Legal Status and Health Care: Mexican-Origin Children in California, 2001–2014

Abstract

Using restricted data from the 2001–2014 California Health Interview Surveys, this research illuminates the role of legal status in health care among Mexican-origin children. The first objective is to provide a population-level overview of trends in health care access and utilization, along with the legal statuses of parents and children. The second objective is to examine the nature of associations between children’s health care and legal status over time. We identify specific status-based distinctions that matter and investigate how their importance is changing. Despite the continuing significance of child nativity for health care, the descriptive analysis shows that the proportion of Mexican-origin children who are foreign born is declining. This trend suggests a potentially greater role of parental legal status in children’s health care. Logistic regression analyses demonstrate that the importance of parental legal status varies with the health care indicator examined and the inclusion of child nativity in models. Moreover, variation in some aspects of children’s health care coalesced more around parents’ citizenship than documentation status in the past. With one exception, the salience of such distinctions has dissipated over time.

Uncertainty About DACA May Undermine Its Positive Impact On Health For Recipients And Their Children

“…It is possible that having one parent who is a US citizen might provide resources that could affect children's health. 31 As a robustness check, we ran our models including a fixed effect for whether the child had a US citizen parent (responding or nonresponding). The variable was not significant in any of our models and did not change our substantive results.…”

Policies of Exclusion: Implications for the Health of Immigrants and Their Children

“…Nationally, undocumented/unauthorized immigrant children also have the lowest rates of health insurance coverage in the U.S. (60). Additionally, state-level data from California suggest U.S.-born children of undocumented/unauthorized parents are less likely to be insured than U.S.-born children with U.S.-born parents (89, 116, 145). California is also the only state to have sufficient data to evaluate differences in health care utilization by children’s or parental legal-residency status.…”

“…Results are equivocal. One study suggests no significant difference in annual physician visits by either children’s or parents’ legal-residency status and two studies suggest that children who are undocumented/unauthorized immigrants and/or have a parent who is undocumented/unauthorized have fewer annual physician visits than U.S.-born children with a U.S.-born parent (89, 116, 145).…”

Fear of Immigration Enforcement Among Older Latino Immigrants in the United States

“…This is a common challenge for contemporary telephone survey research due to the growing unwillingness of the public to participate in these surveys. However, several studies point out that nonresponse does not necessary introduce substantial biases into the analyses (Keeter, Kennedy, Dimock, Best, & Craighill, 2006; Massey & Tourangeau, 2013; Oropesa, Landale, & Hillemeier, 2016; Pew Research Center, 2012). Furthermore, it is necessary to point out that the significant coefficients in our regression models only suggest meaningful associations between fear of immigration enforcement and the independent variables.…”