Immigrant Legal Status Disparities in Health Among First- and One-point-five-Generation Latinx Immigrants in California

Restrictive US immigration laws and law enforcement undermine immigrant health by generating fear and stress, disrupting families and communities, and eroding social and economic wellbeing. The inequality and stress created by immigration law and law enforcement may also generate disparities in health among immigrants with different legal statuses. However, existing research does not find consistent evidence of immigrant legal status disparities in health, possibly because it does not disaggregate immigrants by generation, defined by age at migration. Immigration and life course theory suggest that the health consequences of non-citizen status may be greater among 1.5-generation immigrants, who grew up in the same society that denies them formal membership, than among the 1st generation, who immigrated as adolescents or adults. In this study, we examine whether there are legal status disparities in health within and between the 1st generation and the 1.5 generation of 23,288 Latinx immigrant adults interviewed in the 2005–2017 waves of the California Health Interview Survey. We find evidence of legal status disparities in heart disease within the 1st generation and for high blood pressure and diabetes within the 1.5 generation. Non-citizens have higher rates of poor self-rated health and distress within both generations. Socioeconomic disadvantage and limited access to care largely account for the worse health of legally disadvantaged 1st- and 1.5-generation Latinx adults in California.

Metabolic Risk and Depression among Elderly Mexican Americans: The Roles of Nativity Status of Nativity Status

Objective: To evaluate the relationship be­tween metabolic risk (MR) and depression in a sample of older Mexican Americans and examine whether the association differs by age at migration.Methods: Longitudinal study using data from the Hispanic Established Populations for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly (HEPESE) (N=807, mean age = 84.3). The analytical sample was compiled from wave 6 (2007) to wave 7 (2010-2011) of HEPESE. Random-effect logistic regression examined the association between MR and depression and tested the model stratified by nativity status and age at migration.Results: MR was associated with higher odds of depression for US-born Mexican Americans after controlling for potential confounders. Similarly, among Mexican Americans who migrated before age 20, MR was associated with higher odds of depres­sion.Conclusion: The findings highlight the importance of age at migration when evalu­ating the health of foreign-born Mexican Americans from a life-course perspective. Particularly among Mexican Americans who migrated before age 20, those with MR were more vulnerable to depression than their counterparts without MR.Ethn Dis. 2021;31(2):243-252; doi:10.18865/ed.31.2.243

Age at Migration and Cognitive Health Among Chinese Older Immigrants in the United States

Objectives: This study addressed two questions: (1) Is age at migration associated with cognitive function among Chinese older immigrants? and (2) what personal and environmental factors confound the above relationship? Methods: Data were derived from the Population Study of Chinese Elderly ( N = 2957). Quantile and linear regressions were used to examine the associations between age at migration and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and global cognitive function, respectively. Results: Migration in late middle age (50–64) or late adulthood (65 or older) was associated with lower MMSE scores. Global cognition did not vary by age at migration. Associations between age at migration and MMSE were stronger among individuals with lower education or social engagement. Discussion: Migrating late in one’s life has important implications for cognitive health over the life course. Findings are helpful to identify vulnerable older immigrant segments and provide tailored interventions to promote their cognitive health.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Migrant Populations: Should we look Even Further Back?

Background: The incidence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) continues to rise worldwide. Despite the advances on pharmacotherapy, the etiopathogenesis of Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) remains underexplained. The migratory waves are a challenging setting to analyze the evolution of IBD prevalence and to infer its triggering factors. Objective: Our study aimed to overview the literature regarding IBD prevalence and phenotype in first- and second-generation migrants Also, we aimed to summarize the migration history and to draw a possible correlation with IBD distribution. Methods: A non-systematic review was performed following electronic (PubMed and Web of Science) and manual searches on relevant topics. Results: Overall, first-generation migrants tend to maintain the IBD risk of the native country. On the following generation, the risk tends to converge to that of the destination country. Earlier age at migration modulates IBD risk, suggesting that the degree of exposure to environmental and socio-economic factors can be decisive for disease progression. In general, CD needs more time to reach a disease burden similar to that of the host country, indicating that UC may be more affected by nongenetic factors and genetic-nongenetic interactions. Conclusion: IBD phenotypes and natural history vary in migrants and according to ethnicity; however, the trends are not consensual among cohorts. Further studies are warranted to analyze the effect of genetic background and environmental risk factors in different ethnic groups, providing evidence to move towards the identification of at-risk individuals, prevention and earlier diagnosis of IBD.

Too Old to Forget: The Dynamics of Political Trust among Immigrants

Scholars have argued that immigrants’ trust in institutions is the result of the exposure to host-country institutions but also shaped by past experiences in the country of origin. These experiences create a “home-country point of reference,” a political/institutional memory that becomes the relevant comparison for any political/institutional interaction in the host country. We develop further this concept and unpack its key determinants—the age at migration and the historical conditions of the home country at the specific time of migration. Only those immigrants who were too old to forget the historical and contextual features of the country-of-origin institutions at the time of migration will rely on this comparison when interacting with institutions in the host country. Across time, there is both a continuous positive/negative accumulation of trust for the host-country institutions among those with less/more democratic points of reference. We examine immigrants’ political trust using survey evidence from Israel.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease in migrant populations – a narrative review

Background: The incidence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) continues to rise worldwide and despite the advances on pharmacotherapy, the etiopathogenesis of Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) remains underexplained. In this context, the migratory waves of the last decades created a challenging setting to analyze the evolution of IBD prevalence and to infer its triggering factors. Objective: Our study aimed to overview the literature regarding IBD prevalence and phenotype in first- and secondgeneration migrants. Methods: A non-systematic review was performed following electronic (PubMed and Web of Science) and manual searches on relevant topics. Results: Overall, first-generation migrants tend to maintain the IBD risk of the native country. On the following generation, the risk tends to converge to that of the destination country. Earlier age at migration modulates IBD risk, suggesting that the degree of exposure to environmental and socio-economic factors can be decisive for disease progression. In general, CD needs more time to reach a disease burden similar to that of the host country, indicating that UC may be more affected by nongenetic factors and genetic-nongenetic interactions. Conclusion: IBD phenotypes and natural history vary in migrants and according to ethnicity; however, the trends are not consensual among cohorts. Further studies are warranted to analyze the effect of environmental risk factors in different ethnic groups, providing background to move towards identification of at-risk individuals, prevention and earlier diagnosis of IBD.

Fertility, migration, and altruism

Migration is a human capital investment in which parents bear costs and children share returns. Therefore, migrants from a population with heterogeneous intergenerational discount rates will self-select on intergenerational altruism. Intergenerational altruism and fertility are arguably linked, therefore immigrants might self-select on eventual fertility. Soviet Jews who migrated to Israel despite high migration costs averaged almost one child more than members of the same birth cohorts who migrated later, at lower cost. Distinguishing selection from treatment effects using mothers' age at migration, selection accounts for most of that difference (the proportion varies with specification), even with controls for religion and religiosity. Selection on fertility may have other explanations, including cultural preservation. To probe, we conduct an alternative empirical test of immigrant selection on altruism, finding that U.S. immigrants spend more time with grandchildren than do natives. Additionally, immigrant self-selection on fertility provides an alternative explanation for Chiswick's (1978, Journal of Political Economy86(5), 897–921) earnings-overtaking result.