Demographers have long been interested in how fertility ideals vary in response to perceived existential threats. Although migration scholars document the increasingly threatening nature of U.S. immigration policies, little research explores how these policies shape the fertility ideals of those most affected by them. To that end, we exploit spatiotemporal variation in states’ evolving immigrant policy contexts to understand the effects of different policies on the ideal family size of Hispanics—a group who is most likely to be stereotyped as undocumented and most likely to live in mixed‐status households or communities. Specifically, we combine time‐varying information on state‐level immigrant policies with geo‐referenced data from the General Social Survey. Results suggest that ideal family sizes are significantly higher among Hispanics (compared to non‐Hispanic whites) in state‐years with omnibus policies—which bundle multiple restrictive laws together and thus impose sweeping restrictions— compared to state‐years without these policies. On the other hand, sanctuary policies, which aim to curb federal immigration enforcement, and E‐verify mandates, which aim to curb the employment of undocumented immigrants, are not associated with significant differences. Our analyses provide new insights into the complex ways in which the evolving U.S. immigrant policy landscape has far‐reaching impacts on reproductive and family life.

中文翻译：

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美国各州的移民政策和理想的家庭规模


长期以来，人口统计学家一直对生育理想如何根据感知到的生存威胁而变化感兴趣。尽管移民学者记录了美国移民政策日益增长的威胁性，但很少有研究探讨这些政策如何塑造受其影响最大的人的生育理想。为此，我们利用各州不断发展的移民政策背景下的时空变化来了解不同政策对西班牙裔理想家庭规模的影响——西班牙裔是最有可能被刻板印象为无证的群体，最有可能生活在混合身份的家庭或社区中。具体来说，我们将有关州级移民政策的时变信息与来自一般社会调查的地理参考数据相结合。结果表明，与没有这些政策的州年相比，在实行综合政策的州年中，西班牙裔（与非西班牙裔白人相比）的理想家庭规模明显更高——这些政策将多项限制性法律捆绑在一起，从而施加了广泛的限制。另一方面，旨在遏制联邦移民执法的庇护政策和旨在遏制无证移民就业的电子验证授权没有显着差异。我们的分析为不断变化的美国移民政策环境对生殖和家庭生活产生深远影响的复杂方式提供了新的见解。