Migration Policy Institute - Health & Welfare Benefits
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Latinos and immigrants are at least twice as likely to lack health insurance coverage as the overall population in the Kansas City metropolitan area. This gap that has significant implications for the region, as Latinos and immigrants will form an ever-growing share of the area’s labor force and tax base amid anticipated declines in the native-born, non-Latino population.
A new Trump administration action requiring intending immigrants to prove they can purchase eligible health insurance within 30 days of arrival has the potential to block fully 65 percent of those who apply for a green card from abroad, MPI estimates.
Six months on from the original March 2019 Brexit date and staring a new deadline in the face, many EU countries still had only skeletal plans for how to adjust the status of their resident UK nationals should a no-deal Brexit come to pass. This policy brief highlights critical gaps in these plans, the groups most likely to be affected by them, and strategies Member States and the United Kingdom could adopt to soften the impact.
With nearly 1.4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), Ukraine is home to one of the largest IDP populations in the world. Five years after Russia's annexation of Crimea, displaced Ukrainians continue to face challenges related to national identity, social cohesion, and political participation. While the Ukrainian government has had some success integrating IDPs, the conflict’s end remains uncertain, and many are unlikely to return to their communities of origin no matter the outcome.
Home visiting programs for young families are growing in popularity across the United States, and have demonstrated their effectiveness in supporting maternal health and child well-being. At the same time, more infants and toddlers are growing up in immigrant families and households where a language other than English is spoken. Why then are these children under-represented in these programs? This brief explores common barriers, ways to address them, and why it is important to do so.
The public-charge rule issued by the Trump administration in August 2019 will have profound effects on future immigration and on use of public benefits by millions of legal noncitizens and their U.S.-citizen family members. Complex standards for determining when an immigrant is likely to become a public charge could cause a significant share of the nearly 23 million noncitizens and U.S. citizens in benefits-using immigrant families to disenroll, as this commentary explains.
In the two years since President Trump entered office, U.S. immigration policy has changed in many ways. Some actions have received significant media attention and public scrutiny, and others have been implemented with little fanfare. This document chronicles these wide-reaching policy changes, covering immigration enforcement, the immigration courts, humanitarian admissions, visa processing, and more.
With the children of immigrants a growing share of all U.S. children, and federal immigration enforcement and other policies undergoing significant change, some state and local child welfare agencies are developing new ways to improve how they work with immigrant families. This report examines key cultural, linguistic, and legal challenges, and how agencies are adjusting staffing, training, placement, and other policies to tackle them.
During this webinar, speakers provide an overview of an MPI policy brief that seeks to raise awareness of the intersection of trauma and early childhood development, and how U.S. early childhood programs could more effectively address this trauma in young children in refugee and immigrant households. The participants discuss efforts to integrate trauma-informed approaches into early childhood systems and how home visiting services can effectively address trauma and mental health through a two-generation approach.
The first years of a child’s life are a time of immense growth, and exposure to trauma—if left unaddressed—can have significant, lifelong effects. This issue brief examines how young children of refugees and other immigrants may be affected by trauma, and what early childhood education and care programs, health-care providers, and others can do to mitigate its adverse effects.
Mexico is facing a new reality: Rising migration from Central America, the reintegration of returning migrants, and protection of Mexicans in the United States. As President Andrés Manuel López Obrador seeks to shift the country’s migration policy from enforcement to protection, his task is complicated by changing U.S. border policy and the need to avoid domestic backlash over Central American migration to and through Mexico.
Development actors are well positioned to help close the gap in refugee protection system capacity that exists between high-income countries and those that have fewer resources. With 85 percent of the world's refugees in low- or middle-income countries that lack the means to support them fully, strengthening protection systems would benefit from new thinking and tapping the expertise of well-placed actors to assure a more comprehensive approach.
This brief looks at the potential impact of Brexit on British families in the EU-27, a group that is much less studied than their counterparts in the United Kingdom. As it explores, legal systems are not always designed to cater to the needs of families rather than individuals, and the patchwork of differing rights and benefits for EU citizens and non-EU nationals could mean some family members—third-country nationals, adult dependants, and same-sex or unregistered partners—will fall through the gaps.
As Brexit approaches, British pensioners in the EU-27 face a series of issues beyond those of the wider British population of the EU-27. This issue brief explores the diversity of the pensioner population and unique challenges ranging from whether UK state pensions will rise with the cost of living, to tax, health care, and access to social assistance issues, before considering key policy questions and recommendations for both EU and UK policymakers.
Most recent U.S. legal permanent residents could have found themselves at risk of green-card denial had they been assessed under a proposed Trump administration public-charge rule that would apply a significantly expanded test to determine likelihood of future public-benefits use. This analysis finds the effects would fall most heavily on women, children, and the elderly, while potentially shifting legal immigration away from Latin America.
A Trump administration “public-charge” rule expected to be unveiled soon could create the potential to significantly reshape family-based legal immigration to the United States—and reduce arrivals from Asia, Latin America, and Africa—by imposing a de facto financial test that 40 percent of the U.S. born themselves would fail, as this commentary explains.
This webinar highlights findings from an MPI report examining the potential impacts of expected changes to the public charge rule by the Trump administration. Leaked draft versions suggest the rule could sharply expand the number of legally present noncitizens facing difficulty getting a green card or extending a visa as a result of their family's use of public benefits. The rule likely would discourage millions from accessing health, nutrition, and social services for which they or their U.S.-citizen dependents are eligible.
According to leaked drafts, the Trump administration is considering a rule that could have sweeping effects on both legal immigration to the United States and the use of public benefits by legal immigrants and their families. This report examines the potential scale of the expected rule’s impact, including at national and state levels and among children, as well as Hispanic and Asian American/Pacific Islander immigrants.
MPI experts discuss an expected Trump administration public-charge rule that could have wide-reaching effects on the ability of immigrants legally present in the country to get a green card as well as who could qualify to enter the United States. The webinar focuses on an MPI report assessing how the proposed rule could affect future benefits usage by immigrants and their U.S.-citizen children.
The mental health of asylum seekers has emerged as an important issue following the 2015-16 European migration and refugee crisis. Many asylum seekers suffer from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and similar conditions—with implications not only for their well-being but also potentially for the outcomes of their claims and the integrity of the asylum system as a whole, as this article explores.