Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/DanPerezLopez

The Urban Institute developed this profile of the foreign-born in Lowell, Massachusetts for members of the One Lowell Coalition: a regional coalition working on immigrant and refugee integration. The profile describes Lowell's immigrant population in terms of its growth, diversity, settlement patterns, English language ability, poverty, and citizenship trends.

The Urban Institute developed this profile of the foreign-born in Nashville, Tennessee for members of the Nashville New American Coalition: a regional coalition working on immigrant and refugee integration. The profile describes Nashville's immigrant population in terms of its growth, diversity, settlement patterns, English language ability, poverty, and citizenship trends.

The Urban Institute developed this profile of the foreign-born in Portland, Oregon for members of Project Interwoven Tapestry: a regional coalition working on immigrant and refugee integration. The profile describes Portland's immigrant population in terms of its growth, diversity, settlement patterns, English language ability, poverty, and citizenship trends.

Immigrants make up one in nine U.S. residents, one in seven U.S. workers, and one in five low-wage workers. Immigrants are overrepresented among both low-wage and less educated U.S. workers. Since so many immigrants work and so many hold low-wage jobs, they could potentially benefit from post- as well as pre-employment services. Unfortunately, most publicly funded training programs assume that participants have 9th grade levels of literacy, numeracy, and basic English skills. This brief recommends revamping the Workforce Investment Act and tailoring job-training programs to serve limited English proficient populations, build language assessment capacity, and combine job training with English language, basic education, and literacy instruction.

This guidebook was designed by Urban Institute researchers, in consultation with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, to help policy makers, program implementers, and advocates use U.S. Census and other data sources to identify immigrant populations in their communities--their characteristics, their contributions, and their needs. The guidebook discusses national trends in immigration and addresses public policy questions that can be analyzed using these data. It provides users with advice on how to identify immigrants in the data and cautions them on data limitations. The guidebook also includes an analysis of the immigrant population in Providence, Rhode Island, by way of example.

This report provides findings from a 1999-2000 survey of 3400 immigrant families in Los Angeles County and New York City, two cities that account for roughly a quarter of the nation's immigrant population. The survey was conducted in five languages and probed the respondents' legal status (naturalized citizen, legal permanent resident, refugee, undocumented immigrant, etc.). The report measures housing affordability, food insecurity and hunger among immigrant populations. Health insurance coverage, health care access and self-reported health status are also highlighted. The study uses these measures to assess the need for food stamps, Medicaid and other benefits and services and differing immigrant subpopulations.

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