The Integration of Immigrant Families in the United States

Another version of this paper will be published in The Citizen's Commission for Civil Rights Biennial Report on Federal Civil Rights and Enforcement, forthcoming 2001. Earlier versions of this paper were presented in Los Angeles, California at the symposium of the Building the New American Community Project sponsored by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement and in Miami, Florida at the conference Strengthening Immigrant Families and American Communities: Strategies for a New Century sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The authors would like to express their appreciation to Laureen Laglagaron for her expert assistance.

Support for the research and writing of this report was provided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Urban Institute or any of its sponsors.

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Table of Contents

I. INTRODUCTION

II. WHY DISCUSS THE INTEGRATION OF IMMIGRANT FAMILIES?

Continuing mismatch between immigration and immigrant policies

Averting unintended consequences

Population dispersal

Shifting political climate

Strong but faltering economy

Deeper knowledge base

Policy targets: PRWORA and ESEA reauthorizations

III. HOW IS THE IMMIGRANT FAMILY CHANGING?

High flows

Dispersal

Changing origins and rapid rise in Mexican migration

Increased share of undocumented

Large share of immigrants in families

Predominance of mixed status families

IV. HOW WELL ARE IMMIGRANT FAMILIES FARING?

Change across generations

Language acquisition among school age children

Household income growth

Benefitting from the boom economy

Increased naturalizations

Increased poverty among school-age children

Segregation of LEPs in schools

High drop out rates

High but rapidly falling rates of welfare use

Rising uninsurance rates

V. INTEGRATION POLICY: SELECTED CONCEPTUAL AND DESIGN ISSUES

Setting expectations for immigrant family integration

Determining the reach of antidiscrimination principles

Limiting immigrant families’ support obligations

Apportioning intergovernmental roles and responsibilities

Targeting integration policies to discrete populations

Choosing between mainstream and targeted programs

Identifying strategies for leveraging the private sector

Assessing the merits of a national office for immigrants and refugees

VI. WHAT DOES THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SPEND ON IMMMIGRANT FAMILY INTEGRATION?

Federal spending on targeted programs

Impact assistance

Targeted services

Refugee resettlement

Refugee education

Federal bilingual education

Migrant education

ESL for adults

Spending on immigrant families in mainstream federal programs

VII. SELECTED DIRECTIONS FOR THE FUTURE

1. Safety net

2. Education

3. Employment

4. Housing and community development

5. Creation of institutions focused on immigrant integration

References

Figures and Tables

Figure 1. Current Levels Are High

Figure 2. Immigrant Numbers Are at Peak – Percentage Is Not

Figure 3. Concentration is High, But New Centers Emerge in '90s

Figure 4. Most Legal Immigrants from Latin America and Asia

Figure 5. Rapid Growth of Mexican Population

Figure 6. Legal Status of Immigrants

Figure 7. Undocumented Population Returns to Pre-IRCA Levels

Figure 8. Household Type by Nativity of Household Head: 1998

Figure 9. "Mixed" Families Are Common

Figure 10. Large Share of Low-Income Families with Children are Mixed

Figure 11. Integration is Dynamic

Figure 12. Immigrant Unemployment Rate Declines

Figure 13. Immigrant Wages Rise Slowly

Figure 14. Immigrants Less Likely to Have Employer-Provided Health Insurance

Figure 15. Naturalizations Surge in Wake of IRCA

Figure 16. More Immigrant Children are Poor

Figure 17. LEPs are Linguistically Segregated

Figure 18. Immigrant Welfare Use Declines Faster than Citizen Use

Figure 19. Low Income Immigrant Families with Children Use Less Welfare

Figure 20. Program Percentage Change for All MHUs (families): for the U.S., 1994-1999

Figure 21. Enrollment in Adult Education Programs: 1994-98





Table 1. Targeted Federal Spending on Immigrants

Table 2. Emergency Immigrant Education Program (EIEP) Funding: 1985-2001

Table 3. Federal Refugee Resettlement Program Funding: 1990-2001

Table 4. Federal Bilingual Education Funding: 1991-2001

Table 5. Federal Funding for Migrant Education Program: 1990-2001

Table 6. Federal Funding for Adult Education Programs: 1992-2001

INTRODUCTION

What do we know about the integration of immigrant families within the United States—the progress these families are making and their reception in the communities where they settle? How are immigrants affected by the nation’s integration policies or lack thereof? What directions might immigrant integration and the policies governing it take in the future?

In examining these issues, this paper proceeds from two straightforward assumptions:

• The nation may be ready for a period of constructive engagement on the issue of how best to integrate immigrant families into U.S. society.
• A basic mismatch exists between the nation’s essentially liberal, if highly regulated immigration policies and its historically laissez-faire immigrant policies. That is, despite the fact that the nation admits more immigrants who are on track for citizenship than any other country, U.S. immigrant integration policies have essentially been ad hoc and small-scale.

We begin the paper by noting several reasons for starting a discussion of the integration of immigrant families now. We proceed to examine some of the demographic imperatives for an integration agenda and selected trends in immigrant integration. With these trends in mind, we explore some of the conceptual and design issues that should inform an integration agenda for immigrant families. We then document trends in recent spending on immigrant integration and conclude by touching on several substantive areas and issues that we believe bear further work.

Because the reach of the paper is rather broad, we should note several of its limitations. The paper relies heavily on analyses conducted by the Urban Institute, and as such our themes and findings are drawn less from the rich literature on integration than our own institution’s analyses. We also acknowledge that our demographic measures and our metrics of integration do not include several important trends such as political participation. Despite our own past emphasis on the merits of disaggregating the immigrant population by legal status, duration of residence, national origin, and the like, we have presented more aggregated findings than we might have preferred, owing to data and resource limits.

The reader will find that we do not advance a firm, narrowly drawn definition of immigrant family integration—the term will have different meanings for different people. We do believe, however, that a definition should involve not only an accounting of immigrants’ mobility over time, but encompass notions of community change as well.

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