Lesson II-5: Immigration research
For today’s lesson, we have two handouts: the first is the Brooklyn immigration project primer from Jere Hester, and the second is a lengthy list of immigration resources from my Research Methods colleague Barbara Gray (with assistance from Barbara Oliver).
Of course, the key resources on Jere’s handout are the Community District Profiles, the list of Brooklyn Community Districts, and most importantly, the New York City Department of Education page.
Barbara Gray’s handout begins with several good articles for you to read. I would suggest the most noteworthy for you to check out is the seven-part Remade in America series currently underway at the Times. Don’t miss all the bells and whistles accompanying the main articles. You’ll see more each Sunday until the project is finished, so keep looking. Excellent stuff!
She also lists numerous statistical resources, and tells me that the Population Reference Bureau’s Immigration Data Matters report in the “U.S. Agencies and Statistics” section is a particularly useful guide to stats nationwide. Additionally, she suggested I stress that some oft-cited immigration-related organizations–such as the Center for Immigration Studies–often have an agenda, hence her FactCheck.org link. So be careful.
Barbara Oliver recommends the New York City Department of Education’s Office of English Language Learners report as a great source re: schools and recent immigrants, Gotham Gazette’s “The Citizen” page and the handout’s experts section.
What sources do I recommend? Definitely the Department of Homeland Security’s Yearbook of Immigration Statistics listed in last week’s federal government handout. Also, Infoshare Online, RAND New York, NYCdata and the New York State Statistical Yearbook, all of which I had listed in my Craft I cops and crime handout for different statistics. Note that the information contained within is dated to varying degrees, however.