Health Correlates of Intimate Partner Violence and Help-seeking Among Unauthorized Immigrant Women

Intimate partner violence (IPV) research on immigrant women who are unauthorized is particularly scarce, despite unique vulnerabilities associated with their documentation status that may impact help-seeking and health outcomes. The purpose of this study was to document the frequency of lifetime IPV and related help-seeking behaviors, and examine the relationship between IPV, major depressive disorder (MDD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and health-related quality of life (HRQL) among a community health center-based sample of unauthorized, Spanish-speaking immigrant women in Philadelphia. A clinic-based sample of unauthorized Spanish-speaking women ( N = 200, ages 18-65) completed an anonymous, cross-sectional survey on IPV experiences, help-seeking behaviors, and self-reported health in 2013-2014. Chi-square tests assessed associations between sociodemographic variables and IPV. Multivariable logistic regression investigated whether IPV predicted mental health outcomes. Approximately one in three (34.5%) women reported lifetime IPV experiences. Of these, half (56.6%) sought help (formal n = 22; informal n = 25) because of the violence. Women identified not knowing where to go, believing that help was not necessary, and embarrassment as barriers to help-seeking. Symptoms consistent with MDD and PTSD were reported by 40.5% and 16% of the sample, respectively. In unadjusted logistic regression models, IPV survivors were more likely to endorse MDD and PTSD, and report low mental health HRQL scores than counterparts without IPV. In fully adjusted models, only the association between IPV and PTSD remained significant (OR: 3.80, p =.01). Study findings document high frequencies of IPV, MDD, and PTSD among this clinic-based sample of unauthorized immigrant women. Women who reported IPV also had a greater likelihood of reporting symptoms consistent with PTSD. Findings highlight the need for clinic-based mental health and trauma-informed services tailored to unauthorized immigrant women as well as interventions to decrease IPV.

Substitution between Immigrant and Native Farmworkers in the United States: Does Legal Status Matter?

The policy debate surrounding the employment of immigrant workers in U.S. agriculture centers around the extent to which immigrant farmworkers adversely affect the economic opportunities of native farmworkers. To help answer this question, we propose a three-layer nested constant elasticity of substitution (CES) framework to investigate the substitutability among heterogeneous farmworker groups based on age, skill, and legal status utilizing National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) data from 1989 through 2012. We use farmwork experience and type of task performed as alternative proxies for skill to disentangle the substitution effect between U.S. citizens, authorized immigrants, and unauthorized immigrant farmworkers. Results show that substitutability between the three legal status groups is small; neither authorized nor unauthorized immigrant farmworkers have a significant impact on the employment of native farmworkers.

Do Immigrants Threaten US Public Safety?

Executive Summary Opponents of immigration often claim that immigrants, particularly those who are unauthorized, are more likely than US natives to commit crimes and that they pose a threat to public safety. There is little evidence to support these claims. In fact, research overwhelmingly indicates that immigrants are less likely than similar US natives to commit violent and property crimes, and that areas with more immigrants have similar or lower rates of violent and property crimes than areas with fewer immigrants. There are relatively few studies specifically of criminal behavior among unauthorized immigrants, but the limited research suggests that these immigrants also have a lower propensity to commit crime than their native-born peers, although possibly a higher propensity than legal immigrants. Evidence about legalization programs is consistent with these findings, indicating that a legalization program reduces crime rates. Meanwhile, increased border enforcement, which reduces unauthorized immigrant inflows, has mixed effects on crime rates. A legalization program or other similar initiatives not currently under serious consideration have more potential to improve public safety and security than several other policies that have recently been proposed or implemented.

Recognizing the Civic Value of Parenting a New Generation

This chapter contends that polities have a long-term public policy interest in applying the same best interests of the child standard that they use for domestic child welfare determinations to immigration cases that involve deportable noncitizen parents, balanced against the interests of citizens in effective immigration regulation and enforcement. The burden lies with parents who have entered and continued to reside without authorization in a country to show that their right to remain is of benefit to existing citizens. This means that unauthorized immigrant parents should initially be given conditional permission to stay in their children’s country of long-term residence to raise them. Deportable parents should be legalized to fulfill a duty of care to their long-term resident or citizen children in the communities where they reside and be offered the opportunity to acquire citizenship based on their service to their broader communities.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the book’s argument for a pathway to U.S. citizenship for long-term resident, unauthorized immigrants through their community contributions in relationships they have developed over time in their adopted country. It addresses the scope of the policy challenge of unauthorized immigrant residence in the U.S. in terms of numbers of migrants and the persistence of the political debate over their future. It explains the special moral challenges that arise from immigrant military service, as well as from the deportation of the parents of citizen children and the separation of their families through immigration enforcement. It then provides a set of nonhumanitarian justifications for legalizing unauthorized immigrants based on their contributions in their relationships with citizens. This argument balances citizen interests in enforcing immigration laws against mitigating factors, including service to citizens, communities, and the nation as a whole.

Earned Citizenship

Earned Citizenship is an intervention in the U.S. immigration reform debate that advances the proposition that long-term, unauthorized immigrant U.S. residents should be able to earn legalization and a pathway to citizenship through service to citizens in their adopted U.S. communities as restitution for immigration law violations. Earned Citizenship first applies the principle of civic membership as reciprocity to support the argument that military service by unauthorized immigrants in particular merits naturalization in the United States, given its strong citizen-soldier tradition. The book contends that noncitizens who serve in the military during a period of declared hostilities should be immune from deportation for the rest of their lives. After drawing from the military aspect of the civic republican tradition, the second part of the book considers the civic value of caregiving as a service to citizens and the nation, which merits a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants. Family immigration policies should be expanded to recognize the importance of caregiving duties performed by family members and fictive kin for dependents. This argument is part of a broader project aimed at reconciling the civic republicanism of the first part of the book with a feminist ethic of care and its emphasis on dependency work. As a whole, this book provides a nonhumanitarian justification for legalizing unauthorized immigrants based on their contributions to citizens and institutions in their adopted nation.