Impact of immigration to the USA on immigrant family life

¶ … Immigration to the U.S.A. On Immigrant Family Life

According to a study released in 2004 by the National Institutes of Health which reviewed million of death and health records from 1986-1994, found that immigrants who come to the United States actually live an average of three years longer that people who are born here (Pritchard pp).

This life expectancy deficit is true for all races and reflects both immigrants' innate vitality and their reluctance to embrace Americans' drive-through, drive-everywhere mentality (Pritchard pp). What was most astonishing to researchers is that immigrants are more likely to be poor and less likely to see a doctor, which is usually a prescription for a shorter life (Pritchard pp). Researchers believe that lifestyle plays a large role, for immigrants are less likely to smoke and to be obese, however they are most likely to have been the most physically active and vigorous citizens in their homelands (Pritchard pp). To make the journey and spread roots, they must be resilient, and tend to benefit from stress-reducing social support networks, and have an outlook that appreciates the fact that they are better off than before, even when poor (Pritchard pp). Despite these statistics, immigrants and their families are subject to a number of stressors.

The Committee on Community Health Services of the American Academy of Pediatrics released has a new policy statement in the April 2005 issue of Pediatrics, concerning health care for immigrant and migrant children (Morantz pp). For migrant families potential issues include overcrowded housing, poor sanitation, and cultural isolation, while migrant children were reported at increased risk for respiratory, skin, ear infections, gastroenteritis, parasites, tuberculosis, lead exposure, poor nutrition, undiagnosed congenital abnormalities, delayed development, and occupational injuries (Morantz pp). Several stressors listed that are experienced by immigrant families included acculturation-induced depression, separation from support systems, traumatic experiences, difficulty adapting to school environments, consequent depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, or conduct disorders (Morantz pp).

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, Kathryn Harker reported in the March 01, 2001 issue of Social Forces that first generation immigrants experience less depression and greater positive well-being than their native-born age-mates of similar demographic and family backgrounds.(Harker pp).

However, second generation immigrants do not differ significantly from native-born youth in terms of psychological well-being (Harker pp).

Harker notes that a number of family influences, such as parental supervision, lack of parent-child conflict, religious practices, and social support, tend to serve as protective factors that enable first generation immigrants to maintain a higher level of well-being (Harker pp).

By 1997, approximately 20% of all American children, roughly 13 million, were either immigrants or the children of immigrants (Harker pp). The processes by which immigrants assimilate and adapt to American culture, and the influence that these processes have on their mental and emotional health outcomes, have been the subject of research for years (Harker pp). Overall, the majority of earlier work on immigrant psychological health, reveals that although immigrants might experience initial negative effects on their well-being while they are becoming accustomed to a new society and assimilating to its values and culture, the negative effects disappear (Harker pp). However, there is mounting evidence that concludes that the assimilation of immigrants and their children now often leads to a deterioration in psychological health outcomes over both time and generation in the United States (Harker pp). To Harker, these findings are intriguing, since contemporary research on psychological well-being suggest that immigrants should have lower psychological well-being than natives (Harker pp). Today's immigrants are more likely than natives to live in intact homes and have similar employment patters to those of natives, they are on overage, poorer, less educated, live in urban areas, have language difficulties, and are often without social ties (Harker pp). According to research, "all of these factors are associated with lower levels of psychological well-being and/or a greater incidence of psychological problems and behavioral disorders" (Harker pp).

Harker's study found that the effect of assimilation on psychological well-being outcomes appears to act inter-generationally, rather than individually across time spent in the United States, and that despite the demographic and family background characteristics that place immigrants at risk for greater psychological problems than the native-born population, immigrants seem to bring with them important familial and communal mechanism through which help to protect and strengthen the psychological well-being of their children (Harker pp).

Thus, inter-generational "assimilation tends to lower psychological well-being to the levels experienced by native-born adolescents" (Harker pp).

One of the most significant demographic developments during the last few decades has been the increasing numbers of Asian immigrants to the United States, in fact, Koreans are now one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the country (Sales pp). In the August 02, 2002 issue of the Journal of Social Psychology, Esther Sales revealed findings from her study, which found acculturation was directly related to higher depression among Korean immigrants who reported abandonment of Korean identity, tradition, and values (Sales pp).

Immigration is a stressful process for people who have uprooted their families from foreign countries and find themselves trying to adjust to a new society with different cultural norms and social conditions (Sales pp). Researchers note that recently arrived Korean immigrants are particularly fragile with respect to their psychological well-being (Sales pp). Evidence shows that the psychological well-being of Korean immigrants is less than optimal, and according to one 1990 study, high levels of stressful experiences were reported by this cultural minority (Sales pp). In a 1984 study, Korean immigrants reported higher levels of depressive symptoms than did Filipino, Japanese, or Chinese immigrants, and a 1992 study of Korean immigrants in Canada, found elevated levels of psychological distress (Sales pp).

Sales notes that "explanations of the psychological consequences of the acculturation process emphasize cultural differences" (Sales pp). Defining acculturation as the process of cultural change resulting from contact between distinctive cultural groups, C.W. Kiefer, "suggested that the structural confusion, cultural conflict, and cultural alienation that occur in the acculturation process would disturb the drives toward clarity, consistency, and continuity, thus becoming sources of stress" (Sales pp).