Are immigration policies adversely affecting citizen children?
October 26, 2018, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine
Before the family separation policy of the Trump administration created a flash point in the ongoing immigration debate, state legislatures enacted more than 1,500 pieces of increasingly punitive immigration legislation dating back to 2005. In a research paper published in the Harvard Medical Student Review, UNC School of Medicine student Sebastian Werner, synthesized existing research to outline the acute and long-term health impacts these policies have had and may continue to have on Latinx citizen-children.
In the short term, the fear of their parents facing criminal proceedings or deportation has been shown to increase anxiety, depression, and ADHD in children. Furthermore, Werner reports that increased fear of deportation could lead to a decrease in the enrollment of Latinx citizen-children in public insurance programs like Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), benefits they are entitled to receive, just like any other citizens who meet requirements. According to Werner, the reduction in enrollment could be traced at least in part to fear that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may apprehend personal information from applications. This fear, he said, also played a role in missed medical appointments.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-10-immigration-policies-adversely-affecting-citizen.html
