How Legal Status Affects Immigrant Health: Why Legal Help Matters
Legal status is a dimension of immigrant health that is frequently overlooked but has important intersections with almost every aspect of immigrant life. To understand why legal support is an important health intervention, it’s essential to think more deeply about how these two things are connected.
Legal status is a major factor in health status among immigrants. Those without legal status – including undocumented immigrants – often face major barriers to accessing care. In the US, many public health insurance programs, including Medicaid for low-income people and the ACA for anyone making under certain levels of income, exclude undocumented immigrants. This often results in limited options for using medical services at an affordable price and has an additional impact of often leading to pay-out-of-pocket fees for people seeking medical help, which can be prohibitively expensive. The result is that many forgo medical treatment and so have worse health than others. The fear of deportation also plays a significant role in this issue. Many undocumented immigrants are afraid to seek out medical help, even when facing serious disease, due to a fear of being reported to immigration authorities. When fear of authorities leads to a delay in care, the health condition often worsens, raising subsequent medical costs.
These barriers include not only the out-of-pocket expenses related to healthcare, but also the psychological stress related to the fear of deportation. Later complications resulting from such avoidance could have been prevented with earlier, adequate treatment. Additionally, language and cultural barriers heighten the problem of immigrant access to care.
Legal aid can significantly improve immigrants’ health outcomes by helping to overcome these barriers. Legal aid programs can provide information and help to protect immigrants from the fear of deportation that can prevent them from seeking timely care. In some instances, legal aid can help immigrants secure legal status, which might facilitate access to public health insurance and other benefits, such as income-support programs. Legal advocates can help applicants fill out applications for these programmes and ensure that immigrants gain the benefits to which they are entitled. Legal aid organizations play an important role in educating immigrants about their healthcare rights and the services available to them. They can also help raise awareness and lobby for policy changes so that immigrants have smoother access to healthcare.
Legal status isn’t just bureaucratic, it’s also a determinant of health – of whether an immigrant will have access to healthcare or not. Through legal support, we can remove barriers to care and, in the process, improve individual health outcomes and community health. Law, policy and outreach will be essential to addressing and decoupling the intersections of legal status and health. We need to work together to empower health clinicians in providing care to all patients and build a healthcare system that is more just and equitable for all.
