Beyond "Chilling Effects": Latinx and Asian Immigrants' Experiences with Enforcement and Barriers to Health Care (Medical Care)
Summary: Immigration enforcement policies are associated with immigrants' barriers to health care. Current evidence suggests that enforcement creates a "chilling effect" in which immigrants avoid care due to fear of encountering enforcement. Yet, there has been little examination of the impact of immigrants' direct encounters with enforcement on health care access. This article examines some of the first population-level data on Asian and Latinx immigrants' encounters with law and immigration enforcement and assessed associations with health care access.
Findings: Latinx, compared with Asian respondents, reported the highest levels of enforcement experiences. Almost all individual enforcement experiences were associated with delaying care for both groups. Each additional cumulative experience was associated with a delay in care for both groups. There were no associations with the usual source of care.
Findings confirm that Latinx immigrants experience high levels of encounters with the enforcement system and highlight new data on Asian immigrants' enforcement encounters. Direct experiences with enforcement have a negative relationship with health care access. Findings have implications for health systems to address the needs of immigrants affected by enforcement and for changes to health and immigration policy to ensure immigrants' access to care.
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