“We’re seeing an increase in anxiety that is related to kids’ concern about the personal consequences of U.S. immigration policy, and these are U.S.-born citizens,” said Brenda Eskenazi, the Brian and Jennifer Maxwell Endowed Chair in Public Health in UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health.
“Further, these are kids in California, a sanctuary state with more protective policies for immigrant families, compared to many other states,” Eskenazi said. “So, this study is probably reflecting the best-case scenario of how children of immigrants in other states are being affected.”
Eskenazi is the lead and corresponding author of a paper describing the results that appears June 24 in the Journal of the American Medical Association: Pediatrics.
The research drew upon mental and physical health data of 397 Latinx youth that was gathered by the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS), a longitudinal study of Mexican farmworker families in California. Each participant in the study had at least one parent who was an immigrant; the documentation status of the parents was unknown.
Co-author Julianna Deardorff, an associate professor in the Maternal and Child Health Program in UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, noted that the higher levels of anxiety faced by these teens is likely piled on top of other challenges and responsibilities that come with living with immigrant parents, including being an English translator for Spanish-speaking family members and helping relatives navigate U.S. services and institutions. The fear of having a family member reported may also keep them from seeking treatment, Deardorff added.
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