What Undocumented Immigrants Face When Trying to Receive Healthcare
Undocumented immigrants today face many hardships when arriving in the United States. As we know there are many restrictions that immigrants face when seeking healthcare. And some of the main hurdles that undocumented immigrants have to face are language barriers and getting healthcare. When arriving in the United States, many undocumented immigrants arrive in a culture shock because many of these undocumented immigrants don’t speak English and are not accustomed to the life of an American. So when undocumented immigrants are in necessity of healthcare they are often feel lost and disconnected.
When entering a clinic most undocumented immigrants arrive with low education, low income, and know very little English. They often don’t know where to start when trying to receive healthcare. But the thing is that many undocumented immigrant families cannot get healthcare and do not utilize it. Many of these undocumented immigrants are limited to access it or they often don’t use it. For example, in the article Immigration Status and the Healthcare Access and Health of Children of Immigrants∗ by Julia Gelatt she states that most immigrant or mixed-status families have lower rates of having insurance due to undocumented parents working for industries or occupations that don’t offer insurance. They also stated that undocumented children couldn’t apply for public insurance because they were not eligible for it. As a result, there were about “sixty-seven percent of children in undocumented immigrant families who lack insurance coverage” and with the lack of insurance coverage, they are less likely to seek medical attention and most often avoid going to the dentist. When receiving healthcare people are provided with the addition of dental coverage because dental is considered an important health issue when referring to one’s well-being. But in this article, they mention that these undocumented immigrant families had lower rates of seeing a dentist compared to native or mixed immigrant families. When comparing children with legal immigrants and children in mixed-status families they had better percentages of excellent health, they reported only about “27 percent of children in undocumented immigrants” had excellent health but this percentage is still less than half of the undocumented population (Gelatt 2016: 545). Not only do undocumented immigrant parents and their kids are affected by being uninsured, but people with cancer cant also get the treatment they deserve. In the article End-of-Life Care for Undocumented Immigrants With Advanced Cancer: Documenting the Undocumented by Sylvia Jaramillo, she mentions that patients who had lung cancer and were “uninsured were much more likely to present with Stages III and IV cancer at diagnosis compared to patients with private insurance.” She mentions that these undocumented patients who show symptoms toward a disease often brush it off because they want to avoid seeking healthcare due to the lack of being insured. Resulting in having advanced disease patients, in which small check-up could’ve been prevented these diseases from advancing. She also mentions that when patients are presented with higher stages, like stage III and IV, present “higher symptom burden, fewer opportunities for end of life discussions, and receive a more aggressive end of life care including prolonged hospitalizations, hospital death, and intensive care unit admissions, as seen in our patient.”(Jaramillo 2016:787) So overall with having undocumented immigrants not being insured can result from them not getting an annual check-up and seeking medical attention when needed.
Another hurdle they face is language. As we know undocumented immigrants most often “have low health literacy and are less likely to benefit from written materials”, so immigrants will commonly seek help (Terui 2017: 217). Even though the U.S. government by law is obligated to have medical institutions to provide linguistically and culturally appropriate healthcare, many of these institutions do not provide those services upfront and regularly do not have staff who can speak multiple languages or have an understanding of their background and culture-wise, giving undocumented immigrants a disadvantage on trying to understand the healthcare system and overall get treatment. But let us say they seek help through family members, this could be helpful at times but “important information can sometimes be lost in translations. Inadequate interpretation services can result in serious medical errors, a greater risk of infections, and longer hospital admissions.” (Jaramillo 2016:286). With the status of language, many can see that undocumented immigrants face a lot of hurdles when trying to getting the information they need but with the help of healthcare providers and translators, they will eventually attain what they need.
References
Jaramillo, Sylvia, MD, & Hui, David, MD, MSc. (2015). End-of-Life Care for Undocumented Immigrants With Advanced Cancer: Documenting the Undocumented. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 51(4), 784–88.
Terui, Sachiko, & Terui, Sachiko. (2017). Conceptualizing the Pathways and Processes Between Language Barriers and Health Disparities: Review, Synthesis, and Extension. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 19(1), 215–224.
Gelatt, J. (2016). Immigration Status and the Healthcare Access and Health of Children of Immigrants. Social Science Quarterly, 97(3), 540–54.
