The perverse side effects of America’s harsh immigration policies

By C.K.

IN JANUARY last year President Donald Trump signed an executive order reviving Secure Communities, a programme that empowers the federal government to check the immigration status of anyone arrested by local police. Launched in the last year of the George W. Bush administration and expanded under President Barack Obama, Secure Communities was axed in 2014 amid protests that it might be unconstitutional and that it discouraged migrants from co-operating with local law enforcement. Two new papers look at the effects of the programme in its earlier incarnation. They find that it succeeded in its stated goal of removing undocumented workers—but it also reduced access to jobs, health care and nutrition for migrants and citizens alike.

Secure Communities saw a staggered rollout out across America between 2008 and 2012. Some 43m sets of fingerprint were collected and more than 400,000 people deported by the time the Obama administration cancelled the programme in 2014. Towards the end, a number of jurisdictions, called “sanctuary cities”, were refusing to pass on fingerprint data to the federal authorities. The multi-year rollout of Secure Communities and the varying levels of enforcement allow researchers to identify its impacts. Chloe East from the University of Colorado and colleagues examined employment effects while Marcella Alsan of Stanford University and Crystal Yang of Harvard University looked at access to welfare and health-care enrollment.

Ms East and her co-authors found that the rollout of Secure Communities was associated with a 3.5% reduction in the employment of non-citizens, mainly among low-skilled workers, who are least likely to be documented. But the programme was also associated with a 0.5% decline in employment for citizens, concentrated among workers with mid- or high-level skills. These results match a growing body of evidence that suggests low-skilled migrant labour supports the growth of higher-skilled employment: the presence of immigrants often means more affordable child care, allowing parents to return to work, and a greater number of management and technical positions in firms employing low-skill labour.

Tougher immigration enforcement also affects enrolment in safety-net programmes. State authorities in charge of running the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP; better known as food stamps) routinely check the immigration and citizenship status of applicants and household members. Most states assure applicants that the information they provide will only be used to check eligibility and will not be shared with immigration authorities. But a 2017 survey of people in Los Angeles County concerned that they or a friend or family member might be deported suggests that fully 80% of them thought that attempting to enroll in a government health, education or housing program would increase the risk of deportation.

Ms Alsan and Ms Yang found that the rollout of Secure Communities was associated with a 10% decline in food-stamp use among eligible Hispanic households. They also estimate that health-care coverage under the Affordable Care Act would have been 22% higher among eligible Hispanic households had Secure Communities not been in place, because of fears that any interaction with officials might lead to friends or family being deported. That may contribute to the disparity between Hispanic and non-Hispanic take-up of the six most significant federal entitlement programs. Only 50% of Hispanics reported participating in any of these, compared to 56% of non-Hispanics, according to Alana and Yang. Secure Communities may have helped widen the gap. And given undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than the native population it should come as little surprise Secure Communities had no noticeable impact on overall crime rates either.