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Abstract 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. 

Abstract Policies that expand the rights of marginalized groups provide an additional level of structural integration, but these changes do not always come with broad social acceptance or recognition. What happens when a legally marginalized group attains increased rights but not full political or social inclusion? In particular, what are the mental health implications of these transitions for impacted groups? We bring together theories of liminal legality and stress process to offer a framework for understanding how expansions in the legal rights of a highly politicized and vulnerable social group can be initially beneficial, but can attenuate due to renewed or new stress events, chronic stressors, and anticipatory stressors. We use the case of Latina/o immigrant youth who transitioned from undocumented legal status to temporarily protected status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Analyses of representative California statewide survey data from 2007 to 2018, combined with surveys and in-depth interviews with DACA recipients, suggest that without full social and structural inclusion, legal transitions that expand rights will produce short-term psychological benefits that do not hold up over time. 

Abstract The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, implemented by executive order in 2012, granted a subset of undocumented youth temporary relief from deportation, work authorization, and other benefits. While theories of immigrant integration predict that legalization will enable immigrant socioeconomic mobility, past research on DACA’s effects on education and employment have reached mixed conclusions, possibly reflecting the limitations of different methodological approaches to the question. Using multiple data sources and mixed methods, we analyzed both whether and how DACA impacted education and employment among undocumented immigrants in California. Our difference-in-differences analysis of the 2007–2017 waves of the California Health Interview Study employs a more precise definition of the DACA-eligible population than previous studies, yet we also find mixed effects. Our analysis of surveys and in-depth interviews collected with DACA recipients in California provides context for this finding. DACA enabled college for some, but discouraged it for others. DACA recipients perceived substantial occupational mobility, but this was not reflected in movement out of the secondary labor market for many. Our findings suggest that without access to permanent legal status, DACA recipients will experience liminal legality with limited and contingent impacts on socioeconomic integration.