Immigrants in Covid America
When the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the country last spring, some referred to the virus as the “great equalizer” that knew no boundaries of wealth, ideology, race, or class. But as test results came in, COVID came to disproportionately affects immigrant, Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color.
In an effort to document the pandemic’s impact on immigrants, refugees, and asylees in the U.S., the University of Minnesota has launched the Immigrants in COVID America project, a web resource that gathers relevant research, reporting, and analysis in an accessible public forum.
The project addresses health disparities and the forces that drive them: it highlights structural inequities—from limited healthcare access to detention in crowded centers—that put immigrants and refugees at greater risk of infection and death. But the research team also studies the social, political, and economic impacts of the pandemic. In addition to health, they’ve identified issues that are particularly affecting immigrants, refugees and asylees during the COVID crisis: immigration policy, labor and the economy, and anti-Asian xenophobia.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of us,” Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies and Distinguished McKnight University Professor Erika Lee, who is leading the Immigration History Research Center research team behind the project, said in a press release. “However, Black, Indigenous and other communities of color are at a higher risk of death from COVID-19 complications and face the highest unemployment rates. Some are facing increased racism and hate crimes, while others face an upended immigration and refugee admissions system in the U.S.”
The Immigrants in COVID America project assembles a range of resources: fact-based research and reporting from national media and think tanks, pieces by ethnic and local media, and perspectives from academics, experts, and political commentators. The research team’s aim is two-fold: one, to create a historical record of the pandemic’s impacts in immigrant and refugee communities, and two, to provide an accessible public resource that will inspire further learning, teaching, research, advocacy, and creative work.
The Immigration History Research Center has partnered with Gustavus Adolphus College Professor Maddalena Marinari and her research team to update the site throughout 2020, thanks in part to a SSRC Rapid Response Grant on COVID-19 and the Social Sciences from the Social Science Research Council. Additionally, the IHRC will create digital stories on immigrants and refugees in the pandemic in collaboration with Sahan Journal, an independent digital newsroom that produces authentic reporting for and about Minnesota’s immigrant and refugee communities.
