Undocumented College Students in the United States: A category in need of further analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Deguili
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
College Students ◽  
Family Structure ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Undocumented Students ◽  
The United States ◽  
Undocumented Immigration ◽  
Undocumented College Students

This paper concerns itself with a subset of undocumented immigrants, that of undocumented students in the United States. While many sociologists have engaged with undocumented immigration in general, not much attention has been paid to this growing group and when it has been done these students were treated as a unified and undiversified category. In this letter, instead, I intend to outline some of the ways in which the label of undocumented student and its consequences may vary greatly depending on a number of different elements, among them: the different legal status of various family members, the different methods of entry into the country, family structure, and the influence of the communities that surround them.

scholarly journals Undocumented College Students in the United States: In-State Tuition Not Enough to Ensure Four-Year Degree Completion

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 364-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan Conger ◽  
Colin C. Chellman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
College Students ◽  
Degree Completion ◽  
Associate Degree ◽  
Undocumented Students ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
University Systems ◽  
Bachelor's Degrees ◽  
Undocumented College Students

Using restricted-access data from one of the largest urban public university systems in the United States—where many undocumented students are eligible for in-state tuition—we review the literature on undocumented college students in the United States and provide a comparison of the performance of undocumented students to that of U.S. citizens and other legal migrants. Overall, undocumented students perform well in the short-term, earning higher grades and higher rates of course and associate degree completion than their U.S. citizen counterparts. But undocumented students are less likely to earn their bachelor's degrees within four years. This finding suggests that, despite their earlier college successes and their access to in-state tuition rates, at some point after enrollment, undocumented students experience higher costs to completing their bachelor's degrees than they had anticipated upon enrollment. We offer a number of policy considerations for university officials and policy makers who aim to help undocumented college students succeed in postsecondary institutions.

The Impact of Immigration Legislation

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Reimers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Family Members ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Women ◽  
National Origin ◽  
Undocumented Immigration ◽  
Chain Migration ◽  
Immigration Legislation ◽  
Asian Immigration ◽  
The Impact

Racism and economics account for the first laws directed at Chinese and Japanese. Entering as “picture brides,” Japanese women evaded the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907-1908 between the United States and Japan, but by use of the naturalization qualifications in the 1920s, Congress effectively closed the door to Asian immigration. For southern and eastern Europeans, national-origin quotas of the same decade cut their immigration drastically. After 1945, Congress and U.S. presidents relaxed the tight restrictions, and, in 1965, Congress passed the Hart-Celler Act, which created a new and more liberal system that stressed family unification. Major issues in recent years have concerned terrorism and undocumented immigration. Throughout this period, the results of the laws were often unintended, largely because the flow of immediate family members and chain migration were unseen.

Inside Story

2019 ◽  
pp. 27-54
Author(s):  
Sarah C. Bishop
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Undocumented Immigration ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement

This chapter reveals the centrality of narrative and storytelling to the sociopolitical status of undocumented immigrants living in the United States. It offers a theorization of reclaimant narratives by illuminating the experiential, partial, public, oppositional, and incondensable nature of the stories undocumented activists tell. Despite attempts to essentialize and distill this narrative, the reality of undocumented immigration is a complicated story with no easy one-size-fits all tagline. This reality complicates the process of public education about immigration and works both for and against immigrants who use their stories as activism. The emergence of voices of undocumented storytellers in the immigrant rights movement has the capacity to engender empathy, motivate listeners, and even advance reforms in laws and policy. But these narratives also have the capacity to decelerate the movement by detracting from systematic problems and the tangible actions needed to advance reform.

The Post-1996 Immigrant Underclass

2019 ◽  
pp. 76-88
Author(s):  
Susan Bibler Coutin
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Central America ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Undocumented Students ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Experiences ◽  
Educational Benefits ◽  
Immigration Control ◽  
Young Immigrants

This chapter shows how children who immigrate to the United States from Central America are at risk of becoming an underclass, a set of individuals whose life opportunities are powerfully constrained by legal status. Child arrivals, as those who immigrate to the United States before turning 16 have come to be known, may experience a number of adverse circumstances, including violence in their country of origin, lengthy family separations, the challenges of immigrating without authorization, being undocumented in the United States, a lack of work authorization, challenges pursuing higher education, poverty, racism, the threat of removal, no opportunity to permanently regularize, and a deep disjuncture between legal and social experiences of belonging. This chapter charts the contradictory outcomes as young people move through legal systems. Although local, state and federal measures have provided undocumented students with some legal protections and educational benefits, these remedies remain limited and the threat or the actuality of deportation looms large. This chapter details the structural obstacles that place young immigrants in an underclass, confining them to spaces of legal nonexistence and forcing them to linger rather than move out of systems of immigration control.

scholarly journals The Academic Performance of Undocumented Students in Higher Education in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Hsin ◽  
Holly E. Reed
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Educational Outcomes ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Undocumented Students ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public University ◽  
Undocumented Immigrant ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Race Ethnicity

Our understanding of the sources of educational inequality for the estimated 250,000 undocumented immigrant college students in the United States is limited by poor data. We use student administrative data from a large public university, which accurately identify legal status and include pre-enrollment characteristics, to determine the effect of legal status on GPA and graduation. We find that undocumented students are hyper-selected relative to peers; failing to account for this difference underestimates the effect of legal status on academic outcomes. Our findings also highlight the ways legal status interacts with institutional settings and race/ethnicity to affect educational outcomes.

Disentangling contributions of demographic, family, and socioeconomic factors on associations of immigration status and health in the United States

2020 ◽  
pp. jech-2020-214245
Author(s):  
Adrian Bacong ◽  
Heeju Sohn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Characteristics ◽  
California Health Interview Survey ◽  
Potential Health ◽  
Individual Level

BackgroundIn the United States, immigration policy is entwined with health policy, and immigrants’ legal statuses determine their access to care. Yet, policy debates rarely take into account the health needs of immigrants and potential health consequences of linking legal status to healthcare. Confounding from social and demographic differences and lack of individual-level data with sensitive immigration variables present challenges in this area of research.MethodsThis article used the restricted California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) to assess differences in self-rated health, obesity, and severe psychological distress. Between US-born citizens, naturalised citizens, lawful permanent residents (LPR), undocumented immigrants, and temporary visa holders living in California.ResultsResults show that while immigrant groups appear to have poorer health on the surface, these differences were explained predominantly by older age among naturalised citizens and by lower-income and education among LPRs and undocumented immigrants. Favourable family characteristics acted as protective factors for immigrants’ health, especially among disadvantaged immigrants.ConclusionImmigration policy that limits access to healthcare and family support may further widen the health disadvantage among immigrants with less legal protection.

scholarly journals The Academic Performance of Undocumented Students in Higher Education in the United States

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Hsin ◽  
Holly Reed
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Educational Outcomes ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Undocumented Students ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public University ◽  
Undocumented Immigrant ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Race Ethnicity

Our understanding of the sources of educational inequality for the estimated 250,000 undocumented immigrant college students in the United States is limited by poor data. We use student administrative data from a large public university, which accurately identify legal status and include pre-enrollment characteristics, to determine the effect of legal status on GPA and graduation. We find that undocumented students are hyper-selected relative to peers; failing to account for this difference underestimates the effect of legal status on academic outcomes. Our findings also highlight the ways legal status interacts with institutional settings and race/ethnicity to affect educational outcomes.

In Pursuit of an Audience

2019 ◽  
pp. 131-151
Author(s):  
Sarah C. Bishop
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
Undocumented Immigration ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Lack Of Knowledge

This chapter turns from undocumented creators to their audiences to illuminate how immigrant storytellers conceive of and characterize US citizens who encounter reclaimant narratives. The narrators describe their frustration with citizens’ apparent lack of knowledge about immigrant rights and policy. I illustrate the link between US audiences’ perceptions of immigrants and the tropes present in mediated portrayals of immigrants in public discourse, and the narrators describe their own reactions to these portrayals. Finally, in response to the question “What do you wish US citizens knew about undocumented immigrants?” they explain why it is so important that citizens recognize immigrants as human, take a bigger picture view of the historical reality of undocumented immigration, acknowledge the factors that lead immigrants to give up their homes and communities and flee to the United States, and understand the privilege of citizenship.

On the association between undocumented immigration and crime in the United States

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Gunadi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Violent Crime ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
Undocumented Immigration ◽  
Us States ◽  
Younger Age ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Immigration And Crime

Abstract Approximately 11 million undocumented individuals live in the United States. At the same time, there are concerns that the presence of undocumented immigrants may contribute to an increase in crime rates. In this article, I examine the institutionalization rate of undocumented immigrants and quantify the change in crime rates attributable to undocumented immigration. The analysis yields a few main results. First, despite possessing characteristics usually associated with crime, undocumented immigrants are 33% less likely to be institutionalized compared to US natives. Second, there is no evidence that undocumented immigrants who have spent more time in the USA are more likely to be institutionalized compared to those who have been in the USA for a shorter time. There is evidence, however, that arriving at a younger age is associated with higher institutionalization rate. Finally, overall property and violent crime rates across US states are not statistically significantly increased by undocumented immigration.

scholarly journals Achieving the DREAM: The Effect of IRCA on Immigrant Youth Postsecondary Educational Access

2013 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
pp. 428-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalena E Cortes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Postsecondary Education ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Immigrant Youth ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
Educational Access ◽  
Achieving The Dream ◽  
And Control

This paper contributes to the existing literature on the effect of legal status on educational access among immigrant youth in the United States. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 granted amnesty to undocumented immigrants who entered the United States before 1982. Using a difference-indifferences framework, I analyze the effect of this large amnesty program on immigrant youth's postsecondary educational access. My main finding shows that immigrant youths who were granted amnesty under IRCA are more likely to enroll in postsecondary education.

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