In When Care Is Conditional, Dani Carillo highlights the difficulties facing undocumented migrants in the United States. A key challenge revolves around securing driving licenses, as without these it is difficult to access employment and social support for them and their families.

Research from Washington University in St. Louis highlights how making it easier for undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses has a big impact on not only their own overall health but also that of their children.

Easier access

In 2023, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Minnesota joined other states in letting undocumented immigrants get driver’s licenses. They need to show specific documents like a foreign birth certificate or passport and proof of living in the state. Nineteen states and Washington, D.C., already have similar rules, and places like Michigan and Oklahoma are thinking about it.

People passed these laws thinking it would make roads safer by letting undocumented immigrants drive legally and get insurance.

The new research suggests that having these license laws is linked to better birth weight for babies born to Mexican and Central American immigrants. Birth weight is important for a baby’s early development and long-term health. The study also found fewer preterm births between 2008 and 2021 in states with license laws compared to those without. But both groups saw a decrease in preterm births over time.

To see how license laws affect baby outcomes, the researchers checked birth records for over 4 million single births to Mexican and Central American immigrants from 2008 to 2021. They focused on states that adopted these laws during the study.

They also looked at how many months before getting pregnant the law was put in place to understand how it impacted the health of pregnant people and their babies before, during, and after birth.

As a comparison, they checked outcomes for US-born, non-Hispanic white pregnant people in the same states. Interestingly, there was no connection between the law and birth weight in this group.

Reduced stress

The study found a link between these laws and better outcomes for babies born to Mexican and Central American immigrants. However, it didn’t explain why this connection exists, but the researchers believe it may be simply to do with the reduction in stress caused by the new laws.

“By reducing the criminalization of immigrants, driver’s license laws may lessen deportation fears and subsequent stress, potentially improving birth outcomes,” they explain.

Stress before getting pregnant, not just during pregnancy, can impact how babies are born. So, it’s probable that the connection between license laws and better outcomes would get stronger as time goes on, she suggests.

“While we see stress as one key mechanism through which these license laws may improve perinatal health, we also think it is possible that the laws could lead to improved birth outcomes by increasing immigrants’ access to financial resources, including better-paying jobs and more weekly work hours,” the authors continue.

Easier access

The researchers also guessed that these laws would make it easier for immigrants to get timely prenatal care, which could improve their perinatal health. However, their observation didn’t match their guess. They noticed a slightly lower chance of people in states with license laws starting prenatal care in the first trimester.

The authors think one possible reason is that immigrants in these states already had high rates of early prenatal care, leaving little room for improvement. Another possibility is that having a driver’s license didn’t overcome other obstacles, like not having insurance, language barriers, and distance to healthcare.

In the past twenty years, states have become significant players in immigration policy, passing more immigration laws than we’ve seen in over a century.

“There’s been a lot of focus on the extreme measures taken by some states to keep immigrants out and limit their access to services and benefits, but many states have responded by affirming their support for immigrants,” the researchers conclude.

“In fact, more than half of the states that have enacted license laws did so after 2015, when Donald Trump began his first campaign and made immigration enforcement a key issue.”