Placement of Immigration Help Centers

What areas hold the largest population of immigrant communities?

What area has the highest rate of deportation?

Where do most low-income families reside?

The spatial extent is focusing on areas that hold a large immigration population and seeing the trends between where migrants are located and where it would it be best to place immigration help centers.

A Profile of Low-Income Working Immigrant Families by Randy Capps, Michael Fix, Everett Henderson, and Jane Reardon-Anderson is an article that focuses on the dynamic and struggle that low-income immigrant families face. Being an immigrant and having to live in fear of deportation without any knowledge to the immigration legal system is a focus. It's important for those that are more vulnerable to have access to proper legal representation and education to be able to protect themselves from being exploited and deported.

It is important for immigration help centers to be placed in areas where a high number of undocumented immigrants live to provide help with things such as housing, food accessibility and entering the workforce aside from navigating a day to day life. To find the best location for these help centers the analysis technique I would apply would be site suitability analysis. Another analysis technique that I would apply would be land/parcel for sale, zoning requirements , undocumented immigrant density , poverty and unemployment.

1. Log into ArcGIS
2. Click map
3. Search for layers
4. Change dropdown menu to "ArcGIS Online"
5. Search "Immigration US"
6. Add "ACS Children in Immigrant Families Variables - Boundaries"
7. Add "Immigrant Population Profiles for Community Health Service Areas - 2016 Census "
8. Add "ACS Children in Immigrant Families Variables - Centroids"
9. Click "Show contents" to select layers to compare and contrast in layer colors
10. Click the first layer "ACS Children in Immigrant Families Variables - Centroids" to change style
11. Click "counts and amount (color)" to change color
12. Click on the second layer "ACS Children in Immigrant Families Variables - Boundaries"
13. Click " Perform Analysis" then "perform analysis"
14. Click "Find outliers"
15. Uncheck " use current map extent"
16. Click "run analysis"

There is a high concentration of immigrant communities in the areas of Florida, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Texas, Washington and California. Having areas that hold a high concentration of immigrant communities shows the best places to place immigrant help centers. Placing immigrant help centers in these areas will allow more people to access the help that they need with their immigrant status and services needed.

The clear data gaps seen with finding high concentrations of immigrant communities are the lack of surveys done. Meaning that there aren't a lot of study or surveys targeted towards immigrant communities and if there are, people are reluctant to participate due to their legal status. The legal status itself is a limitation because people are afraid to give out their information in fear of repercussions such as deportations targeted in the areas they are located in.

For future work there need to be more resources towards immigrant communities that ensure their safety in speaking out and having themselves being represented in data instead of being looked over. It would be important to have more money to do more research in which they are informed there will be no consequences for participating but understanding that having knowledge of where they are located in helps evenly distribute resources such as housing/rent help.

Budiman, A. (2020, September 22). Key findings about U.S. immigrants. Pew Research Center. Retrieved December 11, 2021, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/#:~:text=In%202018%2C%20most%20immigrants%20lived,nation's%20total%20foreign%2Dborn%20population. 

Budiman, A. (2020, September 22). Key findings about U.S. immigrants. Pew Research Center. Retrieved December 11, 2021, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/.