In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter 3 Life Under the Radar: Legal and Illegal Authorities and Public Programs A delina, a Mexican mother with an infant son, was talking with her field-worker about public programs in the United States that help children. “I tell you, I have very little information, since I don’t deal with a lot of people from here.” She knew about Medicaid and WIC, because hospital social workers had signed her up for these programs during prenatal care. She knew that she herself had access to care only during and right after pregnancies, while her son Federico had full medical coverage. Adelina had heard about welfare from one friend, an older Dominican woman with grown children. This woman had also told her about “Seccion Ocho” (Section 8), but Adelina did not quite remember what that program was. When asked about a whole list of other programs, Adelina was not familiar with child care subsidies, Head Start or other free preschool programs, benefits for people with disabilities, or unemployment insurance. Adelina also had heard from a friend that American-born children of undocumented immigrants could be taken from their parents. She feared that if she was caught while traveling, her children would be taken from her. The friend had told her that immigration officials, when deporting an undocumented parent, ask the child whether he or she wishes to remain with the parent and do not send the child with the parent automatically. This friend had also told Adelina that immigration officials might not give her children a choice at all and could just deport the parent and take the children into protective custody. Adelina had a great fear of this horrible moment occurring and ripping apart her family. The undocumented parents in our study arrived in the United States with hopes and dreams for a better life no different from the good life envisioned by all Americans—owning a home, having a good job, raising children in safe neighborhoods with good schools. But for these undocumented parents, the American dream was tempered by how unlikely it was at this point in U.S. history that they would obtain legal resident sta- Life Under the Radar 53 tus and, ultimately, citizenship status. As we saw in chapter 2, pathways to citizenship in the United States for undocumented immigrants were increasingly restricted between 1986 and the 2000s, to an extent that was unprecedented in the twentieth century.1 This was the period during which the majority of the undocumented in this sample came to the United States; for them, having a U.S.-born child was their only long-term hope for integration into U.S. society. But they were often reluctant to take advantage of the rights that their children held as U.S. citizens. Keeping out of sight of a range of authorities was part of the daily experience of these immigrants, who quite frequently suffered from depressive symptoms and psychological distress. The undocumented parents in our sample lived this paradox: the very same government that could deport them also offered resources to their citizen children, in the form of public supports for families in poverty. The children in our sample were generally eligible as citizens in low-income families for a range of U.S. public supports. Many of these resources—the center-based care that child care subsidies can help families purchase, the food and nutritional information provided by WIC and food stamps—are proven to help children’s early development. But of course, children cannot walk into offices and enroll themselves in these programs. When parents are reluctant to do so, for a variety of reasons—including reasons related to their legal status—children cannot benefit. This chapter is about the conflicting experiences of legal and illegal authorities and public programs brought about by this paradox in the lives of undocumented parents and their children. These experiences— ranging from being afraid of deportation and associated distress, to paying off debts that are sometimes in the tens of thousands of dollars, to gathering information and making decisions about programs that citizen children are eligible for—are all related to the paradox of living both inside and outside U.S. institutions that characterizes the daily lives of “mixed-status” families. Far too often, that paradox leads to citizen children of the undocumented being excluded from supports from which their peers with documented or citizen parents benefit. Immediate Legal and Illegal Contexts in the New Land Many of the undocumented in...

Share