This special feature summarizes three volumes commissioned by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation to analyze and better understand the population of immigrants and Marshall Islanders in Arkansas.

Volume 1, Changing Workforce and Family Demographics, provides a demographic and socioeconomic profile of immigrants and their children, including a description of immigrant workers in the Arkansas economy. Volume 2, A Profile of Immigrants in Arkansas: Economic and Fiscal Benefits and Costs, presents an analysis of immigrants’ impact on the Arkansas economy and on state and local budgets. Volume 3, A Profile of the Marshallese Community in Arkansas, focuses on Marshall Islanders—a group that is important to Arkansas but inadequately described in national Census Bureau surveys. The report—produced by researchers from the Migration Policy Institute, the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Arkansas—is a follow-up to a similar study in 2007.

The updated data in this report supports the Foundation’s mission to improve the lives of all Arkansans by closing the educational and economic gaps that leave many families behind. The study is part of the Foundation’s continuing commitment to identify and support those factors that can help the state move the needle from poverty to prosperity.

The methods and findings of the study were discussed at two meetings of an advisory group composed of experts from the public, nonprofit, and private sectors in Arkansas. The Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation would like to thank the advisory group who helped to design, shape, and review the report.

To read the three volumes of A Profile of Immigrants in Arkansas,
visit wrfoundation.org.

infographic design: Joel Richardson
print & web layout: Arkansas Times

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Advisory group members included:

Phyllis Poche, Director, Census State Data Center, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Frank Head, Director, Catholic Charities Immigration Services–Springdale, Diocese of Little Rock

Diana Gonzales Worthen, Director, Project Teach Them All, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

Andre Guerrero, Director of Programs for Language Minority Students, Arkansas Department of Education

Robert Martinez, Board of Visitors, University of Arkansas at DeQueen

Al Lopez, School/Community Liaison, Springdale School District

Rafael Arciga García, Arkansas League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and Office of Latino Academic Advancement, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

Michel Leidermann, Director/Editor, El Latino Spanish Weekly

Sandy Harris Joel, Marshallese Program Coordinator, Credit Counseling of Arkansas, Inc.

Mireya Reith, Executive Director, Arkansas United Community Coalition

Deanna Perez Williams, PhD, Coordinator, Arkansas Migrant Education Program, Boston Mountain Educational Cooperative

Logan Hampton, Interim Associate Vice Chancellor, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Adjoa Aiyetoro, Director, Institute for Race and Ethnicity, University of Arkansas at Little Rock