Fear and the Safety Net: Evidence from Secure Communities

恐惧与安全网：来自安全社区的证据

• 批准号: 1849427
• 负责人: Crystal Yang
• 金额: $ 22.5万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-09-01 至 2021-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1849427&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Fear; Safety; Net; Evidence; Secure

Poorer households in the U.S. are more likely to be eligible for means-tested federal welfare programming. Prior research has shown that many safety net programs have important positive effects on the health and well-being of those who receive them. Yet, take-up of such programs among the eligible population is incomplete and tends to be dampened by a variety of factors such as stigma, hassle costs, and lack of information. However, particularly among poor, program-eligible Hispanic households, the federal government also plays a major role in their lives through immigration enforcement. Indeed, numerous media accounts have reported that increased vigilance for non-citizens has led individuals who are eligible for enrollment in such programs (e.g. U.S.-born and naturalized citizens) to not sign up or to drop out of government programs. Such behaviors, purportedly driven by fear of "outing a relative," are highly policy relevant and could have important effects for Hispanic and non-Hispanic households alike. Understanding whether the dual role of federal authority as both enforcer and benefactor influences the take-up of decisions of vulnerable households is critical to developing policies that fulfill the government's mandates. The research will examine the staggered roll-out of a relatively novel and far-reaching immigration enforcement program, Secure Communities, which led to a massive increase in detainers and deportations for both violent and non-violent immigrant offenders. Secure Communities provides ideal quasi-experimental variation since the Hispanic community was overwhelmingly affected and the timing of the rollout was based on technical factors, lending itself to a triple difference-in-differences empirical methodology. This approach allows the researchers to compare program take-up for Hispanic households within a given location to take-up for non-Hispanic whites and blacks, net of counties that had not yet activated, versus after Secure Communities activation. To assess whether any isolated effects on the take-up of programs by Hispanic Americans are mediated by fear of revealing non-citizens in their networks, the researchers have assembled data on the spatial distribution of mixed-status families, survey data on deportation fear, and Google Trends data on searches for deportation-related terms. Lastly, the researchers assess whether the effects of enforcement on take-up are buffeted in areas that have declared sanctuary status.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

美国较贫困的家庭更有可能有资格获得经过经济状况调查的联邦福利计划。先前的研究表明，许多安全网计划对接受这些计划的人的健康和福祉具有重要的积极影响。然而，符合条件的人群对此类计划的接受程度并不完全，而且往往会受到各种因素的影响，例如耻辱、麻烦成本和缺乏信息。然而，特别是在贫困、符合计划资格的西班牙裔家庭中，联邦政府还通过移民执法在他们的生活中发挥着重要作用。事实上，许多媒体报道称，对非公民的警惕性提高导致有资格参加此类计划的个人（例如美国出生和入籍公民）不注册或退出政府计划。据称，这种行为是由于担心“出卖亲戚”而引起的，与政策高度相关，并且可能对西班牙裔和非西班牙裔家庭产生重要影响。 了解联邦当局作为执行者和捐助者的双重角色是否会影响弱势家庭对决策的接受，对于制定履行政府职责的政策至关重要。该研究将考察一项相对新颖且影响深远的移民执法计划“安全社区”的逐步推出，该计划导致暴力和非暴力移民罪犯的拘留和驱逐人数大幅增加。安全社区提供了理想的准实验变量，因为西班牙裔社区受到了压倒性的影响，并且推出的时间基于技术因素，适合三倍差实证方法。这种方法使研究人员能够比较特定地点内拉美裔家庭的计划接受情况与非拉美裔白人和黑人的计划接受情况（扣除尚未启动的县）与安全社区启动后的情况。 为了评估拉美裔美国人接受项目的任何孤立影响是否是由于害怕在他们的网络中暴露非公民而介导的，研究人员收集了关于混合身份家庭的空间分布的数据、关于驱逐出境恐惧的调查数据、以及有关驱逐出境相关术语搜索的 Google 趋势数据。最后，研究人员评估了在已宣布庇护地位的地区，执法对接受的影响是否受到影响。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。