“We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud,” Mr. Trump said, without offering specifics, though a Senate bill with bipartisan sponsorship introduced last week would continue DACA’s protections for three years.  In the interview, Mr. Trump said of the young immigrants: “They’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”  On that, Ms. Luna agreed. “For someone like me, that uncertainty still looms,” she said.  Across the country, more than 740,000 young immigrants, often called Dreamers, are wondering what will happen to the two-year work permits granted through DACA. They work in fields like education, law, medicine, finance and government. About 30,000 live and work in New York City, officials say.  At the age of 5, Chandrapaul Latchman was brought by strangers on an airplane from Guyana to reunite with his parents on Long Island. He became student body president of Valley Stream Central High School, an honors student at Baruch College and an intern at BlackRock, the investment firm, before going to work at JPMorgan Chase. Today, at 23, he is one of the bank’s 100 credit risk analysts, assessing multimillion-dollar loans to real estate developers and entertainment companies.  He knows what he would feel were Mr. Trump to cancel the program, known as DACA.  “It’s a feeling of rejection,” Mr. Latchman said.  “Even though you tried so hard, and outworked so many people to get here, still at the end, you’re not good enough and they don’t want you,” he said.  Because Mr. Obama initiated the program by executive action, Mr. Trump could still revoke it with the stroke of a pen. It does not need congressional approval.  Without the right to work legally in the United States, the Dreamers could see the accouterments of middle-class life — a studio apartment in Brooklyn, a driver’s license, a biweekly paycheck with deductions for retirement, a coveted desk in a financial firm — disappear.  Some viewed Mr. Trump’s latest comments as polarizing, continuing a narrative from his campaign.  “We don’t want to differentiate between the good immigrants and the bad immigrants – however he chooses to qualify them,” said Hina Naveed, 26, a registered nurse on Staten Island and a co-director of the activist group, Dream Action Coalition. “Instead of just working it out with the Dreamers, what I’d rather see is some clear policy in what he’s hoping to work out with immigrants in general.”  Otherwise, she said, the alternative is frightening: “We’ll save DACA and all their parents will be deported — who will want to stay here?”  Mr. Latchman said that even before Mr. Trump was elected, his manager suggested exploring other offices around the world, like the one in Toronto. His work permit expires in the summer of 2018, about the time his three-year contract with the bank ends.  A JPMorgan Chase spokesman, Andrew Gray, said that it was too early to discuss what was still a hypothetical situation. He emphasized that Mr. Latchman was speaking personally, and not on behalf of the company.  In many cases, employers, whether they are private or government entities, may not know if an employee has a work permit through DACA unless that person discloses it. And there is little any employer can do if an employee’s work authorization is canceled.  But Teach for America, the national organization that trains and recruits young teachers to work in schools in low-income communities has, since 2013, made a point of hiring and supporting teachers who are covered by the program, helping with application fees and moving.  Now it has pledged to offer legal and financial support to the 146 corps teachers who could lose their work permits. Ms. Luna, who works at the Great Oaks Charter School, said she would apply for a transition grant that Teach for America offers for resettlement. In her case, she might need the money to break her lease on her $1,850-a-month studio and move back in with her parents, who live in Port Chester, N.Y.  Antonio Vance, the executive director in New York for Great Oaks Charter School, said he had already consulted lawyers to help Ms. Luna.  “She’s only been here a year, and she’s already a model teacher,” Mr. Vance said. “It would be difficult to replace her and the relationships she has formed with her students.”  Ms. Luna said that if were she to lose her work permit, she would consider going back to school for a degree in administration in hopes of one day opening her own school if the law changes. She already has a master’s in urban education and policy.  “I wouldn’t lie to say it won’t devastate me. But it would ignite more of a fire inside me,” she said, referring to her ambition to remain a teacher in the United States.  Others said their fallback plan might mean retreating to the underground economy.  Juan Carlos Pérez, 31, a math teacher at the International High School at Union Square, said he might have to return to teaching English as a second language in Queens for a small stipend or even return to Mexico, which he left at age 11.  Joe Luft, the executive director of the Internationals Network for Public Schools, which operates 15 high schools in New York City that specialize in teaching new immigrants, said losing people like Mr. Pérez could adversely affect the students who had come to confide in him.  “I really fear what that does to their sense of hope, which can be tenuous to students anyway,” Mr. Luft said.  According to an immigration lawyer, Stephen Yale-Loehr, Mr. Trump could still cancel the program immediately, or let the existing two-year work permits simply expire.  Ms. Naveed, whose family is from Pakistan, came to New York when she was 11 because her older sister needed medical treatment; they came legally, but overstayed their visas. In May, Ms. Naveed was able to get a nursing license because the New York State Board of Regents allowed people covered by DACA to be eligible for 57 professional licenses. As a private home nurse, she now changes and maintains the tubes that allow a 10-month-old baby to breathe and eat.  Ms. Naveed said it would be “a significant loss” of independence to no longer be able to work and take part in her community openly. Still, she said, “Before DACA people survived, and after DACA people will survive.”
More than 740,000 young undocumented immigrants are allowed to work under an Obama administration directive, but Donald J. Trump could take that away.