How does immigration status affect older immigrants’ late adulthood experiences? And how does the experience of illegality change across the life course? The older Latino immigrant population is the most vulnerable group in the country. Older Latinos have the highest poverty and lowest employment rates and are least likely to have access to Social Security programs. Mexicans are the largest ethnic subgroup of this population. Within this population, undocumented older adults face the biggest challenges without access to Social Security pensions and critical safety net programs. The experience of growing old in the United States as an undocumented (or ever undocumented) immigrant highlights the barriers constructed by immigration laws and the dire consequences of these laws over the life course. In late adulthood, when many undocumented immigrants can no longer work and have little or no access to safety nets, the consequences are more extreme representing a risk to their life and well-being. Older immigrants are left to manage the ailments that come with aging without the support from institutions and safety nets that is important for all aging individuals.
Drawing on 102 semi-structured interviews with older Mexican immigrants over 50-years-old, I shed light on how illegality, the everyday experience of living with undocumented status, has permanent and cumulative consequences across the life course. My findings reveal that older immigrants experience what I call perpetual punishment as their needs, and even their humanity, become invisible to the general public and policymakers. Perpetual punishment is the process in which immigration-related barriers seep into immigrants’ day-to-day lives and produce long-term consequences from the cradle to the grave. These are permanent consequences of long-term exclusion from U.S. institutions designed to support individuals throughout their lives, especially in late adulthood. I demonstrate that illegality traps older immigrants in the United States, but for different reasons than in earlier life stages. Older immigrants’ resources, health status, and immigration status influence where they live, including who can and cannot return to Mexico. In particular, illegality interferes with older immigrants’ ability to lead autonomous lives independently from their families, which is what they desire. Moreover, the experience of illegality shifts as older immigrants age and over the life course. I provide insight into this shift by tracing how the threat and fear of deportation evolve for older undocumented immigrants.
By highlighting how undocumented status uniquely shapes the burdens of illegality of aging older immigrants, Becoming Invisible offers a sobering account of the far-reaching consequences of our punishing immigration policies. It shines a spotlight on the Mexican men and women at the other end of the life spectrum—people who have lived in the United States for decades. It exposes the ways in which immigration law stratifies the experiences of older immigrants by immigration status and produces cumulative inequality over the life course resulting in perpetual punishment.
