This page offers numerous resources on children of immigrants, who make up about 20 percent of all children in the United States. [source] A wide range of information, from statistics to model programs, is available below.
Data Sources:
- KIDS COUNT Data Center
The Annie E. Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT Data Center provides a plethora of detailed information about children in immigrant families on 21 different topics ranging from the number of children living in immigrant families to the number of children living in families with immigrant parents who do not have a high school education. Users can select a topic that will take them to data arranged by state and by major cities.
- Data Snapshot: One Out of Five U.S. Children is Living in an Immigrant Family
This concise four-page report provides highlights from the KIDS COUNT Data. Maps in the report clearly demonstrate where the highest concentrations of children in immigrant families live. Along with providing state- and national-level data about these children, this report also provides information on the importance of improving the well-being of these children and provides a list of programs and organizations around the country who are addressing these issues.
- Children in Immigrant Families: U.S. and State-Level Findings From the 2000 Census
Published in 2006, this jointly published report by KIDS COUNT and the Population Reference Bureau is one of a series of reports based on the 2000 U.S. Census. The report notes there was a major increase in the number of children in immigrant families living in the United States in the 1990s. The 2000 Census counted 5.2 million more children in immigrant families than in 1990, a 63 percent increase. The report examines demographics, poverty status, and parental employment among other issues for this cohort.
- Children of Immigrants, Facts and Figures
Because of recent immigration trends, children with immigrant parents—whether legal or undocumented—are the fastest growing segment of the nation's child population. The well-being of these children is influenced not only by their parents’ immigration, but also by family income and structure; parental employment, educational attainment, and English proficiency; availability of health care; and access to work supports, such as tax credits, food assistance, and child care. This fact sheet describes the population of U.S. children of immigrants—especially those with unauthorized parents—by drawing on facts and figures from other reports from the Urban Institute.
- Community Profiles of Young Children of Immigrants
Using data from the 2000 U.S. Census, Migration Policy Institute provides an overview of the characteristics of children of immigrants under the age of nine living in 14 communities in 10 states including California, Florida, and Kentucky. The information tracks citizenship status, parents’ places of birth, parents’ immigration status, and incidence of mixed-status families. The fact sheets also examine parents’ levels of education and English-language ability, parents’ occupations, wages, labor force participation rates, shares of young children of immigrants living in poverty or low-income households, and rates of benefits use. Users will find links to the communities profiled on the right of the screen.
- New Voices from the Bluegrass: A Portrait of Kentucky’s Children in Immigrant Families
Kentucky Youth Advocates, in partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, released the first statewide portrait of children in immigrant families. The study offers a glimpse into the unique challenges, opportunities, and personal experiences that families in Kentucky face in regards to health care access, education, and community integration.
- Children in Immigrant Families: A California Data Brief
This report corrects misperceptions about children in immigrant families. For example, 85 percent of children from immigrant families in California are U.S. citizens, and three-quarters of them are bilingual. The report also highlights the difficult, additional challenges immigrant children and their families face, such as barriers to English language acquisition and lower rates of health insurance coverage when contrasted with their non-immigrant peers.
- Children Action Alliance of Arizona
This three-page brief provides facts on key issues facing children of immigrants in Arizona as well as six key recommendations for stakeholders.
- Snapshots of Children in Immigrant Families
This fact sheet focuses on children in Virginia who live with at least one immigrant parent. As their numbers grow, they will play an increasingly important role in the communities across the state. The brief examines family structure, linguistic proficiency, English language proficiency, educational achievement, and homeownership as these factors affect children.
- Asian-American Children: State-Level Measures of Child Well-Being From the 2000 Census
This report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT Pocket Guide highlights the demographics of this cohort, and discusses some of the main attributes of immigrant Asian children and their families.
Program Models:
Early Childhood Education:
- The Village for Early Childhood Education
This promising program model looks at the Village for Early Childhood Education in Littleton, Colorado. While it began as a small preschool in an abandoned building it now serves 350 children from 10 different countries through a variety of programs, including Head Start, state-funded preschool, and special education. The Village has taken a number of steps to help make families feel comfortable and respected including: the hiring of bilingual Spanish-speaking teachers and aides to communicate with its limited English proficient families, the distribution of non-English books to immigrant families so parents can read to their children in their native language, and the incorporation of cultures and traditions into the classroom curriculum.
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Working with Immigrant Parents
SPARK Georgia, a project of Smart Start Georgia and United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, uses a community-based approach to help immigrant families learn about early education opportunities and develop skills for participating in their children's education. Strategies include free or reduced-cost lunches, home visits, and community meetings. The approach has increased the number of immigrant children enrolled in the state's preschool program and helped parents learn how to actively support their children's education.
- K-16 Public Education
This program model details the achievements of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association’s efforts to change local schools from isolated institutions in a low-income neighborhood to community partners for learning and empowerment. Their efforts, begun in the early 1990s, have resulted in the construction of five elementary school annexes and two middle schools, as well as the development of strong relationships with local educators. Logan Square also established collaborative programs with local schools to improve the quality of education. The program has not only provided students with extra attention and resources, it has transformed relationships between parents and schools. The association has also launched a literacy ambassador program, community learning centers, and a bilingual teacher preparation program.
Language Acquisition:
- Family Literacy, National Center for Family Literacy in Louisville, Kentucky
The center has been an important leader in the development of family literacy strategies and helped create an effective model for other organizations to emulate using these components: literacy in adult education for the parents, age-appropriate educational instruction for children, instruction to parents on early childhood development, and activities for parents and children to practice shared language learning. The National Center for Family Literacy also operates a number of programs to help limited English proficient immigrant families acquire English literacy skills and connect to their children's education in schools. This program practice looks at one of those programs, located in Providence, Rhode Island.
Health:
- Promoting Health Care for All Children
In 2000, government and community leaders in California's Santa Clara County came together to determine the best way to allocate new monies that would soon arrive from the Tobacco Settlement Fund. Although Medicaid and SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) cover children under 250 percent of the federal poverty level, there were no resources for children and families who earned more than that threshold yet too little to afford private health insurance. Grassroots organizations, the First Five Commission, the Santa Clara Social Services Agency, the Santa Clara Health Plan, and officials at both the county and city levels joined forces to eliminate the confusion and intimidation that prevented many families from applying and increase enrollment in public health insurance programs. In its first two years, Santa Clara's Children's Health Initiative increased enrollment in Medicaid and in SCHIP in the county by 28 percent.
- Increasing Enrollment in Public Health Insurance Programs
The Citrus Valley Health Partner's Get Enrollment Moving (GEM) in Covina, California has used face-to-face outreach as a successful approach to enroll nearly 30,000 people into California's Medicaid, SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program), and public health programs for children and pregnant women. GEM estimates that approximately 85 percent of enrollees are Latino, three-quarters have limited English skills, and nearly 35 percent live in a family headed by at least one undocumented adult. Several factors have contributed to the success of their program including: the recruitment of volunteers from the community, establishing partnerships with volunteers in program development, providing volunteers with training, and offering professional development opportunities.
Immigrant Children Initiatives:
- Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Making Connections
The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Making Connections is the flagship decade-long effort that with a multi-pronged strategy strives to improve the lives of low-income members of communities around the nation; its Civics sites, which are cities that are in partnership with the foundation to work on pressing issues; and additional links to resources on immigrant and refugee families and their children.
- Kentucky Youth Advocates
Kentucky is the ninth fastest growing state for the foreign-born population. Children in immigrant families comprise approximately five percent of the state’s total child population and growing. To address a lack of research, data, and voice to give context to immigrant and refugee families’ experiences, Kentucky Youth Advocates began several initiatives. This Web page provides links to KYA’s own research as well as to national and local resources.
- Blueprint for Kentucky’s Children
Begun in 2007, the Blueprint for Kentucky’s Children is a coalition of nonprofit, public, and private organizations that have the goal of improving conditions for the state’s children. One of its priorities is to provide children with access to quality early learning opportunities, a strong K-12 education, and support in transitioning to adulthood. Its concerns also include health care access, fair lending practices, and targeted tax relief. The website provides links to its publications and action alerts.
- Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services
Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services is a national technical assistance project working to broaden the scope of information and collaboration among service providers to strengthen services to refugee youth, children, and their families.
Policy:
- Securing the Future: U.S. Immigrant Integration Policy
At a time when most of the growth in the U.S. labor force will have to come from immigrants, and more than one in five children live in immigrant families, it is important that policymakers create a strategy for immigrant integration. This book defines integration while attempting to sketch a nationwide policy. Chapter Four discusses issues impacting the second generation of newcomers and Chapter Nine is devoted to the educational issues of children of immigrants.
- Los Angeles on the Leading Edge: Immigrant Integration Indicators and Their Policy Implications
Los Angeles is a multicultural city that often leads the nation in immigration trends as well as unresolved immigrant integration issues. As such, Los Angeles provides a laboratory for policymakers at all levels of government for how to address immigrant integration in a coordinated fashion. Chapter Five of the report targets English language proficiency, language acquisition, and performance of PreK-12 youth. The remaining chapters address other issues including poverty.
- Kids' Share 2008: Key Facts
This report summarizes findings from the Kids' Share 2008 report, which looks comprehensively at trends in federal spending and tax expenditures on children. Key findings from the report suggest that historically children have not been a budget priority. The report finds that children's spending did not keep pace with GDP growth. Absent a policy change, children's spending will continue to be squeezed in the next decade. This Web page provides a summary of key findings under several categories, a link to the full report, and a list of related research and reports.
- Raising Children in a New Country: An Illustrated Handbook
This booklet was created as a tool for refugee- and immigrant-serving agencies as they help newcomer parents adjust to different laws, norms, and practices around raising children in the United States. It’s fall 2008 Spotlight is titled Helping Immigrant and Refugee Families Stay Together. The website also provides links for multilingual resources in 20 languages and information on cultural competency with information on 21 nationalities.
Health:
- The Health and Well-Being of Young Children of Immigrants
This Web page provides a link to a four-page report from 2005 that provides a summary of the Urban Institute's research on the health and well-being of young children under six years of age who reside in immigrant families. It also addresses the poverty rates of these families, the legal status of their parents, and the childcare arrangements for children under the age of six.
- Final Report of the Evaluation of the San Mateo County Children's Health Initiative
Begun in January 2003, the San Mateo County Children’s Health Initiative (CHI) was an effort to improve the health of low-income children in the county by assuring that they have health insurance coverage and access to care. This report provides a five-year evaluation of that initiative. The report summarizes key findings and concludes that the investment of targeted resources proved to be very effective.
Education:
- Immigrant Children and Education Fast Facts
These Fast Facts from the GCIR Immigrant Integration Toolkit provide concise data on immigrant children and educational issues and impacts. Four fast facts are provided and each one is followed by clarifying data and bullet points.
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Measures of Change: The Demography and Literacy of Adolescent English Learners
In 2002, passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act marked a turn in the nation’s approach to educating children who do not speak English well, many of whom are immigrants or the children of immigrants. At the same time, the population of students who did not speak English well grew to record highs, and changes in the labor market signaled that high-skilled students would be in ever-growing demand in a knowledge-based economy. This 73-page report contains a profile of limited English proficient students in schools, with an emphasis on adolescents; explores literacy achievements of the English language learners in the eighth grade; details results from the 2005 statewide standardized reading and math tests for eighth-grade students; and documents variations in state policies.
- Setting the Stage for School Readiness: Early Childhood Education among Immigrant Families in Kentucky
For young children in immigrant families, quality early child care and education can improve English proficiency and cultural skills necessary to succeed in school and become productive adults. This issue brief, published in 2008, addresses Kentucky’s early care and education of young children in immigrant families. It also offers best practices and policy solutions to ensure Kentucky’s future workforce and community leaders are prepared and educated for success.
- Children Now, 2008 California Report Card
This Web page provides a link to Children Now’s 2008 California Report Card: The State of the State's Children. The report highlights the generally poor health and education status of the state's children by assigning letter grades to key individual determinants, including access to health insurance, K-12 education, and obesity. The report asserts that these issues are undermining children's optimal development and putting the state's future at undue risk by dramatically increasing the financial costs and societal problems faced by future generations. The report also shows, however, that real progress on these issues can and should be made in 2008.
Rural Communities:
- Child Poverty in Rural America
An estimated 14 million children live in rural America and with their families represent a significant share of the total population of the United States. According to the report rural families are disproportionately poor, less educated, and underemployed. This report includes a look at the demographic impacts of immigration and race taking place in rural America.
U.S. - Mexico Border:
- A Snapshot of Children Living on Mexico's Northern Border
This 12-page report examines the Mexico and U.S. border region as it pertains to the two million children living in Mexico’s northern border region. The issues the report tackles include the barriers, advantages, and opportunities facing border children and their families. The report provides information on demographic characteristics, living conditions, family economic well-being, education, health, migration, and safety. It provides detailed data by city on these issues.
- The Unique Challenges to the Well-Being of California's Border Kids
Only half of all border kids come from immigrant families—families with at least one parent born abroad. Moreover, 93 percent of all border kids live in families with at least one working parent, a statistic that mirrors the statewide percentage. In addition, the vast majority of children of immigrants living on the border—81 percent—are U.S. citizens, a rate on par with the rest of California. These are a few of many clarifying data points included in this report.