Yet there are a substantial number of children, including many born in the United States, who are affected by current enforcement of immigration laws and would be affected by legalization of the unauthorized. According to recent estimates, 5.5 million US children reside with at least one unauthorized immigrant parent, and 4.5 million of these children are US-born. Given that children with unauthorized parents constitute nearly one-third of all children with immigrant parents and about 8 percent of all US children, their well-being holds important implications for US society.
There has been little research on how a parent’s unauthorized status affects child development, due in large part to difficulties in identifying and surveying unauthorized parents. Emerging research suggests that having an unauthorized immigrant parent (as opposed to a legal resident or citizen parent) is associated with lower cognitive skills in early childhood, lower levels of general positive development in middle childhood, higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms during adolescence, and fewer years of schooling.
Author: Hirokazu Yoshikawa & Jenya Khloloptseva
Source: Migration Policy