Poorer households in the U.S. are more likely to be eligible for means-tested federal welfare programming. Prior research has shown that many safety net programs have important positive effects on the health and well-being of those who receive them. Yet, take-up of such programs among the eligible population is incomplete and tends to be dampened by a variety of factors such as stigma, hassle costs, and lack of information. However, particularly among poor, program-eligible Hispanic households, the federal government also plays a major role in their lives through immigration enforcement. Indeed, numerous media accounts have reported that increased vigilance for non-citizens has led individuals who are eligible for enrollment in such programs (e.g. U.S.-born and naturalized citizens) to not sign up or to drop out of government programs. Such behaviors, purportedly driven by fear of "outing a relative," are highly policy relevant and could have important effects for Hispanic and non-Hispanic households alike. Understanding whether the dual role of federal authority as both enforcer and benefactor influences the take-up of decisions of vulnerable households is critical to developing policies that fulfill the government's mandates.
The research will examine the staggered roll-out of a relatively novel and far-reaching immigration enforcement program, Secure Communities, which led to a massive increase in detainers and deportations for both violent and non-violent immigrant offenders. Secure Communities provides ideal quasi-experimental variation since the Hispanic community was overwhelmingly affected and the timing of the rollout was based on technical factors, lending itself to a triple difference-in-differences empirical methodology. This approach allows the researchers to compare program take-up for Hispanic households within a given location to take-up for non-Hispanic whites and blacks, net of counties that had not yet activated, versus after Secure Communities activation. To assess whether any isolated effects on the take-up of programs by Hispanic Americans are mediated by fear of revealing non-citizens in their networks, the researchers have assembled data on the spatial distribution of mixed-status families, survey data on deportation fear, and Google Trends data on searches for deportation-related terms. Lastly, the researchers assess whether the effects of enforcement on take-up are buffeted in areas that have declared sanctuary status.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
