Central American Immigrant Population

The Central American immigrant population is one that suffers from a wide variety of social problems and represents the poorest population of all minority populations in California (Davis, 1993). The poverty rates for this group are twice as high as those for other minority groups such as blacks.

The rates of both medical symptoms and mental disorders are much higher than those of the general population (Williams & Berry, 1991) and the services provided to them are said to generally be inadequate. Moreover, because of their often illegal status, there is a reluctance on the part of many Central American immigrants to seek out and utilize provided services (Gong-Guy, Cravens & Patterson, 1991).

Within Central American immigrant groups, women are said to have an especially difficult time, often because they are single mothers responsible for both earning a living and raising young children. This means that in order to meet these res

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migrants being at risk of being identified and reported. Penalosa states that census data indicated that Salvadorans were the most numerous Central American population in the United States in General and in California in particular. The second and third largest groups (also living mostly in California, particularly Los Angeles) consist of, respectively, the Guatemalans and the Nicaraguans. Penalosa states that these three countries contributed the majority of Central American immigrants to the United States as a function of their fleeing repressive regimes. The fact that many Central American immigrants have come to the United States due to political flight is not without importance in this study. This because strong levels of stress have been found to be associated with having to leave a homeland under such circumstances. Indeed, Horowitz (1990) states that in the cases of many immigrants who have left their country due to political unrest, stress levels are sufficiently high to warrant a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. This finding means that there is a possibility in the conducted study that a certain amount of sample females' stress levels may be due to post-traumatic stress disorder rather than due to accu
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 7068
Approximate Pages = 28 (250 words per page)

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