When he saw the Trump sign in the courtyard, Camila knew she would have to take into account.
It was February 2025, and Camila* had appeared in a house in northern Texas to meet the new family for which she would make a babysitter.
The 22 -year -old university student has no legal documentation, but that has never been a problem. In their experience, many families like to pay their child care workers. Even so, this new family raised an interesting challenge. The interior of the house was full of more Trump paraphernalia. “Trump everything, everywhere,” says Camila. It turned out that the father works for Fox News.
“It was very ironic,” Camila told Al Jazeera. “If I were going to say:” Hey, this is my legal situation, “I could have gone one of the two ways. They might like to worry, or maybe they would go out. And who knows what would have happened.”
Finally he decided not to tell them and focused on his work to take care of his children. The awkward encounter and the “cold” he gave Camila to evoke a major problem.
In the United States, immigrant work, including undocumented workers, has long supported child care industries, home care and nursing care. However, in the midst of anti -immigrants politics and posture in the second administration of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, including the threat of “mass deportations”, those sick industries face new threats that experts, according to experts, could have a “domino effect” in millions of Americans.
“People do not appear to work because they are worried about the raids that occur in their workplace,” said Lori Smetanka, executive director of the National Consumer Voice for long -term quality care.
And the children, he added, “I have the leg really worried about their parents and if they will return home at the end of the day.”
‘Attacked from all angles’
Economists have documented the devastating effect that would have mass deportations in the economy, and organizations such as the American Immigration Council map the billion dollars that immigrants contribute to the United States in taxes and spending power.
But some industries are exclusively vulnerable to changes in immigration policy.
For example, approximately one in five US child care workers are immigrants, and some studies indicate that almost 30 percent of direct care workers are immigrants. As multiple experts emphasized Al Jazeera, these roles have a high reach effect in communities throughout the country.
“There will be domain effects based on some of the policies we are seeing to be in place,” said Smetanka. The policies, she continued, “are impacting the ability of immigrants not only to come to this country, but also to obtain their citizenship, feel safe when staying and work in this country, and provide the necessary services in those communities.”
At the beginning of his second term, Trump rescinded the guide of “sensitive areas” that has prevented immigration raids from schools, churches and places of employment. The Government is also denying or delaying H-1B Visa permits, which continues a decade of decade of decreased access to a program that helps immigrants find work.
“We want people, by the way, to come to our country, but we are because they enter through a legal process,” said President Trump in his announcement of rates on April 2. “We need people to administer these plants and help automobile workers and teams and people who are not union and everyone else, but we need people.”
Despite this rhetoric, the president’s administration has legal routes limited by freezing the United States refugee resettlement program. Then, in an interview on April 15, Trump proposes a new way for which “great people” could be eligible to re -enter the United States and achieve permanent citizenship status if they first leave the country, then receive the sponsorship of an employer.
The president has also proposed the creation of a “gold card” visa that would cost the applicants $ 5 million.
Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, a policy analyst at the Institute of Migration Policy, said the main objective of politics “seems to be wealth to the United States.”
To evaluate whether the legal routes for immigrants are strengthening, one would have to observe not only the number or visas granted, but also “who is arriving, if the strengthening of the legal routes reduces irregular migration.”
In other words, admit more immigrants through a “legal process” to which the speech of April 2 would be mentioned to make the visas easier to reach, something he could not do in his first mandate, where the legal call decreased.
In addition, the revocation of the temporary protected state has school administrators, nursing home and nursery operators who wonder who they can hire and how they can protect them.
Wendy Cervantes Say’s thesis has made the leg so that immigrant families are “attacked from all angles.”
Cervantes is the director of immigration and immigrant families at the Center for Law and Social Policy, and his team recently conducted a web seminar to provide technical assistance to child care suppliers in the United States. She said that more than 1,000 people appeared, driven by “stress and fear” created by the focus of the new immigration administration.
“People are no longer worried about parents; they are also worried about staff,” he told Al Jazeera.
As a result, administrators in fields such as child care are learning about the complexities of arrest orders: what child’s child is needed and what information should an immigration officer provide to be legal allowed in the facilities.
“This knowledge at least gives them a certain agency measure,” he said. “But that is a really scary place to be in which to be.”
‘I want to stay’
One of Cervantes’ objectives is similar to those of economists who track the effect of deportations: they want people to realize how much their lives are molded by immigrants.
This is especially true for any person whose family has some connection with the child care sectors, home care or careful care. Approximately 20 percent of all American elderly people live in rural communities, and in the last five years, 40 new counties have become deserts of nursing homes: areas where nursing care is needed with butter, which forces residents to drive long distances.
According to Smetanka, when an elderly home is closed, leave a hole in the community. Deans lose jobs, and patients, who probably had few options to start, are struggling to find a new home. It is difficult to quantify the economic and psychological effect that this has in a family or community in general, as well as, for Cervantes, it is difficult to quantify the damage caused to the psyche of a child when they are afraid of being deported.
In spite of all this, Smetanka says it is important to remember how much immigrants want to remain in the United States and continue working in places like elderly homes. The average per hour payment for direct care workers increased by less than $ 3 between 2014 and 2023, but health fields remain widely popular among immigrants.
Sarah Valdez, an immigration lawyer based in Austin, Texas, expresses it without rodeos: “You [won’t be able to] Replace the 10 people who deported with 10 workers born in the United States. “
Camila, the nanny of northern Texas, is one of those people who are willing to work long hours, without complaints and for little salary. Nanning may not be his long -term career, but he chose the field because he needed to pay the school and loves to work with children.
In many cases, he feels that he spends so much time with his clients as his parents. His typical day is to get up at 6 am and work up to approximately 10 pm, while time for class work and studies at any free time that he can administer is found. She has helped several children face divorce and sudden deaths in the family, among many other life situations.
“With everything that happens in the world, I don’t know what follows for me,” he said. “I’m just doing it every day, week by week. But I know I want to stay. I’m slippery to be here right now.”
*Camila’s name has changed her leg to protect her identity.