Approaches to Protect Children’s Access to Health and Human Services in an Era of Harsh Immigration Policy

Approaches to Protect Children’s Access to Health and Human Services in an Era of Harsh Immigration Policy examines the barriers low-income immigrant children and their families encounter when trying to access social services in a climate of heightened immigration enforcement and hostility towards immigrants. The paper also outlines a wide range of strategies that can partly overcome these barriers. In the U.S., one in four children lives with at least one immigrant parent, and more than one-quarter of children of immigrants have an undocumented parent or are undocumented themselves. Recent policy changes and proposals have severely disrupted the lives and well-being of many immigrant families. Citing examples of best practices from across the country, the authors make 12 recommendations to mitigate the adverse affects that these policies have on the nearly 18 million at-risk immigrant children. Among the solutions are ensuring the confidentiality of public benefit records, expanding program eligibility through state action, easing enrollment challenges, increasing access to immigrant legal services, expanding family educational programming, providing identity documents and allowing child-only applications. In order to benefit from any of these recommendations, the authors suggest improved collaboration between community stakeholders, policymakers and immigrant individuals, as well as more robust government infrastructure, such as offices of immigrant affairs, to coordinate policy responses. (Patrick Bloniasz for the Immigrant Learning Center's Public Education Institute)

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