How COVID-related government backlogs prevented DACA doctor from treating COVID

August 11, 2021

Among the shutdowns and slow downs associated with COVID-19, government agencies have fallen behind in processing all manner of applications. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which requires two-year renewals, is no exception. Juan Vasquez, a DACA recipient and NYU Physician Resident in Emergency Medicine, writes in the Washington Post about how backlogs on DACA renewals have kept him from treating coronavirus patients.

Vasquez immigranted to the US from El Salvador when he was 9 years old. He lived as an undocumented immigrant until his college sophomore year when he received DACA. Relying on a series of renewals, he managed to attend and graduate from medical school at the University of California at San Francisco and get accepted into a ER residency in New York. While serving his residency, COVID-19 closed many government offices at the same time that it flooded ERs with patients suffering with coronavirus. He muses that the fear of contracting covid contributed by dissuading sick people from venturing out and seeking medical care or by having their non-urgent procedures delayed.

Although Vasquez filed to renew DACA well in advance of its expiration (typically 3 months in advance when the DACA processing averages 1.3 months), his DACA and associated work permit expired.

And then they did expire. Per DACA requirements, I have been placed on an unpaid leave of absence, unable to care for patients. It turns out that because the pandemic caused long shutdowns of many government offices, DHS has fallen far behind in processing DACA renewal applications: It can take up to 5.5 months for the agency to approve eligibility that lasts just two years.

I am disillusioned and uncertain as to how all this will play out. I never imagined the pandemic would threaten not only the lives of my patients, but also my very ability to care for them.

Vasquez closes by noting that his story is not unique. Indeed, 27,000 of the 800,000 DACA recipients work in the medical profession and 200,000 worked on the front lines during COVID. A fuller list of critical infrastructure jobs, which comprises a list of protected workers in the proposed Citizenship Act of 2021, is here. Yet nationwide DACA is in a state of limbo after a federal district court set out to enjoin it, even after a prior Supreme Court ruling managed to keep it going. Several proposed bills are pending in Congrses that would cure the problem and grant a path to citizenship (e.g. The American Dream and Promise Act passed in the House in March and is under consideration in the Senate).

MHC

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