Giving Compass' Take:

• A recent study shows that more U.S. citizen children who have DACA-eligible mothers will enroll or have access to programs such as the National Special Supplemental Nutritional Program for Women, Infants and Children in order to receive better health services. 

• The study found that children who perceived reduced risk for their parents' deportation would access more health programs. How can politicians use these findings to curb immigration policy to benefit immigrant families? 

• Read about the DACA students who are persevering through their hardships in order to figure out how to finance themselves through college. 

The U.S. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, has spillover benefits for the health of the young children of DACA-eligible mothers, a recent study suggests. Researchers found that after DACA was implemented, there was a surge in enrollment of these U.S.-born kids aged 5 and younger in the national Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) benefit program.

The findings highlight the potential for multigenerational effects of immigration policy and should be considered in ongoing immigration debates, the study authors say.

“We were interested in understanding whether immigration-related policies impact how children of undocumented immigrants - children who are U.S. citizens themselves - access critical social services,” said lead author Dr. Maya Venkataramani, a pediatrician at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

“Some policymakers and healthcare professionals believe that there may be a ‘chilling effect’ - whereby immigration-related policies which confer a higher risk of deportation may lead families to shy away from applying for and accessing, services they would otherwise be eligible for.”

“By reducing the risk of deportation among parents, we reasoned that their citizen children would be more likely to participate in programs like . . . (WIC), a program which has been documented to have beneficial effects on child health outcomes,” she said.

“As the debate around immigration policy continues to grow, research providing evidence on the intergenerational impact of federal, state and local policy affecting children in immigrant families is increasingly important,” he said.

Read the full article about DACA by Shereen Lehman at Reuters