The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and birth outcomes in California: a quasi-experimental study.

BACKGROUND: The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program provides temporary relief from deportation and work permits for previously undocumented immigrants who arrived as children. DACA faced direct threats under the Trump administration. There is select evidence of the short-term impacts of DACA on population health, including on birth outcomes, but limited understanding of the long-term impacts. METHODS: We evaluated the association between DACA program and birth outcomes using California birth certificate data (2009-2018) and a difference-in-differences approach to compare post-DACA birth outcomes for likely DACA-eligible mothers to birth outcomes for demographically similar DACA-ineligible mothers. We also separately compared birth outcomes by DACA eligibility status in the first 3 years after DACA passage (2012-2015) and in the subsequent 3 years (2015-2018) - a period characterized by direct threats to the DACA program - as compared to outcomes in the years prior to DACA passage. RESULTS: In the 7 years after its passage, DACA was associated with a lower risk of small-for-gestational age (- 0.018, 95% CI: - 0.035, - 0.002) and greater birthweight (45.8 g, 95% CI: 11.9, 79.7) for births to Mexican-origin individuals that were billed to Medicaid. Estimates were consistent but of smaller magnitude for other subgroups. Associations between DACA and birth outcomes were attenuated to the null in the period that began with the announcement of the Trump U.S. Presidential campaign (2015-2018), although confidence intervals overlapped with estimates from the immediate post-DACA period. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest weak to modest initial benefits of DACA for select birthweight outcomes during the period immediately following DACA passage for Mexican-born individuals whose births were billed to Medicaid; any benefits were subsequently attenuated to the null. The benefits of DACA for population health may not have been sufficient to counteract the impacts of threats to the program's future and heightened immigration enforcement occurring in parallel over time.

Standardizing the fee-waiver application increased naturalization rates of low-income immigrants.

Citizenship can accelerate immigrant integration and result in benefits for both local communities and the foreign-born themselves. Yet the majority of naturalization-eligible immigrants in the United States do not apply for citizenship, and we lack systematic evidence on policies specifically designed to encourage take-up. In this study, we analyze the impact of the standardization of the fee-waiver process in 2010 by the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). This reform allowed low-income immigrants eligible for citizenship to use a standardized form to have their application fee waived. We employ a difference-in-differences methodology, comparing naturalization behavior among eligible and ineligible immigrants before and after the policy change. We find that the fee-waiver reform increased the naturalization rate by 1.5 percentage points. This amounts to about 73,000 immigrants per year gaining citizenship who otherwise would not have applied. In contrast to previous research on the take-up of federal benefits programs, we find that the positive effect of the fee-waiver reform was concentrated among the subgroups of immigrants with lower incomes, language skills, and education levels, who typically face the steepest barriers to naturalization. Further evidence suggests that this pattern is driven by immigration service providers, who are well-positioned to help the most needy immigrants file their fee-waiver requests.

A low-cost information nudge increases citizenship application rates among low-income immigrants.

We show that an information nudge increased the rate of American citizenship applications among low-income immigrants eligible for a federal fee waiver. Approximately half of the 9 million naturalization-eligible immigrants qualify for a federal programme that waives the cost of the citizenship application for low-income individuals. However, take-up of this fee waiver programme remains low1-3. Here we use a randomized field experiment to test the effectiveness of a low-cost intervention (a 'nudge') that informed low-income immigrants about their eligibility for the fee waiver. We find that the information nudge increased the rate of citizenship applications by about 8.6 percentage points from 24.5% in the control group to 33.1% in the treatment group (ordinary least squares regression with robust standard errors (d.f. = 933); P = 0.015; 95% confidence interval ranged from 1.7 to 15.4 percentage points). We found no evidence that the nudge was less effective for poorer or less educated immigrants. These findings contribute to the literature that addresses the incomplete take-up of public benefits by low-income populations4-10 and suggest that lack of information is an important obstacle to citizenship among low-income immigrants who demonstrate an interest in naturalization.

A randomized controlled design reveals barriers to citizenship for low-income immigrants.

Citizenship endows legal protections and is associated with economic and social gains for immigrants and their communities. In the United States, however, naturalization rates are relatively low. Yet we lack reliable knowledge as to what constrains immigrants from applying. Drawing on data from a public/private naturalization program in New York, this research provides a randomized controlled study of policy interventions that address these constraints. The study tested two programmatic interventions among low-income immigrants who are eligible for citizenship. The first randomly assigned a voucher that covers the naturalization application fee among immigrants who otherwise would have to pay the full cost of the fee. The second randomly assigned a set of behavioral nudges, similar to outreach efforts used by service providers, among immigrants whose incomes were low enough to qualify them for a federal waiver that eliminates the application fee. Offering the fee voucher increased naturalization application rates by about 41%, suggesting that application fees act as a barrier for low-income immigrants who want to become US citizens. The nudges to encourage the very poor to apply had no discernible effect, indicating the presence of nonfinancial barriers to naturalization.

Protecting unauthorized immigrant mothers improves their children's mental health.

The United States is embroiled in a debate about whether to protect or deport its estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants, but the fact that these immigrants are also parents to more than 4 million U.S.-born children is often overlooked. We provide causal evidence of the impact of parents' unauthorized immigration status on the health of their U.S. citizen children. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program granted temporary protection from deportation to more than 780,000 unauthorized immigrants. We used Medicaid claims data from Oregon and exploited the quasi-random assignment of DACA eligibility among mothers with birthdates close to the DACA age qualification cutoff. Mothers' DACA eligibility significantly decreased adjustment and anxiety disorder diagnoses among their children. Parents' unauthorized status is thus a substantial barrier to normal child development and perpetuates health inequalities through the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.