A Window of Opportunity Is Opening to Improve Immigrant Health: A Research and Practice Agenda

• Published in: American journal of public health (1971) Vol. 111; no. 3; pp. 398 - 401
• Main Authors: De Trinidad Young, Maria-Elena, Wallace, Steven P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Public Health Association 01.03.2021
• Subjects: Access; Acculturation; Advocacy; Citizenship; Deportation; Discrimination; Emigrants and Immigrants - legislation & jurisprudence; Emigrants and Immigrants - statistics & numerical data; Emigration and Immigration - legislation & jurisprudence; Emigration and Immigration - statistics & numerical data; Fairness; Health care policy; Health disparities; Health education; Health policy; Health Policy - legislation & jurisprudence; Health promotion; Health research; Health Services Accessibility - legislation & jurisprudence; Health Services Accessibility - statistics & numerical data; Healthcare Disparities - legislation & jurisprudence; Healthcare Disparities - statistics & numerical data; Humans; Immigrants; Immigration; Immigration policy; Mental health; Migrant workers; Migrants; Noncitizens; Opinions, Ideas, & Practice; Other Race/Ethnicity; Policies; Political asylum; Psychological factors; Public health; Public Health Practice; Racialization; Racism; Refugees; Rules; Social interactions; Systemic racism; Systems; United States; United States
• ISSN: 0090-0036; 1541-0048
• DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2020.306128

In recent years, public health scholarship has documented that immigration policy is health policy.1,2 Restrictive enforcement and deportation policies can harm health through increased stress and social exclusions based on race and citizenship status.1,3 Inclusive policies granting legal status and rights can promote health by extending access to the safety net and opportunities and creating welcoming environments.4,5 This work is a reminder of our field's role in contributing to the nation's social and political immigration climate as we work toward health equity. Seemingly "race-blind" policies, such as the public charge rule that discriminates against low income immigrants, also serve as mechanisms of racial exclusion.8 As a result, immigration policies contribute to structural racism that produces mechanisms of social, economic, and political inequity, resulting in risks to physical and psychological well-being.7 Public health must expose and dismantle mechanisms of racialization that are at the heart of immigration policy by supporting inclusive immigration policy and shifting power and priorities within our field and broader society. In public health research, practice, and advocacy, the very distinctions used to identify vulnerability, unfortunately, are often rooted in the very deficit models that use social categorizations to justify exclusion.2,12 Refugees and asylum seekers are sometimes portrayed as more deserving than economic migrants; woman and children are presumed to be the most vulnerable; and Latinx immigrants are assumed to be the only group affected by immigration policy, obscuring the experiences of Black and Asian immigrants. Questions that apply color-blind analyses or focus exclusively on behavioral patterns, such as acculturation, run the risk of obscuring structural racism and other inequities and inadvertently placing blame on immigrants themselves.14 Focus research on the systems and structures that create vulnerability, not solely the cultural or behavioral characteristics of immigrant populations.