Commentary: Undocumented women: Pushed from poverty and conflict, pulled into unjust disparity

Abstract

The statistics provide the background. The United Nations estimates that 3 per cent of the world's population (213 million people by 2010) live outside their country of origin.1 Most immigrants move from developing to developed countries, where international migrants constitute more than 10 per cent of the population. Global data for undocumented migrants are difficult to obtain, but estimates suggest that there may be 30 million undocumented migrants worldwide, as many as 11 million in the United States.2 Undocumented immigrants make up 4 per cent of the population of the US and 5.4 per cent of its workforce. Women now constitute more than half (51.4 per cent) of the international migrants in developed countries, only slightly more than 40 years ago. But women today migrate largely in search of their own work and security, rather than as dependents, traveling to live with their husbands.4'5 Studies from the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia report an excess of health problems among undocumented migrants. Poverty, less access to health services contraception, cervical cancer prevention, and prenatal care language barriers, stigma, abuse, and sexual vulnerability put them at greater risk. They experience unplanned pregnancies and labor complications more frequently. Mental illness, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV, and TB are more common.6"16 Because of fear and discrimination, as well as oppressive working and living situations, women may be unable to get health or social services. In their study 'Self rated and health problems of undocumented immigrant women in the Netherlands, a descriptive study', Schoevers and her co-authors add the voices of immigrant women in the