No abstract

The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program granted work authorization and protection from deportation to more than 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who arrived to the United States as minors. We estimate the association between this expansion of legal rights and birth outcomes among 72,613 singleton births to high school–educated Mexican immigrant women in the United States from June 2010 to May 2014, using birth records data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Exploiting the arbitrariness of the upper age cutoff for DACA eligibility and using a difference-in-differences design, we find that DACA was associated with improvements in the rates of low birth weight and very low birth weight, birth weight in grams, and gestational age among Mexican immigrant mothers.

Between 2000 and 2015, the U.S. deported unprecedented numbers of Mexican immigrants. During the same period, the population of U.S.‐born children living in Mexico doubled in size. This study estimates the number of U.S.‐born children who emigrated to Mexico from the United States in order to accompany a deported parent: de facto deported children. The data come from the Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (ENADID), a national probability sample of households in Mexico collected in 2014 and 2018. About one in six U.S.‐born children living in Mexico in 2014/2018, amounting to an estimated 80,000–100,000 U.S.‐born children, were there because the U.S. government deported one or both of their parents. De facto deported U.S.‐born children are socioeconomically disadvantaged in Mexico compared to U.S.‐born children whose parents migrate to Mexico for other reasons. Women are overrepresented among deported people who bring their U.S.‐born children to Mexico, and when deported mothers bring their children, they are far less likely to do so with a partner than are deported fathers. U.S. policy should consider the interests of U.S. citizen children forced to live abroad when redesigning immigration and child welfare policies.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was created to mitigate some of the harmful consequences of undocumented immigration status. Although research shows that the DACA program promoted employment outcomes for the average DACA recipient, life-course theory and immigrant integration theory suggest that the program may differentially affect younger and older recipients. Using data from the American Community Survey, the authors test whether DACA was associated with different education and employment outcomes for younger and older Mexican immigrants. The results indicate that DACA was associated with increases in the likelihood of working among younger but not older DACA-eligible individuals and with greater decreases in the likelihood of school enrollment among younger DACA-eligible individuals. These results suggest that policy makers should ensure that opportunities to permanently legalize status are available to immigrants as early as possible in the life course.

93 Background: Improving quality of life (QOL) is a key goal in palliative care for patients with advanced cancer. Most studies about QOL in palliative care patients have been performed in the developed world. However, little is known about the factors that influence patients QOL in developing countries. The aim of this study is to describe factors associated with QOL in a cohort of patients with advanced cancer who were enrolled in the outpatient clinic public hospital in Santiago, Chile. Methods: Patients with advanced cancer admitted to the National Program of Palliative Care at a public Hospital in Santiago, Chile were prospectively enrolled in a study to assess QOL longitudinally. QOL was assessed with the EORTC-QLQ-PAL 15 questionnaire. Demographics, symptom intensity, depression and anxiety were assessed. Descriptive statistics and regression analysis were performed. Information about cancer curability and perception of personal health were also included. Results: In this preliminary report, the first 37 patients were included. Baseline characteristics were: mean patient age was 64, 21 (57%) females, 14 (38%) had GI cancer, 7 (19%) lung cancer, 4 (11%) breast cancer and 12 (22%) other. Mean (SD) QOL was 63 (34) in a 0 to 100 scale. QOL was not associated with age, gender, functionality, depression, anxiety, spiritual pain or financial distress. QOL was negatively associated with total symptom burden (coef -.53, p = .48), and positively associated with believing that cancer was curable (coef 33.3, p = .003). In a multivariate analysis, QOL was independently associated with both lower overall symptom burden (coef -.55, p = .38) and believing that cancer was curable (coef 28.6, p = .009). Conclusions: In palliative care patients with advanced cancer from a developing country, QOL was associated with lower overall symptom burden and with believing that cancer was curable. Further studies are needed to explore whether clarifying prognostic information about cancer curability in developing countries may impact patients’ QOL.