This was written in 2009, but I thought it deserved another look.

[quote]Facts on Immigration and Health Insurance
By Steven A. Camarota
August 2009

Steven A. Camarota is the Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies.

As Congress and the nation debate health care reform, the impact of immigration policy is an important component of that discussion. This Memorandum provides information about immigration’s effect on the nation’s health care system. The analysis is primarily based on data collected by the U.S. government in March 2008 about insurance coverage in the prior calendar year (2007).

Among the findings:

In 2007, 33.2 percent of all immigrants (legal and illegal) did not have health insurance compared to 12.7 percent of native-born Americans. (Table 1)


Immigrants account for 27.1 percent of all those without health insurance. Immigrants are 12.5 percent of the nation’s total population. (Figure 1)





There are 14.5 million immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 1 who lack health insurance. They account for 31.9 percent of the entire uninsured population. Immigrants and their children are 16.8 percent of the nation’s total population. (Figure 1)


In 2007, 47.6 percent of immigrants and their U.S.-born children were either uninsured or on Medicaid compared to 25 percent of natives and their children. (Figure 2)



Lack of health insurance is a significant problem even for long-time residents. Among immigrants who arrived in the 1980s, 28.7 percent lacked health insurance in 2007. (Table 2)






The high level of uninsurance among immigrants is partly explained by the large share who have low levels of education. This means they often have jobs that do not provide insurance. Moreover, their lower incomes often make insurance unaffordable.


Cultural factors may also contribute to the high rate of immigrant uninsurance. College-educated immigrants are twice as likely as college-educated natives to lack health insurance.


In an earlier study, the Center for Immigration Studies estimated that 64 percent of illegal immigrants were uninsured in 2006, accounting for one out of seven people without insurance. If the U.S.-born children (under 1 of illegal immigrants are included, they account for one out of six people without insurance.


Among legal immigrants (non-citizens), 27 percent were uninsured in 2006.
Data Source

The data for this analysis come from the March 2008 Current Population Survey (CPS) collected by the Census Bureau. Our estimates for the illegal population come from an earlier CIS study published in 2007 that used data from the March 2007 CPS.1 The March CPS, which is also called the Annual Social and Economic Supplement, is one of the best sources of information on the foreign-born.2 The foreign-born are defined as persons living in the United States who were not U.S. citizens at birth.3 In this report the terms foreign-born and immigrant are used synonymously. The CPS does not include persons in “institutions,â€