On Valentine’s Day, we focus on love’s gift of comfort and partnership, knowing love can also bring pain and heartache. When you don’t have papers, these extremes are magnified.

Immigration law is used to commit horrors every day — caging children, deporting parents, separating loved ones. But its damage is also subtler, steadily undercutting romance, love and families.

I interviewed more than 150 undocumented Latinx young adults, and their romantic partners, in Southern California for my research on how immigration policy affects families. I traced how undocumented immigrants dealt with financial insecurity, deportation threats and limited pathways to legalization. Their lives are circumscribed by state policies that determine access to a driver’s license and sources of identification. These realities fundamentally shape the material, psychological and social foundations of romantic relationships and families.

Read on, courtesy of the LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-02-14/immigrants-romance-families-immigration-laws