After decades of debate and legal challenges, national health care reform moves onward. Next up: immigration reform.
The two are linked.
Immigrants — both those who are documented and those who are not — are less likely to have health insurance than their U.S.-born counterparts. Almost half the documented immigrants in the U.S. do not have health coverage, according to 2011 Employee Benefit Research Institute statistics.
In California, which has one of the country’s largest immigrant populations, immigration policies influence health care policies. Some contend that health care policies influence immigration.
We asked policymakers, immigration experts and consumer advocates how immigration reform might influence health care reform in California.
We got responses from: