Emerging and Established Efforts by States to Expand Language Access

For the more than 25 million U.S. residents who have limited proficiency in English, language barriers can prevent or hinder access to critical public services such as education, health care, emergency response, and the legal system. Federal, state, and local government agencies also regularly need to communicate with linguistically diverse communities to conduct outreach, deliver services, and provide information. Removing language barriers to public services—commonly known as providing language access—has been a longstanding civil-rights requirement for state and local agencies and other entities that receive federal funding. These realities and growing U.S. linguistic diversity have made the provision of language access an important practical concern for all levels of government.
State governments, in particular, can play important and unique roles in expanding language access given key functions and services they directly oversee, such as elections, policing, and granting drivers’ licenses, as well as the broad powers they hold in receiving and administering funds for numerous federal programs and funding streams.
This webinar from the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy explores language access efforts in Colorado, Michigan, and New York—three states that provide important lessons for ensuring the effectiveness and long-term viability of state laws and policies that seek to ensure public services and information are accessible to all residents, regardless of the language they speak.
State leaders provide insights into how their language access efforts evolved, how they are structured, and innovative approaches undertaken to reduce language barriers across their states. This webinar also previews findings from an MPI report on recent language access work undertaken by Colorado’s state agencies.  
  

The Importance of Community Consultations in the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Network

The U.S. government in 2021 recommitted to the U.S. refugee resettlement program following several years of dismantling and record-low admissions. This reconstruction is taking place even as the resettlement program has been tasked with scaling up to meet the needs of refugees admitted in the wake of emergency resettlement initiatives, Operation Allies Welcome and Uniting for Ukraine, which have brought in more than 200,000 Afghan and Ukrainian refugees since 2021. This rebuilding is also occurring against the backdrop of unprecedented numbers of humanitarian migrants entering the United States through immigration parole pathways or the asylum system. Collectively, these developments have consequences for local capacities, affecting public health systems, schools, and other human services. As a result, coordination and communication among key stakeholders in the resettlement network has never been more critical. 
During this MPI webinar, speakers discuss the importance of community consultation in a rapidly evolving landscape, and explore how consultation supports capacity building and where it can, at times, fall short. Marking the release of a MPI report, The Unmet Potential of Community Consultations in U.S. Refugee Resettlement, this webcast explores key recommendations and actionable steps toward a more inclusive, collaborative, and adaptable consultation proces

Engaging Local Voices: Letting Cities Inform National Refugee Resettlement Goals

With the Global Refugee Forum (GRF) approaching, most of the planning focus has been on resettlement and complementary pathways pledges that will be announced at the December gathering and the number of refugees that states are committing to admit. Far less attention is being given to the crucial issues of how countries will reach their goals, whether the necessary capacity and infrastructure exist, and if there is effective coordination between the state and nonstate actors involved at different levels.
Effective communication and collaboration between local and national authorities are essential to ensure that resettlement and complementary pathways pledges are grounded in the realistic capacity and goodwill of local governments. Engaging with these local authorities, who often oversee reception and integration processes, can also enhance post-arrival planning and, therefore, refugees' integration prospects. Recent responses to the displacement of Ukrainians underscored the benefits of involving local authorities, as they have played a crucial role in identifying housing solutions and providing informal integration support through innovative local-national coordination and communication. 
This MPI Europe discussion considers how municipalities and other key stakeholders can be engaged in informing and delivering on the 2024 resettlement and complementary pathways pledges. Featuring findings from the recent publication Improving Stakeholder Coordination in Refugee Resettlement: A Path to More Effective, Inclusive Programs, this webinar explores opportunities for effective multi-level engagement ahead of the GRF.

Improving Language Access in Federal Programs: What Is the State of Play?

Providing meaningful access to public services for individuals with limited proficiency in English is both a longstanding civil-rights requirement for federal programs and an important policy consideration given growing linguistic diversity in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic has also brought language access to the forefront by demonstrating the necessity of providing critical government services and information to individuals who speak languages other than English. Hand in hand with this growing visibility, recent years have also seen the expansion of federal, state, and local government efforts to develop and improve language access policies and programs. The Biden administration has engaged in a number of efforts to foster greater language access across federal programs. This has involved government-wide initiatives that include language access as part of advancing equity for underserved populations, supporting newcomers’ integration, and better addressing the needs of ethnic or immigrant communities with large numbers of speakers of languages other than English. Individual federal agencies also have expanded their efforts to improve language access in their services and ensure state and local programs receiving federal funding do so as well. This webinar from MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy explores executive-branch efforts related to language access provision. White House and Department of Health and Human Services officials and a leading language access advocate provide an overview of the various strands of the administration’s work and discuss former, current, and upcoming actions connected to language access. The webinar provides insights into the challenges and opportunities in this area and explore options to foster greater language access in federal programs.
MPI's Language Access Work 
Recommendations for the Task Force on New Americans on Language Access 

World of Migration: The Power of Refugee Sponsorship: A Sponsor’s Story

What does the future of refugee resettlement look like? In this World of Migration episode, MPI Senior Policy Analyst Susan Fratzke leads an insightful conversation about sponsorship of refugees by private individuals and community groups. With humanitarian protection systems struggling to address record needs, more countries—including the United States—are turning to private or community sponsorship. Tune in to hear from Erin Schutte Wadzinski, who leads one of the pioneering sponsorship groups in Worthington, Minnesota. She discusses the Welcome Corps program launched by the U.S. government in January 2023. What does it mean to be a sponsor? How much responsibility do sponsors take on? What is the private sponsorship experience for refugees? Is this model working well? The conversation offers answers to these and other questions.

Strengthening Medical and Mental Health Services for Unaccompanied Children in U.S. Communities

The number of migrant children entering the United States without a parent or legal guardian reached a record high last year. Most unaccompanied children temporarily enter the care of the U.S. government before joining parents or other sponsors in U.S. communities to await the outcome of their immigration proceedings. Once they have made this transition, the services and supports that are critical to their ability to thrive—medical and mental health care key among them—can be difficult to access. This 60-minute conversation marks the conclusion of a research project undertaken in 2022 by MPI and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to study unaccompanied children’s access to medical and mental health services after release from federal custody.
AAP and MPI launched their report, A Path to Meeting the Medical and Mental Health Needs of Unaccompanied Children in U.S. Communities, and discussed its findings and recommendations during this webinar, including insights from field visits in Houston, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, where researchers spoke with more than 100 professionals working with unaccompanied children. The conversation featured a walk-through of the report’s findings around barriers to care for unaccompanied children and promising community practices to strengthen medical and mental health services. It also focused on the report’s recommendations on steps that governments, health systems, schools, and communities can take to improve access to medical and mental health care, for the benefit of the children and broader society.

Career and Technical Education as a Bridge to High School English Learner Success

Career and technical education (CTE) is frequently touted as an effective strategy to encourage high school students to persist to graduation and set themselves on a path to jobs that pay a family-sustaining wage. For English Learners (ELs), who disproportionately come from low-income families and are less likely than their peers to graduate on time, participating in CTE can be especially rewarding—if they have meaningful access to such classes and support to successfully complete them. Federal rules and state oversight play important roles in ensuring ELs are allowed to enroll in CTE, but challenges to serving them are numerous, from student schedules already packed with required classes to faculty unprepared to meet unique learning needs.
ELs’ meaningful participation in CTE requires a holistic approach to program planning and student recruitment. For example, school counselors—who play a gatekeeping role in determining the courses students can access—can benefit from working closely with EL specialists to understand student and family perspectives. Regular, two-way communication with higher education and industry partners ensures that high school staff understand local opportunities, and that those partners are ready to take advantage of the assets current and former EL students bring with them and to support their continued career growth.
This webinar marks the release of a report from MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy on CTE and ELs that describes federal and state policies that support EL inclusion in CTE, as well as local challenges and opportunities. The conversation highlights a Texas school district program in which collaborative practices between the CTE and multilingual departments are taking place to ensure ELs are appropriately supported.

Ukrainian Displacement in Europe, One Year Later

The war in Ukraine reaches its one-year milestone on February 24, 2023. Whilst the fallout of the Russian invasion, whether geopolitical, economic, energy- or food-related, has left few countries untouched, the European Union has had to gear up for the prolonged stay of nearly 5 million displaced Ukrainians and face the prospect of new arrivals amid unrelenting violence. This has presented policymakers with the multi-pronged challenge of integrating Ukrainian refugees into housing, education, and labor markets while also preparing for the eventual rebuilding of Ukraine and return of millions of its citizens. Nearly one year into the massive displacement and the relief effort, this MPI Europe webinar examines what has been done to foster the integration of those staying long(er) in host societies, to organize first reception services for any additional newcomers, and to prepare the return of those set on going home and rebuilding Ukraine. Speakers explore responses ranging from swift implementation of the Temporary Protection Directive to improvements in labor market integration, as well as efforts to facilitate social and economic reintegration for those intent on returning. The speakers also consider how the tension between reception, integration, and return (to rebuild) has materialized in the context of the Ukrainian response, and the challenges that lie ahead. The time is ripe to devise a range of approaches that can serve the interests of displaced Ukrainians, host societies, and Ukraine alike. This webinar examines whether the emerging practices are adequate.
Read the related commentary.
www.migrationpolicy.org

Ensuring Effective Language Access Services and Policies in Early Childhood Programs

One in three young children in the United States is a Dual Language Learner (DLL), and nearly half of these children have at least one parent who is Limited English Proficient (LEP). Language access policies and services are critical to promoting the equitable participation of these families in early childhood education and care (ECEC) programs, yet persisting gaps in participation for DLL children in many public ECEC programs demonstrate the need for improved language services to support this population. Amid this reality, the needs for even basic translation and interpretation for children and parents and relevant language skills among early childhood staff are often overlooked. Indeed, many early childhood services lack the necessary data and accountability measures to demonstrate equal access for DLL families, despite civil-rights requirements that they do so.
In this webinar, MPI experts provide an overview of a policy brief outlining federal and state efforts to implement language access policies in the early childhood field. The conversation examines the right to language access in federally funded services and the application of this right to early childhood programs. It also focuses on the language and other barriers that immigrant and DLL families face in accessing early childhood programs despite existing language access requirements, as well as opportunities to improve language services. It also marked the release of factsheets by state.

Migrant Integration: Learning from What Works in Times of Uncertainty

With millions fleeing war-torn Ukraine, questions about how to effectively promote migrant integration are again front and center. Integration policy is often forged in the heat of crises and led by political priorities, with limited resources devoted to making improvements along the way. As a result, lessons from promising innovations that tend to emerge particularly during crises often get lost. Understanding what works, under which conditions, and how to use this knowledge is crucial to design effective policies. Failure to embrace an evidence culture in migrant integration may come at a high human, financial, and societal cost for not only migrants, but also for governments and host societies. 
This webinar, organized as part of the HORIZON SPRING project on Sustainable Practices on Integration, brings together experts and policymakers to examine the state of the field and promising innovations that facilitate an evidence culture in migrant integration, particularly in contexts marked by uncertainty and limited resources, such as the current effort to integrate displaced Ukrainians. The discussion spotlights projects that demonstrate how an evidence culture can be leveraged to benefit migrant integration policymaking, including from the frontline reception of Ukrainian refugees. 
The webinar marked the publication of a policy brief that maps out the state of play of an evidence culture in migrant integration and identifies obstacles and promising steps policymakers at EU and national levels could take. It also previews the launch of a toolkit that will help policymakers and practitioners in their efforts to embed an evidence culture in migrant integration.

Migrant Integration Governance After the Pandemic: Lasting Adaptations?

The COVID-19 pandemic and its fallout have triggered the perfect storm in migrant integration, with migrants and refugees experiencing disproportionate health and economic effects. They also upended the ability of policymakers and practitioners to respond in typical ways, given the halt to the delivery of in-person services and the forced shift online.
Marking the release of a Migration Policy Institute Europe report, this webinar examines how government strategies, practices, and instruments of integration policymaking have adapted during the pandemic both in Europe and North America. How did policymakers ensure effective and agile responses in a context of COVID-induced disruption, and what can be learned to promote cost-effective integration policies moving forward?

Fomentar la cohesión social para todos: ¿Qué podemos aprender de las intervenciones de desarrollo sobre cómo promover la inclusión y reducir la xenofobia?

 La preocupación por el aumento de la xenofobia y la discriminación ha provocado inversiones que promueven la cohesión social y combaten los prejuicios contra las personas que se desplazan. Estas preocupaciones son especialmente urgentes debido al aumento de la migración forzada y la pandemia mundial, la cual ha provocado el uso de los migrantes como chivos expiatorios, y cuyos efectos económicos devastadores pueden dañar aún más la cohesión social de las comunidades.  
Los gobiernos, las ONG y las organizaciones internacionales han pedido nuevas ideas para aprovechar la solidaridad y reducir los conflictos. Estas ideas ocupan un lugar importante en el Pacto Mundial para una Migración Segura, Ordenada y Regular. Sin embargo, se desconoce qué estrategias, desde las campañas digitales hasta las intervenciones de creación de comunidades, funcionan realmente para eliminar los prejuicios y mitigar las tensiones sociales. Este evento del Foro de Revisión de la Migración Internacional trata de iniciar una conversación práctica y necesaria sobre qué fomenta los sentimientos de confianza y qué estrategias evitan que se produzcan tensiones y prejuicios.  
El debate se centra en lo que ha sido eficaz para construir sociedades socialmente cohesionadas e inclusivas, examinando las lecciones de situaciones post-conflicto sobre cómo fomentar la confianza entre grupos además de explorar ejemplos de ideas prometedoras pero fallidas para entender por qué fracasaron en la práctica.  

Making Social Cohesion Work for Everyone: What Can We Learn from Development Interventions on How to Promote Inclusion and Reduce Xenophobia?

Concerns that xenophobia and discrimination are on the rise have sparked a panoply of investments in promoting social cohesion and combatting prejudice against people on the move. These concerns are particularly acute in the wake of rising forced displacement and a global pandemic that triggered widespread scapegoating of migrants, and whose economic devastation may further fray the social fabric of communities.
Governments, NGOs, and international organizations have called for new ideas to harness solidarity and reduce conflict, and these ideas have featured prominently in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration. Yet not enough is known on what actually works to reduce prejudice and mitigate social tensions, especially as so few interventions—from digital campaigns to community-building interventions—have been rigorously evaluated. This side event of the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) aims to spark a much-needed, practical dialogue around what works to promote feelings of trust and blunt tensions and prejudice before they take root.
The discussion, featuring opening comments by the UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Crisis Bureau, looks at what has been effective to build socially cohesive and inclusive societies—including lessons from post-conflict settings on how to build intergroup trust—as well as examples of promising ideas on paper that may have fallen short in practice, and why.
This side event was organized jointly by MPI, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and Enabel (the Belgian Development Agency) on the margins of the first IMRF.

Testing Disrupted: Assessment of English Learners Complicated by Pandemic

In fall 2021, the educational experience for children changed dramatically, with many returning to the classroom for the first time in more than a year and a half. The nation’s 5 million English Learners (ELs) endured disproportionate impacts during this pandemic-induced period of distance learning due to a range of reasons, including gaps in digital access and inadequate support in languages other than English. The COVID-19 pandemic also challenged statewide assessment systems, in a year when many students were not attending school in person and instruction was of variable quality.
Unsurprisingly, there were downward trends in student performance visible across all students in English language arts, math, and among ELs, English language development. But what have state policymakers and school leaders learned from the 2020–21 state assessment data? How are they coupling assessment data with other metrics to inform investments and interventions that are personalized for ELs?
In a webinar marking the release of a report ( https://bit.ly/517ELtest ) that examines ELs’ learning experiences during the 2020-21 academic year and their performance and participation in statewide testing, experts offer their analysis of states’ assessment data and how instructional challenges and the pandemic affected the interpretation of these data. Speakers also explore challenges states faced and lessons learned in administering assessments and how schools are using data to inform interventions and instruction this year. Finally, they share their perspective of how the pandemic might change the approach states and districts take to measuring academic growth and success.

Public Narratives on Refugees: Sustaining Solidarity in Times of Crisis

The massive humanitarian exodus from Ukraine has upended global expectations of how quickly—and at what scale—host communities can welcome people fleeing their homes. The number of Ukrainians who fled to Poland within the first two weeks of the invasion surpassed the number of Venezuelans received by Colombia over a five-year period. Despite the potentially destabilizing pace and volume of arrivals from Ukraine, the policy response has been overwhelmingly supportive. So has the public response, with public opinion polling pointing to high support for Ukrainians across Europe. But as the crisis continues, there are fears that these initial feelings of goodwill will fade and generosity fatigue will set in, much as occurred during the 2015-16 European migration and refugee crisis and in parts of South America with the arrivals of large numbers of Venezuelans. This raises several questions: How can immediate post-crisis solidarity be harnessed and made more sustainable, such that it can withstand emerging narratives of newcomers as threats to jobs and limited public services? How can feelings of goodwill be leveraged to spread to others rather than remaining narrowly focused on a particularly sympathetic population? And how can policy responses such as temporary stay permits build longer-term goodwill towards populations needing protection writ large? This Migration Policy Institute webinar convenes international experts to consider what we know about public opinion and narratives on refugees and what this means for the Ukrainian crisis. This event marks the launch of a publication from the “Beyond Territorial Asylum: Making Protection Work in a Bordered World” initiative led by MPI and the Robert Bosch Stiftung. The initiative aims to advance ideas to redesign the global protection and resettlement infrastructure in a way that is more equitable, flexible, and sustainable.

With Millions of Unfilled U.S. Jobs, What Role Is There for Immigration?

The U.S. government in March 2022 announced record job vacancies, with 11.3 million unfilled positions. With an aging population, declining fertility, shifting skills needs, and the Great Resignation underway in part as baby boomers retire, the United States is experiencing a major labor market transformation that will challenge the country’s economic growth and competitiveness.
How these mega forces play out is yet to be seen. As a policy option, immigration has always been one of the levers available to address labor shortages or skills gaps. But beyond recruiting workers from abroad, developing and leveraging the skills of immigrants already in the United States represents a smart policy option. What role could underutilized high-skilled immigrant workers occupy in the changing labor market, especially in high-demand sectors such as health and education? What national and state policy options exist to maximize immigrants’ economic contributions by more fully tapping their talents and potential?During this webcast, experts -- including MPI's Jeanne Batalova and Muzaffar Chishti, former U.S. Labor Department Chief Economist Harry J. Holzer, Upwardly Global's Jina Krause-Vilmar, and Alexandra Manuel -- highlighted the latest demographic and labor market trends shaped by growing automation and the COVID-19 pandemic. They also discussed the merits of three policy approaches that leverage immigrants’ talents to address labor and skills shortages: tapping the existing skills of underemployed college-educated immigrants, increasing immigrant adults’ access to postsecondary credentials, and attracting new talent through the immigration system. The webinar featured the launch of an MPI issue brief on the underemployment of skilled health-care workers in Illinois and Chicago ( https://bit.ly/immskills22 ).

Innovation Within Government. Rethinking and Modernizing Integration Policy Plenary Session

MPI Europe Director Hanne Beirens moderated a session where Laura Batalla from Ashoka Hello Europe Initiative, David Cashaback from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Drocella Mugorewera from the Refugee Congress, Cameron McGlothlin of the U.S. Department of State's Office of Refugee Admissions, and Vincent Catot from the European Commission's Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs, discussed these questions:
How is integration policymaking evolving, under the combined pressures of the pandemic, economic shifts, rising social needs, and technological transformation?
How have policymakers in Europe and North America responded to the need for rapid and agile policy action to address COVID-19-induced disruption, at a time in which many of their usual routines, practices, and tools have been upended? How might these experiences shape integration policy in the longer run—in its objectives, practices, and overall mission?
How can multi-level governance approaches and multi-stakeholder cooperation help governments address evolving integration challenges and promote innovation? How to ensure systematic learning and transfer between community-level innovations and government policy?

Digital Equity: How Will Rapid Digitization Impact Migrant and Refugee Inclusion?

MPI Europe Senior Policy Analyst Jasmijn Slootjes moderated a session where Imad Elabdala, Founder, Hero2B and Kidnovation; Josephine Goube, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Techfugees for Impact; and Marco Campana, Freelance Communications Consultant discussed the following questions:
What lessons can recent innovations provide on how to advance migrant and refugee inclusion through digital services—particularly in a context of social and physical distancing?
What limitations, challenges, and inequities should social innovators in civil society, the private sector, and government keep in mind when exploring the potential of tech for inclusion?
What investments are necessary to ensure that digitization does not lead to widening inequalities in diverse communities and societies?
How can we prevent a proliferation of short-lived, fragmented digital tools and tech solutions—thus improving sustainability, quality, and impact?

A Tribute to the Life of Dr. Demetrios G. Papademetriou

This event celebrated the remarkable legacy of MPI's first president and MPI Europe's founder, Demetrios G. Papademetriou. One of the world's pre-eminent scholars and lecturers on international migration, he developed a rich body of scholarship shared in more than 275 books, research reports, articles, and other publications. He also advised numerous governments, international organizations, civil-society groups, and philanthropic organizations around the world on immigration and immigrant integration issues.
Read the event program and select writings from Dr. PapademetriouRead MPI's press release on his passing.For his obituary or to leave any memories for his family, click here.Read a collection of tributes to his life and legacy.Listen to his thoughts on this World of Migration podcast episode.
Speakers: 
Sir Trevor Phillips, OBE, Co-Founder, Webber Phillips Ltd.; former Chair, Equality and Human Rights Commission, England, Scotland, and Wales; Founding Member, MPI Transatlantic Council on Migration
Doris Meissner, Senior Fellow and Director, U.S. Immigration Policy Program, MPI; former Commissioner, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
Ulrich Weinbrenner, Director-General for Migration, Refugees, and Return Policy, Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community, Federal Republic of Germany
Michael Fix, Senior Fellow and former President, MPI
Gustavo Mohar, MPI Board Member; former Under Secretary for Migration, Population, and Religious Affairs, Ministry of Governance, Government of Mexico
Brenda Dann Messier, Senior Advisor, Education Strategy Group; former Assistant Secretary for Career, Technical, and Adult Education, U.S. Department of Education
Malcolm Brown, MPI Board Member; former Deputy Minister of Public Safety; former Executive Vice President, Canada Border Services Agency, Government of Canada
Frank Sharry, Founder and Executive Director, America's Voice
Moderator: 
Andrew Selee, President, MPI

Bridging the Digital Divide for U.S. Children in Immigrant Families

The Omicron surge caused many U.S. schools to return to remote learning, an all-too-familiar status since the sudden shift to virtual learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The public-health crisis has tested school systems across the country and continues to pose operational challenges as schools transition between in-person, remote, and hybrid instruction. 
Remote learning has become a controversial tool and now is often considered a last-resort pandemic response. One reason is the digital divide in who can access computers, high-speed internet, and digital skills training. Children in immigrant families often have disproportionately less access to digital tools and training than their peers, which can lead to knowledge gaps, lower grades, chronic absenteeism, and disenrollment.
This webinar features findings from an MPI report that takes stock of lessons and promising practices from the pandemic, with insights from educators, community leaders, and other stakeholders on how to support immigrant children and U.S.-born children with immigrant parents during remote learning. Speakers from MPI, Internationals Network for Public Schools, Office of Global Michigan, and the U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology, examine related parts of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 and how federal, state, and local governments; school districts; schools; libraries; and service providers can advance digital equity for children in immigrant families.