Universal health care and reformed bilingual education programs are among the services most critically needed by California's immigrants to become employed, productive state residents, according to a new University of California, Davis, study. Immigrants' social mobility also could be enhanced through other public-policy changes including better workplace regulation, more flexible social services to account for differing needs among immigrants and employment of new immigrants in social services, conclude Michael Peter Smith, a professor of community studies and development, and research sociologist Bernadette Tarallo, of UC Davis' applied behavioral sciences department. Their study, "California's Changing Faces: New Immigrant Survival Strategies and State Policy," was funded and published by the California Policy Seminar, a joint UC-state government program. Research for the two-year study involved in-depth interviews with social services providers and 170 immigrants and refugees in San Francisco and Sacramento. The study examines the difficulties encountered by immigrants in their new settings, and their coping strategies; personal stories describe their experiences and their changing lives. Mexican and Chinese immigrants, Vietnamese and Mien refugees and Salvadoran undocumented refugees were among those interviewed about work, welfare and immigration. Smith and Tarallo interviewed immigrants in Northern California, yet many of their conclusions have statewide implications. "Guaranteeing universal health-care access, separating other benefits currently tied to welfare so they can be more flexibly tailored to serve the unique needs of each population group, and access to English," Smith said, "are the keys to empowering people to fulfill themselves and make a productive contribution to society." A striking research finding was the emphasis immigrants place on learning English, contrary to popular perceptions suggesting the opposite, Smith says. "That's the one finding that cut across all the groups, that acquisition of English is recognized by all groups as the one road to economic well-being and a way to avoid discrimination," Smith said. The forced choice many immigrants must make between work and health, because of linked welfare and medical benefits, was another experience common to the immigrant and refugee groups studied. Although the new immigrants are willing to work, and prefer work to welfare, they have been unable to find jobs with employee health benefits, the study shows. If immigrants could participate in a universal health-care system for all California residents, that would eliminate a major incentive for them to remain unemployed. "What was surprising was how forcefully the people said that if they could have healthy children and work, they'd work," Smith said. Interestingly, "now you can draw a parallel, that the immigrants are no worse off than many Americans because so few of the service-sector jobs offer benefits." The study debunks several myths about California immigrants' relationship to work and welfare. Among such myths is the belief new immigrants and refugees are responsible for taking away jobs, when in fact structural changes in the global economy, significant cuts in defense spending and welfare retrenchment have transformed the California labor market and have reduced job opportunities. The vast majority of those interviewed work as unskilled labor in ethnic employment enclaves, or as domestic or other personal-service workers in hotels and restaurants; a limited number work as immigrant entrepreneurs or community-service providers for their ethnic groups. Most of the Mexican women and men, Salvadoran refugees and second-wave Vietnamese refugees are employed in low-paid secondary labor market jobs in the service sector or are unemployed. Many highly skilled immigrants from mainland China are likewise relegated to the bottom of the service sector because they lack access to English education. A majority of the Mien refugees from Laos are dependent on welfare for survival. Yet those Mien who have learned English and benefited from job-training and placement programs are employed and becoming self-sufficient. Another myth debunked is the notion that the ethnic enclave economy is an adequate employment channel providing genuine economic opportunity for new immigrants. Rather, such enclaves, where immigrants tend to work in the same businesses, serve to reinforce their difficulties in learning and speaking English and inhibit upward mobility. Forced compliance with labor statutes as well as vigorous enforcement of laws against discriminatory hiring and working conditions by mainstream employers could provide workplaces in which immigrants can learn English, according to the study. Such an atmosphere would also supplement overburdened and sometimes ineffective English-language programs. Other myths the study rejects are the belief that the new immigrant social networks can be counted on to offer effective informal social support for new immigrants and the belief that new immigrant integration will resolve itself in future generations in the absence of state policies.