Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees - GCIR

This book describes the growth and population characteristics of immigrants in new settlement states and examines the implications for the integration of immigrants moving into areas that lack a tradition of receiving newcomers. It Pprovides case studies of new immigrant settlements in North Carolina, Atlanta, Minnesota, Virginia, Utah, and Arkansas. The book aims to improve communication between immigrants and the institutions they interact with, and enhance the flow of information between communities facing similar challenges in different regions.

Behind the contentious politics of immigration lies the question of how well new immigrants are becoming part of American society.  To address this question, this book draws on the results of a ground-breaking study of young adults of immigrant parents in metropolitan New York to provide a comprehensive look at their social, economic, cultural, and political lives.  The authors conclude, "We began this study worried about downward mobility of some of the children of immigrants.  We now feel that, in some ways, it is the opposite problem that is actually a greater cause for concern.  It has become clear that the relative success of the children of immigrants is now obscuring the depth of continuing poverty and discrimination, limited opportunities, staggering rates of incarceration and the general social excluision of large segments of the native minority youth population."

The task force commissioned by the Nebraska legislature evaluates the potential for integrating new Latino workers, whose numbers grew by 155 percent between 1990 and 2000 in response to new beef- and poultry-processing jobs. It paints a portrait of newcomers’ economic, education, English language, and citizenship status. Through surveys of schools, churches, law enforcement, and local NGOs, the Task Force identified seven challenges to integration: language, lack of understanding of U.S. rules, cultural conflict and racism, low wages, education/training needs, basic needs, and lack of access to legal status and advice.

The author uses a century of Census data and other research to present a comprehensive comparison of contemporary Mexican immigrants with the progress of Italians who came at the beginning of the last century. The book examines wages, schooling, and economic outcomes to show that Mexican second-generation progress, though slowed, is better in several respects than earlier Italian generations. Key recommendations to boosting progress include reversing the growing wage inequality in the United States, legalizing undocumented Mexican immigrants, and improving high school graduation rates.

This study by the Applied Research Center addresses the question, "How can established community-based and philanthropic organizations more effectively work with emerging mutual assistance and immigrant rights organizations to address the concerns of immigrant and refugee families?" It Eexamines models of immigrant and refugee organizations by evaluating data from interviews with over more than 120 key leaders, and explores case studies of six local organizations,; and assesses the effect of the post-September 11 political environment on immigrant and refugee communities.

This book compiles the writings of a variety of contributors and introduces contemporary immigration controversies with articles representing the spectrum of political opinion, from progressive to conservative. Academics and policy analysts discuss immigration in historical and contemporary contexts; the immigrant bargain; how assimilation works; economics, politics, and race; and what it means to be American.

Explains sources and impact of American nativism which flourished during the great cycle of immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Higham's analysis of the different strains of nativism, from anti-foreign to anti-radical and anti-Catholic, is considered masterful and is relied on by scholars today.