In 2012, the Obama administration issued the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program by executive order. Since then, more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants who arrived as children have benefited from renewable 2‐year reprieves from deportation and work permits. In 2017, the Trump administration announced it would end DACA—an announcement immediately followed by court challenges. We examine how the temporary nature of DACA's granted benefits and the uncertainty regarding the program's fate after 2017 might have shaped DACA‐eligible migrants’ decision to marry a U.S. citizen—presumably to secure permanent residence amid an increasingly unclear policy environment. Using a difference‐in‐differences approach that exploits the discontinuity in DACA eligibility criteria cutoffs to construct akin treatment and control groups, we show that DACA‐eligible immigrants became 20% more likely than similar DACA‐ineligible undocumented migrants to marry U.S. citizens after the program came under siege. The findings are illustrative of the implications of policy changes that increase the uncertainty surrounding migrants’ legal status, as in the case of intermarriage with potentially long‐term consequences on migrant integration and the welfare of subsequent generations.

中文翻译：

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移民身份不确定中的异族通婚：来自 DACA 的证据


2012年，奥巴马政府通过行政命令发布了“童年抵达暂缓遣返计划”(DACA)。自那时起，超过 800,000 名儿童时期抵达的无证移民受益于可更新的 2 年缓刑驱逐和工作许可证。 2017 年，特朗普政府宣布将终止 DACA——这一宣布立即引发了法庭挑战。我们研究了 DACA 所授予福利的临时性以及该计划在 2017 年之后命运的不确定性如何影响符合 DACA 资格的移民与美国公民结婚的决定——大概是为了在日益不明朗的政策环境中获得永久居留权。使用双重差分法，利用 DACA 资格标准截止值的不连续性来构建类似的治疗组和对照组，我们发现，在程序遭到围攻。研究结果说明了政策变化的影响，这些政策变化增加了移民法律地位的不确定性，例如通婚，可能对移民融入和后代的福利产生长期影响。