National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy

Policy Briefs

April 2024

Supporting Immigrant and Refugee Families through Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Services

Young girl talks to a child psychologist

iStock.com/Lacheev

Infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) services can offer vital support for young children’s healthy development. Yet, young children in immigrant and refugee families often do not benefit, due in part to lower levels of health-care coverage and limited cultural responsiveness in the field. This issue brief explores the benefits and barriers to supporting these children via IECMH services, and some ways to close key gaps.

Reports

January 2024

Refining State Accountability Systems for English Learner Success

A high school student answers a math problem on a whiteboard

Allison Shelley/EDUimages

State accountability systems are designed to identify and close student achievement gaps. Yet most do not report and interpret English Learner (EL) outcomes in a way that paints a full picture of how different instructional services have contributed to academic development. This report sketches a vision for reimagined accountability systems that can support better understanding of ELs’ learning and inform school improvement strategies.

Reports

November 2023

The Unmet Potential of Community Consultations in U.S. Refugee Resettlement

Young woman speaks to other participants at a meeting

iStock.com/SDI Productions

As humanitarian migrant arrivals in the United States increase, via refugee resettlement and channels such as temporary parole, communication between the national, state, and local actors involved in supporting their reception and integration is critical. This report examines the goals and design of quarterly resettlement consultations, as well as opportunities to refine these processes to boost their impact and relevance in a changing policy landscape.

Fact Sheets

October 2023

Recent Immigrant Children: A Profile of New Arrivals to U.S. Schools

Allison Shelley/EDUimages

A significant increase in the number of immigrant children in U.S. schools over the last decade has challenged K-12 educators to expand their capacity to serve students with different backgrounds and educational needs. This fact sheet sketches a profile of recently arrived immigrant children, presenting data on top states of residence, national origins, household characteristics, and more.

Policy Briefs

October 2023

Leveraging Data to Ensure Equitable and Effective Adult Skills Programming for Immigrants

Adult immigrant students work together in an English class

iStock.com/shironosov

Immigrants make significant contributions to the U.S. economy and social fabric, but many also face barriers to integration. Adult education and workforce development programs offer services intended to help address such challenges yet can be mismatched to immigrants' needs. This issue brief sketches a profile of U.S.-born and immigrant adults, highlighting key similarities and differences relevant to the design of adult skills programs.

Policy Briefs

July 2023

ESSER: Moving the Needle on Equitable and Adequate Education Funding for English Learners

4th and 5th grade students working on posters

Allison Shelley/EDUimages

The pandemic and move to remote learning affected students across the United States, and certain groups—including the nation’s 5 million English Learners (ELs)—were hit particularly hard. At the same time, the federal government made unprecedented investments in public K-12 education to counter the pandemic’s adverse impacts. This issue brief explores the ways school districts have invested these funds to support ELs.

Featured

English Learners and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) includes a number of new requirements for the education of English Learners (ELs), including standardized criteria for identifying EL students and inclusion of English proficiency as a measurement of school quality. Resources on this page can help inform decisions such as how quickly schools must improve and how states can intervene with struggling districts.

Featured

ELL Information Center

The English Language Learner (ELL) Information Center provides informative fact sheets, maps, and state-level data resources that chronicle the demography and trends of immigrant families and their children.

Recent Activity

Multimedia April 24, 2023 Strengthening Medical and Mental Health Services for Unaccompanied Children in U.S. Communities	Multimedia April 19, 2023 Career and Technical Education as a Bridge to High School English Learner Success
Reports April 2023 A Path to Meeting the Medical and Mental Health Needs of Unaccompanied Children in U.S. Communities By Jonathan Beier and Karla Fredricks	Reports April 2023 Unlocking Opportunities: Supporting English Learners’ Equitable Access to Career and Technical Education By Julie Sugarman
Policy Briefs March 2023 Recommendations for the Task Force on New Americans By Margie McHugh, Jacob Hofstetter, Jeanne Batalova, Michael Fix, Valerie Lacarte, Maki Park, Delia Pompa and Julie Sugarman	Policy Briefs March 2023 SNAP Access and Participation in U.S.-Born and Immigrant Households: A Data Profile By Valerie Lacarte, Lillie Hinkle and Briana L. Broberg
Fact Sheets December 2022 The Skills and Economic Outcomes of Immigrant and U.S.-Born College Graduates By Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix	Policy Briefs December 2022 Four Strategies to Improve Community Services for Unaccompanied Children in the United States By Jonathan Beier, Lauren Farwell, Rhonda Fleischer and Essey Workie

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Policy Briefs December 2022 Four Strategies to Improve Community Services for Unaccompanied Children in the United States By Jonathan Beier, Lauren Farwell, Rhonda Fleischer and Essey Workie	Fact Sheets November 2022 A Profile of Low-Income Immigrants in the United States By Julia Gelatt, Valerie Lacarte and Joshua Rodriguez
Fact Sheets October 2022 Dual Language Learners: Key Characteristics and Considerations for Early Childhood Programs By Ivana Tú Nhi Giang and Maki Park	Policy Briefs October 2022 Overlooked but Essential: Language Access in Early Childhood Programs By Maki Park, Jacob Hofstetter and Ivana Tú Nhi Giang
Policy Briefs October 2022 Diverging Pathways: Immigrants’ Legal Status and Access to Postsecondary Credentials By Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix	Reports July 2022 The Missing Link: Connecting Eligible Asylees and Asylum Seekers with Benefits and Services By Essey Workie, Lillie Hinkle and Stephanie Heredia
Reports July 2022 Changing the Playbook: Immigrants and the COVID-19 Response in Two U.S. Communities By Randy Capps and Michael Fix	Policy Briefs June 2022 Immigrant Children’s Medicaid and CHIP Access and Participation: A Data Profile By Valerie Lacarte

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Policy Beat

February 11, 2015

As Implementation Nears, U.S. Deferred Action Programs Encounter Legal, Political Tests

President Obama's sweeping executive action to shield as many as 3.7 million unauthorized immigrants who are parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents from deportation is facing tough legal and political challenges. This month's Policy Beat examines the efforts to proceed with implementation of DAPA and the expansion of DACA despite a lawsuit brought by a coalition of 26 states and staunch opposition in the Republican-controlled Congress.

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Video

November 8, 2021

MPI Turns 20

As MPI celebrates two decades of providing essential research, policy analysis, and data on important immigration and immigrant integration issues, hear from members of the MPI community about what the institute has meant to them and how it has evolved.

Expert Q&A, Audio

November 5, 2021

Immigrant Integration: Essential to the Success of Immigration Policy

In this World of Migration podcast episode, Margie McHugh, director of MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, chats with Ivana Tú Nhi Giang about the important role of integration, for immigrants themselves and the broader society, and the varying degrees of intentionality in integration policy design around the world.

Video, Audio

November 2, 2021

Effects of the Pandemic on High School English Learners and Ways to Help Them Recover

This webinar examines how the pandemic upended school life, the challenges for high school English Learners (ELs), state- and district-level efforts that can help ELs recover academically and address mental health needs, and the results of new research on the postsecondary aspirations of immigrant-background Latina/o students following the pandemic.

Video, Audio

October 21, 2021

Translating Into Success: Key Features of U.S. State & Local Language Access Laws and Policies

On this webinar, MPI researchers examine common features and notable areas of innovation they found in a scan of state and local language access laws and policies in more than 40 states, along with practical insights that local governments can employ as they face growing linguistic diversity in their communities.

Audio

June 24, 2021

Brain Waste among Highly Skilled Immigrants in the United States: A Persistent Problem with Increasing Costs

During this webcast, experts discuss findings from a report examining at U.S. and state levels the underemployment of college graduates by nativity and by race and ethnicity, in the process revealing patterns of economic inequality.

Recent Activity

Commentaries

December 2016

New Data Resources Can Help Improve Targeting of State Early Childhood and Parent-Focused Programs

As states work to build high-quality early childhood systems and implement the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) and Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), having detailed knowledge of the characteristics of immigrant parents can help maximize the effectiveness of programs that seek to improve child and family outcomes, as this commentary explains.

Fact Sheets

December 2016

State Sociodemographic Portraits of Immigrant and U.S.-Born Parents of Young Children

These fact sheets provide a sociodemographic sketch of parents with children ages 0 to 8 in the 30 states with the largest number of immigrant families, offering data and analysis of some of the key parental characteristics to help stakeholders identify populations that could be targets for early childhood and parent-focused programs working to improve child and parent outcomes.

Video, Audio

December 7, 2016

Doctors as Taxi Drivers: The Costs of Brain Waste among Highly Skilled Immigrants in the United States

A presentation of the first-ever U.S. estimates on the economic costs of brain waste for highly skilled immigrants, their families, and the U.S. economy. The researchers discuss their findings in terms of the billions of dollars in forgone earnings and unrealized taxes when college-educated immigrants are relegated to low-skilled work.

Video, Expert Q&A

December 6, 2016

Brain Waste: Researchers Discuss Economic Costs of Skill Underutilization among Highly Skilled Immigrants

Nearly 2 million college-educated immigrants in the United States are stuck in low-skilled jobs or are unemployed—a phenomenon known as brain waste. In this brief video, MPI researchers discuss their key findings on immigrant skill underutilization and the resulting billions of dollars in unrealized wages and forgone federal, state, and local tax receipts.

Fact Sheets

December 2016

The Costs of Brain Waste among Highly Skilled Immigrants in Select States

Across the United States, nearly 2 million immigrants with college degrees are unemployed or stuck in low-skilled jobs. This skill underutilization, known as “brain waste,” varies significantly by state. These fact sheets offer a profile of these highly skilled immigrants and estimate their forgone earnings and resulting unrealized tax receipts in eight states: California, Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.

Reports

December 2016

Untapped Talent: The Costs of Brain Waste among Highly Skilled Immigrants in the United States

Nearly 2 million immigrants with college degrees in the United States—one out of every four—are employed in low-skilled jobs or unable to find work. This report explores this skill underutilization, often referred to as brain waste, and offers the first-ever economic costs of underemployment for immigrants in the United States: More than $39 billion in forgone wages and a resulting $10 billion in unrealized tax receipts.

Video, Audio, Webinars

November 17, 2016

Including Immigrant and Refugee Families in Two-Generation Programs: Elements of Successful Programs and Challenges Posed by WIOA Implementation

MPI experts discuss their analysis of data on U.S. foreign- and native-born parents with young children, along with their findings from a field study of select two-generation programs that serve immigrant and refugee families. They explore the implications of WIOA and recommendations for successful program and policy design.

Reports

November 2016

Serving Immigrant Families Through Two-Generation Programs: Identifying Family Needs and Responsive Program Approaches

Two-generation programs that weave together early childhood learning with adult-focused programs hold great potential to break cycles of intergenerational poverty for low-income parents with young children. Little research has been done on how these programs succeed with immigrant families. This report studies select programs and offers analysis of the sociodemographic characteristics of U.S. parents with young children.

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