SERIOUS ABOUT CHILD SUPPORT: Louisiana is bucking a nationwide trend by increasing child support collections, thanks to an aggressive enforcement scheme, The Times-Picayune reports. Nationally, the recent recession has led to the first decline in child support collections since the start of the federal program in 1975, a new government report shows. In Louisiana, the state collected $19 million more in 2010 than in 2008.
IMMIGRATION SHIFTS:
Colorado ,
Florida ,
New York and
Virginia all saw the number of unauthorized immigrants decrease from 2007 to 2010 while unauthorized immigrant population grew in
Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas ,
a new report says.
California has the largest unauthorized-immigrant population by far, with 2.6 million. The
overall number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. increased only slightly from 2009, to 11.2 million.
STILL ELIGIBLE FOR FOOD STAMPS: A federal judge has temporarily stopped
Washington State from eliminating food benefits for thousands of legal immigrants,
seattlepi.com reports. The state had planned to drop the program to save $7.2 million. The state extended its food benefits to certain legal immigrants in 1997 after Congress, under welfare reform, severely restricted the eligibility of immigrants to get federal food stamps.
As Stateline has reported , states are seeing a historic increase in food stamp enrollment.
TEEN BIRTH RATES DROP: The birth rate remained steady or dropped among girls ages 15 to 17 in every state except
West Virginia , new data from the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show. Overall, the birth rate for teenagers in the U.S. dropped to the lowest ever, falling 8 percent from a year earlier, the
largest single-year drop since 2001.
