Congress’s failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform has increased the pressure on state and local governments to address the issue of immigration in areas within their control. Some have undertaken purely restrictive or punitive measures aimed at making communities less hospitable to immigrants. On the other hand some have explored ways to more effectively incorporate immigrants into their communities, investing in immigrants instead of marginalizing them. This article presents a “menu” of affirmative measures available to state and local governments.

Tanya Broder, Jonathan Blazer

Copyright September 2007, National Immigration Law Center

www.nilc.org

This brief analyzes the impact of the California health care reform proposals introduced by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, and Senator Sheila Kuehl on the uninsured in general and on communities of color in particular.

The Having Our Say Coalition, http://cpehn.org/havingoursay.php

This brief sheds new light on immigrant children and their families in California, challenging misinformed, negative stereotypes with the most current and accurate data available. The information presented also shows that, while many children in immigrant families are thriving, too many are struggling. Out of this knowledge new opportunities arise to ensure even greater success is achieved by this large subgroup of the state’s population.

© 2007 Children Now, http://www.childrennow.org

This report discusses the importance of expanding immigrants’ access to health insurance.

Susan Okie, MD

The New England Journal of Medicine

This short piece provides a look at the life of Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, an undocumented immigrant who started out as a farm laborer and eventually became a neurosurgeon at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, MD

New England Journal of Medicine 

This report provides estimates of the number of unauthorized immigrants residing in the United States as of January 2006 by period of entry, region and country of origin, and state of residence.  It is a publication of the Office of Immigration Statistics of the Department of Homeland Security.

Michael Hoefoer, Nancy Rytina, and Christopher Campbell

© 2007 Office of Immigration Statistics, Department of Homeland Security

This report gives a quantitative overview of introduced legislation and briefly analyzes enacted laws relating to immigrants and refugees. This report not only includes legislative proposals and laws solely concerned with immigration enforcement but also all those in which immigrants – whether authorized or unauthorized, migrants, aliens and refugees are affected.

Dirk Hegen
Immigrant Policy Project
National Conference of State Legislatures

This report provides census-based estimates on the number, educational attainment, and English skills of adults who are lawful permanent residents (LPRs) or unauthorized immigrants. It translates these numbers into estimates of the hours of instruction these immigrants will need to achieve the English skills necessary for civic integration or what some refer to as “patriotic assimilation” into US society, and, in the case of youth age 17 to 24, the English skills necessary for postsecondary study. The report includes both national- and state-level estimates of instructional needs and the costs associated with meeting them.

Margie McHugh, Julia Gelatt, and Michael Fix
© 2007 Migration Policy Institute, http://www.migrationinformation.org

Using data from the National Day Labor Survey, this report examines the day labor population and looks at the ways local governments are responding to the presence of day labor markets in their communities.

Arturo Gonzalez

© 2007 Public Policy Institute of California, http://www.ppic.org

This policy brief reviews research studies on undocumented immigration and public benefits, with specific attention to health insurance benefits. Because so few studies examine the migration of undocumented immigrants for health benefits, we also review two directly related areas of inquiry: 1) the relationship between public benefits offered by a state and the destination choice of legal immigrants to the United States; and 2) the migration of low-income citizens across state lines in response to public benefits offered by states.

Joshua S. Yang, Steven P. Wallace

UCLA Center for Health Policy Research

© 2007 Regents of the University of California