The County-Level View of Unauthorized Immigrants and Implications for Executive Action Implementation

As the federal government, immigrant and legal service providers, educators, and others prepare for implementation of the expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and a new deferred action program, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) has released new profiles of unauthorized immigrants for counties in the United States with the largest populations potentially eligible for DACA or the new Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program (known as DAPA). The profiles for 94 counties in 24 states include population size, countries and regions of origin, recency of arrival, educational enrollment and attainment, English proficiency, industries of employment, health insurance coverage, and the size of potential DACA and DAPA populations. The county profiles are the latest additions to an MPI online data tool that already has national and state-level profiles of the unauthorized. Experts from MPI to discuss some of the interesting county-level findings, and  top officials from Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. and the National Council of La Raza talk about the implications of the data for implementation of the DACA and DAPA programs.