Staying under the Radar? Immigration Effects on Overdose Deaths and the Impact of Sanctuary Jurisdictions

Growing political and public rhetoric claim that immigration has contributed to drug crime and the overdose crisis of the 21st century. However, research to date has given little attention to immigration–overdose relationships, and almost no work has examined the ways that the sanctuary status of locales influences these connections. The current study draws on the immigrant revitalization perspective and Brayne’s (2014) systems avoidance theory to examine the connections between immigrant concentration, sanctuary status, and overdose mortality across MSAs for the 2015 period, overall and across races/ethnicities. The analysis uses data on overdose deaths drawn from the CDC’s Restricted Access Multiple Cause of Death Mortality files, combined with data on characteristics of MSAs drawn from the U.S. Census and other macro-level data sources. Findings reveal that the percent Latinx foreign-born is related to lower levels of overdose deaths overall and for White and Black populations but higher levels of Latinx overdose mortality. Contrary to expectations, sanctuary status has little effect on overdose deaths across most groups, and it does not significantly condition immigration–overdose relationships.