Disentangling the Consequences of Latino Immigrants’ Unauthorized Status for the Health of Their U.S.-Born Children

Immigrants' legal status has been described as a social determinant of health that shapes health outcomes through multiple channels. Furthermore, legal status matters not only for immigrants themselves, but also for their family members, including their U.S.-born citizen children. Nonetheless, few studies have empirically disentangled the possible mediating mechanisms through which parents' legal status shapes their children's health. This paper applies path analysis to data from the 2014-2019 California Health Interview Survey to examine how Latino immigrant parents' unauthorized status impacts the health of their U.S.-born citizen children. I consider how the effects of parents' unauthorized status for their children's health are mediated by children's healthcare access, household food insecurity, family income, and parents' own physical and mental health. I find that parents' unauthorized status has a negative but indirect effect on their children's health through increasing household risk of poverty and food insecurity. These results have significant implications for the well-being of millions of children in the United States who have legally vulnerable parents.