Rescinding DACA would hit the healthcare industry hard

Hina Naveed, 27, graduated from the College of Staten Island in January with a degree in nursing and now works for an organization that provides health services to foster children. But by April 2019, when her work permit expires, Naveed might be out of a job and out of the country.

Naveed, who arrived in the U.S. from Pakistan in 2001 at age 10, is among the roughly 91 percent of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients — about 700,000 total — who are employed and would also be leaving jobs behind if Congress lets the program expire in six months.

President Trump’s decision to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) will hit a lot of industries that employ DACA workers, but perhaps none as hard as healthcare, where a sizable number of so-called “Dreamers” make a living, like Naveed.

“If I was not here, there is a team that could of course continue day-to-day,” Naveed said in an interview with VICE News. “But it would take time for the agency to find someone else, and that could result in some interruption in the continuity of care.”

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An estimated 21 percent of employed Dreamers work in “health and educational services,” making it the single largest category in which Dreamers hold jobs, according to a 2016 edition of an annual survey conducted by UC San Diego professor Tom Wong.

While Wong is still tabulating the results of his 2017 survey, which includes more specific questions about where Dreamers are employed, he believes he’ll find a great many working in healthcare, particularly in California and Texas where 44 percent of Dreamers live.

“There are a lot of [surveyed DACA recipients] who are pre-med, in nursing in particular. And when we think about California and Texas… we’re not talking about jobs that many Americans imagine when they think about immigrants,” Tom Wong told VICE News. “We’re talking about people who are being better prepared and competitive for white collar jobs, and the health field in general is seeing this.”

The health sector, more broadly, employs a significant number of workers born abroad; a 2014 Georgetown study found that 22 percent of the entire health care workforce is foreign-born.

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“Anecdotally, from our members working in hospitals, [rescinding DACA] would have a direct effect on the many support services that people depend on for patient care,” said Fernando Losada, the national collective bargaining director for National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in the country. “DACA recipients make up a noticeable proportion of those workforces. To have their ability to work pulled out from under them would impact the employers and the delivery of care. It’s a real concern.”

Rescinding DACA would hit the ranks of home health providers, in particular, as such work often does not require advanced education or accreditation, and can be used as training for further nursing or health care work. It’s also an industry that experiences chronic labor shortages. Sherwin Sheik, CEO of the home health care company CareLinx, told the New York Times rescinding DACA would worsen a presently “disastrous situation in terms of shortages of supply. This is a big issue we’re focusing on.”

Not surprisingly, Naveed said that at her last job as a home healthcare worker, she had many Dreamers as co-workers. “I know that there were a lot of individuals with temporary status at the home care agency I used to work at,” said Hina Naveed. “When I worked in home care, I had a medically fragile child who depended on me for tube feeding and medication to ensure that the child survived. And I know a lot of [undocumented workers] in similar situations.”

Since Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Congress had six months to find a solution before the Trump administration would pull the rug out from under DACA, the healthcare industry has almost uniformly lined up against the move. Hospital associations, health worker labor unions (including Nurses United), and the American Medical Association have publicly condemned rescinding DACA.

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“Our nation’s healthcare workforce depends on the care provided by physicians and medical students with DACA status, who are trained at medical schools in the United States and fill gaps in patient care, as well as offset the deficit in the physician workforce,” wrote AMA chief executive Dr. James Madara in a letter to Congressional leaders.

Madara might as well have been talking about Hina Naveed, who is now a registered nurse. When President Obama introduced DACA in 2012, it allowed her to pursue a long-held dream of working in the medical field. When she and her family arrived in 2001, it was to secure life-saving treatment for her older sister.

“My parents’ decision paid off, as my sister is still with us, and it inspired me to pursue a career in health services,” Naveed said. “Because I saw the impact nurses made, I wanted to be able to make that impact in other people’s lives. And I was unfortunately unable to apply to nursing school until DACA. And then I applied as soon as I could.”