Mitigating Strategies to Protect Youth Access to the U.S. Safety Net in Mixed-Status Families

• In Event: 2-178 - Children of Immigrants' Health: Mobilizing Research, Policy and Practice in a Time of Crisis

Integrative Statement

Background: In the United States, 18 million or one in four of all children live with at least one immigrant parent (Zong, Batalova, & Hallock, 2018). Twenty-eight percent of all children of immigrants -5.3 million children and youth - are growing up with either an unauthorized parent or are unauthorized themselves (4.5 million children are U.S. born citizens with at least one unauthorized parent and 775,000 have unauthorized status themselves; Yoshikawa, Suárez-Orozco, & Gonzales, 2017). The heightened immigration enforcement climate currently permeating United States politics threatens the degree to which immigrant families can access the public safety net. The particular programs threatened include those providing nutritional and healthcare assistance, such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) and Medicaid/Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Causal evidence on child health and developmental outcomes of each of these programs suggests important short- and medium-term benefits (Bitler & Currie, 2005; Hoynes, Schanzenbach, & Almond, 2016). Our research questions are: 1) What are the major barriers to access to US public safety-net programs experienced by youth in mixed-status families and their parents? 2) What mitigating strategies at the policy implementation level can address these barriers?

Methods: We conducted a research and policy scan concerning relevant research relating to child welfare and immigration intersections; interviewed practitioners and policy officials in states and counties that have significant experience working with immigrant families; and gathered a compilation of relevant publicly available policy materials from these states and localities.

Results: RQ1: The barriers facing this population's access to health and human services generally fall into the following categories: ineligibility due to their immigration status, fear of deportation, lack of transportation and physical mobility, and language barriers. Some of these strategies became even more pronounced for mixed-status families since the increase in immigration enforcement policies and climate that began in 2016. RQ2: Mitigating strategies protect mixed status families' access to WIC, SNAP and Medicaid/CHIP, with particular concern for U.S. citizen children who are typically eligible for these programs when in low-income households. The most common mitigating strategies involve (1) confidentiality provisions regarding benefits use, (2) articulating and actively reaching out to support or encourage eligible applicants for programs, (3) engaging CBOs and advocacy groups to support improved information and access strategies, (4) creating Offices of Immigrant Affairs, (5) creating and maintaining municipal ID programs, (5) integrating service referrals into immigrant legal services, and (6) implementing certain local law enforcement-based strategies.

Implications: We will report on dissemination efforts to multiple policy jurisdictions of this evidence on barriers and mitigating strategies. We will discuss the developmental consequences of such mitigating strategies.

Authors

• Sarah Rendon Garcia, Harvard University
  Presenting Author

• Ajay Chaudry, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hiro Yoshikawa, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Trenel Francis, Doctoral Student, New York University, Steinhardt
  Non-Presenting Author