Parental Immigration, Legal Status, and Children's Substance Use

• In Event: 033 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 14. Substance Use

Abstract

Much of the recent empirical research on immigration and crime has found immigration to have no association or a negative association with crime, despite theoretical and popular expectations to the contrary. This has been discussed as part of a broader “Latino paradox,” as immigrants have also been observed to fare better than natives on other outcomes (e.g., health), despite higher levels of disadvantage. Largely missing from this literature, however, is the distinction between undocumented and documented immigration. In one recent study that was able to make this distinction (Landale et al. 2015), the children of undocumented Mexican immigrants were found to have more behavior problems than children of documented immigrants and U.S. born parents. The current study draws on this work to investigate the link between immigration legal status and substance use, an outcome that is typically positively associated with behavior problems. Analyses of a representative survey of neighborhoods and households in Los Angeles County, the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (n=861) found evidence that the adolescent children of undocumented immigrants have lower odds of substance use than the children of U.S. born parents, consistent with the Latino paradox. This relationship was not explained by, nor did it vary across levels of, behavioral problems or neighborhood characteristics. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.

Authors

• Alyssa Yetter, Pennsylvania State University

• Corina Graif, The Pennsylvania State University