The Coronavirus Pandemic and Immigrant Communities: A Crisis That Demands More of the Social Work Profession

Abstract

As the coronavirus pandemic has taken over matters of life and death globally, immigrant communities were some of the most deeply impacted. In the United States (U.S.), Latinx immigrants and other minorities have experienced greater economic burden and worse health outcomes, resulting in alarming rates of death from COVID-19. Yet the government’s relief measures to support individuals did not extend to millions of immigrants. This left many immigrants with the cruel choice to either stay home to protect themselves and their loved ones from the virus or go to work to support their families. Disregard for a large segment of the population is further complemented by strict immigration policies, harsher border restrictions, and public health guidelines that failed to account for the realities faced by immigrants. In this brief, we highlight the unequal toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on immigrants and consider social work response. We argue that the pandemic demands more of the social work profession, as the coronavirus crisis exposed more clearly the systemic inequalities toward immigrants and aggravates their vulnerabilities. Insofar as systems are unequal and racist in the context of coronavirus, there is a great need for social work response that is innovative, brave, and deeply connected to communities.

In early 2020, the novel coronavirus was declared a global pandemic with significant health and economic implications worldwide. At the time of this writing, over 30 million individuals have contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, and around 950,000 have died (World Health Organization (WHO, 2020). Beyond the public health crisis, economies have been severely impacted across the world. New fears about the effects of stay-at-home measures and the long-term health implications of the virus emerged among governments and citizens alike. This pandemic has laid bare the inequalities woven into our social fabric, including our institutions, systems, and policies. From education and employment to housing and health care, various domains of life have been impacted. The economic and health repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic touched communities in different ways, leaving marginalized populations more vulnerable to infections (Clark et al., 2020).

In this brief, we consider the unequal toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on immigrant communities in the U.S.. Pandemic preparedness plans in many countries fail to consider immigrant groups (Wickramage et al., 2018). In a review of the plans of 119 countries, the WHO (2011) found that only 11% included targeted strategies to assist immigrants. During the 2020 COVID-19 crisis, immigrant communities, along with African American and indigenous communities, often with poverty and low socioeconomic status, have been among those who suffered greater economic damage, increased health risks, and worse health outcomes in the U.S.. Disproportionate impacts of pandemics upon immigrants should not be surprising. History illustrates how immigrants experience exclusion and graver impacts during health emergencies (Steege et al., 2009). For example, during the 1918–1919 Spanish flu pandemic, outreach to immigrant groups providing needed information and assistance in coping was limited (Kraut, 2010). Also, during the tuberculosis health crisis in the 1920s, Mexican and Filipino immigrants were expelled from Los Angeles, making health services practically unavailable (Abel, 2007). More recently, when Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana in 2005, Latinx immigrants received low priority in federal assistance efforts (Mathew & Kelly, 2008).

Despite this record of immigrant treatment during past public health crises, our current moment reveals no lessons learned. We discuss issues pertaining to their health, employment, and access to health care and welfare services, in the context of restrictive immigration policies. We use the term immigrant throughout this article to refer to those documented and undocumented immigrants, seasonal migrants, farmworkers, resettled refugees, and asylum seekers. We close with reflections on social work practice amid the pandemic, and a call to action to the profession to advocate and support the more vulnerable immigrant communities, from helping assuage their anxieties to engaging in prevention efforts.

Compounded Vulnerabilities of Immigrants

In the initial months of the pandemic, the U.S. employed public health measures to protect against the coronavirus crisis by “closing” parts of the country, which included requiring individuals to stay at home and restricting businesses from opening to the public in an effort to “flatten the curve” (Lee et al., 2020). However, millions of immigrants have continued working in fields, factories, grocery stores, janitorial services, and other “essential” workplaces. These workers, who have historically experienced damaging levels of discrimination and oppression, are suddenly considered essential by the government, as reflected in employer-provided letters stating the critical need for their labor throughout this pandemic (Jordan, 2020; Ornelas et al., 2020). In spite of this, U.S. policy, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, failed to mandate protective measures to safeguard immigrant workers’ health, illustrating indifference toward them (Chishti & Pierce, 2020).

Furthermore, while most Americans have had access to pandemic relief measures provided by the government, such as expanded unemployment benefits and direct cash payment, undocumented workers were not eligible, even those who have been filing and paying their taxes using their Individual Tax Identification Number (Chishti & Pierce, 2020). Such disregard for the well-being of immigrant workers in U.S. policy further highlights continued efforts to marginalize this group, efforts that have increased in the Trump Administration. The exclusion of many immigrants from protective and supportive policies for workers during the pandemic, combined with travel restrictions to ban the entrance of immigrants through northern and southern borders and continued immigration raids, illustrates how their cheap labor is welcomed and necessary, but their presence is not.

Immigrants are often motivated to work hard, with enthusiasm about the opportunity for an improved future in their new country. Under COVID-19, this emphasis on building a new future can lead to desperate attempts by workers to continue providing for their families at the expense of their own health. Undocumented immigrants, in particular, struggle under many additional layers of disadvantage such as severe poverty, lower levels of education, language barriers, lack of health care access, and higher levels of migration-related stress, making them more vulnerable to the virus (Ornelas et al., 2020). These conditions are compounded by the restrictions associated with their unauthorized status, forcing them to deal with chronic levels of stress arising from fears of deportation and family dissolution that often limit their willingness to seek out support and access social services. These fears make them reluctant to seek medical care even if exposed to the virus or when exhibiting symptoms (Page et al., 2020).

International human rights advocates suggest that during a pandemic, vulnerable and stigmatized groups receive prioritization in disease prevention services, health care, and vaccinations (Wickramage et al., 2018). The public health recommendations provided for protection from the virus in the U.S. include frequent hand washing, avoiding in-person trips to grocery stores, maintaining social distance, wearing masks, and self-isolating if showing symptoms (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). These recommendations, however, are very hard to follow for many immigrants, especially those undocumented, for whom self-quarantine is often not an option in their close living quarters. Minimizing shopping trips might involve unrealistic expenditures and unavailable storage space. Such pandemic response guidelines neglect the realities many immigrants face and fail to offer the same level of attention and protection that national citizens receive.

When domestic COVID-19 cases appeared, the public charge rule was implemented, making immigrants who use public benefits, such as health care, ineligible to become permanent residents. Furthermore, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continued to detain undocumented individuals weeks after the virus was detected in the U.S., and travel restrictions were established (Chishti & Pierce, 2020). These factors have been pushing immigrants to the fringes of society, away from COVID-19 testing, tracing, and treatment, all crucial public health measures to contain the disease (Page et al., 2020).

This pandemic has been used to rationalize and push restrictive immigration policies with the government turning away thousands of immigrants at our southern border, including unaccompanied minors and asylum seekers, despite their legally protected status (Page et al., 2020). More than 10,000 individuals were deported over a period of 3 weeks during the pandemic, after a cursory processing of their cases (O’Toole, 2020). Additionally, thousands of unaccompanied minors, many under the age of 13, have been deported back to their countries with no regard for their safety or for this country’s child welfare laws (Woltjen, 2020). Furthermore, many immigrant children have been kept under ICE custody for months at a time in breach of federal regulations that protect children’s rights in immigration detention (Aguilera, 2020). Immigration advocates have petitioned for the release of immigrants held in detention centers to avoid preventable deaths and the rapid spread of the virus (McKenzie & Mishori, 2020). Nevertheless, thousands of detainees, including children, have already tested positive for COVID-19 in the U.S. (Alvarez & Sands, 2020). These detention facilities are at greater risk of outbreaks, given the high concentration of confined people, lack of access to health care, and shortage of hygienic materials. The influx of new detainees, transfers between centers, and the constant cycle of workers in and out increase the likelihood of contagion for both detainees and staff (Keller & Wagner, 2020). While these actions have been justified as protective public health measures against the virus, they accomplish the long-held goals of U.S. policy, emphasized especially during the Trump Administration, to stop undocumented immigration and asylum petitions.

Moreover, U.S. policy, under the Trump Administration, has failed to address heightened racial harassment, hate crimes and attacks against Chinese immigrants and other Asian immigrants during the pandemic, which originated in China. Instead, racist, anti-Chinese rhetoric was deployed by the U.S. President himself, which some observers say contributed to increased discrimination and violence within the U.S., while also severing geopolitical and economic ties with China (Chiu, 2020; Jackson et al., 2020).

In contrast, some countries have adopted a more compassionate stance toward immigrants. Portugal has extended full citizenship rights to all immigrants, assuring everyone equal access to social services and health care for the duration of the crisis (Alberti & Cotovio, 2020). England has released hundreds of immigrants from detainment (Lindsay, 2020). Even the U.S., during the Ebola epidemic of 2014, allowed some African immigrants to remain lawfully until the pandemic ended in 2017 (Chishti & Pierce, 2020). The present health crisis calls for such broader and intentional policies that consider the needs and vulnerabilities of all individuals regardless of their immigration status.

Social Work Response: The Pandemic Warrants Something More of the Profession

Social work practice during times of crisis offers a wide range of services, including advocacy, support with social isolation, mental health and information access, assistance with unemployment, financial difficulties, and disruption of schooling (Park & Lee, 2016). The complexity of the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic thus makes special demands upon social workers, as it extends over multiple and overlapping realms of assistance. Unlike health service providers, educators and other professionals whose expertise are constrained to a single domain, social work’s multifaceted and person-in-environment approach is key for pandemic response.

The vulnerabilities of the pandemic are compounded with the vulnerabilities imposed by policies that have long oppressed immigrants. However, the social work profession has a dark history of complicity in those unjust policies toward immigrants, including in times of crisis such as wars (Park, 2019). For instance, during the World War II era, social workers implemented the federal program of forced removal and incarceration of Japanese immigrants, as well as citizens with Japanese ancestry (Park, 2019). Social work did not resist nor act against those oppressive policies against immigrants but instead legitimized them by carrying out government-assigned tasks (Park, 2019). More recently in 2017 when U.S. policy was enacted to separate families at the border in what has been considered a “crisis” of migration, some social workers grappled with the ethical dilemma inherent in “enabling the system,” while also providing support for children and families who were impacted (Evans & Hokanson, 2018). Oppressive U.S. policies thus structure and delimit social work practice with immigrants.

Therefore, in this time of coronavirus and in considering immigrant and vulnerable communities, what is called for is social work response that seeks to move beyond the limits of institutional policy. Social work response to the pandemic intersects with social work with immigrants, warranting something more of the profession. Direct social work practice with immigrants must “see” the individualized immigrant and must attend not only to health, but also labor, family, precarity, safety, immigration status, and positionalities such as gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and ability. This intersectional, feminist lens pays attention to “difference” (Gringeri et al., 2010), as constituted by overlapping domains of power (Mehrotra, 2010).

Social work practice that is reflexive and ethical, as core to feminist praxis, is introspective and critically aware of itself and the institutional/organizational context in which it is embedded (Gringeri et al., 2010). Insofar as institutions are unequal and racist in the context of coronavirus, there is a great need for social work response that is innovative, brave, and deeply connected to communities. Such a response may entail supporting or partnering with organizations and communities at a smaller scale, at the informal level, at the grassroots because it is to such groups that immigrants and refugees often go for help (Gonzalez Benson, 2020a). Given that immigrant-led organizational structures are already embedded within communities, participatory approaches to social work may lend themselves well to reaching and serving immigrants who are too often out of reach of mainstream services (Gonzalez Benson, 2020b). Further, to reach immigrant groups during a public health emergency, social workers may use group-specific language using media and means of communication already utilized by immigrant communities (Park & Lee, 2016).

In advocacy, social work efforts are integral as well. Dissolving micro–macro silos in social work with immigrants calls attention to policy and systemic change as much as interpersonal work (Popescu & Libal, 2018). Heeding these demands for response, there has been some mobilization of the sector of social work that works directly with immigrant communities in service and rights organizations (Wilson, 2020). For instance, in March 2020, social workers joined rights groups in advocating for the incorporation of immigrant families into legislation for coronavirus relief (Human Rights Watch, 2020). Their collective public letter to Congressional leadership noted, “the virus and its effects do not discriminate based on immigration status, and neither should relief efforts.” The efficacy of public health responses relies upon the comprehensiveness of testing and care; that is, efforts to curb infections are effective only if all members of the community, including documented and undocumented immigrants, receive care.

Overall, social work practice with immigrants as we have introduced above is characterized by (a) a holistic, in-environment, intersectional perspective; (b) going beyond institution-based modalities and connecting to the community; (c) dissolving micro–macro disciplinary divides via advocacy and policy change; and (d) attending to systemic issues. A feminist, critical sensibility that attends to difference, reflexivity, ethics, praxis, and power (Gringeri et al., 2010) underpin these approaches.