Economic Challenges and Resilience Among Asylum Seekers from Central and South America during COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant changes for asylum seekers arriving at the Southern border, particularly for those fleeing life-threatening risks in Central and South America. Economic challenges, policy changes such as Title 42, and limited access to resources have made it difficult for asylum seekers to meet their basic needs and practice social distancing during their journey. Asylum seekers from these regions are also exposed to anti-immigration rhetoric in the United States (U.S.) and have limited access to legal and economic resources compared to those from other regions even after allowed to stay in the U.S. for their decision on asylum grant. This study aimed to describe economic challenges and resilience to mitigate COVID-19 risk of asylum seekers from Central and South America.

Methods:

Respondents were non-citizens recruited from a temporary shelter in Phoenix, Arizona, who were immediately released by federal immigration authorities between February 2022 and August 2022. Participants completed a self-administered survey in either English or Spanish and were assessed for knowledge of COVID-19 risk behaviors, attitude toward mask-wearing, and economic challenges during the pandemic. We identified asylum seekers from Central and South Americas by two proxies: 1) the language of survey completed in Spanish group (SS group) or English (ES group), and 2) self-identified as Latinx over other racial and ethnic groups. Covariates included gender, age, educational attainment, and asylum status. To address missing values, we conducted a multiple imputation approach that aggregated estimates from 20 imputed datasets, resulting in 538 cases used for analyses. We used SPSS version 28.0 for multiple regression analyses with a 0.05 alpha level.

Results: Of the respondents, 87.9% completed the survey in Spanish (SS group) and 55.6% identified as Latinx, with non-Latinx Whites comprising 26.0% and other races comprising 18.4%. The average age was 33.4 year-old, 52.2% were female, and 93.1% identified as asylum seekers. Unadjusted analyses showed significant differences between groups by language used for the survey: the SS group (N=473) had a significantly higher proportion of female (57.9%), Latinx (62.8%), and those reporting seeking asylum (96.4%). Adjusted analyses showed that the SS group had significantly higher knowledge of COVID-19 risk behaviors (p<.001), more positive attitudes toward mask-wearing (p<.05), and more economic challenges during the pandemic (p<.001) compared to the ES group. However, no differences between Latinx and non-Latinx respondents were observed.

Conclusion and Implications: This study highlights additional economic challenges among non-citizens, particularly asylum seekers from Central and South America, and sheds light on their resiliency to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 infection. The findings address a research gap by studying non-citizens released by federal immigration authorities before they move to various communities. One limitation is that we lacked a question asking the country of origin and had to proxy the language used to identify those from Central and South Americas. Findings highlights significance of social workers who can play a critical role in addressing the economic, social, and emotional challenges faced by these individuals and promoting their health and well-being.