Leah Zallman's meticulous research helps us all to tell the story of what immigrants give to this nation and what they should receive from this nation.

Growing isolation, financial challenges and disease burden during the Covid-19 pandemic threaten to worsen the mental health needs of the entire U.S. population. These challenges are heightened among immigrants with untreated chronic mental health conditions as they experience added psychological distress owing to harsh immigration policies and worsening structural barriers to health during the pandemic.

The novel coronavirus pandemic has starkly revealed the vulnerabilities of low-wage immigrants, immigrant-led households, and immigrant communities to coronavirus infection, severe Covid-19 illness, and economic fallout from pandemic. This public health emergency compounds pre-existing social inequa...

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security  announced the final public charge rule, which revises the interpretation of “public charge” in the Immigration and Nationality Act. Under the Final Rule, DHS may find applicants ineligible for a visa for admission to the U.S. or a green card grant...

Another June. Another public outcry about cruelty as policy harming migrants in United States custody. This summer, the photo of a drowned family, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter, Valeria, of El Salvador, shocks the conscience. Reporters are documenting the inhumane conditions in a Border Patrol facility where hundreds of children have been held. How should our field respond?

Hastings President, Mildred Solomon, applauds University of Pennsylvania bioethicists and other bioethics leaders for drafting a letter of historic importance, intended to assist lawyers representing immigrant children being abused and denied their basic human rights at the U.S. border. Act now and sign the letter by 2 pm, June 25.

The federal government's proposed rule to disqualify families from public housing if any member is undocumented will harm children, families, and cities.

On May 7, New York City officials unveiled details of NYC Care, a new  program in the nation’s largest public health system that aims to improve health care access for about 300,000 low-income New Yorkers who are ineligible for insurance because of their immigration status. The initiative, ann...

Immigrants and their families in the United States and migrants who seek asylum in this country face accelerating threats and harms to their health because of the Trump administration’s immigration priorities. A new Hastings Center project, supported by the Open Society Foundations Public Health ...

A long-anticipated policy change proposed by the Trump administration that would count the use of many federally-subsidized programs against immigrants currently eligible to use them threatens public health and would undermine ethical practice in health professions and systems.

Amid the volume of coverage and commentary on the politics of immigration and the consequences of crackdowns and criminalization, here is a selection of recent work – analysis, personal essay, fiction, mixed-media – that can spark the moral imagination.

Reports that migrant children held by the Office of Refugee Resettlement are being drugged require an immediate and unambiguous response by the Trump administration. According to court filings, the drugs that are alleged to be among those given to children without their parents’ consent include cl...

The Russian poet Anna Akhmatova was a mother separated from her child by a state policy of terror. During the 1930s, she and other mothers would gather outside a Leningrad prison, desperate for information. One day, after 17 months of “waiting in prison queues,” another woman whispered to her, �...

In April, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it would criminally prosecute migrants who had been apprehended after crossing the U.S.-Mexico. border. An immediate consequence of this announcement, explained in detail here, is the separation of children from their parents.

In an essay in Aeon magazine, Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger argues that migrants — who make up every seventh person in the world–need more than sanctuary cities. They need to be recognized as “social citizens.” Berlinger is codirector of The Hastings Center&...

An  article in the New England Journal of Medicine last March warned of the “chilling effect” of recent federal immigration policy changes on health care access for undocumented immigrants. The Trump administration’s expanded immigration enforcement has seen an increased number of arrests at m...

The Hastings Center teamed up with the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) to create three sessions on gene editing for its annual meeting in Orlando on April 20. In addition, Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger was a panelist on a session concerning health care for refugees an...

People value their health. It allows them to pursue their aims and enjoy their lives, and it contributes to their well-being. But health is not only good for particular healthy individuals. It is also good for their families, communities, nations, and in a world in which people flows are global, heal...

On February 21, the Department of Homeland Security released new policies prioritizing deportation of undocumented immigrants. Will this policy shift affect health care access for this population of 11 million? Two public health studies from Arizona suggest that immigration crackdowns change health-s...

How do state and local health care systems care for seriously ill undocumented immigrants? This question is the focus of a collection of articles in JAMA Internal Medicine. Nancy Berlinger, a Hastings Center research scholar and coauthor of one of the articles, “The Illness Experience of Undocument...

The 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States live in all 50 states and rely on local safety-nets and state-level provisions for health care. Launched in 2011, The Hastings Center’s Undocumented Patients project has focused on understanding ethical and policy challenges in providing h...

Health care access is local; creating, financing, expanding, or restricting health care access for a low-income population involves local, state, and federal policies. During the Obama administration, health insurance for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States remained...

The public health catastrophe known as the Flint water crisis is also a textbook case about the consequences of immigration policy, including the federal stalemate concerning reform and state-level policymaking, on the health of undocumented immigrants living in this low-income city. This population...