Peer Reviewed

Hitting Closer to Home: State Policies’ Impacts on Immigrant Health, Social Science & Medicine

Tatiana Padilla, Cornell University 

Adriana Reyes, Cornell University

State policy and the climates they create have become increasingly important for health outcomes and the proliferation of inclusionary and exclusionary immigration related state policies has led to varying state climates for immigrants. We use this divergence in state policy climates to test the relationship between state-level immigration policies and three health outcomes. We include 22 state policies related to immigration enforcement, integration and health to capture the state climate for immigrants. Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation, a nationally-representative study of households in the U.S., we estimate multilevel regression models to assess the role of state policy climate for the healthcare access of immigrants. We also examine differential effects of the policy climate among immigrants, by examining differences by citizenship status and race. We find that more exclusionary immigration policies may be detrimental to healthcare access for all residents regardless of legal status– but ultimately noncitizens see the greatest benefits from inclusive policy climates. 

• Oral presentation at the American Population Association annual meeting 2021 

Access to Justice for Unaccompanied Children in U.S. Immigration Court (R&R International Immigration Review) 

Chiara Galli, University of Chicago  

Tatiana Padilla, Cornell University

Since 2009, nearly 800,000 unaccompanied minors have been apprehended at the US-Mexico border. The vast majority of these children come from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. They migrate to flee child abuse and gang violence, reunify with relatives, and seek better opportunities (UNHCR 2014). Since 2012, over 600,500 unaccompanied minors have been entrusted to ORR shelters (ORR n.d.). ORR, in turn, releases children to family member “sponsors” while they await the outcomes of their removal proceedings in immigration court: the bureaucratic process that determines whether children are ordered deported or allowed to remain in the United States, sometimes, with legal status and a path to citizenship.

This Dispatch from the Field provides new statistics on nearly a half million unaccompanied minors navigating removal proceedings in US immigration courts nationwide between 2009 and 2023 (through March), including population demographics, geographic location of cases, representation rates, and case outcomes. We extrapolated these statistics, even the most basic of which have not been available to the public since 2017, by using a novel approach that we developed to identify unaccompanied minors in administrative data from the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR).

• Oral presentation at the American Population Association annual meeting 2022 

Findings from 2019 Racial Equity and Social Justice Community Conversations, Report Number 2019-16

Emilia Calma and Tatiana Padilla, Montgomery County Summer Fellows

This Office of Legislate Oversight report summarizes findings from the Community Conversations from April and August of 2019. The Community Conversations on Racial Equity and Social Justice provided opportunities for diverse residents across the County to discuss the challenges they face in experiencing racial inequities and to offer recommendations for change. 

Chapter II, Overview of Community Conversations

Chapter III, What Challenges to Achieving Racial Equity Does Montgomery County Face

Chapter IV, Suggestions for Achieving Racial Equity in Montgomery County

Chapter V, Suggestions for Future Surveys

Racial Equity in Economic Development in Montgomery County

Tatiana Padilla, Montgomery County Summer Fellows

Drawing from a racial equity lens, this Office of Legislate Oversight report summarizes metrics for measuring economic wellbeing and recommends best practices for equitable economic development. 

Chapter II, Overview of racial disparities across several measure of economic well-being

Chapter III, Explains the traditional economic development framework and, providing important contrasts, introduces a racial equity lens to economic development.

Chapter IV, Recommends best practices of economic development through places, people and programs. Additionally, this chapter highlights the steps Montgomery County has taken towards racially equitable economic development.

Racial Equity Profile Montgomery County, Report Number 2019-7 

Elaine Bonner-Tompkins, Senior Legislative Analyst Office of Legislative Oversight

Emilia Calma and Tatiana Padilla, Montgomery County Summer Fellows

In the April 2018 resolution (Resolution No. 18-1095) articulating a vision for racial equity and a commitment to develop a Racial Equity and Social Justice Policy for Montgomery County, the County Council tasked the Office of Legislative Oversight to complete a baseline report describing disparities by race and ethnicity across a variety of measures of opportunity by May 31, 2019. This memorandum provides an overview of Jupiter’s Racial Equity Profile report and offers analysis based on the data compiled in this report. This memorandum also offers advice for how to use the information compiled to advance racial equity and social justice in local decision-making.