: Migrants and Refugees Face an Invisible Trauma We Can’t Ignore #WorldNEWS In the wake of multiple legal challenges, the Biden Administration late last month aimed to fortify the Deferred Action for

Migrants and Refugees Face an Invisible Trauma We Can’t Ignore #WorldNEWS
In the wake of multiple legal challenges, the Biden Administration late last month aimed to fortify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program with a new rule that would shield more than 600,000 undocumented people brought to the U. S. by their parents. While proponents of the program welcomed the move and heralded it an “effort to bulletproof the DACA program,” our response in this moment overlooks a fundamental problem: each challenge on immigration—whether the Muslim Ban, family separation, or challenging DACA—takes a toll on refugee and migrants through vicarious trauma and weathering, regardless of the outcome.
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While we debate annual refugee caps, if Title 42 should be repealed and whether to welcome Haitian and Afghan refugees, each day migrants experience the trauma of instability. This additional trauma—often ignored because of other acute, pressing issues—has lasting physical and psychological health effects that we document in our refugee and migrant patients for decades. Understanding this often-invisible trauma is a vital component of recovery and rehabilitation.
Shock experiments conducted in the 1980s in rats showed that when rats can control when they are subjected to pain, they develop tolerance to it. On the other hand, rats that have no control over when they are shocked become depressed, dejected, develop ulcers, lose weight and have compromised immune systems that make them more susceptible to disease.
Similarly, humans experience a crippling response when faced with persistent uncertainty. Consider the simple routines and patterns in our lives that allow us to function. For example, the uncertainty of in-person school for children during the COVID-19 pandemic debilitated many American families, which led to record rates of women quitting their jobs, sent many families to move to the suburbs where schools were more likely to have in-person classes and put substantial stress and strain on families and marriages.
DACA recipients and refugees and migrants in Afghanistan, Greece or at the U. S. -Mexico border experience weeks, months or years of instability. The impact of uncertainty extends beyond a single affected individual or family: it permeates entire communities through vicarious trauma, or trauma transmitted second-hand through bearing witness to stories of other people who have experienced pain and suffering. Imagine struggling to drive after taking care of a friend who had a bad car accident or being crippled by the decision of whether or not to send your children to school after a school shooting close to home. Vicarious trauma produces its own psychological weight and burden.