Recovery plan and green initiatives:
- No Economic Recovery Without Cities: The Urgency Of A New Federal Urban Policy [1] - In this report, the Drum Major Institute highlights the critical role of urban centers to economic recovery and the need for urban investments to achieve national goals of lower emissions, greater public transit use and more affordable housing.
- The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy [2] - This Center for American Progress paper finds that the economic stimulus program and the forthcoming American Clean Energy and Security Act will generate roughly $150 billion per year in new clean-energy investments in the United States over the next decade. They also provide fifty-state fact sheets - Clean Energy Investment Creates Jobs in Every State [3]
- A Short Guide to Setting Up a City-Scale Retrofit Program [4] - This brief by COWS and Green for All provides a model for designing and implementing energy efficiency retrofitting programs on a citywide scale that provide good, entry-level jobs with career pathways accessible to low-income communities and communities of color.
How to Structure a "Play-or-Pay" Requirement on Employers: Lessons from California for National Health Reform [5] - This UC Berkeley Labor Center report uses the experience of state legislation and San Francisco's existing employer responsibility provisions in its city health policy to provide lessons for national reform.
It's Time We Talked: Mandatory Mediation in the Foreclosure Process [6] - This Center for American Progress report highlights city and state mediation programs in reducing the impact of the housing crisis on neighborhoods, uncloging courts, and achieving better resolutions for homeowners, mortgage lenders and servicers, and the community at large.
The Costs of Confinement: Why Good Juvenile Justice Policies Make Good Fiscal Sense [7] - This Justice Policy Institute policy brief details how states can see a net reduction in costs by moving expenditures away from large, congruent care facilities (often called “training schools”) for youth and investing in community-based alternatives. They argue that such a resource realignment can reap better results for communities, taxpayers, and children.
Paid Family Leave: One Solution to Helping Today’s Working Families Meet Their Family Responsibilities at Critical Times [8] - This Sloan Work and Family Research Network brief describes state policy efforts to enact paid family leave and why it's so crucial to families.
Families USA has released new issue briefs on implementation of the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (CHIPRA):
- More Funding for CHIP, Different Rules: How Does CHIPRA Change CHIP Funding? [9] summarizes the new federal financing rules for CHIP, as well as the improvements to the financing system that will help ensure that states have the funding they need to get more children covered.
- The Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA): Addressing Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities [10] examines four key provisions in the new law: investing in outreach, increasing access for legal immigrant children and pregnant women, increased funding for interpretation and translation services, and establishing new quality of care measures. It also includes action steps for advocates.
- Families USA's CHIPRA Implementation Series: Exploring New Opportunities for Children's Coverage [11] examines the new provisions that were included in the re-authorization and how they will affect implementation in the coming months.
Reports and studies out on immigration:
- Raids on Workers: Destroying Our Rights [12]: A report from the National Commission on ICE Misconduct and Violations of 4th Amendment Rights headed by the president of the UFCW on Bush-era ICE workplace raids and the systematic abuses of workers' rights during ICE raids.
- The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University released The State of the Nation's Housing 2009 [13], finding, among other things, that in order for the housing market to recover, immigration reform is essential.
- Human Rights Watch's report titled Detained and Dismissed: Women's Struggles to Obtain Health Care in United States Immigration Detention [14] documents dozens of cases in which immigration agency medical staff either failed to respond at all to health problems of women in detention or responded only after considerable delays.
- The Center on Asian American Children and Families (CACF) has a new report [15] out on how children act as language brokers for parents and the need for more proficient translators in hospitals, schools, and the workplace.
- Leadership Conference on Civil Rights notes in a new report that a hate crime [16] happens on average, once an hour, every day. Using federal hate crime data, they also show that there's been a marked increase in hate crimes committed against Hispanics and those perceived to be immigrants.
- The U.S. Department of State [17] has a new pamphlet out, aimed at preventing human trafficking and the exploitation of non-immigrant visa holders.