Executive Summary

There are approximately 18.5 million children of immigrants in the United States. And by 2025, children of immigrants will make up nearly one-third of the nation's child population. More than 94 percent of children of immigrants under the age of six are U.S.¹ citizens. The ability of young children to learn, grow, and succeed defines what our nation will become, and yet, children of immigrants often lack the necessary resources to grow to their full potential.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed and widened racial disparities in society by disproportionately harming historically marginalized groups. Black, Latinx, American Indian/Alaskan Native, and Asian people have had substantially higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and death compared with white people while also being overrepresented in low-wage sectors like retail, service, and care work. As a result, communities of color have disproportionately experienced poverty, hardship, and unemployment during the pandemic. At the same time, the pandemic presented a critical opportunity to reimagine the role of government, which made unprecedented public investments in family-supportive policies such as the Child Tax Credit, food and income supports, expanded unemployment insurance, eviction moratoriums, and paid childcare and paid sick leave to some workers.

Yet these investments have been too little to stop a profound crisis for families with young children and for the early learning sectors, as centers across the nation close their doors and parents of young children exit the workforce or reduce their hours to cope. The Biden administration championed further investments in the form of the budget reconciliation bill, Build Back Better, which notably included childcare, pre-kindergarten, home- and community-based care, paid family and medical leave, and a system for granting work authorization for undocumented immigrants. With no Republican legislators on board and two key Democratic senators against the package, the legislation has been stalled with little hope of advancing since December 2021. The nation must rebuild by reenvisioning governmental roles. This is an opportunity to promote equity in ways that the United States has never seen before, by centering historically alienated and, even villainized, immigrant families.

Meanwhile, the international chaos produced by ongoing wars, genocides, and climate crises continues to produce more refugees, who will bring their children to and have more children in the United States. In late March 2022, the Biden administration announced it would accept 100,000 Ukrainians and offer humanitarian relief to Ukrainians who have been living in the United States without legal documentation since March 1 or earlier as Russia advanced in the south of the country. States across the country are preparing to accept Ukrainian refugees. Similarly in August 2021, when the United States ended its longest war in Afghanistan, over 70,000 Afghans came to the United States on top of the 2.2 million Afghan refugees already in neighboring countries and 3.5 million people forced to flee their homes within Afghanistan's borders.

Drawing from interviews with immigrant families with young children and organizations that serve them, this report highlights their complicated lives and makes social and political suggestions for promoting a fair growing environment for these young children. Seven refugee mothers, who relocated to Tucson, Ariz., were interviewed for this report. The location is limited to where the author lives. About half of the interviews took place in the interviewees’ homes, while the others took place in coffee shops and a McDonald’s depending on the interviewee’s preference. The majority of the interviews included the mother or the mother with her young child(ren), there were two exceptions: Sarqas and her husband Soor Gul Entizar spoke equally together, and Zahra Hasmi conducted the interview with a female friend and her husband present. Hasmi’s husband sat away from us and never spoke, and the friend was there with the hope that I could interview her too. Each interview lasted for about one hour. The interviews were conducted in English or Dari with a translator. The interviewees were compensated with $20 for their time. The money was an acknowledgement of their time. It seems that the interviewees wanted to speak to me with the hope that I could help their circumstances, such as finding a job, enrolling their children in school, finding relatives, or helping their relatives in Afghanistan. Researchers, and organizers of programs across the United States that serve immigrant families were also interviewed by phone or Google Meet. They were not compensated.

The stories in this report are those of people you might unknowingly interact with at various locations, including neighborhood, hotels, grocery stores, etc. Specifically, the report provides an overview of barriers such as family socio-economic status, language accessibility, parents’ educational backgrounds, access to social safety net benefits, and exposure to traumatic events. This report concludes by offering policy recommendations that would boost opportunities for immigrant families and their children. These include a pathway to permanent residency and citizenship, immigrant-friendly social services, work authorization, adult education investments, and critically, childcare programs, including center-based, family, friend and neighbor care, and home visitings, that reach children of immigrants. Some of these strategies have successfully been adapted in communities and states across the United States, and therefore, can be replicated and expanded with adequate investments.