Illinois, U.S.A. — A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies provides a detailed picture of immigrants (legal and illegal) in the United States and in Illinois.  The statistics reveal Illinois’ immigrant population as being significantly poorer and less-educated than the state’s native-born population. Using the latest Census Bureau data from 2010 and 2011, the study shows a high rate of poverty with over one-third of immigrant headed households using at least one major welfare program.

The report is online at http://cis.org/2012-profile-of-americas-foreign-born-population.

• Illinois’ Immigrants:

Illinois’ immigrant population (legal and illegal) grew 15 percent (231,000) from 2000 to 2010.  Nationally the immigrant population grew percent over the same period. Immigrants (legal and illegal) accounted for 14 percent of the state residents in 2010 and 16 percent of workers in the states. Of Illinois immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18), 22 percent live in poverty compared to 12 percent of natives and their children.

Immigrants and their U.S.-born child (under 18) account for 18 percent of the state’s overall population and 28 percent of all persons in poverty in the state. Of Illinois immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18), 27 percent lack health insurance, compared to 12 percent of natives and their children (under 18).  Immigrants and their children account for 32 percent of the state’s uninsured.

Of households headed by immigrants in Illinois, 36 percent used at least one major welfare program, primarily food assistance and Medicaid, compared to 22 percent of native-headed households.

Illinois immigrants’ home ownership rate tends to be relatively high (61 percent) compared to immigrants in other states. The rate for natives in the state is 69 percent. The lower socio-economic status of Illinois’ immigrants is not because most are recent arrivals. Their average length of residence in the United States is 19 years.

One of the primary reasons immigrants in the state tend to be poor and access welfare programs at high rates is a large share arrive in the U.S. as adult with relatively low levels of education.

Of adult immigrants (25 to 65) in the state 24 percent have not completed high school, compared to 6 percent of natives. However, the share of immigrants in the state that have a bachelor’s degree (31 percent) is much closer to the 36 percent for natives.

In 2010, 23 percent of public school students in Illinois were from immigrant households.  Overall, one in four public students in the state speaks a language other than English at home.

• Illegal Immigrants in Illinois:

Our best estimate is that 31 percent of Illinois immigrants are in the country illegally. Illegal immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) account for 6 percent of the state’s overall population, 13 percent those in poverty, 16 percent of the uninsured and 9 percent of the school age population.

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Washington, U.S.A.  – The states of Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas will receive grants totaling $3 million to develop strategies aimed at helping returning Army veterans find employment more quickly through the public workforce system, Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis announced. This funding represents an initiative of the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Army under the Unemployment Compensation for Ex-service Members program.

“The Labor Department is deeply committed to providing employment services and benefits that best support the men and women who have served our country, and the grants announced today are an example of that commitment,” said Secretary Solis. “Ensuring Army veterans have expedited access to job training and job placement services is one way our nation honors their sacrifices.”

This initiative will provide each of the four states with $750,000 to develop new strategies to enhance outreach and re-employment services for Army unemployment compensation claimants.

Examples of strategies include improved tracking of claimants across federal programs to better link unemployed veterans to potential job opportunities; increasing staff capacity to help claimants understand which military skills can be transferred to civilian careers; expanding service delivery through agency partnerships, such as opening employment service satellite offices in U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs locations; and expanding outreach activities to better connect these veterans to American Job Centers, job fairs and other services that can expedite their return to work.

“These grants are an important step toward ensuring that the soldiers who so valiantly and selflessly served our nation get the help they need transitioning back to civilian life,” said Secretary of the ArmyJohn McHugh. “By sharing information, improving access to re-employment services and increasing outreach opportunities, we can help Army veterans get better access to and information about job opportunities. I’m grateful to Secretary Solis and the Department of Labor for their support. This is great news for the Army and its veterans.”

The four states selected have large populations of Army veterans who are unemployment compensation claimants and have been actively collaborating with both the Labor Department and the Army to improve veterans’ access to the public workforce system. These grants will be implemented over the next two years, and the promising practices developed with these investments will be shared with other states and expanded to include other branches of the military.

Image Courtesy of  Anthony Correia / Shutterstock.com

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Chicago, U.S.A. – Medicaid cuts being considered in Springfield would cost thousands of jobs and threaten care at nursing homes across the state, according to nursing home administrators, health care leaders and elected officials who rallied at the Thompson Center in Chicago. The event was organized by the Health Care Council of Illinois (HCCI), which represents more than 500 nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities across the state of Illinois.

“Nursing homes are the 10th largest employer in the state,” Pat Comstock, HCCI Executive Director, told the crowd. “We employ 100,000 workers who pay their taxes and support their families. At a time when 70 cents of every dollar a nursing home spends is for staff wages, these Medicaid cuts could cause thousands of layoffs across Illinois.”

Legislators are considering Governor Quinn’s proposal to slash Medicaid spending by $2.7 billion. The proposed cuts to nursing homes could drastically jeopardize the quality of care for the more than 50,000 people residing in Illinois nursing homes who pay with Medicaid. These cuts put nursing homes at risk for closing, especially some Chicago nursing homes where Medicaid recipients make up more than 90 percent of the resident population.

“We’ve been traveling Illinois for the past few weeks, making 16 stops, calling on lawmakers and Governor Quinn to step up to the plate for nursing home residents,” Comstock continued. She invoked the baseball metaphor in calling upon the General Assembly to support nursing homes.

“The State of Illinois is dead last in the nation for the amount of Medicaid funds the state gives nursing homes. That’s strike one,” Comstock said. “The state is more than $600 million and eight months delinquent in paying most nursing homes. That’s strike two. Illinois must not strike out when it comes to our most frail, vulnerable residents.”

In addition to the multi-city tour and rally, nursing home staff from across Illinois have been visiting Springfield, meeting with legislators and urging them to give nursing home residents top priority for Medicaid funding.

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The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability (CTBA) and the Social IMPACT Research Center released a new analysis that highlights how large cuts to human services, which provide supports for some of the most vulnerable people in the state, will send shockwaves through the state’s economy.

The new research, entitled Ramifications of State Budget Cuts to Human Services: Increases Job Loss, Decreases economic Activity, Harms Vulnerable Populations, shows these cuts could result in nearly 4,000 lost jobs and a $458.5 million loss to Illinois’s economy.

While budget discussions are just beginning, the three year budget projection issued by the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget as part of the new Budgeting for Results process indicates that the human services budget area will receive a significant cut of $350 million dollars from Financial Year2012 to Financial Year 2013.

Faced with cuts of this magnitude, human services providers will reduce hours, lay off staff, close facilities, or do all of these things. Not only does this impact thousands of Illinoisans who rely on these programs, but the cuts will have a direct economic consequence on the state.

Since most human services are delivered by private, nonprofit businesses, the vast majority of the economic effects will land on the private sector. When organizations providing human services must cut programs and reduce services, these actions ripple through the economy causing job loss in communities and sectors all across Illinois.

More broadly, cuts to human services will translate directly into decreased economic activity statewide, and the report shows that could result in a loss of $458.5 million to the economy. The actual negative economic impact of a cut to the human services budget exceeds the actual size of the cut since spending on human services generates $1.31 of economic activity for every $1 spent. In other words, state funding to human services functions as an economic engine and removing it from the economic chain has serious consequences:

“By cutting human services funding further in the next budget Illinois is lengthening the time it will take to fully recover from the Great Recession,” said Yerik Kaslow, Director of Education and Social Policy Analysis at the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability and co-author of the report.

“Since human services are often the most cost-effective approaches to treating and solving social problems, with these cuts we are allowing social problems to become more entrenched and more difficult to address, which sets the stage for more costs to all Illinois taxpayers.”

This is not simply a point-in-time issue—cuts to human services accumulate: the $1.64 billion dollar cumulative underfunding of human services since 2002 likely led to the loss of over 18,000 private sector jobs in Illinois over that same period. As of October 2011, the State had a backlog of bills to human service providers totaling nearly $459 million, which has the effect of withholding over $600 million from the Illinois economy.

Illinois is in the midst of recovering from the worst recession in two generations. Job growth and increased economic activity are of paramount concern to voters and lawmakers alike. Ramifications of State Budget Cuts to Human Services provides evidence that public spending on human services serves as an economic stimulus for jobs and private spending in the broader Illinois economy.

Adequate public spending also has the longer-range benefits of avoiding future social problems and associated costs. In light of this, cuts to human services are short-sighted and detrimental to Illinois’s economy.

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The attorneys for Dinizulu Law Group on Tuesday filed litigation on behalf of the victim in a 1997 molestation investigation in which the 11-year-old girl’s attacker went free, because Harvey, Illinois, police failed to submit the rape kit to the state crime lab for testing.

As a result, the accused, Robert Buchanan, who was working as a Cook County corrections officer at the time, returned to the family home and continued the abuse. He was subsequently charged in the attack last fall after the rape kit – discovered with some 200 untested rape kits at the Harvey police station during a raid by law-enforcement in 2007 – provided overwhelmingly evidence of his guilt.

The victim, now 25, is seeking unspecified damages in a seven-count lawsuit that names Buchanan and the City of Harvey. Specifically, the complaint accuses Harvey officials of failing to protect her rights under the Illinois Domestic Violence Act of 1986; infliction of emotional distress; willful and wanton neglect; and fraudulent concealment.

After telling her mother of the abuse, the victim was examined that same day at a local hospital. Doctors followed protocol, collecting DNA samples for the Illinois State Police Sexual Assault Evidence Kit and handing it off to Harvey police. The victim was notified by an investigator for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office last spring that the kit was never tested.

“After being failed at home, this young woman should have been able to trust that local police would follow through with their most basic levels of investigation,” said her attorney, Yao Dinizulu. “The abuse could have ended there had police done their jobs. There is a pattern of gross negligence in the City of Harvey that has led to the suffering of countless other victims. We’re asking a jury to send a strong message that such egregious malfeasance won’t be tolerated.”

The victim is identified in court documents as “Jane Doe” to shield her identity. She has been diagnosed with suppressed memories and is currently receiving therapy, Dinizulu said.

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