Nearly Half a Million Early Childhood Educators Are Immigrants

Major threats include H.R. 1, which quadruples the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) budget, and the removal of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from an estimated 500,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan immigrants, who can now be deported. Most recently, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would ban certain immigrants—such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and TPS recipients—from accessing publicly-funded programs, including Head Start. This is the beginning of a larger effort to shut out immigrants from accessing vital programs.

The increased enforcement, hostility towards immigrants, and racial profiling is deeply traumatic for children, families, educators, the Hispanic/Latine community, and people of color across the United States. And when it comes to the ECE workforce, such policies not only harm immigrant families and early educators, but even spill over to undercut the availability of care for entire communities. 

Immigrants make up at least 21 percent of the child care workforce, including both documented and undocumented individuals. This percentage may even understate the number of immigrants working in child care, since we derived our estimate using U.S. Census data, where immigrants are frequently undercounted.

CSCCE uses the American Community Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau to understand state-by-state demographics of the ECE workforce, following the approach we developed for the 2024 Early Educator Workforce Index. This strategy enables us to include as many types of early educators as possible in our analysis: child care and preschool, center- and home-based. We know from our own survey research that immigrants are well represented among home-based educators like licensed family child care providers.

Immigrants make up vastly different shares of each state’s ECE workforce. In seven states (including Mississippi and Vermont), they represent less than 5 percent. However, immigrants make up more than 20 percent of early educators in 14 states and the District of Columbia. These states include populous regions across the political spectrum, like Florida and New York (38 and 40 percent, respectively). For a full list, see the table at the bottom of this post.

We estimated there were 2.2 million early educators working throughout the United States when we published the 2024 Index. That means nearly half a million of these ECE professionals are immigrants, with language and cultural skills that serve the needs of the United States’ increasingly diverse child population. We cannot afford to lose their contributions to shaping the development of our youngest children. Diversity is our strength as a nation; it begins with our children and with our early educators. Each early educator provides essential care and education for numerous families, contributing to a vibrant web of support.

Immigration policy has cascading effects on educators, families, and the economy. Recently about a dozen employees at Tierra Encantada, a Spanish-immersion early education program with nine locations in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, lost their work authorization after the Department of Homeland Security terminated the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela Parole Program. One director lamented the departure of a teacher who had recently been promoted because of her exceptional classroom skills and connection to children and families.

Such abrupt loss of staff is tumultuous for parents, businesses, and children, who depend on stable relationships to feel secure themselves. When parents’ child care arrangements are disrupted, it can also lead to job disruptions and even job loss. Detainments and deportation orders also impact the child care programs, providers, and educators who must scramble to make sure classrooms are adequately staffed.  

Child care programs already struggle to hire and keep staff, due to their low wages, an average of $13.07 an hour. The administration’s policies targeting immigrant populations have the potential to further destabilize our fragile ECE system. As a country, we cannot afford to undermine the scarce, precious pool of early educators, including the great numbers of immigrant women who contribute to its strength.

Suggested Citation: Powell, A. (2025). Nearly Half a Million Early Childhood Educators Are Immigrants; New Analysis Shows Percentage in Each State. Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California, Berkeley. https://cscce.berkeley.edu/publications/blog/nearly-half-a-million-early-childhood-educators-are-immigrants/