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Begin New Search Author Michael Fix Publication Year within 25 Years

1. Immigration Enforcement and the Mental Health of Latino High School Students

Author:
Randy Capps, Jodi Berger Cardoso, Kalina Brabeck, Michael Fix, and Ariel G. Ruiz Soto
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
As public discourse around immigration has become more highly charged and immigration policies have seen sweeping changes in the United States, immigration enforcement has generated fear in immigrant communities across the country—fears that extend beyond the unauthorized immigrant population to immigrant families with U.S.-born children and legal immigrants. This report explores how fear of immigration enforcement is related to the mental health and school engagement of young Latinos, the fastest-growing group of high school students nationwide. It also considers the role of other stressors, including discrimination and economic hardship, and factors that may support students’ resilience, such as spirituality and strong family relationships. This analysis draws its findings from a study that was conducted by researchers from the Migration Policy Institute, University of Houston, and Rhode Island College during the 2018–19 school year and that had two components: self-assessments completed by hundreds of Latino students in 11 high schools, and semistructured interviews with dozens of education professionals and community experts. The two study sites—Harris County, TX and Rhode Island—offer contrasting immigration-enforcement contexts. Among the study’s findings are: A majority of the students in both Harris County and Rhode Island (67 percent versus 52 percent) feared that someone close to them would be arrested and deported. While fears were more common among youth in Harris County, which has a higher level of immigration enforcement, these findings suggest deportation fears are not limited to places where enforcement is widespread. More than half of the students reported symptoms of mental-health conditions such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or depression at levels high enough to warrant treatment. Students who feared immigration enforcement most acutely—and who changed their behaviors as a result—had the worst mental-health outcomes. Almost one-third of students in the study had changed their behavior as a result of enforcement fears. In interviews, educators also described school and community strategies for supporting Latino students’ mental health, including approaches to establishing a welcoming environment, reforming disciplinary practices, and connecting students with in-house and external mental-health resources.
Topic:
Education, Immigration, Law Enforcement, Mental Health, Deportation, and Latino Issues
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

2. Credentials for the Future: Mapping the Potential for Immigrant-Origin Adults in the United States

Author:
Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
As the U.S. workforce ages, baby boomers retire, and birth rates decline, the United States is facing an estimated shortfall of 8 million workers between now and 2027. At the same time, the U.S. economy is becoming ever more knowledge-based. Having a marketable postsecondary credential, whether an academic degree or a professional certification or license, has become more of a necessity to secure a job that pays a family-sustaining wage. Amid these economic changes, immigrant-origin adults—that is, immigrants and their U.S.-born children—are projected to be the primary source of future labor-force growth. Yet about 30 million of the 58 million immigrant-origin adults in the country as of 2017 did not have a postsecondary credential, representing 30 percent of all U.S. adults without one. These immigrants and their children are thus an important target group for efforts by governments, educational institutions, civil society, and employers to boost the credential attainment of U.S. workers. This report offers a first-of-its-kind profile of immigrant-origin adults without postsecondary credentials, including a look at key sociodemographic characteristics, geographic distribution, and factors such as English proficiency and legal status that can affect their access to workforce programs. It also considers the labor-market returns of nondegree credentials, finding that immigrant-origin adults who hold such certifications or licenses have higher rates of labor-market participation, higher wages, and lower unemployment than counterparts who lack them. “Helping a significant share of these 30 million immigrant-origin adults obtain postsecondary credentials,” the authors conclude, is “a critical tool in meeting national and state education goals, addressing current and projected labor shortages, and raising labor productivity.”
Topic:
Education, Immigration, Economy, Vocational Training, and Integration
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

3. A Profile of The Foreign-Born in Lowell, Massachusetts

Author:
Katherine Lotspeich, Michael Fix, Dan Perez-Lopez, and Jason Ost
Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
The Building the New American Community demonstration project is an experiment in refugee and immigrant integration in which the cities of Lowell, Massachusetts; Nashville, Tennessee; and Portland, Oregon formed coalitions to identify integration challenges in their com m unities and address them collaboratively. These cities were assisted by a national team of policy analysts, advocates, and researchers from the Nation al Conference of State Legislatures, the National Immigration Forum, the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, The Urban Institute, and the Migration Policy Institute.
Topic:
Demographics, Human Welfare, and Migration
Political Geography:
United States

4. A Profile of the Foreign-Born in the Portland, Oregon Tri-County Area

Author:
Katherine Lotspeich, Michael Fix, Dan Perez-Lopez, and Jason Ost
Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
The Building the New American Community demonstration project is an experiment in refugee and immigrant integration in which the cities of Lowell, Massachusetts; Nashville, Tennessee; and Portland, Oregon, formed coalitions to identify integration challenges in their communities and address them collaboratively. These cities were assisted by a national team of policy analysts, advocates, and researchers from the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Immigration Forum, the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, The Urban Institute, and the Migration Policy Institute.
Topic:
Demographics, Economics, and Migration
Political Geography:
United States

5. How Are Immigrants Faring After Welfare Reform?: Preliminary Evidence from Los Angeles and New York City - Final Report

Author:
Randy Capps, Michael Fix, Dan Perez-Lopez, Jeffrey Passel, Leighton Ku, Chris Furgiuele, Rajeev Ramchand, and Scott McNiven
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
In 1996, debates about welfare reform and immigration converged and reshaped federal policies about the eligibility of legally admitted immigrants for means-tested public benefits programs, including the Food Stamp Program (FSP), Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Before the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was enacted in 1996, legal immigrants were eligible for benefits on terms similar to those of native-born citizens. The new law significantly limited the eligibility of legally-admitted immigrants for means-tested federal benefit programs, particularly immigrants entering the United States after the welfare reform law was passed in August 1996.
Topic:
Government, Human Welfare, and Migration
Political Geography:
United States

6. The Health and Well-Being of Children in Immigrant Families

Author:
Randy Capps, Michael Fix, and Jame Reardon-Anderson
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
Children of immigrants are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population under age 18 (Van Hook and Fix 2000). One in five children in the United States is the child of an immigrant, evidence of the demographic impact of recent rapid immigration. In addition, one in four low income children is an immigrant's child (Fix, Zimmermann, and Passel 2001). But despite their demographic and policy significance, children of immigrants and their well-being are rarely studied on a national scale. In this brief, we present a number of key indicators—both positive and negative—of child well-being. The measures fall within three areas: (1) family environment, (2) physical and emotional health, and (3) access to needed services.
Topic:
Human Welfare, Migration, and Poverty
Political Geography:
United States

7. The Dispersal of Immigrants in the 1990s

Author:
Randy Capps, Michael Fix, and Jeffrey Passel
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
The U.S. immigrant population grew rapidly during the 1990s, with growth rates especially high across a wide band of states in the Southeast, Midwest, and Rocky Mountain regions. In many of these states, the foreign-born population more than doubled between 1990 and 2000.
Topic:
Demographics, Human Welfare, and Migration
Political Geography:
United States

8. Limited English Proficient Students and High-Stakes Accountability Systems

Author:
Michael Fix and Jorge Ruiz-de-Velasco
Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
In 1994 Congress required all states to implement comprehensive accountability systems for schools receiving federal funds under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). This new federal requirement responded to civil rights advocates' concerns that schools serving large numbers of poor, minority, and limited English proficient (LEP) students set lower standards for their education and thus ratified lower expectations for their performance. These changes in the ESEA made a dramatic break with past practice by requiring states to replace minimum standards for poor and academically disadvantaged children with challenging standards for all students. New accountability systems were to be based on state-established content standards for reading and math, include assessments aligned with those standards, and would require that states hold all students to the same performance standards.
Topic:
Education, Government, and Migration
Political Geography:
United States

9. The Scope and Impact of Welfare Reform's Immigrant Provisions

Author:
Michael Fix and Jeffrey Passel
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
For immigrants, welfare reform went well beyond conditioning access to cash benefits on work. Rather, the law set out a comprehensive scheme for determining immigrant eligibility for a wide range of social benefits that are provided by governments at all levels. Reform represented a major departure from prior policy by making citizenship more central to the receipt of benefits, by granting the states rather than the federal government the power to determine immigrant eligibility for benefits, and by drawing a sharp distinction between immigrants arriving before and after PRWORA's enactment on August 22, 1996.
Topic:
Government, Human Welfare, and Migration
Political Geography:
United States

10. The Integration of Immigrant Families in the United States

Author:
Michael Fix, Wendy Zimmermann, and Jeffrey Passel
Publication Date:
07-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
What do we know about the integration of immigrant families within the United States—the progress these families are making and their reception in the communities where they settle? How are immigrants affected by the nation's integration policies or lack thereof? What directions might immigrant integration and the policies governing it take in the future?
Topic:
Government, Human Welfare, and Migration
Political Geography:
United States