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Credit cards, bank accounts, and other financial services are often critical in order to fully participate in the modern world. Yet many refugees and other forced migrants have trouble obtaining these seemingly simple tools, preventing them from full integration. This article outlines humanitarian migrants’ needs for financial services and the barriers that can arise.
White House and Department of Health and Human Services officials join a leading language access advocate and MPI's Margie McHugh in a conversation exploring executive-branch efforts related to language access provision, upcoming actions, and opportunities to improve the provision of information and services in languages other than English in federal programs.
White House, Department of Health and Human Services, and national advocacy officials review executive-branch efforts related to language access provision, discuss upcoming actions, and explore opportunities to improve the provision of information and services in languages other than English in federal programs.
While smartphones and other technologies can assist decision-making, they do not always improve migrants’ journeys or lives. Forcibly displaced populations can face barriers in the form of limited internet access and low levels of digital literacy. Digital tools may also expose them to government surveillance and raise anxiety about social relations with loved ones. This article underscores refugees' complex relationships with technology.
The pandemic and move to remote learning affected students across the United States, and certain groups—including the nation’s 5 million English Learners (ELs)—were hit particularly hard. At the same time, the federal government made unprecedented investments in public K-12 education to counter the pandemic’s adverse impacts. This issue brief explores the ways school districts have invested these funds to support ELs.
High-skilled immigration represents a potential major benefit to Czechia, which has undergone rapid economic growth since the transition from communism. The arrival of hundreds of thousands of new Ukrainians, many of whom are well educated, marks a moment for the country to re-evaluate its integration policies, as this article details.
The Task Force on New Americans launched by the Biden administration represents an important occasion to deepen understanding of immigrant integration issues and to identify ways to address them. MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, which has long argued for the need to create such an office within the White House, has developed recommendations for the task force in key areas, drawing from its extensive record of research, policy analysis, and technical assistance.
Shortages of workers continue to plague early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems across the United States. With the field already struggling to effectively serve young children in families that speak languages other than English, apprenticeship programs offer a promising solution to bring more—and more multilingual—workers into early childhood careers.
Spain has an unconventional immigration system. The national government is primarily responsible for border control, granting legal status to migrants, and other issues, but integration is mostly handled by regional and local governments, allowing for some pioneering policies at the subnational level. This article explores what this system has meant for Catalonia and its capital, Barcelona, which have been considered to be a model throughout Europe.
Language access policies and services are critical to promoting the equitable participation of Dual Language Learners and their families in early childhood programs, yet there are persisting participation gaps. This webinar outlines federal and state efforts to implement language access policies in the early childhood field, along with opportunities to improve language services.
How many Dual Language Learner (DLL) children live in your state, and what share do they comprise of all children under age 5? What languages are most commonly spoken in their households? Answers to these and other questions that are critical to the design and implementation of early childhood programs that reach all children equitably are presented in a series of state-level data fact sheets.
Dual Language Learners (DLLs)—young children with a parent who speaks a language other than English at home—benefit greatly from early childhood programs, but they also enroll at lower rates than their peers. This policy brief looks at federal and state language access policies that aim to make such programs more accessible to DLLs’ families. It also examines persistent gaps in participation and ways to address them.
Language access policies and services are critical to promoting the equitable participation of Dual Language Learners and their families in early childhood programs, yet there are persisting participation gaps. This webinar outlines federal and state efforts to implement language access policies in the early childhood field, opportunities to improve language services, and more.
As school districts across the United States move to allocate their federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, it is essential that they engage with multilingual and diverse community stakeholders, in part given English Learners have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. The track record suggests many districts are struggling to effectively engage these communities.
On this webinar, MPI researchers examine common features and notable areas of innovation they found in a scan of state and local language access laws and policies in more than 40 states, along with practical insights that local governments can employ as they face growing linguistic diversity in their communities.
Many states and localities have language access laws and policies to ensure people who are Limited English Proficient (LEP) have effective access to essential public services and institutions. This report explores a wide range of common and unique features of these language access laws, highlighting how different jurisdictions have approached issues such as translation, interpretation, agency oversight, technical assistance, and community involvement.
On this webinar, MPI researchers examine common features and notable areas of innovation they found in a scan of state and local language access laws and policies in more than 40 states, along with practical insights that local governments can employ as they face growing linguistic diversity in their communities.
Immigrant integration is a complicated process that cannot fully be measured by any single metric. Understandings of immigrant integration have changed over time, and this article explores how the methods of measuring integration outcomes have evolved alongside these changing frameworks.
Faith plays a significant role in the mental health and social integration of refugees and asylum seekers. Yet in Germany, concerns about Islam and migrants from Muslim-majority countries have complicated social cohesion efforts, particularly in the wake of the 2015-16 refugee and migration crisis.
The 2020–21 academic year is underway, but many U.S. schools, students, and families are still reeling from the rocky transition to remote learning that occurred months earlier, after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. For English Learners and students in immigrant families, many of the challenges are magnified. This policy brief examines how schools’ pandemic response is affecting these students and offers recommendations to help schools and districts support them in this period of uncertainty.