Deportation is a Public Health issue

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Deportation is a Public Health issue

Lost in an increasingly heated debate about U.S. immigration reform is a growing problem of immigrant mental and emotional health, a public-health doctor says. Tragedies like the Thanksgiving weekend 2011 suicide of high school senior Joaquin Luna Jr., 18, of Mission, Texas -- who said he realized he had "no chance in becoming a civil engineer," despite excellent grades, because he was undocumented -- put an occasional face on immigrant psychosocial challenges. Such incidents energize controversy over the DREAM Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who go to college. But unspoken are untold immigrant psychosocial ills, Dr. Manuel Carballo -- executive director of the International Center for Migration, Health and Development and a former professor of clinical public health at Columbia University -- told United Press International.