Study: DACA Dramatically Improves Mental Health of Dreamers’ Children

We’re hearing a lot lately about the Dreamers. But what about their kids? A new Stanford University study shows that DACA significantly reduced mental illness in Dreamers’ children. Specifically, the researchers looked at “adjustment and anxiety disorders, mental illnesses known to be provoked by external stress and that can produce lifetime challenges for children.”

As the study authors wrote yesterday in the Washington Post: “Compared to children of mothers who were not eligible for DACA, children with DACA-eligible mothers had a far lower rate of mental health diagnoses: 3.3 percent versus 7.8 percent.” The full report on the study was recently published in Science.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that these diagnoses were more than twice as common in children whose parents were not protected by DACA. After all, what is more traumatic for a young child than the idea that Mom or Dad may be picked up and shipped to a faraway land? (Answer: The day that Mom or Dad is actually picked up and shipped to a faraway land.)