Demographics, Health, and Access to Care of Immigrant Children in California: Identifying Barriers to Staying Healthy

This fact sheet is a joint effort of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) using the 2001 California Health Interview Survey data. Among the many important findings about immigrant children and their health are: * Almost half of children ages 0-17 in California -- 4.4 million -- are either immigrants themselves or live in families with at least one immigrant parent. Of these, one-third are U.S.-born children of documented immigrant parents, who are either naturalized legal permanent residents, refugees, or other documented immigrant parents. * U.S.-born children of undocumented parents and undocumented children of undocumented parents face many barriers to staying healthy in comparison with U.S.-born children of U.S.-born parents. * Among useful policies are -- increase enrollment in existing services by improving culturally and linguistically appropriate outreach. The National Immigration Law Center (NILC), in collaboration with the California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative (CIWC) and a grant from The California Endowment, provided the funding for the research and development of this publication.

Publication Authors:

• Nadereh Pourat, PhD
• Gabrielle Lessard
• Armine Lulejian
• Lida S. Becerra
• Rini Chakraborty