increased focus on rapid English acquisition. Further, every bilingual and ESL classroom, just like other classrooms, must have a highly qualified teacher, one who is credentialed and holds a degree or significant expertise in the subject areas he or she teaches (U.S. Department of Education 2004a). NCLB may also produce more emphasis on enrolling LEP children in pre-kindergarten (PK) and other early education programs to better prepare them for classroom instruction and the national assessments. Research has shown that early education programs help narrow gaps in preparation for elementary school (Haskins and Rouse 2005; Takanishi 2004). By highlighting achievement gaps among major racial and ethnic groups and for LEP children, NCLB may lead to more investment in early education programs that serve these children, whether Head Start, school-based PK, or other child care programs with strong education components. Finally, parents of LEP students and immigrant parents have the same rights as other parents under NCLB: to be informed of their child's progress on assessments, their school's progress on meeting standards, and their right to transfer their child to another school if the local school fails to sufficiently progress. Parents of LEP children must also be informed about the type of language instruction their children are receiving and that they have the right to refuse bilingual or ESL instruction for their children. NCLB requires schools to communicate with parents in the languages they speak "to the extent practicable" (U.S. Department of Education 2004b). NCLB Poses Challenges for Schools with Large LEP and Immigrant Populations No Child Left Behind also poses many challenges for children of immigrants, LEP students, and the schools serving them, particularly those with large numbers of children of immigrants. Because of ongoing residential and school segregation by race, ethnicity, and income, many schools are linguistically segregated. Over half (53 percent) of LEP students attend elementary and secondary schools where over 30 percent of their classmates are LEP; conversely, 57 percent of English proficient students attend schools where less than 1 percent of all students are LEP (Van Hook and Fix 2000). Many schools with large LEP populations also have large Hispanic, Asian, and low-income student populations, since children in immigrant families often share these characteristics. Schools serving large populations in several of these groups must meet performance standards for all groups or face the interventions required by NCLB. NCLB may change the quality or nature of education received by children of immigrants and LEP students. Its emphasis on testing may narrow the focus to subjects covered by the standardized tests, especially in schools that have difficulty meeting their performance targets. Additionally, with English proficiency foremost among their goals, schools may rely less on dual language immersion programs that build students' English and native language skills, instead adopting transit...

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We used the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort 9- and 24-mo surveys (n = 8693) and Structural Equation Modeling to examine direct and indirect associations between food insecurity and toddlers' overweight (weight for length), physical health, and length for age. There were significant effects of food insecurity on parental depression and parental depression in turn influenced physical health. There were also significant effects of food insecurity on parenting practices, which in turn were significantly associated with infant feeding and subsequently toddlers' overweight. There were no significant direct or indirect associations between food insecurity and toddlers' length for age. Our results show that food insecurity influences parenting, including both depression and parenting practices. Findings suggest parental depression is a stressor on parenting behavior that social policy should address to alleviate problematic child health outcomes. Findings underscore the importance of continuing and strengthening policy initiatives to ensure that families with infants and toddlers have sufficient, predictable, and reliable food supply.

No abstract

Social policies that address the adequacy and predictability of food supplies in families with infants have the potential to affect parental depression and parenting behavior, and thereby attachment and cognitive development at very early ages.

This study investigates the impact of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, both passed in 1996, on the use of health‐care services in immigrant communities in five Texas counties. The study presents findings of interviews with public agency officials, directors of community‐based organizations, and members of 500 households during two research phases, 1997–1998 and 1998–1999. In the household sample, 20 percent of U.S. citizens and 30 percent of legal permanent residents who reported having received Medicaid during the five years before they were interviewed also reported losing the coverage during the past year. Some lost coverage because of welfare reform restrictions on noncitizen eligibility or because of changes in income or household size, but many eligible immigrants also withdrew from Medicaid “voluntarily.”

Abstract. In 2014 there were more than 14 million refugees worldwide and almost a million places for permanent resettlement were needed.

Immigrants are a large and growing part of America's labor force. They accounted for half the growth in the U.S. workforce during the 1990s (Sum, Fogg, and Harrington 2002). In 2001, immigrants were 11 percent of the U.S. population, but 14 percent of all workers and 20 percent of low-wage workers in the U.S. economy (Capps, Fix et al. 2003). 1 Immigrants are overrepresented among all U.S. workers but especially among lower-paid workers. Many Americans work hard yet struggle to pay bills and provide for their children (Acs, Ross Phillips, and McKenzie 2000). Immigrant families are no exception, since such a high share of immigrant workers earns low wages. In 2001, one-quarter of all children living in low-income families had one or more foreign-born parents (Fix, Zimmermann, and Passel 2001). Almost half (47 percent) of all low-income immigrant families fit our definition of working families, where adults on average worked at least part-time (1,000 hours) in 2001. 2 For low-income native families, this rate is 40 percent. These figures suggest that unemployment, underemployment, and episodic employment are common for low-income families headed by both immigrants and natives. Despite similar levels of work effort among their parents, children of immigrants are substantially more likely than children with U.S.-born parents to be poor, have food-related problems, live in crowded housing, lack health insurance, and be in fair or poor health (Capps 2001; Reardon-Anderson, Capps, and Fix 2002).