Abstract
Since 2007, large numbers of Mexican migrants in the USA returned to Mexico voluntarily or through deportation. Theory argues that US immigration policy undermines immigrant health through the deprivations of undocumented legal status and deportation, but few studies have considered the combined influences of these exposures on health. We estimate the probability of poor self-rated health, recent physical health symptoms, and recent mental health symptoms by legal status and deportation experience among 42,853 Mexican migrants surveyed in the Survey of Migration in the Northern Border of Mexico (EMIF-Norte) between 2012 and 2014. Deportation is more strongly associated with health than undocumented legal status among returnees in Mexico. Considering the two dimensions of immigration enforcement combined reveals the especially poor health and mental health status of deported returnees, regardless of their legal status in the USA.
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Source: EMIF-Norte 2012–2014
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The EMIF-Norte data is publically available and can be obtained through https://www.colef.mx/emif/.
Notes
In analyses not shown, we found that both documented non-citizens and undocumented returnees had worse health than citizens. Because citizens are not at risk of deportation, we did not include them in our main analysis.
We dichotomize the self-rated health (SRH) scale because the assumption of proportional odds is not supported in the data. Validation of the SRH scale using follow-up mortality finds that the largest mortality risks are associated with answers at the bottom of the scale (Schnittker and Bacak 2014). The coefficients were smaller but the main patterns of results were similar when we categorized “regular” health as good.
We found similar results modeling physical and mental health symptoms as counts using negative binomial regression models.
In separate analyses (not shown), we found some evidence that legal status differences in health varied by length of stay in the USA. Specifically, we found that the higher probability of two outcomes (poor self-rated health and recent mental health symptoms) among undocumented returnees was driven by undocumented returnees who had been in the USA for one year or longer. Among shorter-duration migrants (of less than one year in the USA), undocumented, voluntary returnees are no different from documented, voluntary returnees on these two health outcomes. This finding suggests that the harms of undocumented status are greater with greater exposure.
In separate analyses (not shown), we tested whether the association between deportation and undocumented status was greater for short-duration (less than 1 year) immigrants, which might have suggested a particularly harmful experience of apprehension while crossing the border. We found that deportation has a smaller association with recent mental health symptoms for undocumented migrants, as compared to its association with that outcome for documented migrants, among short-duration migrants. This signals to us something about connection to the USA, and the harms of deportation for more connected migrants (who are either longer-duration, undocumented migrants or who have legal status), rather than something uniquely harmful about the method of deportation for shorter- and longer-duration, undocumented migrants.
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Acknowledgements
This research was funded by a grant from the UC Berkeley Health Initiative of the Americas Program on Migration and Health (PIMSA). We thank Xochitl Castañeda and Caroline Dickinson for their support. We gratefully acknowledge the research assistance of Ramón Medina and feedback on the manuscript from Caitlin Patler and Paola Langer.
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Hamilton, E.R., Orraca-Romano, P.P. & Vargas Valle, E. Legal Status, Deportation, and the Health of Returned Migrants from the USA to Mexico. Popul Res Policy Rev 42, 16 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-023-09745-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-023-09745-7