This project aims to understand how state and county immigration enforcement laws affect the health of undocumented immigrants (defined as individuals born outside the U.S. and not authorized to reside or work in the U.S.) and their children. Our focus will be on three sets of laws that vary over time and across states: 1) E- Verify mandates that require employers in an area to verify a prospective employee's work authorization using a national electronic system; 2) laws that regulate undocumented immigrants' access to driver's licenses; and, 3) laws that authorize local law enforcement agencies to check individuals' citizenship status and set in motion deportation proceedings. These laws are likely to increase environmental demands and/or reduce coping resources among undocumented immigrants and their families and therefore are likely to heighten acculturation stress and its negative health consequences. We test this proposition using 16 years of data (1998-2013) from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), an annual, cross-sectional household survey that adopts a nationally representative multistage probably sampling design. We will test whether the enactment of a given immigration enforcement law affects physical health, mental health, and access to health care for likely undocumented immigrants (identified through a proxy measure) and their children. Using regression analysis, we will compare geographic and temporal trends in health among a treatment population of likely undocumented immigrants who should be impacted by the relevant policies and a control population of comparable native-born whites before and after the enactment of each law. Additionally, we will assess whether the size of the local co-ethnic immigrant population moderates policy-health relationships for likely undocumented immigrants and their children, and we will explore whether restrictive immigration laws have unintended negative effects on the health of individuals who may be perceived to be undocumented immigrants (e.g., native-born Mexican Americans).
This project aims to understand how state and county immigration enforcement laws affect the health of undocumented immigrants and their children. We will examine health outcomes in a growing segment of the population that faces unique structural and health vulnerabilities, and our analyses will contribute to a relatively new literatre on the health effect of 'non-health' policies - i.e. policies for which health is neither an explict goal nor anticipated side effect. Additionally, since the laws we will examine operate through mechanisms that are widely acknowledged social determinants of health, results from our analysis will extend beyond the specific topic of immigrant health and speak to broader question about how social and legal conditions shape health more generally.
