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In this article we address some of the controversies that have arisen in the reception of Richard Alba's work on changing patterns of ethnoracial diversity and the integration of immigrants. We parse some of the debates around the term 'assimilation', arguing that it is still a useful term for understanding the trajectories of immigrants and their descendants. We argue that Alba's demographic analyses of the incorporation of post 1965 immigrants is an objective description of statistical changes in the population, but it is sometimes critiqued by scholars who point to subjective experiences of discrimination and prejudice among this population. We argue that this is best explained by the 'integration paradox' – greater integration leads to more, not less, feelings of exclusion, especially at the beginning of the process. We explore what Alba means when he discusses the expansion of the white racial category, and we review research on whiteness to bring attention to the question of whether the expansion of the mainstream and the blurring of the boundaries of whiteness are related. We stress the importance of differentiating between whiteness as a category, an identity, and an ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) aimed to reduce stark health inequalities by providing universal health insurance to all Americans and long-term authorised immigrants. Later regulations, however, gave the 50 U.S. states latitude to choose the degree of coverage for their constituencies. In this paper, we explore how interactions with these diverse systems of care contribute to the incorporation of immigrants into America, especially among the most likely to remain uninsured: the working poor. We uncovered a process in which immigrants’ access to health coverage and care was informed by the procedural justice embedded in their interactions with representatives of the health care system. These interactions signalled to immigrants their deservingness in American society, operating as a system of incorporation in the most inclusive states and as a barrier to incorporation in the most exclusive ones. Repealing the ACA may exacerbate differences across states in access to health care among eligible immigrants and end the incipient transformation of the U.S. health care system into an agent of immigrant incorporation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]