see, because none of...

DACA and the Supreme Court: How We Got to This Point, a Statistical Profile of Who Is Affected, and What the Future May Hold for DACA Beneficiaries

Executive Summary In June 2012, the Obama administration announced the establishment of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which sought to provide work authorization and a temporary reprieve from deportation to eligible undocumented young immigrants who had arrived in the United States as minors. Hundreds of thousands of youth applied for the program, which required providing extensive evidence of identity, age, residence, education, and good moral character. The program allowed its recipients to pursue higher education, to access more and better job opportunities, and to deepen their social ties in the United States. This article provides a statistical portrait of DACA recipients based on administrative data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and estimates drawn from the 2017 American Community Survey (ACS) Census data. It finds the following: As of September 30, 2019, there were 652,880 active DACA recipients. Sixty-six percent of recipients are between the ages of 21 and 30. The top five countries of birth for DACA recipients are Mexico (80 percent), El Salvador (4 percent), Guatemala (3 percent), Honduras (2 percent), and Peru (1 percent). DACA recipients reside in all 50 states and Washington, DC, and in US territories including Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. The top five states with the highest number of DACA recipients are California (29 percent), Texas (17 percent), Illinois (5 percent), New York (4 percent), and Florida (4 percent). Eighty-one percent of DACA recipients has lived in the United States for more than 15 years. Six percent is married to US citizens, 4 percent to lawful permanent residents (LPRs), and 13 percent to undocumented immigrants. Among US-born children younger than 18 years, 346,455 have at least one DACA parent. Fifty-five percent of DACA recipients graduated from high school, 36 percent has some college education, and 7 percent a bachelor’s degree or higher. Ninety-five percent is employed. The Trump administration rescinded the DACA program in September 2017, leaving recipients and their families in a legal limbo. Federal litigation led to a nationwide preliminary injunction and DACA’s partial reinstatement for existing recipients. At this writing, the case is before the US Supreme Court, which will determine the program’s fate. Beyond its statistical portrait, the article provides testimonies from DACA recipients who recount how the program improved their lives and their concerns over its possible termination. It also provides recommendations for Congress, local and state governments, and immigration advocates. In particular, it recommends passage of legislation that would create a path to citizenship for DACA recipients and programs and policies to support and empower young immigrants.

Uncertainty About DACA May Undermine Its Positive Impact On Health For Recipients And Their Children.

Undocumented immigrants and their children have worse self-reported health than documented immigrants and US citizens do. Evidence suggests that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was created in 2012 by President Barack Obama and which granted some rights to undocumented immigrants who arrived as children, improved the well-being of recipients and their children in the first three years after the program's introduction. However, DACA is subject to executive discretion, and the US presidential campaign that began in 2015 introduced substantial uncertainty regarding the program's future. We examined whether DACA's health benefits persisted beyond 2015 using the 2007-17 waves of the California Health Interview Survey and dynamic treatment effects models. Our results show that self-reported health improved for Latina/o DACA-eligible immigrants and their children from 2012 to 2015 but worsened after 2015. Our results suggest that the political climate of the 2016 presidential election may have underscored the politically contingent nature of the DACA program and eroded the program's health benefits for eligible immigrants and their children.

Mitos y realidades: la nula protección de los derechos humanos del indocumentado en la Constitución de los Estados Unidos de América

La autora presenta un resumen jurídico sobre el estado actual en que se encuentra el Programa Migratorio de Acción Diferida para Menores, conocido como DACA o “Soñadores”. Comenta las batallas que se están llevando en el Poder Ejecutivo, Legislativo y judicial para modificar o terminar este programa; expone brevemente la interpretación por el sistema judicial del gobierno de los Estados Unidos. La autora elabora sobre la cuarta, quinta y decimatercera enmiendas de la Constitución de los Estados Unidos, al no reconocer al indocumentado la calidad de “persona”, y el total desconocimiento a la Convención de Viena sobre Relaciones Consulares, cuando se relaciona con los indocumentados.

Keeping the Dream Alive: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and the Necessary Next Step

In September 2017, the Trump administration announced it was repealing the executive memorandum that provided Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Rescinding DACA revokes protections promised to hundreds of thousands of people brought to the United States as children who now reside in the United States without immigration status. This Note proposes that because both DACA's implementation and its repeal were constitutional, Congress must act to prevent those protected by the DACA program from having their previous trust in the U.S. government now used against them.

(Un)authorized Transitions: Illegality, DACA, and the Life Course

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 408 beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA), this article examines how they experienced their new status and improved adult trajectories as they transitioned from an undocumented to a DACAmented status. Authors' analyses suggest that DACA had a nearly immediate and positive impact on adult trajectories, delaying certain aspects of the “transition to illegality.” In addition, authors found differences in the experiences of respondents who received DACA at earlier and later stages in their transition to adulthood. Nevertheless, important limitations of the program continued to keep DACA beneficiaries in a developmental limbo.

Keep the dream alive: the DACA dilemma

ABSTRACTThis paper will examine the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) executive order by then President Obama in 2012. Special attention will be placed on the impact of this program on higher education as well as the lives of the individuals that it has impacted. Both supporting and opposing views will be presented through relevant court cases and scholarly articles on the matter. Additional emphasis will be placed on the uncertainty of the DACA program post-election (2016) and what it means for the people most affected by the program. The writer’s views on the issue will be presented in the end with an example of how one community has come together to keep the dream alive by refusing to lose hope and embracing opportunity instead of fearing threats or challenges.

When the American Dream Stops: New Challenges after DACA for ELT University Students in Mexico

In recent years, thousands of children and young people have been repatriated from the United States to Mexico. Their parents decided to return to their country of origin and not to host them to the DACA (deferred action for childhood arrivals) program. The objective of this paper is double: first, to characterize the different profiles of young students who return to Mexico after having studied some or all grades of their basic and upper secondary education in the United States and who are repatriated to take up their university studies; and secondly the challenges in scholastic and social issues are analyzed, those that students face in their attempt to attend higher education in another country. The results suggest that having a space for these students in the Mexican educational system is not enough, it is necessary to develop programs that facilitate the inclusion of these young people both in the school and in the social context.

Considerations for Residency Programs Regarding Accepting Undocumented Students Who Are DACA Recipients.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative provides for the temporary deferral of enforcement of immigration laws for certain undocumented individuals brought to the United States before age 16. More than 50 medical schools now consider applicants who are DACA recipients, and medical school graduates with DACA are eligible to continue their training in graduate medical education. In this article, the authors summarize current policy and provide data on DACA recipients in medical school. They then review the implications for considering DACA recipients in graduate medical education, including employment guidelines, employer responsibilities, training at Veterans Affairs facilities, research funding, and professional licensure. They conclude by discussing the future of the DACA program and best practices for supporting students who are DACA recipients.First, there are no employment restrictions for DACA recipients with valid work authorization documents as long as their employers use Form I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification. Second, unlike H-1B or J-1 visa holders, DACA recipients do not generate additional immigration-related costs for their residency programs. Next, provisions in the Civil Rights Act prohibit employers from discriminating against applicants based on national origin or, in some cases, citizenship status. Furthermore, trainees with DACA are eligible to rotate through Veterans Affairs facilities. Finally, some states, like California and New York, have adopted policies and regulations allowing trainees with DACA who meet all professional requirements to receive a medical license. Given this state of affairs, DACA recipients should have equal standing to their peers when being evaluated for residency positions.