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This essay reflects on the materiality of migration with a focus on passports and other kinds of documentary permissions for travel. It argues that throughout the history of the Americas passports have acquired meanings exceeding contemporary associations with national citizenship that are discernible in literary works and in the archival record. It looks to documentary practices in Latin America and the Caribbean to decenter the United States from studies of border crossing and Latinx subjectivities, suggesting intersecting hemispheric practices that delineate the relative importance of being documented or undocumented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the case of 1.5-generation Brazilians who migrated to Massachusetts in the 1980s and 1990s and grew up as unauthorized. Compared to unauthorized youth from other Latin American groups, Brazilians who migrated during this time are relatively privileged: they often come from Brazilian middle-class families, are relatively lighter-skinned, and as visa over-stayers who migrated pre-2001, they have been better positioned to access the very limited pathways to citizenship. Drawing primarily on in-depth interviews, I argue that “privilege without papers”—that is, the intersection of racial and/or social class privilege with (il)legality—shapes their lives in important and nuanced ways. Indeed, some 1.5-generation Brazilians are quite aware of their privilege relative to other unauthorized groups from Latin America. Many Brazilians have experienced movement toward legal inclusion in young adulthood either through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which grants partial inclusion, or through marriage or other legal dispensations that grant pathways to citizenship. Shifts in status have brought new opportunities, some peace of mind, and a degree of legitimacy. Yet, for many, including several who could pass as White, the legacy of legal exclusion has undermined their sense of belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the political advocacy of human service administrators following implementation of a highly restrictive state immigration law. It tests hypotheses to assess whether factors associated with the political advocacy of human service administrators generally are also associated with advocacy at a time of policy crisis. Findings suggest that few human service administrators engaged in immigration-related advocacy, and that those who did advocate were those most likely to perceive organizational benefit for doing so. The findings raise questions about the conditions under which human service administrators will advocate for social benefit in an organizational or individual role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a technique for secondary teachers assigning oral history projects that students enjoyed but did not consider to be real history. Accounts of the difficulties encountered by United States immigrants; Choices to make within the topic of immigration; Characteristics of the typical immigrant from North America; Assigning oral history projects to children of immigrants.

Examines the painstaking steps taken by Chinese to enter the United States during the time of exclusion. Irrelevance of questions that immigration officials directed at Chinese applicants; Exploration of Fong Sun Yin's genealogy; Creation of slots for paper sons.

Objective: Immigrant health discussions often focus on acculturation and omit discussions on historical events that may underlie health differences among immigrant older adults. This paper provides a historical overview of immigration policy and flows to the U.S. and examines insurance access and health difficulties by sending country. Methods: We analyzed the "Immigrants Admitted to the United States, Fiscal Years 1972–2000" and 2015–2019 American Community Survey datasets to examine the number of admitted immigrants, sociodemographic profiles for current immigrant older adults, and the predicted probabilities of health insurance access and health difficulties. Results: Our results highlight alignment of immigration flows with immigration legislation and vast heterogeneity in migration, health, and healthcare access of immigrants by sending country. Discussion/Implications: Public health practitioners must consider how historical events and social factors contribute to the healthcare access and health of immigrant populations, as demographic shifts will require interventions that promote equitable healthy aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jean Raspail's controversial 1973 novel The camp of the saints predicts mass migration to Europe that will destroy European civilization. Decades later, the book has accurately predicted the hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving in Europe annually, prompting a continent-wide crisis. From Lesbos and Lampedusa to the Canary Islands and Calais, no one seems to know how to stem the flow of humanity. Borders are being resurrected, despite Schengen and European Union (EU) agreements, in an effort to control the movement of populations. European governments disagree on how to proceed and some are suggesting that the EU could be torn apart by differing approaches to the problem. But does this have to be the response to the migration crisis? This paper compares the predictions of The camp of the saints to events in Europe today and critiques the book's conclusions with regard to what is an ancient phenomenon: movements of migrants from surplus to deficit labor settings. The paper will also evaluate the response to migrants in the United States under its populist president, Donald Trump, and will review related issues in other parts of the world: Turkey, Russia, and Canada. Contrary to Raspail's predictions, world leaders will need to accept what has already become a de facto reality: large scale admission of migrants and refugees to the EU and North America, as full citizens, will be the only realistic way to preserve prosperity in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detention and removal of unauthorised immigrants by United States (U.S.) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has steadily increased despite declining rates of unauthorised migration. ICE detainees are held in overcrowded detention centres, often without due process and deprived of adequate food, sanitation, and medical care. Conditions of ICE detention contribute to malnutrition and increase the likelihood of infectious disease exposure, including tuberculosis (TB). TB infection interacts with Type 2 Diabetes (DM2), disproportionately affecting individuals who are routinely targeted by federal immigration practices. When two diseases interact and exacerbate one another within a larger structural context, thereby amplifying multiple disease interactions, this is called a syndemic. In this paper, we examine malnutrition in ICE detention as a pathway of bidirectional risks for and interactions between TB and DM2 among ICE detainees. Drawing from literature on detention conditions, TB, and DM2 rates along the U.S.-Mexico border, we propose an ICE-TB-DM2 syndemic model. We present a map displaying our proposed syndemic model to demonstrate the spatial application of syndemic theory in the context of ICE detention, strengthening the growing scholarship on syndemics of incarceration and removal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As immigration and health policy continue to be contentious topics globally, anthropologists must examine how policy creates notions of health-related deservingness, which may have broad consequences. This paper explores hidden relationships between immigration enforcement laws and the most recent health reform law in the United States, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), which excludes immigrants from certain types of health services. Findings in this paper show how increasingly harsh immigration enforcement efforts provide health facilities a 'license to discriminate' against undocumented immigrants, resulting in some facilities 'dumping' undocumented patients or unlawfully transferring them from one hospital to another. Due to changes made through the ACA, patient dumping disproportionately complicates public hospitals' financial viability and may have consequences on public facilities' ability to provide care for all indigent patients. By focusing on the converging consequences of immigrant policing and health reform, findings in this paper ultimately show that examining deservingness assessments and how they become codified into legislation, which I call 'deservingness projects', can reveal broader elements of state power and demonstrate how such power extends beyond targeted populations. Exercises of state power can thus have 'spillover effects' that harm numerous vulnerable populations, highlighting the importance of medical anthropology in documenting the broad, hidden consequences of governmental actions that construct populations as undeserving of social services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on interracial Filipino-American couples attempting to migrate between the United States and the Philippines using the Repatriation Act of 1935 and the War Brides Act of 1945. The prospect of the migrating interracial couple posed new questions for US immigration bureaucracy, prompting reconsideration of policies regarding marriage, family, dependence and citizenship. Viewing the United States and the Philippines in one frame of analysis, with these two Acts as bookends, this paper considers migration a process driven by the desires and needs of couples, mediated by regimes of US border control and empire. Gendered and radicalised notions of protection influenced the implementation of these Acts, with longer term consequences for race, gender and family-based immigration policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Millions of mixed-status Latinx immigrant families in the United States are facing extreme stress and fear of family separation stemming from harsh immigration enforcement practices. In this paper, we suggest that true systemic practice involves knowledge and critical engagement with the broader contexts of families' lives. To this end, we review the history of immigration policy that created today's sociopolitical climate and help therapists situate themselves within this larger context. We then offer additional practice considerations for family therapy with mixed-status families, ranging from pre-intake concerns to community and advocacy work. Our hope is that therapists will use the areas of this paper that best fit their own practices and contexts, with the shared goal of providing ethical and just services to undocumented and mixed-status Latinx immigrant families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores assumptions made and measurement approaches in the nuanced pathway between enacted state immigration policies and the outcomes they affect in Latino immigrant communities. Scholars across a variety of fields have found that contemporary state immigrant policymaking is associated with outcomes in immigrant communities including political engagement, mental and physical health, access to education, and labor opportunities. In this paper, we explore questions of how state immigration policies produce these and other outcomes. Much of this literature relies on the assumption that members of the immigrant communities are aware of the state policies being enacted, yet few quantitative studies of the effects of state immigration policy contain measures of both policy and of perception. We seek to determine the extent to which Latino immigrants are aware of state immigrant policymaking to help determine whether state immigration policies are a valid approach to measure perceptions of the immigration policy environment in Latino immigrant communities. Additionally, we explore alternative measures of immigration policy. Our findings are particularly relevant to policymakers and immigration scholars as the contemporary political environment has helped to fuel anti‐immigrant sentiments and rhetoric contributing to Latinos' perceptions of the state immigrant policy environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After release from immigrant detainment centres in the United States, a select group of unaccompanied immigrant children enter a community-based programme known as 'post-release services' (PRS) because of an identified vulnerability. Despite the name, post-release services do not confer actual services – only a referral for them. We use an intersectional lens to examine the tension for service providers within PRS policy between the rights of the child and the stigma and increasing criminalisation of being undocumented. This paper is based on document analysis of all public federal documents on unaccompanied children, ethnographic fieldwork in four PRS serving sites in the US, and interviews with 20 unaccompanied children, 17 sponsors, and 13 employees of the government subcontracting agency. Drawing on these unique data sets, we consider how age and legal status intersect in shaping the implementation of services for unaccompanied children and subsequent outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are concerns that the future balance between the supply and demand for nurses will result in major nursing shortages around the world. Some think that nurses are leaving nursing because of the COVID‐19 pandemic. In the United States, nurses may be leaving their jobs, but not nursing. Enrollments in nursing programs have increased. Nurse migration to the United States has decreased. This paper, using examples from the United States mainly, aims to explore the issue of supply of nurses and argues that it is not clear that we will have a worldwide nursing shortage going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several Asian-American groups are more educated than their non-migrant compatriots in Asia and their native-born white competitors in America. Lee and Zhou show that this "educational hyper-selectivity" has significant implications for the socio-economic success of Asian immigrants and their children. But they devote relatively little attention to its causes. This paper develops an answer in the Taiwan case. Using interviews and statistics, it shows that the Taiwanese secured an educational advantage because those arriving before 1965 consisted almost entirely of graduate students. Although they entered on student visas, prevailing political and economic conditions led them to settle in the U.S. After the passage of the Hart-Celler Act, these movers reproduced their advantage by sponsoring the arrival of kin, most of whom were also well-educated. The paper's conclusion assesses the ability of American immigration law to foster the formation of hyper-selected groups.en. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon racial formation theory, this paper argues that Korean adoption was part of a racial project that advanced the model minority myth, helping shape what it means to be Asian in America. This focus on Korean adoption as part of the foundation of the model minority myth departs from traditional renderings that concentrate exclusively on Japanese and Chinese Americans. It also addresses the exclusion of Korean adoptees from Asian immigration history. In making this argument, I incorporate historical context and draw upon Korean adoptee adults' online survey responses (N=107) and in-depth interviews (N=37) to examine the multiple domains that enacted this racial project, including policy, family socialization, and interpersonal interactions, and the effect on Korean adoptees. Implications of this racial project are discussed in relation to contemporary adoptee deportations and citizenship rights advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of 9/11 on the self-employment outcomes of Arab and Muslim immigrants. Using CPS Data 2000–2005 and a difference-in-differences approach, I analyze the changes in their self-employment entry/exit decisions and earnings after 9/11 using native whites as the main comparison group. I find that the Arab and Muslim immigrants are less likely to enter self-employment after 9/11, especially into industries that require higher levels of capital investment. However, there is no evidence that 9/11 has negative impacts on their exit decisions or earnings. The paper further documents a shift of Arab and Muslim immigrants’ businesses toward industries such as construction, finance/real estate/insurance services, and professional services after 9/11, areas in which they have performed well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the means for the exclusion of groups deemed undesirable within the Lockean liberal tradition, particularly as the American Federalists modified it. It further explores the consequences of the practical application of this vision for immigration in the American case. The author contends that controversies about immigration in America demonstrate a deeply communitarian strain within Lockean liberalism that feeds rationalized exclusionary practice. This argument turns on an analysis of liberal theories of consent in Locke and early American thinkers. The goal of the paper is to make the Lockean tradition and its American adaptations speak more clearly about immigration, so that the issue can be better defined. In framing both the use and abuse of immigrants and the foundations of such behavior as problematic, the author hopes to provoke fresh thinking about the nature of and possible solutions to American exclusionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Committed to exploring democratic ways of doing research with racialized migrant women and taking up the theme of “what citizenship studies can learn from taking seriously migrant mothers' experiences” for theory and practice this paper explores walking as a method for doing participatory arts-based research with women seeking asylum, drawing upon research undertaken in the North East of England with ten women seeking asylum. Together we developed a participatory arts and participatory action research project that focused upon walking, well-being and community. This paper shares some of the images and narratives created by women participants along the walk, which offer multi-sensory, dialogic and visual routes to understanding, and suggests that arts-based methodologies, using walking biographies, might counter exclusionary processes and practices, generate greater knowledge and understanding of women’s resources in building and performing cultural citizenship across racialized boundaries; and deliver on social justice by facilitating a radical democratic imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the early fourteenth century, perhaps thousands of migrants arrived atop the windswept landscape of Perry Mesa, in central Arizona. They built large massive room blocks strategically overlooking the access routes onto the mesa rim. A key to understanding the migration process is documenting the number of antecedent residents on the mesa and their settlement distribution. Different migration processes are implied if the mesa top was virtually vacant, moderately settled, or densely clustered immediately prior to the migrants’ arrival. Unfortunately, documenting the antecedent settlement pattern has been largely stymied by poor temporal control, which has left the antecedent remains largely invisible archaeologically. To fill the chronometric gap, Scott Wood (2014 Antecedents II: A Progress Report on the Origins of the Perry Mesa Settlement and Conflict Management System. Paper prepared for Fall 2012 Arizona Archaeological Council Conference; publication of proceedings pending) has recently described ceramic signatures for different time periods. In this paper, we test the validity and utility of Wood's Early Classic and Late Classic signatures. We then apply the dating refinements to better reconstruct the Perry Mesa migration process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on a qualitative methodology that includes in‐depth interviews conducted between 2008 and 2017 with 180 migrant smugglers from Mexico, the objective of this paper is to analyse the way US employers' interest in having access to cheap labour feeds migrant smuggling, and is connected to corruption in US border enforcement. We conclude that corruption on the US side of the border could be systematic and not a matter of a few bad apples. Corruption is manifested in selective enforcement, which is a pragmatic practice that justifies enhanced immigration enforcement, and benefits US immigration agents, US employers and Mexican smugglers, while undocumented border crossers suffer the monstrous effects of militarised border enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, the United States saw a greater than 50% increase in the number of unaccompanied children from Mexico and Central America arriving at the U.S./Mexico border, and unaccompanied children continue to migrate to the United States in consistent numbers. The dramatic increase of 2014 exposed gaps in policies aimed at supporting unaccompanied children as they await legal adjudication. This paper begins with a historic review of immigration policies in the United States aimed at supporting unaccompanied migrant children. An analytic review is provided of existing immigration policies in the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, highlighting the competing paradigms created by missions of security‐focused policy versus child‐centred policy. A close examination of the values that influenced policy development in this area is included, along with a discussion of how social work practice can infuse elements of social justice into immigration policy reform. Areas for future research to reform immigration policy focused on supporting unaccompanied undocumented minors are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philip K. Hitti was the first scholar to study Arab-American immigration to the United States. Highly influential during the twentieth century, his ideas have lost much of their appeal to current interpreters of the early diaspora of Arab-Americans called Syrians at the time. This article revisits Hitti's thought, focusing on the issues of Palestine and Arab identity. Using primary source material from Hitti's archived papers, plus multiple secondary sources, I argue that Hitti maintained consistency, both in his advocacy of the general Arab stance opposing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and in his construction of Arab identity as different from Syrian identity. On Palestine, Hitti clashed with Albert Einstein, in public discourse and in an acerbic private exchange of correspondence. On Arab identity, Hitti held firm to a strict interpretation, distinguishing Syrians, conceptualized as Christian, from Arabs, conceptualized as Islamic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the largely voluntary character of Nigerian immigration to the United States since 1970, it is not clear that their patterns of integration have emulated those of earlier immigrants who, over time, traded their specific national origins for "American" or "White" identities as they experienced upward mobility. This path may not be available to Nigerian immigrants. When they cease to be Nigerian, they may become black or African-American. In this paper, I use US Census data to trace patterns of identity in a Nigerian second-generation cohort as they advance from early school-age in 1990 to adulthood in 2014. The cohort shrinks inordinately across the period as its members cease to identify as Nigerian, and this pattern of ethnic attrition is most pronounced among the downwardly mobile - leaving us with a positively select Nigerian second generation and, perhaps, unduly optimistic assessments of Nigerian-American socioeconomic advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How receiving society members perceive and respond to immigration are crucial factors that shape the context of reception for immigrants coming to a new country. In this paper, we examine these processes through the lens of intergroup contact research, with a focus on relations between immigrants and members of receiving societies, to discern ways in which receiving societies are or are not welcoming toward immigrants. Reviewing recent theorizing with illustrative empirical studies and ongoing programs of research that focus on new immigrants in Germany and the United States, we describe how direct and indirect forms of positive and negative contact can serve either to facilitate or inhibit positive immigrant‐receiving community relations. We also discuss factors that may contribute to the emergence of positive and negative contact experiences between immigrants and receiving society members. We close with a discussion of policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will critically explore and compare East Asian perspectives and adaptation modes in the Americas as well as self-perception within the realm of "the Other" through two novels: Yawara! A Travessia Nihondin-Brasil (Yawara! The Nihondin-Brazil Journey 2006) by Júlio Miyazawa, a Nipo-Brazilian (Nisei), and Yellow on the Outside, Shame on the Inside: Asian Culture Revealed by the Sino-American Anson Chi (Web published). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a cultural institution, the press plays a fundamental role in documenting and forging the public image of migrants. This paper analyzes two thematic axes in the post 9/11 narrative of the New York Times on migration. The image that was created during the year following the terrorist attacks presents on the one hand the Mexican migrant as a potential terrorist and on the other hand migration as a global problem. It is fundamental to problematize the rhetoric about contemporary migration by inserting it in the ideological roots that defined that moment and in the historical framework of the Mexico-United States relationship. The media rhetoric post 9/11 contributed to the emergence of a new international agenda by globalizing this representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the EB-5 immigration visa, created by the United States through the Immigration Act of 1990. The Immigration Investor Programm allows immigrants to earn their Green Card / American Citizenship by investing in American businesses. Investments range from commercial real estate to solar energy plants and could only be received by an economic unit defined as a Regional Center. The paper is focusing on legal aspects of the regional centers, which are started by local U.S businessmen, sometimes in alliance with local government agencies, in order to attract investment capital for current or planned business ventures. Regional centers are involved with the promotion of economic growth, job creation and increased domestic capital investments. The paper also reviews certain financial qualifications that EB-5 investors who choose to invest through a regional center with the EB-5 programm must meet. Basically, the U.S Government looks for sophisticated immigrants who qualify as "accredited investors" in order to maximize their business success. State and federal securities laws require this approach in order to protect the investment. Ultimately, the paper offers a presentation of a major project "SkyRise Miami", that will create approximately 17.000 jobs, with a total economic impact during its development stage that exceeds $800 million. It will be the tallest building in Florida, considered to become "Miami's Eiffel Tower", that will change the landscape of Miami. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how, as in the past in their home community in Mexico, Mexican immigrants in the United States use a system of flexible kinship and ritual practices to adapt to new circumstances of living and working in communities with new neighbours, new challenges and new threats. The paper focuses particularly on how the increased presence of women who have not always been a large part of the Mexican migrant community in the United States and their 'kin work' allows migrants to maintain and extend their social networks. Through various family and ritual events, migrants integrate new friends and acquaintances with new resources into their social networks and thus facilitate their survival in their new home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is possible if Dayton became a city that intentionally welcomed immigrants? This question was the starting point for a community conversation about the wellbeing of and outreach toward immigrants in a midsize city in southwest Ohio – the City of Dayton. This paper examines the processes employed to support the emergence of an immigrant-welcoming initiative now called ‘Welcome Dayton’. Early conversations resulted in a formal plan, written by the community and endorsed by city commissioners, which realigned and crystallised local priorities, sparking a wide spectrum of efforts aimed at becoming a welcoming city. Using qualitative methods, primarily participant observation, we identified practices of creating spaces where both long-time residents and recent immigrants come together in a way that recognises and reveals the value of each participant’s perspectives and ideas. Herein we examine the practices of creating and sustaining Welcome Dayton, paying particular attention to the role of recognition in generating ‘resourcefulness’ in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a great deal of state-level legislative activity focused on immigration and immigrants over the past decade in the United States. Some policies aim to improve access to education, transportation, benefits, and additional services while others constrain such access. From a social determinants of health perspective, social and economic policies are intrinsically health policies, but research on the relationship between state-level immigration-related policies and Latino health remains scarce. This paper summarizes the existing evidence about the range of state-level immigration policies that affect Latino health, indicates conceptually plausible but under-explored relationships between policy domains and Latino health, traces the mechanisms through which immigration policies might shape Latino health, and points to key areas for future research. We examined peer-reviewed publications from 1986 to 2016 and assessed 838 based on inclusion criteria; 40 were included for final review. These 40 articles identified four pathways through which state-level immigration policies may influence Latino health: through stress related to structural racism; by affecting access to beneficial social institutions, particularly education; by affecting access to healthcare and related services; and through constraining access to material conditions such as food, wages, working conditions, and housing. Our review demonstrates that the field of immigration policy and health is currently dominated by a “one-policy, one-level, one-outcome” approach. We argue that pursuing multi-sectoral, multi-level, and multi-outcome research will strengthen and advance the existing evidence base on immigration policy and Latino health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of 179 interviews with children who lived in the United States and then returned to Mexico following various itineraries. This article seeks to discover the knowledge children accumulate about international migration-i.e., what do they know about migration? All the interviewed children received part of their education in the United States; that is why this article classifies them as members of the 0.5 generation. This definition allows the formulation of the question in a clearer manner: What knowledge of everyday life have children developed about international migration movements? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on in-depth, qualitative interviews that examine individual experiences in two different legal contexts: deportation regimes and supermax prisons. Through putting these contexts and experiences into dialogue, we identify common legal processes of punishment experiences across both contexts. Specifically, the U.S. legal system re-labels immigrants (as deportable noncitizens) and supermax prisoners (as dangerous gang offenders). This re-labeling begins a process of othering, which ends in categorical exclusions for both immigrants and supermax prisoners. As individuals experience this categorical exclusion, they cross multiple borders and boundaries-often against their will-moving from prison to detention center to other countries beyond the U.S. border, and from isolation to prison to 'free' society. In both cases, the state action that subjects experience as punishment is civil and, therefore, nominally not punitive. Ultimately, excluded individuals find themselves in a space of legal nonexistence. By examining these common processes and experiences, we argue that a new kind of subject is revealed: a disintegrating subject (as opposed to a juridical or disciplinary subject) whose exclusion reinforces the power of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, approximately one million individuals were granted legal permanent residence in the U.S., over 650,000 became naturalized citizens, and about 180 million foreign-born individuals were granted entrance into the United States on the condition of temporary status. Although the literature has been saturated with the mental health needs of this population, many mental health professionals lack knowledge of the legal process of receiving Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) status, the restrictions on various U.S. visa types, and related pressures that impact mental health among individuals and families. The purpose of this paper is to inform mental health professionals of the LPR process and restrictions on nonimmigrant visas along with mental health implications for families and individuals whom are on their journey towards LPR. Future research may include the discussion of specific mental health needs among various immigrant groups in relation to the controversial legal process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]