Study: Nearly 1 in 4 children has at least one immigrant parent

One in 4 children living in the U.S. in 2016 had at least one parent who was born outside the U.S., according to a study released Wednesday.

A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that about 20 million children living in the U.S. in 2016, or about 23 percent, had at least one parent who immigrated to the U.S. Most of those children, 89 percent, are citizens of the U.S. themselves, the study adds.

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More half of those children live in just four states: California (23 percent), Texas (13 percent), New York (8 percent) and Florida (8 percent), according to the study.

A common theme for families with at least one immigrant parent is the family looking for affordable health care, the survey shows.

About 8 million of the roughly 20 million children living with an immigrant parent were covered under either Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

The study states that cuts to CHIP or Medicaid would “increase the uninsured rate among immigrant families, negatively affecting the financial stability of families and the growth and healthy development of their children.”

Immigration has been front and center during the Trump administration after the president’s decision to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program last Fall.

The program protected immigrants who were brought here illegally as children from deportation. It expired in March, but Trump’s decision to end it is being held up in court.

Democrats have sought to tie legal protections for the nearly 2 million immigrants protected by DACA to funding for Trump’s planned wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but negotiations between the White House and Congress on the issue has stalled in recent weeks.

Trump took a hard line against immigration during his campaign, vowing to deport immigrants in the U.S. illegally and impose limits on legal immigration to the country.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has attempted multiple times to ban travelers coming from a number of primarily Muslim-majority nations, bans which various courts have tossed out as unconstitutional.

The latest version of the ban was allowed by the Supreme Court to go into effect in December, pending a review of the case later this month.

Two federal appeals courts have already ruled against the latest version, calling it “unconstitutionally tainted with animus toward Islam.”