A Program of the Urban Institute
For over 25 years, the Urban Institute has studied U.S. immigrants—their impacts, settlement patterns, and incorporation into the labor market, as well as the integration of immigrant families and children.
About the Program
The Immigration Studies Program studies how immigrants enter the U.S. labor market at both the lower-skilled and higher-skilled levels. Immigrants compose one in nine U.S. residents, but one in seven workers and one in five low-wage workers. Our research addresses immigrants' contributions to the U.S. economy and tax base as well as lower-paid immigrants' needs for work supports such as tax credits, health insurance, and child care.
The composition of the U.S. child population is also changing: one in five U.S. children and one in four low-income children has an immigrant parent. Because so many immigrants work in low-wage jobs without benefits, their children are more at risk in terms of poverty, economic hardship, and lack of access to health insurance, public benefits, child care, and other needed services.
Additionally, our research distinguishes citizens from noncitizens, legal from undocumented immigrants, and refugees from other immigrants. Clarifying these distinctions allows for more meaningful analysis of the impacts of public policy on immigrant families.
What's New
As the 110th Congress prepared to debate a sweeping immigration bill, a panel of experts at the Urban Institute debated complex questions about whether immigration reform would boost the economy or provide unfair competition to native workers. Listen to the March 6 forum.
Over one fifth of all U.S. children have at least one immigrant parent, and child welfare systems are encountering large and increasing numbers of these children. The first three briefs in the Identifying Immigrant Families with Child Welfare Systems series provide some of the first data on first- and second- generation Latin American immigrant children in out-of-home care in Texas.
Recent Findings
Immigrants play a large role in regional economies.
Immigrants contribute strongly to the Washington, DC region's economy and tax base. Over 1 million immigrants, from many countries of origin, represent 19 percent of the region's total household income and 18 percent of all taxes paid. Our research shows how the most educated and highest earners pay more in taxes than natives.
A two-part UI study finds that Arkansas is the home to the country's fastest-growing Hispanic population. Arkansas' industrial concentration has brought many jobs, particularly at the high and low ends of the income scale. Employers used to complain about high turnover in those jobs before the recent immigration wave. It's expensive to train—and then lose—a worker, and immigrants are generally willing to stay on the job longer.
Immigrants are also a growing and important part of the Louisville community—its local economy and workforce—while the children of immigrants are a fast-growing segment of the school-age population. Our work outlines the demographic characteristics, strengths, service needed, and assets of Louisville's immigrants.
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Immigrants compose a growing share of workers in America.
Half of all workers entering the workforce in the 1990s were immigrants. While many enter the United States with strong academic credentials and skills, many do not. Immigrants represent 20 percent of low-wage workers, defined as those earning below twice the minimum wage. Of these low earners, nearly two-thirds do not speak English very well and most have had little formal education.
Unauthorized immigrants numbered 2.45 million in California in 2004, representing almost one-quarter (24 percent) of the nation's total (10.3 million). There are about 1 million unauthorized immigrants in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, almost twice the number of any other metro area; the unauthorized are one-tenth of the area's population (10 million).
Contrary to public perception, women make up a substantial share—41 percent—of the adult undocumented population. Compared to native women, fewer immigrant women work outside the home. Undocumented men have a labor force participation rate over 90 percent—higher than that for U.S. citizen men—but undocumented women have a rate around two-thirds, substantially lower than for other women. Weaker job market opportunities and limited access to child care may be partial explanations for lower work effort among immigrant women.
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Young children of immigrants compose a growing share of the young child population.
Recent Urban Institute research on the health and well-being of young children under 6 in immigrant families finds that they are the fastest-growing piece of the child population—and comparatively little is known about them. Policies that can provide a much-needed boost, such as child care and early education, are being scrutinized for their effects on the health, well-being, and school readiness of children of immigrants.
One troubling trend is that children of immigrants use public benefits less often than children of natives, despite higher rates of poverty. Their noncitizen parents may be reluctant to approach public institutions for services despite their children's citizenship and eligibility.
We already know that young low-income children of immigrants are twice as likely to be uninsured as those of natives (22 versus 11 percent), and they are more likely to live in crowded housing and families with difficulty affording food. Many of these children are cared for at home by their immigrant parents rather than in center-based child care (53 versus 34 percent for children of natives). This trend is troubling because child care in center-based settings may benefit a child's early development and socialization and ease the transition from home to school.
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The No Child Left Behind law introduced policy changes that will have big impacts on schools with large numbers of Limited English Proficient (LEP) students.
Between 1970 and 1990, the share of children of immigrants in Kindergarten through 12th grade tripled from 6 to 19 percent. Children of immigrants are significantly more likely than those of natives to be limited English proficient, live in low-income families, and have parents with less than a high school degree. These factors put children of immigrants at risk for lower performance on subject area tests. However, debates over educational opportunity—on issues such as vouchers, high stakes testing, and learning standards—have rarely taken these children's needs into account.
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA), the new standards-based education law that pushes schools to make yearly progress, may be an exception. The law imposes tough new requirements on all schools receiving federal assistance, especially those with high shares of children from immigrant backgrounds. Schools must ensure that increasing shares of students pass standardized assessments each year until 2014, when all students must pass these tests. NCLBA mandates that schools improve the performance of certain groups of students—including low-income students and those who aren't proficient in English—or face interventions. Schools must also staff each classroom—including bilingual and English immersion classes—with fully qualified teachers, and they must effectively engage parents, even when these parents don't speak English. About 80 percent of students with limited English skills have parents who are also LEP.
Effective strategies to teach English to LEP students and improve their performance on standardized tests are not well understood. Two-thirds of these students are U.S. born; 80 percent of LEP students have been in this country for five or more years. In addition, they are highly concentrated: over half go to schools where a third or more of their fellow students are also LEP.
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Welfare reform represents a dramatic shift in immigrant policy; proposed changes could make it harder for immigrants to receive language or vocational training.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 rewrote the rules on immigrants' access to public benefits. Specifically, the new law tied the receipt of benefits more directly to citizenship. It also drew a sharp distinction between legal immigrants arriving before and after the law's enactment (Undocumented immigrants were ineligible for almost all benefits before PRWORA). As legislators hoped, PRWORA has reduced the dollars spent on immigrants' use of some public benefits, including TANF and food stamps.
Despite restrictions and the declining use of welfare nationally, immigrants and limited English speakers make up a significant share of those on the welfare rolls. PRWORA's strict work requirements keep states from providing immigrants with much needed training and education, particularly English as a Second Language instruction. The new requirements may affect the mobility of the immigrants remaining on the rolls as they have few skills or work history.
Since 1996, immigrants and their children have made gains in their access to Medicaid and food stamps. Medicaid policy changes introduced following welfare reform's enactment and the introduction of the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1998 have led to a rise in the public health care coverage of children of immigrants as well as a decline in their share of without health insurance. Immigrant adults, however, have not seen comparable declines in uninsurance or improvements in public coverage, since their access to Medicaid remains restricted.
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Settlements of new immigrants are more widely dispersed.
Historically, immigrants settled mainly in California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois. Between 1990 and 2000, however, the foreign-born population more than doubled across a wide band of states in the Southeast, Midwest, and Rocky Mountain region. At the same time, the share of the immigrant population in the six earlier destination states fell from 75 percent to 68 percent.
Public benefits do not appear to have driven these migration choices. In fact, most of the "new growth" states don't have strong safety nets for immigrant families. Compared with the immigrant population as a whole, recent immigrants to these states have fewer marketable skills, lower incomes, a weaker command of English, and are more likely to need benefits and services. Yet, the new growth states have fewer experienced bilingual teachers and immigrant organizations, and many restrict legal immigrants' access to the social safety net.
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The Program Team
The Immigration Studies program's seasoned experts on immigrants in the United States, their integration, and the policies that affect them include:
- Randy Capps, senior research associate, an expert in immigration policy, welfare reform, and welfare-to-work programs;
- Harriet Orcutt Duleep, principal research associate, an expert on the economic progress of immigrants;
- Everett Henderson, research associate, an expert in immigrant children and families;
- Wendy Zimmermann, senior research associate, an expert in immigration policy, integration patterns and welfare.
Publications
The Immigration Studies program features many publications on the various facets of immigration:
