Within the US, immigrant communities have suffered disproportionately from COVID-19 due to a variety of factors, including high rates of employment as essential workers; substandard housing; and immigration-based restrictions on non-citizens’ access to public benefits, including Medicaid. During this session , Professor Wendy Parmet will discuss the deleterious role immigration laws have played during the pandemic including the recently promulgated public charge rule, along with ongoing immigration enforcement activities and anti-immigrant rhetoric that have compounded these vulnerabilities, leaving many immigrants afraid to access health care or interact with public health workers.

Speaker
Professor Wendy Parmet
Wendy E. Parmet, Matthews University Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University

This session will take place as part of the 2020 Public Health Law Virtual Summit: COVID-19 Response and Recovery

About the 2020 Public Health Law Virtual Summit
COVID-19 Response and Recovery
The COVID-19 pandemic is challenging public health in unprecedented ways, and is exposing structural failures and health inequities that further exasperate the impact of the virus. As the nation continues to grapple with the ongoing pandemic, Northeastern Law's Center for Health Policy and Law has joined with the the  Network for Public Health and other public health law partners, to produce an expansive report, Pandemic Policymaking: Assessing Legal Responses to COVID-19, that includes critical analyses and recommendations from national experts convened to assess the U.S. policy response to the crisis to date. Many of these experts will present their key findings at this virtual Summit, and propose paths forward to more effective and equitable response and recovery efforts.