The Effects of Having Undocumented Immigrants as Parents: A Study
A report from a Harvard developmental and community psychologist has revealed how being undocumented parents effects the lives of their children.
In a recent Congressional briefing on “Children in Immigrant Families,” Prof. Hirokazu Yoshikawa of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, stated, “Citizen children of undocumented parents show lower levels of early language and cognitive skills as early as at 2 years of age.”
“These parents were afraid to enroll their kids in learning opportunities like high-quality center care and particularly the child care subsidies that would help purchase that form of care. And that’s because child care subsidies, for one thing, in our country require confirmation of earnings and employment. And despite the fact that these families were making such low level of earnings, that they more than qualified for subsidies for their citizen children, they were afraid to enroll their kids,” said Prof. Yoshikawa to NPR’s Michel Martin.
“In many cases, with the undocumented moms and dads, our field workers were the first to tell them about
