Immigration Article of the Day: “The Impact of Recessionary Politics on Latino-American and Immigrant Families: SCHIP Success and DREAM Act Failure” by MARIELA OLIVARES

“The Impact of Recessionary Politics on Latino-American and Immigrant Families: SCHIP Success and DREAM Act Failure” MARIELA OLIVARES, Howard University School of Law.

ABSTRACT: mariela.olivares2010@gmail.com The current financial crisis affects Americans of all backgrounds. Research shows, however, that the hardest hit families are the same families that struggle to make ends meet even in good times – and many of the most impoverished families in the United States are Black, Latino Americans and immigrants. The U.S. government has responded with only mixed success to meet the needs of these families. As budgets are slashed, the needs of the poor – in particular, the voiceless poor – are often ignored. The resulting policies put additional stress on American families and immigrant families – forcing them to make difficult decisions and sometimes breaking families apart. This essay will examine two government programs that have been targeted in the American recession and comment on how such programs have affected the fabric of Latino and immigrant families living in the United States. First, this essay will discuss the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and note how Obama’s 2009 reauthorization of the federal program thwarted the years-long efforts to diminish and extinguish this health insurance coverage for children and their families. Second, this essay will consider the demise of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (or DREAM) Act, a law that would have provided a path to citizenship for immigrants who were illegally brought to this country as children and succeeded academically and/or through service in the United States military. Through this discussion, this essay will examine how these two federal programs have affected Latino-American and immigrant families in the United States.

KJ