New Immigration Articles From SSRN

Here are some new immigration articles from the Social Science Research Network (www.ssrn.com):

“Language Access and Initiative Outcomes: Did the Voting Rights Act Reduce Support for Bilingual Education?” DANIEL HOPKINS, Georgetown.  ABSTRACT:  When trying to incorporate immigrants, policymakers risk provoking a backlash if they use the immigrants’ native language. We investigate this tradeoff by studying Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, which ensures that many non-English speakers have access to election materials in their native language. Focusing on California’s Proposition 227 on bilingual education, this paper tests how Spanish-language materials influenced election outcomes in both predominantly Latino precincts and predominantly non-Hispanic white precincts. Empirically, it exploits the legal thresholds for language assistance as well as propensity score matching to identify highly similar precincts that did or did not provide materials in Spanish. The analysis finds convincing evidence that Section 203 raised turnout and reduced support for ending bilingual education in heavily Latino precincts. Yet it finds no backlash: the sight of Spanish did not bolster support for the initiative in precincts with many non-Hispanic whites.

“Case Study: Aguilar v. Ice; Litigating Workplace Immigration Raids in the Twenty-First Century” Bender’s Immigration Bulletin, Vol. 14, p. 389, April 1, 2009 GREGOIRE F. SAUTER  ABSTRACT:  On March 6, 2007, agents for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of USCIS arrested 361 immigrants working illegally in a factory in downtown New Bedford, Mass. The immigrants, many of whom could have applied for asylum in the United States, were swiftly detained; within two days, most were flown to detention centers on the Texas-Mexico border. A coalition of civil rights groups, immigrant rights organizations and lawyers sued to prevent the immigrants’ deportation and obtain their return to Massachusetts. This paper describes their efforts and the challenges these advocates encountered in litigating Aguilar v. ICE.

“Flatlining: How the Reluctance to Embrace Immigrant Nurses is Mortally Wounding the U.S. Healthcare System” MARIA PABON LOPEZ, Indiana University Indianapolis DIOMEDES J. SITOURAS.  ABSTRACT:  Understaffing of nurses in U.S. hospitals is severely impacting the quality of healthcare and is predicted to worsen in future years. By the year 2020, the nursing workforce is projected to be nearly a million nurses short. The current nurse pool is retiring, and the number of new nurses entering the profession is inadequate. At the same time, an aging baby boomer population will need to be cared for as they reach old age. The nationwide shortage is related to another issue, inadequate staffing. There is a strong relationship between inadequate staffing and adverse patient outcomes, including mortality. Proposed domestic solutions to this problem include mandating the minimum number of nurses per patient, increasing nurse education investment, augmenting existing outreach programs that target young people, and increasing nurse wages. One possible solution is the use of foreign nurses to alleviate the burgeoning shortage. This solution is circumscribed by immigration law, which still remains far behind in terms of meeting the need. Immigration law only authorizes 500 H-1C visas per year. Attempts to expand immigration have been met with a cold response from nurse unions and trade associations. This Article argues for the increased use of foreign nurses in U.S. hospitals as a complement to proposed domestic policy solutions, in order to fully alleviate the shortage and to adequately ensure patient safety. This Article analyzes past and current efforts in the U.S. to use immigrant nurses in times of nurse shortage. The Article concludes by analyzing the challenges associated with the continued nurse migration and also calls for an expansion of the H-1C program, as well as further global investment in nursing care.

KJ