Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States.
Front Public Health. 2024 Feb 15;12:1304704. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1304704. eCollection 2024.
Undocumented immigrants experienced high levels of economic insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic while being excluded from government-based relief and unemployment benefits. In April 2020, California became the first state to offer financial aid to undocumented immigrants through the innovative Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants (DRAI) program in collaboration with several community-based organizations (CBOs). However, the process of applying for aid was marked by many implementation challenges, such as intake and language access; however, little data exists on the direct experiences of the undocumented community. This qualitative study examines the experiences of undocumented Asian and Latinx young adults living in California in applying for DRAI through framework of administrative burden. Themes distilled from participant experiences highlight how administrative burden via learning, psychological, and compliance costs shape the ways in which undocumented immigrants navigate policies and programs, such as DRAI. These experiences highlight the need for policymakers to address structural and programmatic administrative burdens in policy development; failure to do so result in detrimental impacts that outweigh financial benefits or cause communities to forgo needed resources.
无证移民在 COVID-19 大流行期间经历了高度的经济不安全，同时被排除在政府救济和失业救济之外。2020 年 4 月，加利福尼亚州成为第一个通过与几个社区组织 (CBO) 合作的创新灾难救济援助移民 (DRAI) 计划向无证移民提供经济援助的州。然而，申请援助的过程中存在许多实施挑战，如受理和语言获取；然而，关于无证社区的直接经验的数据很少。这项定性研究通过行政负担框架考察了居住在加利福尼亚州的无证亚洲和拉丁裔青年的经历。从参与者经历中提炼出的主题强调了行政负担如何通过学习、心理和合规成本来塑造无证移民如何应对政策和计划（如 DRAI）的方式。这些经历突出表明，政策制定者需要解决政策制定中的结构性和程序性行政负担；如果不这样做，将造成有害影响，超过财政利益，或导致社区放弃所需资源。
