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The purpose of this study is to explore immigrants' perceptions of their daily lives in a state with anti-immigrant policies in the United States. Using snowball sampling, researchers recruited a sample of 30 Latino immigrants in southwest Montana. The research team conducted semi-structured interviews in Spanish and analyzed the data using thematic analysis. We identified four themes: difficulty accessing healthcare, frustration over the inability to obtain driver's licenses, challenges related to employment, and desire to make a life in Montana. Fear permeated all topics. Lack of documentation presents complex economic, health, and social challenges that prevent immigrants from fully integrating into their communities. These are exacerbated in states that employ anti-immigrant policies. As Western states continue to experience growth in immigrant populations, it is critical to develop policies to support integration and equitable access to health and social services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is traditional, at least in the United States, to see immigrant adaptation as a straight-line process in both political and social terms: non-members of a nation-state residing outside state borders gain entry, take up residence, and seek full membership in the state. As a narrative of legal status, the acquisition of full membership is the transition from alien to citizen, from stranger to rights-holder, from foreigner to governor. As a narrative of social belonging, the story is one of integration over time, a transition from out-group to in-group which is expected to be completed within a span of two or three generations. But these versions of the national narrative fit the historical experience of some ethnic and racial groups more than that of others, and there are egregious exceptions to the normative tale. We write as a lawyer and a sociologist interested in the relationship of our disciplines’ perspectives on these narratives, and on the linkages between the political and the social realms that are reflected in U.S. models of membership. We argue that the way people are invited or welcomed to become members of the society influences their joining behavior which, in turn, influences how the society invites others to join it. Further, we note that the formulation of public policy helps to produce the conditions that affirm the public policies. A nation concerned about and committed to the successful integration of a large and growing resident immigrant population needs to adopt policies that help orient and acculturate immigrants, provide skills and access, and foster tolerance and non-discrimination. The state should model the behavior - such as attachment, commitment and loyalty - that it seeks from its newest members. Anti-immigrant policies are not integrative policies, even if they provide quasi-coercive incentives to naturalization. Models of membership are not free-standing. Like other self-fulfilling prophecies, those models are influenced by the very phenomenon they purport to be classifying. Preservation of the inclusionary model is important not just on principled grounds, but because the model produces the designed outcome and thereby promotes the national interest.

Increasingly, scholars have argued that immigration politics are inseparable from racial politics, which implies that organizations and individuals who mobilize around racial group interests influence racial and immigration attitudes and behaviors. How does the racial-political context influence anti-immigration lawmaking? In what ways does this influence vary at different stages of lawmaking? To address these questions, we combine comprehensive datasets of racially conservative organizations and state immigrant legislation and use negative binomial regression to estimate the count of anti-immigrant bills and laws in the fifty states from 1991 to 2010. We find that the presence of racially conservative organizations encourages the introduction of exclusionary proposals, but only in contexts with a Republican-dominated government. At the approval stage, on the other hand, racially conservative organizations foster the passage of exclusionary laws, and this effect is heightened in contexts with a growing foreign-born population or where a majority of voters report anti-immigrant opinions or identify as conservative. This indicates that the institutionalization of the colorblind racial ideology (in the form of racially conservative organizations) resonates with lawmakers, but in a different manner when the stakes are higher. These findings have important implications and challenge previous research on the conditions under which advocacy organizations influence lawmaking and additional forms of group behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the findings of a panel workshop related to issue of immigration, held at the Fifth Baltimore Immigration Summit in November 2010 in Baltimore, Maryland. It states that the aim of the workshop was to facilitate a discussion of immigration policy, services, and related issues to encourage future research and intervention that is more responsive to the experiences of people of the immigration community. It also discussed the critical role of immigration in U.S. history.

Research has found a strong inverse association between discrimination and health and well-being. Most of these studies have been conducted among African-Americans, and have examined the relationship at the individual-level. To fill these gaps in knowledge we estimated the prevalence of perceived discrimination among a nationally representative sample of Latino adults in the US, and investigated the association between state-level anti-immigrant policies and perceived discrimination. We merged survey data with a state-level anti-immigrant policy index. First, we fit hierarchical logistic regression models to test the crude and adjusted association between anti-immigrant policies and perceived discrimination. Second, we specified cross-level interaction terms to test whether this association differed by relevant individual characteristics. Almost 70% of respondents reported discrimination (68.4%). More anti-immigrant policies were associated with higher levels of discrimination (OR=1.62, 95% CI 1.16, 2.24, p=0.01). The association between anti-immigrant policies and discrimination differed by place of origin (p=0.001) and was marginally moderated by generation status (p=0.124). Anti-immigrant policies stigmatize both foreign and US-born Latinos by creating a hostile social environment which affects their experiences of discrimination. These non-health policies can adversely affect Latino health, in part through exposure to discrimination, and may help explain health patterns among Latinos in the US.