For hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients who went out to purchase their own health insurance or are insured through an employer, the prospect of losing their social security number and permission to work legally also means the prospect of losing access to health care.
DACA recipient Luis Cruz is among those young people who could be thrown off the rolls, with deadly consequences. Despite being a young man of only 25, Cruz told NBC News that a life-saving kidney transplant two years ago has him taking nearly 20 pills daily that without insurance would cost about $3,000 a month.
Cruz was on dialysis for almost three years, until he purchased his own insurance plan through Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Nebraska. His uncle had volunteered to be a donor some time before, but lack of insurance made the surgery impossible:
His insurance was able to cover specialists one year after he enrolled, since he had a pre-existing condition. Until that time, he and his family paid thousands for emergency rooms, dialysis, and medications. Once his insurance kicked in and a donor was lined up, the cost of surgery was $350,000, entirely covered by Blue Cross, not including the cost of medication.
"There was no way I could have gotten the surgery if I didn't have insurance."'
But, “most private insurers require a social security” for enrollment. Without that, young immigrants like Cruz won’t have coverage. Among DACA youth who are insured through their employers, an estimated 450,000 will lose their benefits if they are no longer allowed to work legally.
“Living and working in the United States are the two privileges most often associated with DACA,” notes the New York Times, “but for many recipients, those are merely the first dominoes to fall if Congress does not pass a replacement.”
NBC News:
Becca Telzak is the Director for Health Programs at immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New York. She told NBC News that the organization is holding workshops across the city to discuss potential changes to DACA.
She hopes that former DACA recipients will be able to still be considered for coverage by the state. "They [DACA recipients] are considered PRUCOL which allows access to Medicaid even after the date they lose employment authorization. That means those on Medicaid can potentially still stay on Medicaid. This is what we hope will happen."
While the decision rests in the hands of state-level health officials, New York City told NBC that they would support DACA recipients regardless of status. "New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status, should know that they will still have access to the City's health services," said City Hall spokesperson Saul Stein."
California takes a more liberal approach. All children under 19, regardless of immigration status, receive health care. The rest of DACA recipients have access to the California Medical Assistance Program (Medi-Cal), a Medicaid program as long as they're at or under 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
After Trump's decision on DACA, California released a statement, updating its website, saying there would be no changes if DACA recipients met eligibiblity requirements.
The New York Times notes further devastating consequences from DACA’s recision, including losing driving privileges in some states and being “barred entirely” from enrolling in some colleges in others:
In New York, they would no longer be eligible for state-funded grants and student loans, and would no longer be able to drive legally. That may have a limited impact on immigrants in transit-rich New York City, but could be debilitating for those who work on farms or construction sites upstate, which can be far from their homes in areas where public transportation options are limited, if they are available at all.
For roughly 120,000 DACA recipients in Texas, the loss of a driver’s license could be even more devastating, given the vastness of the state.
Recipients in Arizona and Georgia may face the worst circumstances. The 50,000 in those states are already largely excluded from in-state college tuition, state-funded loans and grants, and subsidized health care; they would also lose the right to drive, and in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, they would be barred entirely from enrolling in some colleges and universities.
Some 280,000 DACA recipients also had to borrow from lenders like Sallie Mae or Discover in order to attend college (undocumented students, even those with DACA, are not eligible for federal student aid). And without a source of income because they can no longer work legally, their loan cosigners, usually U.S. citizen or permanent resident relatives, will now be on the hook to make the payments:
Denia Perez, who was born in Mexico and was brought to the United States when she was 11 months old, has borrowed about $40,000 from Discover to cover her living expenses at the Quinnipiac University School of Law in Connecticut. A dean’s scholarship pays for her tuition, but does not cover rent, food, gas or maintenance for her 2002 Honda CRV. She also purchased a health insurance policy, required by her school, which costs about $3,000 a year.
For her final year of law school, Ms. Perez, 27, said she would borrow another $23,000, but this time from a friend. After her DACA status expires next October, she will not be able to work for a law firm in California, where she was raised and where she had planned to return to practice law. Under the terms of her Discover loans, she can defer repayment for just six months after graduating.
Ms. Perez said that if need be, she would clean houses or work as a nanny to stay afloat, the way she did as an undergraduate student. Her father is a construction worker; her mother works in food service.
“I would do what I have to do to pay my bills,” she said. “I am just fully prepared to hassle and make a living and try to continue surviving in any way I can. That is what we did before DACA.”
Consider the many things you may do on a daily basis without much thinking, from driving to work or school to presenting a driver’s license when making a purchase. If Congress is unable to pass a clean DREAM Act within the next six months, DACA recipients will lose the privileges many of us constantly take for granted.
But beyond that, losing DACA stands to put lives and families at risk, with consequences ranging from the loss of health insurance to the loss of an income. Because DACA recipients can work legally, they’re often the primary breadwinners in their families. Immigrant youth need relief, and they need it now.