Lost in an increasingly heated debate about U.S. immigration reform is a growing problem of immigrant mental and emotional health, a public-health 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.
