COVID-19 isn’t the only threat facing these DACA health care workers on the front line

The high court has delayed other cases because of the outbreak but is still drafting opinions, and advocates say the DACA ruling, argued in November, could come at any time.

Supporters say a global pandemic is no time to rescind a program that allows tens of thousands of DACA recipients to work as badly needed lab technicians, paramedics, medical assistants, pharmacists, nurses and doctors.

“Termination of DACA during this national emergency would be catastrophic,” lawyers representing recipients argued in a March 27 filing with the Supreme Court.

Conservative groups such as the Center for Immigration Studies say such warnings are overblown and that DACA health care workers represent a “trivial” slice of the workforce.

And they say they are not likely to be a top target of deportation even if the program is scrapped.

But DACA lawyers said the ruling’s potential fallout on health workers is just one example of the effects that the Trump administration failed to fully consider when ending the program.

“The public health crisis … throws into sharp relief DACA recipients’ important contributions to the country and the significant adverse consequences of eliminating their ability to live and work without fear of imminent deportation,” their filing said.

Will Dreamers really be deported?

DACA, created in 2013 by President Obama to provide protection and work permits to undocumented immigrants brought to America before age 16 covers nearly 653,000 people nationwide, including 2,720 in Kentucky and 8,940 in Indiana, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Nearly half of Kentucky’s DACA recipients work in “essential” fields, including health care, education and food-related jobs, according to the progressive Center for American Progress.

Their DACA status lasts for two years and is renewable, but it does not provide a path to citizenship.

Trump has issued conflicting views on the program. In 2017 he tweeted, “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military?”

Late last year he tweeted that “many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from ‘angels.’ Some are very tough, hardened criminals.” He also added that if the court struck it down, “a deal will be made with Dems for them to stay!”

During oral arguments at the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts noted that “Both (the Obama and Trump) administrations have said they’re not going to deport the people.”

But in January, acting ICE director Matthew Albence, responding to questions about recipients having deportation cases reopened that had been administratively closed, said that if “DACA is done away with by the Supreme Court, we can actually effectuate those removal orders.”

Dreamers try to forge medical careers

For Lara-Rojo, the pending decision has fueled uncertainty and worry. And as she works amid one of the nation’s most severe public health crises, it seems to clash with the praise from leaders like Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear of health care workers.

“People are like, health care workers are heroes. But a lot of people don’t know there are some who might not be able to be there for the community” if the program is rescinded, she said.

“We probably wouldn’t be the first to be deported, but we couldn’t legally work. We wouldn’t know what to do.”

Lara-Rojo came to the U.S. from a town on the outskirts of Mexico City when she was 3 years old, her parents looking for work. She grew up in Lexington, went to public schools and watched her mother create a food-truck business.

She wanted to work in health care but didn’t qualify for federal student aid, so she obtained a medical certificate at Bluegrass Community and Technical College while she saves, hoping eventually to become an ultrasound technician.

Since coronavirus swept into Kentucky, wracking up more than a thousand cases and nearly 100 deaths, she’s been working at Health First Bluegrass, a federally funded community health clinic in Lexington, testing and seeing cases come back positive.

She worries about her young son catching the virus. In the back of her mind is her fears of having her life upended if DACA is tossed out.

“It is something that drives up our anxiety even more during this point,” she said.

Hernandez, 23, works as a certified nursing assistant in the emergency department at Central Baptist in Lexington.

“We’ve seen everything, from patients with small fevers, shortness of breath” and many worried about coronavirus-like symptoms, she said.

Hernandez is studying to be a nurse at Eastern Kentucky University. Her mother, who brought her from Hildago, Mexico, when she was 6 years old, lost her hairstylist job and was ineligible for unemployment insurance.

But working amid the coronavirus outbreak has cemented her desire to work in health care.

“I feel like right now you can just see how many nurses are needed,” she said.

Ivonne Gonzalez, who grew up in Kentucky after her father migrated to worked on tobacco farms, is another Dreamer who works at a Richmond-area pharmacy, handing out medicine to people while studying to be an occupational therapist.

“I try not to worry,” she said. “But it’s kind of like a dark cloud.”

Deportations could hurt areas most in need

The Association of American Medical Colleges filed an amicus brief on behalf of the DACA program, argued that excluding DACA recipients from the health care workforce would exacerbate doctor shortages, which “will be felt most keenly in medically underserved areas, such as rural settings and poor neighborhoods — precisely the areas in which DACA recipients are likeliest to work.”

Liz Edghill, who heads the Community Health Worker Program at Louisville’s Family Health Centers, who said workers that “look and speak like the communities we serve” can be critical for treating populations largely disenfranchised from the health care system.

The DACA debate is not the only Trump immigration policy affecting medical care even before the pandemic, which included higher reported rates of delays and denials for certain visas that apply to foreign-born doctors.

Since then, curtailed visa services at consulates have hampered the ability of health care professionals to get medical licenses, obtain visas, and remain in good status, according to the Center for American Progress.

And visas such as the H1-B used by foreign-born doctors remain strictly tied to their employment, often preventing them from going volunteering or working in other hard-hit areas such as New York that need additional staff, according to the Society of Hosptial Medicine in an April 1 letter to Congressional leaders.

“The health care workforce is more and more being served by foreign physicians. Particularly in pulmonary critical care, there’s a very large proportion who are foreign-born … and that can make it difficult with all the visa restrictions,” said Dr. Keith Kelly, a member of the Kentucky Medical Association and a pulmonologist in Paducah, Kentucky.

For dreamers, however, the latest case is part of a long-running struggle for which they say a longer-term solution is needed for a path to citizenship. Most said they want to feel stable and avoid becoming pawns in political negotiations over immigration policy debates such as border walls.

“It’s almost like they play with us,” Gonzalez said. “You hear, ‘We don’t need these individuals in our country.’ But the truth is you could be losing your nurse, your doctor or your children’s teacher.”

Source: Courier Journal