Immigrant Health

The National Health Law Program (NHeLP) believes that health equity is achieved when a person’s characteristics and circumstances—including race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, income, economic security, disability status, health, immigration status, nationality, religious beliefs, language proficiency, or geographic location—do not predict their health outcomes. 

The U.S. immigration system is in dire need of reform. It has embedded hundreds of years of policies that perpetuate racism and xenophobia and deny immigrants and their families fair opportunities to thrive.

Moreover, our existing Medicaid and public benefits programs purposefully exclude the majority of immigrants. The result of these policies is, of course, significant disparities in insurance status and health outcomes for immigrants. Policymakers can and must correct these injustices. We are working to ensure that immigrants have equitable access to health care and to eliminate other long-standing barriers to  health and well-being. To that end, we advocate for expanding Medicaid and Marketplace eligibility for immigrants, improving access to emergency medical services, and limiting the harmful impacts of the public charge provision.

Featured Resources on Immigrant Health

• Medicaid Coverage for Immigrants
• NHeLP provides substantial technical assistance to advocates working to expand access to emergency medical services (often referred to as “emergency Medicaid”). If you are an advocate and would like access to our Emergency Medicaid Toolkit, please complete this form: Request to Access NHeLP’s Emergency Medicaid Toolkit