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Active family engagement is essential to ensuring children benefit fully from early childhood education and care programs. Yet language barriers and cultural misunderstandings can sometimes keep educators and the families of Dual Language Learners (DLLs) from forming this important partnership. This policy brief explores strategies to better utilize federal funding to engage with DLL children and families.
This discussion focuses on the federal government's invitation to states to seek waivers of their obligations under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Experts offer an overview of current state waivers and their objectives, and what these developments might mean for English Learners (ELs) and their schools.
This essential resource offers top statistics about immigration, immigrants, and the immigration system in the United States, drawing on authoritative sources and the latest data available. The article offers insights on the size and characteristics of the immigrant population, the scope of temporary and permanent immigration via all pathways, enforcement actions, and much more.
MPI analysts assess the immigration actions taken during President Trump's first year back in office, detail the legal state of play, and analyze the actual effects on the labor market, U.S. communities, and future immigration to the United States.
A Trump administration proposed rule that would give government adjudicators wide discretion in deciding when public benefits use can be held against green-card applicants and prospective immigrants could discourage many eligible households, including those with U.S.-citizen children, from accessing health, nutrition, and education supports—with significant implications for well-being, as this short read explains.
Although one-third of U.S. young children have a parent who speaks a language other than English, early childhood educators often lack the tools to effectively monitor the development of those not in monolingual, English-speaking households. This issue brief examines why many preschool classroom assessments are a poor fit for Dual Language Learners, and ways to make them more effective for diverse populations.
The 13.7 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States as of mid-2023 reflect increasingly diverse origins, socioeconomic and labor market characteristics, family composition, and places of settlement. This fact sheet explores those trends, drawing on MPI's detailed data profiles of the unauthorized immigrant population at U.S., state, and top county levels.
Immigrants comprise 15 percent of Connecticut’s population, and nearly 30 percent of children in the state are part of immigrant families. Having driven all state population and workforce growth over the last 15 years, immigrants are an important part of Connecticut’s present and its future. This report examines state policies and systems that aim to support upward mobility for all families, highlighting ways in which they could better meet the needs of low-income immigrant families.
Dual Language Learners (DLLs)—young children with at least one parent who speaks a language other than English—make up one-third of all children ages 0–5 in the United States. This fact sheet series and related resources provide essential data on the number and characteristics of DLL children and their families nationwide and in the 30 states with the most DLLs.
In this session, experts from California will share how they are advancing Dual Language Learner identification through expanded use of Family Language Surveys and interview tools across early learning programs administered by the state’s education and social services agencies.
As the number of defections from North to South Korea has declined, South Korea has struggled to respond to a new trend: a rising number of children born during defectors' long stays in China or other third country. As this article explains, these children automatically become South Korean citizens upon arrival but are not eligible for the range of government benefits designed to support defectors, leaving many to fall through the cracks.
On this webinar, experts from Illinois describe their efforts at expanding the use of Home Language Surveys (HLS) beyond preschool programs in public schools and into a broader range of early childhood education & care (ECEC) settings.
Repealing birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to unauthorized immigrants or temporary visa holders would have a contrary result from its stated aim of reducing the unauthorized immigrant population. Projections from MPI and Penn State show that ending birthright citizenship would increase the unauthorized population by 2.7 million as of 2045 and by 5.4 million as of 2075.
Find essential statistics about U.S. immigration, immigrants, and the immigration system today and throughout history. This perennially popular article compiles the latest data on the size and shape of the immigrant population, immigrant families, refugees and asylees, unauthorized immigrants, temporary visitors, and more. It also examines legal immigration processing and immigration enforcement.
Government officials from Colorado, Michigan, and New York discuss how their states’ language access efforts have evolved, how they are structured, and what innovative approaches they have undertaken to reduce linguistic barriers for the more than 25 million U.S. residents who have limited proficiency in English.
Government officials from Colorado, Michigan, and New York discuss how their states’ language access efforts have evolved, how they are structured, and what innovative approaches they have undertaken to reduce linguistic barriers for the more than 25 million U.S. residents who have limited proficiency in English.
Early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems across the United States are grappling with worker recruitment and retention challenges. At the same time, immigrants with relevant education and work experience obtained abroad often find it difficult to gain recognition for those qualifications. This policy brief highlights strategies for improving hiring and licensing processes in the ECEC field.
Other than refugees, noncitizens in the United States face significant restrictions on access to federally funded public benefits, including programs such as Medicaid, food stamps, and cash assistance programs. This is particularly the case for unauthorized immigrants, who except in very limited circumstances are barred from all federally funded public benefits, as our explainer details.
Speakers discuss the importance of infant and early childhood mental health services, highlighting approaches that have successfully connected immigrant and refugee families with beneficial and culturally relevant services. Speakers also offer recommendations to expand accessibility and responsiveness of these services.
The Immigration Act of 1924 shaped the U.S. population over the course of the 20th century, greatly restricting immigration and ensuring that arriving immigrants were mostly from Northern and Western Europe. The century-old law was one of the most restrictive in U.S. history and helped create the framework for key provisions of the U.S. immigration system that remain in place a century later. This article analyzes the effect and legacy of the 1924 law.