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In a letter sent Tuesday to members of Congress, the American Medical Association voiced support for the BRIDGE Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at providing protection to immigrants with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status. It cast such protection as helping to shore up the physician workforce, which faces a looming shortage over the coming decades. The legislation, if enacted, would allow undocumented immigrants who meet DACA requirements to apply for protection from deportation and for work authorization for three years. Immigrants already protected under DACA would be able to apply for the same protections after their status expires. (Whitman, 2/8)

Two-year-old Dilbireen Muhsin's face was badly burned when a heater in the Iraqi refugee camp where he was living with his family caught fire last year. He is now awaiting a second surgery at Shriners Hospital for Children in Boston. But the operation is on hold because his parents can't get back to the U.S. to be with him. Their visas were revoked after Dilbireen's father returned to Iraq, to be there when his wife gave birth to another child. (Mullins and Joliocoeur, 2/8)