State Responses to Immigration: A Database of All State Legislation
The State Responses database is a unique, searchable online tool that catalogues all 1,059 immigration-related bills introduced in state legislatures in 2007, and allows users to search legislation by state, geographic region, subject area, bill status, and legislative typology. The database includes a synopsis of each bill and is accompanied by a report, Regulating Immigration at the State Level: Highlights from the Database of 2007 State Immigration Legislation and the Methodology.

New Data Guide On Finding, Using the Most Accurate, Recent Immigration Data Resources
The Immigration: Data Matters guide shows where to locate some of the most credible, up-to-date US and global immigration-related data compiled by government and non-governmental sources. The online guide, also available in hard copy, includes clickable links to resources that offer immigrant population estimates; the size of the unauthorized immigrant population; English proficiency rates; the share of immigrants in the workforce; education, health, and income and poverty statistics relating to immigrants; and other data.
Data Guide | Press Release
For video and audio of the event, click here
Purchase a hard copy at the MPI bookstore: US | International

Language Portal: A Translation and Interpretation Digital Library
National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, February 2008

The Language Portal is a digital library of nearly 600 resources relating to the use of language access services in social services and public safety agencies. The Portal includes legal guidelines, service models, master contracts for service providers, hourly translation and interpretation rates for different languages, pay differentials for multilingual staff, and sample translated documents. The Portal was created to provide “one-stop shopping” for the many local government administrators, policymakers, and others who are looking for ways to provide high-quality and cost-effective translation and interpretation services.

Role of Foreign-born Voters in Elections
MPI election profiles for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, examining voter registration by nativity, providing breakdowns for foreign-born citizens as a share of total state population, and detailing their turnout in the 2004 general election, and by ethnicity.

MPI Data Hub
Click-of-a-button maps of the foreign born and the most up-to-date demographic information on immigrants in each of the 50 states.

MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy is a crossroads for elected officials, researchers, state and local agency managers, grassroots leaders and activists, local service providers, and others who seek to understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities today’s high rates of immigration create in local communities.

Key services the Center provides include: policy-focused research; policy design; leadership development; technical assistance and training for government officials and community leaders; needs assessment, program planning, and evaluation services; and an electronic resource center on immigrant integration issues.

Learn more about the Center.

David Dixon, Julia Gelatt, and Afshin Zilanawala
provide an overview of characteristics of young children (under age 9) of immigrants living in 14 communities throughout the United States.

The fact sheets use 2000 Census data to track the growth of the population of young children of immigrants between 1990 and 2000, their citizenship status, parents’ places of birth, parents’ immigration status, and the shares living in mixed-status families. 

The fact sheets also document parents’ levels of education and English-language ability; parents’ occupations, wages, and labor force participation rates; shares of young children of immigrants living in poverty or low-income households; and rates of benefits use.

Read more and access the profiles.

E Pluribus Unum Prizes: Recognizing Exceptional US Immigrant Integration Initiatives
MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy has launched a new national awards program that will give four $50,000 awards annually to exceptional initiatives that promote immigrant integration in hopes of providing inspiration and program models to others doing similar work. Visit the awards program website for more details.

Uneven Progress: The Employment Pathways of Skilled Immigrants in the United States
By Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix with Peter A. Creticos
More than 1.3 million college-educated immigrants in the United States are unemployed or working in unskilled jobs because they are unable to make full use of their academic and professional credentials, MPI reports in the first assessment yet of the scope of the “brain waste” problem. The report analyzes and offers possible solutions for the credentialing and language-barrier hurdles that deprive the US economy of a rich source of human capital at a time of increasing competition globally for skilled talent.
Download Report | Press Release
Purchase a hard copy at the MPI bookstore: US | International

The Redesigned Citizenship Test: High Stakes
MPI Backgrounder No. 6, September 2008
More than a decade in the making, the redesigned citizenship test required for use after October 1, 2008 is supposed to provide a more meaningful opportunity for applicants to demonstrate knowledge about US history and civics, and allow the government more standardized test administration. This MPI Backgrounder details the redesign process, examines whether the government met its goals, and provides policy recommendations.
Fact Sheet | Press Release

Gambling on the Future: Managing the Education Challenges of Rapid Growth in Nevada
By Aaron Terrazas and Michael Fix
Nevada, the fastest growing state in the United States, is experiencing a population boom – driven in part by immigration – that has key implications for its school system and labor market. Immigrants represent one in five Nevada residents and their children account for one in three Nevadans under age 18. Yet even as schools have experienced a surge in enrollment, federal and state investments in the state's failing education system haven't kept pace.
Download Report | Press Release

Hometown Associations: An Untapped Resource for Immigrant Integration?
By Will Somerville, Jamie Durana, and Aaron Matteo Terrazas
Hometown associations, the organizations that immigrants create for social, economic development, and political empowerment purposes, play an important – and underexamined – role in immigrant integration. Though policymakers focus chiefly on the associations’ development potential, this MPI Insight recommends cooperative interventions to strengthen their immigrant integration capacity.
Download Report | Press Release
Purchase a hard copy at the MPI bookstore: US | International

Los Angeles on the Leading Edge: Immigrant Integration Indicators and Their Policy Implications
By Michael Fix, Margie McHugh, Aaron Matteo Terrazas, and Laureen Laglagaron
April 2008
As Los Angeles makes the transition from being a city of immigrants to one dominated by their US-born children, it can serve as a policy laboratory for other cities facing the need to better integrate immigrants into US classrooms, workplaces, and civic life. MPI’s report details the imperative for integration policies that will benefit immigrants and the broader US society alike.
Download Report | Press Release

Testing the Limits: A Framework for Assessing the Legality of State and Local Immigration Measures
By Cristina Rodríguez, Muzaffar Chishti, and Kimberly Nortman
Report, December 2007
In 2007 alone, the 50 state legislatures have considered over 1,000 pieces of legislation regulating immigrants and immigration. This paper provides a framework for assessing the legal validity of five of the most common or high-profile measures that address unauthorized immigration specifically.

MPI Report Offers First-Time National Estimates of Numbers and Costs to Provide English Instruction to Legal and Unauthorized Immigrant Adults

In order to get to a level of proficiency necessary for civic integration or to begin post-secondary education, approximately 5.8 million adult lawful permanent residents (LPRs) currently in the United States will need about 277 million hours of English language instruction a year for six years.

If only half of adult LPRs were to participate in classroom English instruction and 10 percent of instruction could be done outside the classroom, the additional cost of meeting LPRs’ English instruction needs would be about $200 million a year, for six years, over and above the approximately $1 billion currently spent annually by the federal government and states.

In order to remain in the United States under the terms of the failed Senate immigration bill or to fully participate in U.S. civic life, approximately 6.4 million unauthorized immigrants will need about 319 million hours of English instruction a year for six years. In the event of a broad legalization program for today’s unauthorized population, total projected English instruction costs would increase $2.9 billion a year for six years.

Read the full report.

Measures of Change: The Demography and Literacy of Adolescent English Learners
By Jeanne Batalova, Michael Fix, and Julie Murray
This new report provides a demographic profile of students in grades 6-12 who are English Language Learners (ELLs) and focuses on how these students are faring on standardized tests at the national level and in four states: California, Colorado, Illinois, and North Carolina. The authors find wide achievement gaps between ELL and other students at both national and state levels -- a finding with worrying implications for schools trying to meet requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Press Release | Download the Report

Securing the Future: US Immigrant Integration Policy, A Reader
Edited by Michael Fix, Co-Director of MPI's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy

This volume sketches the contours of a national integration policy and includes a discussion of key integration issues raised by the current debate around immigration reform, including impact aid to state and local governments and financing health care for legalizing immigrants. 

Read more | Order (US)|Order (International)