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Undocumented Children Suffer ‘Uniformly Negative’ Effects, Study Says
Undocumented children and children with undocumented parents are burdened with “uniformly negative” impacts because of their status, according to a new study by the Harvard Educational Review.
The recent report, titled “Growing Up in the Shadows: The Development Implications of Unauthorized Status," finds that children in families impacted by undocumented status are less likely to perform well academically, attend college, or find stable employment.
“Engulfed by the angry rhetoric and policy dystopia are the roughly one million unauthorized children and youth who are coming of age,” the study reads. “These youth who are American in spirit, schooling, and life experiences are nonetheless illegal in the eyes of the law.”
In addition to the 1 million children who are themselves undocumented, another 4.5 million American-born youth have at least one parent who is undocumented.
The Harvard study is the first to explore the effects on these children from birth through college and the post-graduation job search stage. In children’s early years, the researchers find, family life is dictated by “fear and vigilance,” often preventing parents from seeking publicly available resources like free preschool, food stamps, or child care.
As the children grow older, they are “more cognizant of the culture of fear in which they live.” The authors note that family discussions about deportation begin to occur in middle childhood, noting that one 11-year-old testified before Congress about such fears in 2010:
“I am always worried when my family leaves the house that something might happen to them,” he testified. “I think about it when my dad goes to work that he might not come back or when I go to school that there might not be someone to pick me up when I get out.”
When children in this age range realize their family is “different,” it can impact their self-esteem and cause other psychological effects.
And when children reach adolescence and into the later teenage years, being undocumented poses even more challenges. Typical rites of passage—a first job, a driver’s license, post-secondary education—become nearly impossible for many and “their identity formation is complicated when they come to face a negative social mirror that portrays them as illegitimate and unwanted.”
“They come to recognize that they, like their parents, are vulnerable to deportations, have drastically limited choices in the world of work, and will need to move even deeper into the shadows of adulthood,” the study reads, noting they become stuck in “perpetual outsider-hood.”
Due to their undocumented status, many children also have limited educational options, making them more likely to enroll part-time while working, which the authors note is linked to lower persistence and lower degree attainment. In addition, they’re more likely to enroll at community colleges, which are cheaper, or choose not to pursue higher education in general.
However, immigrant-origin youth tend to be more active civically, the study finds, when civic engagement includes things beyond voting like “interpreting, translating, advocating, filling out official documents.” And having bilingual competency can serve as a “tool” for civic engagement.
While most of the findings in the Harvard study are not incredibly new or shocking, it’s one of the first comprehensive studies to pull in data from a wide age-range of children.
But the study makes important policy suggestions, including the “most fundamental policy implication”—the need for a “pathway to citizenship for the long-settled unauthorized who pass a strict ‘belonging threshold’.”
“Bringing them out of the shadows would free unauthorized parents to enroll their children—our future police officers, nurses, firefighters, teachers, and doctors—in programs that benefit their development,” the study reads.
In addition, the researchers call for policies to ensure proper wages for workers, increase access to education, and encourage parental involvement.
The authors conclude that, with an aging population, “the United States cannot afford to relegate millions of its children and youth to a liminal, excluded status that harms their development and restricts their ability to become productive and civically engaged members of our society.”
Brian Stewart
3 October 2011
