State
There are many ways in which states and localities can act to improve the situation of immigrant workers in the present climate, including: language access to government services and benefits; drivers' licenses; confidentiality laws and laws regulating police enforcement of immigration laws; immigrant workers' rights and remedies post Hoffman Plastic, and workers' compensation rights of immigrant workers.  This section addresses those actions, providing background, comparison of states’ laws, model legislation and talking points.

More Harm Than Good: Responding To States’ Misguided Efforts To Regulate Immigration. This guide describes some of the anti-immigrant worker provisions currently pending in state legislatures and talking points explaining why these provisions will be bad for workers, bad for communities and bad for states.  Finally, this guide provides some affirmative proposals of steps states can take to ensure that workers are not being exploited and that employers are complying with state labor and employment laws. (March 2006)

Low Pay, High Risk: State Models for Advancing Immigrant Workers' Rights This document provides a review of the many creative campaigns being undertaken to advance immigrant workers' rights in five areas, language access, drivers' licenses, confidentiality, post-Hoffman Plastics issues and workers' compensation. It provides background information, model legislation and talking points. (Revised April 2003)

Summary of Immigrant Drivers' License Proposals 2002  After September 11, 2001, there is mounting pressure on state drivers’ licensing agencies to institute stringent documentation requirements and costly verification procedures, which would limit many immigrant workers’ access to drivers’ licenses. Nonetheless, advocates for liberalizing drivers’ license requirements have made surprising progress in the 2002 state legislatures. Most of the forty-six restrictive licensing bills were defeated in 2002, and small progress was made in making licenses more accessible to immigrants. The bills that passed face legal, fiscal and practical obstacles. This is an update of a chart compiled by the National Immigration Law Center, the National Council of La Raza, and NELP.  (September 2002)