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Responding to the Public Charge Rule: Immigrant Well-being and Access to Services

The Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI) is launching two policy reports and an interactive mapping website on Friday morning, October 11. This symposium brings together service providers, policy makers, and other stakeholders to learn about immigrant integration resources in the Bay Area, followed by a discussion about strategies to ensure immigrants' access to services in the future.

Prof. Irene Bloemraad, Founding Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI), will present key findings from three projects delving into these issues:

  • “Responding to the Public Charge Rule: Immigrant Well-being and Access to Services” – A policy report examining the impact of changes to the public charge rule, other barriers to services, and advice on how to ensure the ongoing access to immigrant services
  • “Welcoming Communities? Immigrant Access to Services in the Bay Area” – A policy report focusing on ways to improve immigrant’s access to health and legal services in mid-size cities and suburbs in the 9-county Bay Area.
  • Mapping Spatial Inequality: Immigrant Services in the Bay Area– An interactive mapping tool which allows stakeholders to identify gaps between the availability of and demand for immigrant health and legal services in the 9-county Bay Area.

The proposed change to the public charge rule is already disrupting how immigrants receive healthcare and a wide variety of other social services, and this will only intensify when the rule goes into effect on October 15. It is essential that local leaders understand the full impacts of the change and the latest research on how immigrants' access to services could be improved. Immigrants are an important part of every community across the region, yet an increasing number are cut off from health care and other vital services.

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We would like to thank our donors and partners for their generous support to make the launch of the reports, the interactive web map and this launch event happen.

  • Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society (HIFIS)
  • CITRIS and the Banatao Institute
  • The Unger Family Foundation
  • The Institute of Governmental Studies
  • The Berkeley Collegium Grant
  • The D-Lab