The Health and Well-Being of Young Children of Immigrants

Provides an overview of immigration trends and their effects on the composition of the young child population. Looks at poverty, family structure, parental work patterns, immigrant parents' education, health status, and health insurance coverage

Immigrants, Welfare Reform, and the U.S. Safety Net

Beginning with the 1996 federal welfare reform law many of the central safety net programs in the U.S. eliminated eligibility for legal immigrants, who had been previously eligible on the same terms as citizens. These dramatic cutbacks affected eligibility not only for cash welfare assistance for families with children, but also for food stamps, Medicaid, SCHIP, and SSI. In this paper, we comprehensively examine the status of the U.S. safety net for immigrants and their family members. We document the policy changes that affected immigrant eligibility for these programs and use the CPS for 1995-2010 to analyze trends in program participation, income, and poverty among immigrants (and natives). We pay particular attention to the recent period and examine how immigrants and their children are faring in the “Great Recession” with an eye toward revealing how these policy changes have affected the success of the safety net in protecting this population.

Inclusive Policies Advance Dramatically in the States: Immigrants' Access to Driver's Licenses, Higher Education, Workers' Rights, and Community Policing

As Congress debated federal immigration reform this year, states led the way by adopting policies designed to integrate immigrants more fully in their communities. In the wake of the 2012 elections, with Latino and Asian voters participating in record numbers,1 the 2013 state legislative sessions witnessed a significant increase in pro-immigrant activity. Issues that had been dormant or had moved in a restrictive direction for years, such as expanding access to driver's licenses, gained considerable traction, along with measures improving access to education and workers' rights for immigrants.This report summarizes the activity on immigrant issues that took place during the states' 2013 legislative sessions, as well as efforts to improve access to services for immigrant youth

Public Finance and Individual Preferences Over Globalization Strategies

In the absence of distortionary tax and spending policies, freer immigration and trade for a country would often be supported by similar groups thanks to similar impacts on labor income. But government policies that redistribute income may alter the distributional politics. In particular, immigrants may pay taxes and receive public services. Imports, obviously, can do neither of these. This suggests quite different political coalitions may organize around trade and immigration. In this paper we develop a framework for examining how pre-tax and post-tax cleavages may differ across globalization strategies and also fiscal jurisdictions. We then apply this framework to the case of individual immigration and trade preferences across U.S. states. We have two main findings. First, high exposure to immigrant fiscal pressures reduces support for freer immigration among natives, especially the more-skilled. Second, there is no public-finance variation in opinion over trade policy, consistent with the data that U.S. trade policy has negligible fiscal-policy impacts. Public-finance concerns appear to be crucial in shaping opinions towards alternative globalization strategies.

Public Finance and Individual Preferences over Globalization Strategies

In the absence of distortionary tax and spending policies, freer immigration and trade for a country would often be supported by similar groups thanks to similar impacts on labor income. But government policies that redistribute income may alter the distributional politics. In particular, immigrants may pay taxes and receive public services. Imports, obviously, can do neither of these. This suggests quite different political coalitions may organize around trade and immigration. In this paper we develop a framework for examining how pre-tax and post-tax cleavages may differ across globalization strategies and also fiscal jurisdictions. We then apply this framework to the case of individual immigration and trade preferences across U.S. states. We have two main findings. First, high exposure to immigrant fiscal pressures reduces support for freer immigration among natives, especially the more-skilled. Second, there is no public-finance variation in opinion over trade policy, consistent with the data that U.S. trade policy has negligible fiscal-policy impacts. Public-finance concerns appear to be crucial in shaping opinions towards alternative globalization strategies.

Preventive Detention Distorted: Why It Is Unconstitutional to Detain Immigrants Without Procedural Protections

There are two main problems with the current immigration detention system: the conditions of confinement and the procedural mechanisms that are used to detain noncitizens. The current conditions of confinement cast serious doubt on the constitutionality of the detention system. Although it is purportedly civil, immigration detention is very much a punitive institution. Moreover, there is no binding regulation governing the operation of detention facilities or the conduct of detention staff. The problems that stem from this lack of regulatory oversight are compounded by the fact that many detention centers are run as for-profit businesses. More fundamentally, noncitizens are detained without the procedural protections that inhere in all other preventive detention contexts. Because there is no principled justification for this aberration, the constitutionality of the detention system is, at best, highly suspect. At a minimum, immigrants should receive pre-detention hearings to determine whether their detention is in the government’s interest, and there should be time constraints imposed on pre-removal order detention