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.

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

Role of Foreign-born Voters in Elections
Election profiles for Texas and Ohio, as well as the 48 other states and the District of Columbia, examine voter registration by nativity, providing breakdowns for foreign-born citizens as a share of total state population, their turnout in the 2004 general election, and ethnicity.

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.

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)