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Credential Recognition in the United States for Foreign Professionals
Foreign-trained professionals in the United States often encounter significant obstacles on their path to professional practice, among them difficulties in demonstrating the value of their past work experience and qualifications. This report examines the decentralized US credential recognition process, particularly with regards to recertification in the medical and engineering sectors and offers recommendations for improvement.
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| Press Release
Detailed Review of the 2013 Senate Legislation and Side-by-Side Comparison with 2006, 2007 Senate Bills
This issue brief offers a detailed review of major provisions included in S.744, the immigration legislation introduced in the Senate by a bipartisan group of senators, and compares those provisions with bills considered by the Senate in 2006 and 2007. Topics reviewed include border security and enforcement; creation of Registered Provisional Immigrant (RPI) status for unauthorized immigrants, the DREAM Act, agricultural workers program, and paths to lawful permanent residence; immigrant integration; creation of a new merit-based visa and adjustments to preference categories for family- and employment-based immigration; employment verification, detention and immigration court provisions, and more.
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Side-by-Side Comparison of 2013 Senate Immigration Framework with 2006 and 2007 Senate Legislation
The Migration Policy Institute has completed an analysis of the major provisions in the 2013 framework, comparing them to provisions of the legislation the Senate considered in 2006 and 2007.
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Immigration Reform: A Long Road to Citizenship and Insurance Coverage
In an article in the April issue of Health Affairs, Migration Policy Institute Senior Policy Analyst Randy Capps and Senior Vice President Michael Fix examine the key questions surrounding legalization and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). With Congress poised to consider a major overhaul of US immigration laws and legalization for many of the nation’s unauthorized immigrants, how legalization affects implementation of the ACA is a key policy question. The article examines current coverage rates for unauthorized immigrants, eligibility for coverage under expansion of Medicaid, the distribution of costs of uncompensated care, and options for covering those who will remain uninsured under ACA.
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Unauthorized Immigrant Parents and Their Children’s Development
By Hirokazu Yoshikawa and Jenya Kholoptseva
According to recent estimates, 5.5 million children in the United States - all but 1 million of them US-born - reside with at least one unauthorized immigrant parent. Given that they constitute about 8 percent of all US children, their well-being holds important implications for US society. Emerging research suggests that having an unauthorized immigrant parent is associated with lower cognitive skills in early childhood, lower levels of general positive development in middle childhood, higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms during adolescence, and fewer years of schooling. This report, co-authored by the Academic Dean of Harvard Graduate School of Education, explores the research and suggests policies and programs to reduce or mitigate these developmental risks.
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Immigrants in a Changing Labor Market: Responding to Economic Need
Edited by Michael Fix, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, and Madeleine Sumption
This volume, which brings together research by leading economists and labor market specialists, examines the role immigrants play in the U.S. workforce, how they fare in good and bad economic times, and the effects they have on native-born workers and the labor sectors in which they are engaged. The book traces the powerful economic forces at play in today’s globalized world and includes policy prescriptions for making the American immigration system more responsive to labor market needs.
Purchase the book | Press Release
Limited English Proficient Individuals in the United States: Linguistic Diversity at the County and State Level
These data tables show estimates of the number and share of Limited English Proficient (LEP) individuals - and the main languages or language groups they speak - across counties in the United States and Puerto Rico. The data, taken from the US Census Bureau's pooled 2007-2011 American Community Survey and organized by state, show these groups as a percentage of the total population of the state and county as well as by absolute number.
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Critical Immigration, Health, and Education Policies Affecting Young Children of Immigrants
 A conference with leading experts in health, education, and immigration policy discussing public policies affecting the young children of immigrants. Click here for audio and video of the conference panels.
January 17, 2013
Young Children of Black Immigrants in America: Changing Flows, Changing Faces
Book release event with US Department of Health and Human Services Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Services Policy Ajay Chaudry; Gerald D. Jaynes, Yale University Departments of Economics and African-American Studies; and chapter authors Dylan Patricia Conger, from the George Washington University School of Public Policy and Public Administration, and Kevin Thomas of Pennsylvania State University ; with volume editors Randy Capps and Michael Fix, both of MPI.
December 14, 2012
Listen to Audio | Watch Event Video
Young Children of Black Immigrants in America: Changing Flows, Changing Faces
Edited by Randy Capps and Michael Fix
The US child population is rapidly changing and diversifying, in large part because of immigration. Today, nearly one in four US children under age 18 is the child of an immigrant. While research has focused on the largest of these groups, far less academic attention has been paid to the changing Black child population, with the children of Black immigrants representing an increasing share of the US Black child population. This interdisciplinary volume, with chapters by leading researchers, examines the health, well-being, school readiness, and academic achievement of children in Black immigrant families, most with parents from Africa and the Caribbean. The volume explores the migration and settlement experiences of Black immigrants to the United States, focusing on contextual factors such as family circumstances, parenting behaviors, social supports, and school climate that influence outcomes during early childhood and the elementary and middle-school years. Its findings hold important policy implications for education, health care, child care, early childhood development, immigrant integration, and refugee assistance.
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Patterns and Predictors of School Readiness and Early Childhood Success among Young Children in Black Immigrant Families
By Danielle A. Crosby and Angel S. Dunbar
This report examines levels of school readiness among young children by race/ethnicity and nativity, helping fill a significant gap in knowledge about the early childhood experiences of young children in Black immigrant families. Using a nationally representative US birth-cohort study (the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort), the authors identify the contextual factors - such as family circumstances, parenting practices, and enrollment in center-based child care - that encourage early school success.
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Parenting Behavior, Health, and Cognitive Development among Children in Black Immigrant Families: Comparing the United States and the United Kingdom
By Margot Jackson
Racial disparities in child development in the United States are significant, with a particularly pronounced disadvantage among Black children. This report focuses on the development of children of Black immigrants, comparing against the outcomes for their peers in native-born and other immigrant families. The report also compares children in the United States to those in the United Kingdom, where there is a large Black immigrant population but a notably different policy context of reception.
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Migration Policy Institute 2012 E Pluribus Unum Prize Awardees Discuss Immigrant Integration from Migration Policy Institute on Vimeo.
The 2012 Winners of MPI’s E Pluribus Unum Prizes for Exceptional Immigrant Integration Initiatives
MPI is pleased to announce the winners of its 2012 E Pluribus Unum Prizes: ACCESS (Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services), a Michigan-based Arab American organization that strengthens ties between immigrant and native-born communities; Building Skills Partnership, a California labor-business alliance that provides on-the-job English language and other classes for janitors; and Californians Together, a California education coalition that has achieved significant instructional reform for English language learners. Each was given a $50,000 award. The Prizes’ Corporate Leadership Award was given to Citi Community Development, which supports citizenship promotion for eligible legal immigrants and economic empowerment.
Press Release | Awards Event Program | ACCESS | Building Skills Partnership | Californians Together | Citi Community Development
Black and Immigrant: Exploring the Effects of Ethnicity and Foreign-Born Status on Infant Health
By Tiffany L. Green
The birth experiences and prenatal behaviors of Black immigrant mothers have received relatively little attention. This report compares prenatal behaviors and birth outcomes of Black immigrant mothers to those of other immigrant and US-born mothers, using federal vital statistics. It finds that Black immigrant mothers are less likely to give birth to preterm or low-birth-weight infants than US-born Black women, yet are more likely to experience these adverse birth outcomes than other groups of immigrant and US-born women.
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The Economic Value of Citizenship for Immigrants in the United States
By Madeleine Sumption and Sarah Flamm
Beyond imparting political and social rights, naturalization appears to confer economic gains for immigrants in the United States, with a wage premium of at least 5 percent – even after accounting for the fact that naturalized immigrants have higher levels of education, better language skills, and more work experience in the United States than noncitizens. More than 8 million legal immigrants in the United States are eligible to apply for citizenship but have not done so. Naturalization rates in the United States are lower than most other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, the report notes.
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Relief from Deportation: Demographic Profile of the DREAMers Potentially Eligible under the Deferred Action Policy
By Jeanne Batalova and Michelle Mittelstadt
As many as 1.76 million unauthorized immigrants under age 31 who were brought to the United States as children, a population known as DREAMers, could gain a two-year reprieve from deportation, according to updated MPI estimates that reflect more detailed eligibility guidelines for the deferred action policy being implemented by the Department of Homeland Security. The Fact Sheet offers estimates on the age, educational attainment, state of residence, country and region of birth, workforce participation, and gender of prospective beneficiaries.
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Changing Demography and Circumstances for Young Black Children in African and Caribbean Immigrant Families
By Donald J. Hernandez
This report, the first in a trio of reports from the Young Children of Black Immigrants research initiative, finds that the 813,000 children under the age of 10 who have Black immigrant parents generally fall in the middle of multiple well-being indicators, faring less well than Asian and white children but better than their native-born Black and Hispanic peers. The report examines their family structure, citizenship status, English proficiency, parental characteristics, poverty, housing, and access to social supports.
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Diverse Streams: African Migration to the United States
By Randy Capps, Kristen McCabe, and Michael Fix
Black African immigrants represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the US immigrant population, increasing by about 200 percent during the 1980s and 1990s and by 100 percent during the 2000s. This report finds African immigrants generally fare well on integration indicators, with college completion rates that greatly exceed those for most other immigrant groups and US natives. Despite higher levels of human capital, high employment rates, and strong English skills, African immigrants’ earnings lag those of the native born.
Download Report | Press Release | Research Project
A Demographic Profile of Black Caribbean Immigrants in the United States
By Kevin J.A. Thomas
Immigration from the Caribbean to the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon, beginning largely after changes to US immigration law in 1965 that placed a new priority on family-based migration. This report finds that despite relatively low educational attainment, English-speaking Black Caribbean immigrants earn more than Black African immigrants. This earnings gap may be explained in part by the fact that Caribbean immigrants, who account for 1.7 million of the nation’s nearly 40 million immigrants, tend to have been in the United States longer.
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The Educational Trajectories of English Language Learners in Texas
By Stella M. Flores, Jeanne Batalova, and Michael Fix
English Language Learner (ELL) public school students who successfully complete English as a Second Language (ESL) or bilingual education programs within three years appear to fare better in meeting basic math and reading proficiency standards than long-term ELLs, according to analysis of a unique longitudinaldataset that tracks all Texas students from first grade through high school graduation and beyond. Interestingly, Hispanic ELLs who opt out of ESL or bilingual education programs in favor of English-only courses may be particularly disadvantaged in terms of college enrollment.
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Limited English Proficient Individuals in the United States: Number, Share, Growth, and Linguistic Diversity
By Chhandasi Pandya, Margie McHugh, and Jeanne Batalova
The number of US residents who are deemed to be Limited English Proficient (LEP) has increased substantially in recent decades, consistent with the growth of the US foreign-born population. Sustained high rates of immigration and the dispersion of LEP individuals to new immigrant destination states has meant that an increasing number of states and localities must grapple with issues of communication and English language learning. To assist the wide array of stakeholders working with LEP populations, MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy has compiled the most up-to-date analysis on the number, share, growth, and linguistic diversity of LEP individuals in the United States from 1990 to 2010 at the national, state and metropolitan levels.
Download Data Brief |
State-level Data on LEP Number, Share, and Growth |
State-level Data on Linguistic Diversity
Up for Grabs: The Gains and Prospects of First- and Second-Generation Young Adults
By Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix
Youth and young adults from immigrant families represent one in four people in the United States between the ages of 16-26 and account for half of the growth of the young adult population between 1995 and 2010. This report profiles the nation’s 11.3 million first- and second-generation young adults, finding substantial generational progress in terms of high school graduation, college enrollment, and ability to earn family-sustaining wages. Second-generation Hispanic women are faring particularly well, with college enrollment rates equal to those of third-generation non-Hispanic white women. However, they are not graduating from college at the same rate or on the same timeline because of family, work, or economic reasons. The report sketches how postsecondary education, workforce development, and language training programs could better meet the needs of this population, which will assume a greater role as the US workforce ages.
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Immigrants in the United States: How Well Are They Integrating into Society?
By Tomás R. Jiménez
Even though immigration is intertwined with the history of the United States, fears about immigrants' ability to integrate remain an area of concern. Yet an examination of immigrants’ integration across five major indicators – language proficiency, socioeconomic attainment, political participation, residential locale, and social interaction with host communities – shows they are integrating reasonably well. Remarkably, the process has unfolded almost entirely without policy intervention. The author examines the laissez faire policy approach to integration, raising concerns about how the state of public education and size of the US unauthorized population may remain powerful barriers to immigrants' full social, economic, and political integration.
Download Report | European Integration Challenges Report
Executive Action on Immigration: Six Ways to Make the System Work Better
By Donald M. Kerwin, Doris Meissner, Margie McHugh
While sweeping reform to fix a US immigration system widely acknowledged as broken has taken a backseat politically, opportunities exist within the executive branch to improve the ways in which the nation’s existing immigration laws and policies are administered. Among the report’s recommendations: establishing uniform enforcement priorities and defining what constitutes effective border control, strengthening immigrant integration policy creation and implementation, allowing applicants for immigrant visas to file in the United States, and making use of prosecutorial discretion in removal proceeding filings.
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Immigrant Integration in a Time of Austerity
By Elizabeth Collett
With austerity at the forefront of European government policy debates and rising debt levels sure to catalyze additional difficult public spending decisions, immigrant integration programs have been an early place for budget cuts in some countries. In this report, MPI European Policy Fellow Elizabeth Collett offers fresh analysis of how immigrant integration programs are faring in a number of EU countries: the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. While the economic and political climate offer some explanation for governments' response, the report details how those factors alone are insufficient to explain countries' differing approaches to immigrant integration programs.
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Delegation and Divergence: A Study of 287(g) State and Local Immigration Enforcement
By Randy Capps, Marc R. Rosenblum, Cristina Rodríguez, and Muzaffar Chishti
The section 287(g) program, which delegates federal immigration enforcement powers to state and local officers, is not targeted primarily at serious offenders. Despite public statements by Obama administration officials that the program is primarily aimed at identifying and removing “dangerous criminals,” MPI researchers found that about half of 287(g) activity involves noncitizens arrested for misdemeanors or traffic offenses. Formal program changes unveiled by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2009 have not substantially changed program priorities, operations, outcomes, or community impacts, the report concludes, offering findings that also have implications for the Secure Communities program.
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Communicating More for Less: Using Translation and Interpretation Technology to Serve Limited English Proficient Individuals
 By Jessica Sperling
Advances in translation and interpretation technology have given language access professionals a multitude of options for breaking down language barriers. However, with different and seemingly complex types of technologies now available, selecting the right technology system can be a challenge. And because language access needs vary immensely, rarely do agencies or service organizations have translation and interpretation needs that can be met the same way. This report by MPI's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy provides an overview of available technologies, discussing their purposes, costs, and benefits. We invite vendors of translation and interpretation technology to fill out a survey detailing their products, and will periodically provide an update with new technologies. The survey can be completed here.
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Vendor Survey
Still an Hourglass? Immigrant Workers in Middle-Skilled Jobs
 By Randy Capps, Michael Fix, and Serena Yi Ying-Lin
It has been conventional wisdom that the immigrant workforce is shaped like an hourglass — wide at the top and the bottom but narrow in the middle. In reality, immigrants are more evenly dispersed across the skills spectrum than has been widely recognized. Using an innovative new method of analysis, the authors found that the fastest growth in immigrant employment since 2000 has occurred in middle-skilled jobs. The study, which examines employment in the US workforce and in four key sectors (IT, health care, construction, and hospitality), finds that employment growth for immigrants far outpaced native growth rates between 1990 and 2006 in the total economy and the four industries surveyed.
Report in Brief | Full Report | Press Release
The Demographic Impacts of Repealing Birthright Citizenship
 By Jennifer Van Hook with Michael Fix
Repeal of birthright citizenship for the US-born children of unauthorized immigrants would expand the unauthorized population by at least 5 million over the next four decades. Employing standard demographic techniques, this analysis suggests that there would be 4.7 million unauthorized immigrants as of 2050 who had been born in the United States — 1 million of them with US-born mother and father — if birthright citizenship were denied to children born to parents who are both unauthorized immigrants. While some policymakers are discussing changes to birthright citizenship as a means to reduce illegal immigration, the report makes clear such a move could in fact significantly increase the size of the unauthorized population.
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DREAM vs. Reality: An Analysis of Potential DREAM Act Beneficiaries
 Slightly more than 2.1 million unauthorized immigrant youth and young adults could be eligible to apply for legal status under the DREAM Act legislation pending in Congress, though perhaps fewer than 40 percent would obtain legal status because of barriers limiting their ability to take advantage of the legislation's educational and military service routes to legalization. This MPI analysis offers the most recent and detailed estimates of potential DREAM Act beneficiaries by age, education levels, gender, state of residence and likelihood of gaining legalization.
Updated Estimates | Download Report | Press Release
 Immigrants and Welfare: The Impact of Welfare Reform on America’s Newcomers
This volume, edited by MPI Senior Vice President Michael Fix, rigorously assesses the 1996 welfare reform law, questions whether its immigrant provisions were ever really necessary, and examines its impact on legal immigrants’ ability to integrate into American society. The book probes the politics behind the welfare reform law, its legal underpinnings, and what it may mean for integration policy. It also focuses on empirical research regarding immigrants’ propensity to use benefits before the law passed, and immigrants’ use and hardship levels afterwards.
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Immigrants and Health Care Reform: What’s Really at Stake?
By Randy Capps, Marc R. Rosenblum, and Michael Fix
Health care reform proposals under consideration in Congress that would exclude many legal immigrants from core benefits and impose new verification requirements would have important spillover consequences for taxpayers and other health care consumers. In a new report, MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy offers the first-ever estimates of the size of uninsured immigrant populations in major immigrant-destination states, the number of immigrant workers covered by employer-provided plans, and the share of immigrants employed by small firms likely to be exempted from employer coverage mandates. The report, based on MPI analysis of Census Bureau data, also examines health coverage for immigrants by legal status, age, and poverty levels.
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Taking
Limited English Proficient Adults into Account in the Federal
Adult Education Funding Formula
By Randy Capps, Michael Fix, Margie McHugh, and Serena Yi-Ying
Lin
This new report by MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration
Policy examines the funding formula used to distribute Workforce
Investment Act (WIA) Title II federal funds for adult education,
literacy, and English as a Second Language instruction. Though
all adults with limited English proficiency (LEP) are eligible
for WIA Title II programs, the authors report that the formula
used to distribute $554 million to the states in fiscal 2009 excludes
11.2 million LEP adults with at least a high school education.
With WIA up for reauthorization, the authors suggest there is an
opportunity for policymakers to revisit the funding formula and
related issues.
Download report
Uneven Progress: The Employment Pathways of
Skilled Immigrants in the United States
 By Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix with Peter A. Creticos
More than 1.3 million college-educated immigrants in the United
States are unemployed or working in unskilled jobs because they
are unable to make full use of their academic and professional
credentials, MPI reports in the first assessment yet of the scope
of the “brain waste” problem. The report analyzes
and offers possible solutions for the credentialing and language-barrier
hurdles that deprive the US economy of a rich source of human
capital at a time of increasing competition globally for skilled
talent.
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Report | Press Release
Purchase a hard copy at the MPI bookstore: US | International
 Measures of Change: The Demography and Literacy of Adolescent English Learners
By Jeanne Batalova, Michael Fix, and Julie Murray
This new report provides a demographic profile of students in grades 6-12 who are English Language Learners (ELLs) and focuses on how these students are faring on standardized tests at the national level and in four states: California, Colorado, Illinois, and North Carolina. The authors find wide achievement gaps between ELL and other students at both national and state levels -- a finding with worrying implications for schools trying to meet requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Press Release | Download the Report
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MPI has compiled in one easy-to-access location its key research and data resources on issues, policies, enforcement programs, and more that relate to the immigration reform debate underway in Washington. Visit 
Language
Portal: A Translation and Interpretation Digital Library
Find easy-to-navigate fact sheets, maps, videos, and more chronicling the growth, geographic dispersal, and academic performance of the English language learner (ELL) student population in the United States. More than 5 million students are ELLs, representing nearly 11 percent of US public school enrollment. As immigrants have moved beyond traditional gateway states such as California, Texas, and New York, and as No Child Left Behind Act provisions have made schools responsible for the progress of ELLs, school districts across the United States are having to rapidly develop educational services for this fast-growing group.
There are 1.3 million children in Black immigrant families in the United States, most with parents from Africa and the Caribbean. Children in these families account for 11 percent of all Black children in America and represent a rapidly growing segment of the US population. Yet despite these demographic changes, children in Black immigrant families remain neglected by research studies. To address this important gap in knowledge, MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, with support from the 
The Immigration: Data Matters guide shows where to locate some
of the most credible, up-to-date US and global immigration-related
data compiled by government and non-governmental sources. The
online guide, also available in hard copy, includes clickable
links to resources that offer immigrant population estimates;
the size of the unauthorized immigrant population; English
proficiency rates; the share of immigrants in the workforce;
education, health, and income and poverty statistics relating
to immigrants; and other data.
MPI Data Hub