Why Are Immigrant Families Different Now

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

Why Are Immigrant Families Different Now? Patricia Zavella University of California, Santa Cruz Context and importance of the problem The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act’s (IRCA) enabled 2,703,984 people to become permanent residents by using the residency provision of the Special Agricultural Worker program (Kerwin 2010, 2). 1 Yet IRCA did not fulfill its primary intent of significantly reducing the influx of unauthorized workers since employer sanctions were rarely enforced (Bean, Edmonston, and Passel 1990; Donato et al. 1992). 2 It wasn’t until the border closure after the 9/11 terrorists attacks that migration halted temporarily (Passel and Cohn 2009). There were two unintended consequences of IRCA related to families: 1) those who qualified for permanent residence were usually men who were more likely to have formal employment and thus able to meet IRCA’s stringent requirements related to documenting their employment or residence (Kanaiaupuni 2000, Cornelius 1992, Cerruti and Massey 2001, Massey, Durand and Malone 2002, 134). 2) The family reunification mechanisms of IRCA lead to increased births and a Latino “baby boom” where citizen children provided another avenue for legalization for their unauthorized parents (Johnson 2001). Births surpassed immigration as the main driver of the growth of the Latino population (Pew Hispanic Center 2011). However, IRCA does not completely follow the family reunification practices that have been the cornerstone of US immigration policy (Hawthorne 2007) since it establishes culturally narrow views of family: “The family group shall include the spouse, unmarried minor children under 18 years of age who are not members of some other household, and parents who reside regularly in the household of the family group” (619). This provision codifies a heterosexual nuclear family and excludes other types of family structures that are prevalent in the United States and Latin America—such as single parents, the elderly, multigenerational, extended, those headed by minors, or same-sex families—as well as children born “out of wedlock” or who have informal foster relationships with parents (in loco parentis) such as grandchildren cared by their grandmothers when the parents migrate. This narrow definition that excludes those culturally considered as members of the family then limits authorized migration, leading those who will never be admitted legally through family reunification provisions to consider unauthorized migration to the United States. These transformations had profound effects on migrant family life, seen in “migrant family formations,” sociohistorical processes that originate in the law’s provisions and the post-IRCA political and economic changes that pressure more people to migrate from Latin America to the United States (Zavella 2011). Migrant Family Formations Migrant family formations include suspended, reunited, separated and mixed-status families and occasionally these types overlap. Suspended families include those awaiting a change in their immigration status by securing a visa so they may reside in the United States with authorization. For those who have a family member eligible for permanent residence in the United States, the actual reunification of the family may be suspended for years because of delays in obtaining a visa. The US Department of State estimates the number of people with approved family-based visa petitions who have not yet received their visas range from 3.4 to 4.9 million. Some of these family members reside in the United States despite their unauthorized status and some reside outside the country. 3 Under these circumstances, family life becomes problematic because the family is divided since some members are left behind and all must cope with significant tensions Further, reunification often occurs in phases after long durations (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila 1997, Nicholson 2006) and may trigger disruptions when individuals decide to migrate without authorization and arrive