A Note on Immigrants Health Care Issues

On the Immprof listserve Vanessa Merton of Pace collected the following in response to a query about sources relevant to immigrant health care issues. It has so much information that it is worth posting here:

I hope you will include some focus on the issue of the rampant occupational injury, toxic exposure, and death in the immigrant community. NYCOSH provides some of the horrific statistics and also stories describing, e.g., immigrant laborers’ trench deaths (getting buried by a landslide in a trench for lack of simple, cheap plywood retaining walls — a recurrent event in the NYC construction business, such that it has become barely a p. 35 story, but a really awful way to die) at www.nycosh.org/index_immigrant_and_other.html. See also the series of articles about the high rate of occupational fatalities among Mexican workers in the U.S. by AP reporter Justin Pritchard, at http://fmmac2.mm.ap.org/polk_awards_dying_to_work_html/DyingtoWork.html, and the Greenhouse article below about this year’s day laborer study. One could go on to the Supreme Court’s decision to deny front pay awards to injured immigrants in Hoffmann Plastics, but I realize this is not the subject of the whole course . . . Then there are the issues raised by the plight of immigrants who ought to be receiving certain governmental health care benefits, but aren’t because of the government’s abysmal delays in processing their concededly valid immigration petitions — e.g., Khrapunskiy v. Doar, 2005 WL 2242849 (N.Y.Sup.), the class action on behalf of disabled immigrants in New York State who are provided only about half the level of public assistance benefits that all other disabled persons in the State receive, solely because they are ineligible for federal SSI benefits on account of their immigration status. The court granted plaintiffs’ motions for summary judgment and class certification, holding that providing lesser benefits for disabled immigrants solely on account of their immigration status violates the NY State Constitution, which requires the provision of aid, care and support to the needy, as well as the Equal Protection clause of the federal Constitution. The affidavits (some of which my students worked on) from the elderly, disabled, and sick immigrants about their experiences would make a great change of pace from published material, and should easily be available (redacted) from Connie Carden at NYLAG or Barbara Weiner at the Empire Justice Center. Another fascinating issue is the impact of the immigrant population on health care providers’ obligations with respect to linguistic and cultural competence. New York City’s recent legislation and other excellent materials are available from the New York Immigration Coalition at http://www.thenyic.org/issue.asp?cid=76. See also www.ethnomed.org. Other resources one could check out for interesting material are the National Alliance for Hispanic Health (www.hispanichealth.org); the NYU Center for Immigrant Health (www.med.nyu.edu/cih) and the National Asian Women’s Health Organization (www.nawho.org). You might also find useful some of the material from last year’s NY Academy of Medicine conference: Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 4:42 PM Subject: Immigrant Health Conference presentations available online The New York Academy of Medicine is pleased to announce that select presentations from our recent Immigrant Health Conference are now available online at: www.nyam.org/immigrantconference Over 200 health professionals and policymakers gathered at the Academy to attend an Immigrant Health Conference, presented by the Academy in concert with The Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Society of Medicine Foundation. We are very pleased that many of the distinguished panelists participating in this engaging forum have agreed to make their presentations available for the benefit of the clinical practice, research, policy and advocacy communities through the New York Academy of Medicine’s website. Through this conference, and the dissemination of materials related to it, the Academy seeks to facilitate a continuing dialogue on this important subject. If you would like to receive e-mail updates regarding future Academy initiatives in Immigrant Health, please go to: http://mail.nyam.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=ihp&A=1 to join the Academy’s Immigrant Health E-Mail List. ————————————————————————————————————————— Broad Survey of Day Laborers Finds High Level of Injuries and Pay Violations By Steven Greenhouse New York Times January 22, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/national/22labor.html [The report on which this article is based, “On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States,” is available at http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/uicued/Publications/RECENT/onthecorner.pdf] The first nationwide study on day laborers has found that such workers are a nationwide phenomenon, with 117,600 people gathering at more than 500 hiring sites to look for work on a typical day. The survey found that three-fourths of day laborers were illegal immigrants and that more than half said employers had cheated them on wages in the previous two months. The study found that 49 percent of day laborers were employed by homeowners and 43 percent by construction contractors. They were found to be employed most frequently as construction laborers, landscapers, painters, roofers and drywall installers. The study, based on interviews with 2,660 workers at 264 hiring sites in 20 states and the District of Columbia, found that day laborers earned a median of $10 an hour and $700 month. The study said that only a small number earned more than $15,000 a year. The professors who conducted the study said the most surprising finding was the pervasiveness of wage violations and dangerous conditions that day laborers faced.  *****************

KJ