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Abstract: The ripple effects of immigration enforcement on the lives of citizen and undocumented children in the United States (US.) remain hidden. Amidst unpredictable and traumatic immigration enforcement policies and practices in the US., children of undocumented parents are exposed to stressors that severely threaten their mental well-being. A community-based participatory study revealed that many of these children suffer from considerable mental health problems. If immigration polities and practices in the US. do not change, millions of children will continue to suffer from their unmet mental health needs. Furthermore, these unmet mental health problems are likely to affect them into adulthood and engender a heaiy human and economic cost for them and all of society.
Key words: Children and adolescents, undocumented immigrants, mental health, immigration enforcement
I. Introduction
Migrations of populations from rural to urban areas, from cities, countries, or regions to other cities, countries, and regions for the purpose of reunification with family, economic opportunities, political freedom, or evasion from persecution and civil war, for example, have been a steady facet of population movements throughout world history (Crul and Mollenkopf, 2012; Demeny and McNicoll, 2003). The recent sinking of two overcrowded boats in the Mediterranean Sea that resulted in the drowning of nearly 400 migrants from Africa and/or the Middle East attempting to reach Europe illustrate the terrible risks individuals will take to secure a better life for themselves and their families (www.nytimes.com/2013/10/12/world/europe/another-migrant-ship-capsizes-in-the-mediterranean.html?_r=0, [Online], accessed on October 15, 2013). In China alone, as a result of the country's market reforms in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the migration of primarily rural populations to urban areas increased dramatically to create a "floating population" of nearly 150 million internal migrants (Chan, 2008). Independent of whether the migration is internal or from one country to another, migrants and their 'host' cities and countries face tremendous social, political, economic, and cultural challenges. In a recent response to these issues, in March 2013 the United Nations (UN) 67th General Assembly passed a resolution for high-level discussions to take place on the topic of International Migration and Development after the 68th session of the General Assembly on October 2013 (www.eclac.org/ celade/noticias/noticias/6/49876/67-219-migration-ing.pdf, [Online], accessed October 16, 2013). Although the outcome(s) of these high-level UN discussions remain to be...