As my wife underwent the administration to secure ‘settled status’ in the UK after the Brexit referendum, there remained considerable consternation among the UK’s EU population, not least due to the lack of physical evidence of one’s status.

New research from Stanford suggests that such fears are not uncommon, even when people have legal status in their new home.  The study suggests that securing official status merely places people firmly on the radar of the authorities, but does little to assuage any concerns that they may still be deported.

The findings emerged from interviews with 50 documented and undocumented immigrants from the Dallas area.  The interviews revealed a fear so profound that some preferred to remain undocumented, even if they were eligible for legal status.  There was a sense that if they didn’t know the immigration officials, then the immigration officials didn’t know them.

Risky business

The formal records normally associated with legal status were viewed by many of the interviewees as far to risky to be linked with, with this view also shared by documented immigrants.  For instance, one of the immigrants had received their permit from DACA, and she said she felt more vulnerable as a result, and even minor offences, such as a traffic violation, would see her deported.

“Documentation is hardly a shield from deportation fears,” the researchers say. “Documentation affords some protection from deportation, but it can also heighten fears since the bureaucracies that ‘document’ immigrants have a greater perceived ability to surveil and expel them.”

Indeed, such was the fear documented immigrants had, it was often comparable with that of immigrants who had already been deported.  It was an inherent fear in the unjust nature of the system and the ‘hostile environment’ that politicians like to portray against immigrants.

Such policies have made a constant threat of deportation their centerpiece, and this message has undermined the process of becoming a legal resident in the country.  The paper highlights how, since the 1980s, the conditions to deport immigrants have expanded significantly.  For instance, whereas in 1988 immigrants could be deported for any ‘aggravated felony’, by 1996 this had been expanded to include any felony with a prison sentence of at least one year.

As such, some 79% of the 7.9 million deportations recorded since records began in 1892 have occurred since 1986.  This inherent unpredictability is at the heart of migrants desire to remain under the radar.

“Some undocumented migrants may be chilled out of legalization opportunities in an attempt to maintain a sense of invisibility to a system they view as primarily punitive,” the authors conclude. “If fears of deportation lead immigrants to pass up rare opportunities for legal status in their search for invisibility from a system they view as unforgiving, they and their U.S.-citizen children may face restricted opportunities for promoting their long-term well-being in this country.”