Immigrants

The immigrant population in the United States has burgeoned over the past few decades. From 1990 to 2006, the number of immigrants rose from 20 million to more than 37 million. Urban Institute immigration policy experts study how the foreign-born population is growing, integrating, and changing.

We have analyzed immigrants' contributions to the labor force and the economy, tracked fast-growing immigrant communities, studied the effect of No Child Left Behind on immigrant children and English Language Learners, and surveyed foreign-born households’ health, well-being, and economic mobility. Read more.

Featured Links

• Metrotrends: Immigration and Employment

  Contact an expert on Immigration Policy

• Children of Immigrants Data Tool
• Five Questions: Karina Fortuny on five key national and state characteristics of children of immigrants

Related Policy Centers

• Center on Labor, Human Resources, & Population

Publications on Immigrants

Racial and ethnic differentials in uninsurance rates could be greatly reduced under the Affordable Care Act, potentially cutting the black-white differential by more than half and the Hispanic-white differential by just under one-quarter. Improving coverage for these populations will depend on states adopting policies that promote high enrollment in Medicaid/CHIP and new insurance exchanges. Coverage gains among Hispanics will depend on policies in California and Texas (where almost half of Hispanics live). If the projected coverage gains are realized, long-standing racial and ethnic differentials in access to care and health status could shrink considerably. This research was funded in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

A multiyear qualitative study describes how low-income parents view their supply of child care, how they learn about their options, and barriers to access. Common impediments include nonstandard schedules, inflexible employers, and unreliable transportation. Challenges are even more intense for immigrants, parents lacking English proficiency, and parents of infants and of children with special needs. Head Start can't enroll enough children to meet demand, and though many families qualify for child care assistance, CCDF spending is capped. Enhancing investment in these resources would help low-income working families get the higher quality and more stable care children need.

A multiyear qualitative study finds low-income families seeking dependable child care are hampered by unsteady work, fluctuating wages, and unreliable transportation. Given many low-wage workers' difficulties finding jobs, especially in the Great Recession, parents selected child care arrangements within constraints imposed by employers rather than what they felt optimal for their children's development. Policy changes could bridge the gap between working parents and professional child care centers. For example, increasing public funding for Head Start, Early Head Start, and child care subsidies would encourage child care providers to extend hours, which would better accommodate more families' work schedules.

This report describes the work the Urban Institute performed to generate the Model of Income in the Near Term, Version 6 (MINT6). MINT is a tool developed for the Social Security Administration (SSA) to analyze the distributional consequences of Social Security reform proposals. MINT is a micro-level data file of individuals born between 1926 and 2075. It starts with a rich set of income and demographic characteristics from the 2001 and 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data linked to SSA data on earnings and benefits. MINT then projects these characteristics until death or the year 2099.

Immigration is transforming the U.S. labor force with important consequences for Social Security's adequacy and finances. Using longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation matched to administrative data on lifetime earnings and benefit receipt, we measure the extent to which nonnatives' lifetime earning patterns, payroll taxes paid, benefits received, and total incomes differ from those for the U.S.-born population. We consider other outcomes important to retirement security, like health status, marital status, and financial wealth. We also compare various immigrant groups with one another. Our findings stress heterogeneity in labor force and Social Security experiences among immigrants.

The increase in undocumented immigration between 1999 and 2007 contributed to an increase in the number of uninsured people in the United States. During this period, the number of undocumented immigrants increased from an estimated 8.5 million to 11.8 million, leading to an estimated additional 1.8 million uninsured. Undocumented immigrants accounted for one in seven of the uninsured in 2007, up from one in eight in 1999. Since undocumented immigrants will not be eligible for public insurance or private coverage obtained through exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, they will eventually constitute a larger percentage of the uninsured population.

Growth in the number of children in immigrant families during the 2000s offset the decline in children with native-born parents. Between 2000 and 2009, the minority share of U.S. children under age 18 increased from 38 to 44 percent, driven by growth in the number of Hispanic and non-Hispanic Asian children and a decline in non-Hispanic white children. While the increase in minority children included children with foreign-and native-born parents, children of immigrants accounted for most of the growth. This brief highlights important trends in the changing demographics of the U.S. child population nationally and across states.

The majority (84 percent) of the 17 million children of immigrants in the United States live in the 100 largest metropolitan areas. Children of immigrants drove the growth in the child population under age 18 nationally and in the largest metros: if it was not for them, the child population in the top 100 metros overall and in many metros would have declined in the last decade. Driven by immigration and population momentum, the child minority share across the top 100 metros reached 51 percent in 2009 and many of the largest metros became "majority minority" metros.