Connected through Service: Diaspora Volunteers and Global Development
By Aaron Terrazas
Nearly 1 million US residents spend time volunteering abroad each year, including nearly 200,000 first- and second-generation immigrants. Diasporas often have the connections, knowledge, and personal drive to volunteer outside the framework of organized volunteer programs. But many also volunteer through established programs. As skilled migration and the number of US youth with ancestors in the developing world grow over the coming years, the potential for both skilled diaspora volunteers and youth diaspora volunteers will increase. This report is the second in a series of studies examining the role of diasporas in development policy.
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ELL Information Center
Find easy-to-navigate fact sheets, maps, videos, and more chronicling the growth, geographic dispersal, and academic performance of the English language learner (ELL) student population in the United States. More than 5 million students are ELLs, representing nearly 11 percent of US public school enrollment. As immigrants have moved beyond traditional gateway states such as California, Texas, and New York, and as No Child Left Behind Act provisions have made schools responsible for the progress of ELLs, school districts across the United States are having to rapidly develop educational services for this fast-growing group.
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Diaspora Investment in Developing and Emerging Country Capital Markets: Patterns and Prospects
By Aaron Terrazas
Financial flows from migrants and their descendants are at the heart of the relationship between migration and development. There is little doubt that remittances can have important effects on financial development. But they represent only a fraction of the potential private financial flows originating from diasporas, with substantial evidence showing that diasporas hold substantial financial assets beyond their current income — for instance, in savings and retirement accounts, in property, debt, and equity. Remittances tap the incomes of migrants, but this report argues that the greater challenge is to mobilize the wealth of diasporas. Capital markets perform precisely this function, mobilizing savings and channeling them to productive investment. This report is the first in a series of six studies on the role of diasporas in development policy.
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DREAM vs. Reality: An Analysis of Potential DREAM Act Beneficiaries
Slightly more than 2.1 million unauthorized immigrant youth and young adults could be eligible to apply for legal status under the DREAM Act legislation pending in Congress, though perhaps fewer than 40 percent would obtain legal status because of barriers limiting their ability to take advantage of the legislation's educational and military service routes to legalization. This MPI analysis offers the most recent and detailed estimates of potential DREAM Act beneficiaries by age, education levels, gender, state of residence and likelihood of gaining legalization.
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The Impact of Immigrants in Recession and Economic Expansion
By Giovanni Peri
There is broad consensus among economists that immigration has a small but positive impact on the average income of Americans over the long term. But far less analysis has been done on the impact of immigrants on the labor market in the shorter term, particularly when viewed through the lens of the recession and its lingering labor market effects. This report finds that immigration unambiguously improves employment, productivity and income but that it also involves some short-term adjustments. These adjustments are more difficult during downturns, further underscoring the need for an immigration system that is more responsive to the economic cycle.
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Migration's Middlemen: Regulating Recruitment Agencies in the Philippines-United Arab Emirates Corridor
By Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias
Private recruitment agencies manage much of the flow of the 200,000 Filipino workers who head to annually to the United Arab Emirates, which is the third-largest destination for Filipino migrants after the United States and Saudi Arabia. While the recruitment agencies provide critical services, some abuse their clients by charging exorbitant fees or violating basic human rights. This report, based on exhaustive interviews with key actors and migrants themselves, examines the recruiters' practices as well as their regulation by the Philippine and UAE governments, finding room for significant improvement.
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2010 E Pluribus Unum Prizes: Honoring Exceptional Immigrant Integration Initiatives
Winners of the 2nd annual E Pluribus Unum Prizes awarded to exceptional immigrant integration initiatives by MPI's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy are the Illinois New Americans Integration Initiative; the Latino Community Credit Union in Durham, NC; Tacoma Community House in Tacoma, WA; and Upwardly Global in San Francisco, CA. McDonald's Corp. of Oak Brook, IL, received the sole honorable mention. The Prizes seek to reward exemplary efforts that uphold and update the ideal of "out of many, one" and inspire others to take on the important work of helping immigrants and their children join the mainstream of US society as well as build stronger ties between immigrants and the native-born.
Press release | Podcasts of ceremony and panel discussions | Video of winners

Securing Human Mobility in the Age of Risk: New Challenges for Travel, Migration, and Borders
This new book makes the case that the nation's post-9/11 approach to immigration and border security is off-kilter and not keeping pace with the scope and complexity of people's movement around the world, nor with expectations regarding freedom of movement. Author Susan Ginsburg, who served as senior counsel and team leader on the staff of the 9/11 Commission, proposes a new paradigm that seeks to secure mobility and promote the rule of law in global migration channels while moving away from a system that too often conflates border and immigration enforcement with counterterrorism.
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A Program in Flux: New Priorities and Implementation Challenges for 287(g)
By Cristina Rodríguez, Muzaffar Chishti, Randy Capps, and Laura St. John
State and local enforcement of federal immigration laws has generated considerable controversy in public policy circles in recent years, particularly with respect to the Section 287(g) program. The Obama administration is reforming the program, with a new standardized memorandum of agreement (MOA) that will govern all future Section 287(g) collaborations. In this report, the authors find that some aspects of the new standardized agreement may address criticisms of the program, while others could complicate implementation. The report also sets forth a research agenda for determining whether the 287(g) program generates greater benefits than costs and is worth maintaining.
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Protection through Integration: The Mexican Government's Efforts to Aid Migrants in the United States
By Laureen Laglagaron
Immigrant integration remains largely an afterthought in US immigration policy discussions and the country's integration policies remain chronically underfunded and limited in scope. Local and informal actors such as families and community-based organizations have historically taken on this responsibility. However, as this report explores, new partners are emerging. Mexico's efforts to help its migrants succeed in the United States offer a new example of an immigrant-sending country looking to improve its emigrants' lives and connect with its diaspora. The report examines the evolution of Mexico's approach to its migrants and details the activities of Mexico's Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME) in a first-ever attempt to map the expanding range of IME educational, health care, financial, and civic engagement programs.
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The UK's New Europeans: Progress and Challenges Five Years After Accession
The enlargement of the European Union has fundamentally changed migration patterns to the United Kingdom. An estimated 1.5 million workers have come to the United Kingdom from new EU Member States since May 2004, accounting for about half of all labor migration during that period. Though employment rates for these new European citizens are high, areas of concern remain because their wages are low and the workers, often despite significant education, are concentrated in unskilled labor sectors. This report, commissioned by the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission, also concludes that the influx of workers may be having a slight negative impact on the wages of the lowest-paid British workers.
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Transatlantic Information Sharing: At a Crossroads
By Hiroyuki Tanaka, Rocco Bellanova, Susan Ginsburg, and Paul De Hert
The attempted Christmas Day attack on a US airliner has refocused interest on the data collected by governments on international travelers, and how information sharing can be used to prevent terrorism and secure travel if properly shared and analyzed. In the wake of 9/11, the United States and European Union worked out agreements to expand the sharing of personal information about international travelers as a means to prevent acts of terrorism and fight international crime. However, as this report explores, negotiations on a binding US-EU agreement that will govern the sharing of personal information for law enforcement purposes – while high on the transatlantic policy agenda – face significant challenges.
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Side-by-Side Comparison of 2009 House CIR ASAP Bill with 2006, 2007 Senate Legislation
MPI analysis, title by title, of the major provisions in the 2009 Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act introduced in the House and comparison with legislation considered by the Senate in 2006 and 2007.
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The Economics and Policy of Illegal Immigration in the United States
By Gordon H. Hanson
Illegal immigration's overall impact on the US economy is negligible, despite clear benefits for employers and unauthorized immigrants and slightly depressed wages for low-skilled native workers, according to this report by University of California, San Diego Professor of Economics Gordon Hanson for MPI's Labor Markets Initiative. The largest economic gains from illegal immigration flow to unauthorized workers, who see very substantial income hikes after migrating, Hanson says, suggesting that policy changes could increase the positive contribution that low-skilled workers make to the US economy by converting illegal flows to legal ones.
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Tied to the Business Cycle: How Immigrants Fare in Good and Bad Economic Times
By Pia M. Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny
Immigrants surpassed native-born workers in several key labor market outcomes from the mid-1990s through 2007, recording higher employment and lower jobless rates — but the trend was reversed with the onset of the current recession. The report, which analyzes employment and unemployment patterns over the past 15 years and two recessions, shows that immigrant economic outcomes began deteriorating before the current recession officially began in December 2007, tracing immigrants' declining fortunes largely to the housing bust which began in spring 2006.
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The Binational Option: Meeting the Instructional Needs of Limited English Proficient Students
By Aaron Terrazas and Michael Fix
With 1 in 10 children in US schools having limited English proficiency, school districts across the country face challenges in meeting the students' educational needs and finding enough qualified bilingual and English as a Second Language educators. This report identifies international teacher exchanges as an innovative, near-term strategy for school administrators to respond to immediate teaching needs, particularly in subject areas where knowledge of a foreign language is necessary. In conjunction with efforts to recruit local teachers, foreign teachers can help alleviate endemic shortages — particularly in districts that face rapid, unexpected, or short-term changes in the student population.
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Immigrants and Health Care Reform: What's Really at Stake?
By Randy Capps, Marc R. Rosenblum, and Michael Fix
Health care reform proposals under consideration in Congress that would exclude many legal immigrants from core benefits and impose new verification requirements would have important spillover consequences for taxpayers and other health care consumers. In a new report, MPI's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy offers the first-ever estimates of the size of uninsured immigrant populations in major immigrant-destination states, the number of immigrant workers covered by employer-provided plans, and the share of immigrants employed by small firms likely to be exempted from employer coverage mandates. The report, based on MPI analysis of Census Bureau data, also examines health coverage for immigrants by legal status, age, and poverty levels.
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Immigrant Detention: Can ICE Meet its Legal Imperatives and Case Management Responsibilities?
By Donald Kerwin and Serena Yi-Ying Lin
As US Immigration and Customs Enforcement launches an initiative to move from a criminal incarceration model to a civil detention system, this report explores whether the agency is capable of meeting legal and case management responsibilities in light of its use of information systems that may not be collecting all the data necessary for compliance with legal, detention management and humanitarian standards. The report analyzes select data for all 32,000 detainees held in ICE custody on one night in January 2009 and examines the sufficiency of the agency's database and case tracking system. The authors provide a roadmap for meeting the data needs essential for the new detention initiative to succeed.
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Migration and the Global Recession
By Michael Fix, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Jeanne Batalova, Aaron Terrazas, Serena Yi-Ying Lin, and Michelle Mittelstadt
The global financial crisis that began in September 2008 can be viewed as having a deeper and more global effect on the movement of people around the world than any other economic downturn in the post-World War II era of migration, finds a new MPI report commissioned by the BBC World Service. The report explores how the recession has affected the movement of some of the world's more than 195 million migrants and their remittances in locations around the globe. It provides data on migration, remittances, employment, and poverty rates for immigrants and the native-born alike; and examines the policy changes some countries have enacted to suppress migrant inflows, encourage departures (including through recent "pay-to-go" plans), and protect labor markets for native-born workers.
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Aligning Temporary Immigration Visas with US Labor Market Needs: The Case for Provisional Visas
By Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Doris Meissner, Marc R. Rosenblum, and Madeleine Sumption
Reform of a rigid employment-based visa system that is out of sync with the needs of employers, the US economy, US society, and immigrants alike must be part of effective comprehensive immigration reform legislation. In this report, MPI recommends creation of a new stream of visas known as provisional visas, which would bridge temporary and permanent admissions to the United States for work purposes in a predictable and transparent way. The authors make the case that the concept hits the sweet spot in balancing the two main goals of labor market immigration policy: It supports economic growth and competitiveness while protecting the wages and interests of US workers; and it facilitates the social and economic integration of immigrants.
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The Next Generation of E-Verify: Getting Employment Verification Right
By Doris Meissner and Marc R. Rosenblum
Effective employment verification must be the linchpin of comprehensive immigration reform legislation if new policies are to succeed in preventing future illegal immigration. While E-Verify, the government's voluntary electronic verification program, has been greatly improved, it most crucially still cannot detect identity fraud and requires further enhancement. This report examines the strengths and weaknesses of the current system and outlines recommendations to get to a stronger next-generation E-Verify, including by testing alternatives such as secure documents, PIN pre-verification, and biometric scanning.
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6th Annual Immigration Law and Policy Conference
In a major address at the 6th Annual Immigration Law and Policy Conference sponsored by MPI, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., and Georgetown University Law Center, Senate Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Charles Schumer outlined the seven principles he said will form the basis for the immigration legislation he intends to introduce by this fall. The conference, also addressed by Homeland Security Assistant Secretary John Morton and other top immigration experts in and out of government, included sessions on “Bringing Immigration Policymaking into the 21st Century,” “Prospects for Immigration Reform: What to Expect from Washington?” “ Discussion on the Economic Recession and its Impact on Immigration,” “ Communities Laying the Groundwork for Immigration Reform and Beyond,” and “Immigrant Integration:  A Full Federal Policy Agenda.”
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Harnessing the Advantages of Immigration for a 21st-Century Economy
By Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Doris Meissner, Marc R. Rosenblum, and Madeleine Sumption
The US immigration system neither meets labor market needs efficiently nor minds the interests of US workers with particular success, and has yet to devise a way that uses immigration to promote US economic growth and competitiveness well. This paper proposes an institutional solution to address this systemic failure: Creating a permanent and independent body, situated within the executive branch, that is charged with recommending adjustments to immigration laws to the president and Congress: the Standing Commission on Labor Markets, Economic Competitiveness, and Immigration. The bipartisan panel would provide timely, evidence-based, and impartial analysis and recommendations to the president and Congress regarding employment-based immigration.
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Taking Limited English Proficient Adults into Account in the Federal Adult Education Funding Formula
By Randy Capps, Michael Fix, Margie McHugh, and Serena Yi-Ying Lin
This new report by MPI's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy examines the funding formula used to distribute Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Title II federal funds for adult education, literacy, and English as a Second Language instruction. Though all adults with limited English proficiency (LEP) are eligible for WIA Title II programs, the authors report that the formula used to distribute $554 million to the states in fiscal 2009 excludes 11.2 million LEP adults with at least a high school education. With WIA up for reauthorization, the authors suggest there is an opportunity for policymakers to revisit the funding formula and related issues.
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DHS and Immigration: Taking Stock and Correcting Course
By Doris Meissner and Donald Kerwin
Nearly six years after the federal immigration bureaucracy was dismantled and rebuilt to meet the heightened security imperatives of the post-9/11 era, the arrival of new executive branch leadership offers the singular opportunity to take stock and provide a clear-eyed assessment of the performance of the three immigration agencies within the Department of Homeland Security. In a new report, MPI offers policy recommendations for US Customs and Border Protection, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services, as well as overall DHS immigration policy direction and coordination, that could be accomplished by the new administration without need for legislation.
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Collateral Damage: An Examination of ICE's Fugitive Operations Program
By Margot Mendelson, Shayna Strom, and Michael Wishnie
The federal fugitive operations program established to locate, apprehend, and remove fugitive aliens who pose a threat to the community has instead focused chiefly on arresting unauthorized immigrants without criminal convictions. In a new report, MPI finds that 73 percent of the nearly 97,000 people arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement fugitive operations teams between the program's inception in 2003 and early 2008 were unauthorized immigrants without criminal records. And arrests of fugitive aliens with criminal convictions have represented a steadily declining share of total arrests by the fugitive operations teams.
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Immigrants and the Current Economic Crisis
By Demetrios G. Papademetriou and Aaron Terrazas
As the nation sinks into a recession that may be the worst since the Great Depression, the economic crisis raises fundamental questions about future immigration flows to and from the United States and how current and prospective immigrants will fare. This report, a research product of MPI's new Labor Markets Initiative, examines how the number of immigrants has changed since the recession began; how legal and illegal immigration flows may change; and how immigrants fare in the labor market during downturns.
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More on the Labor Markets Initiative here

New Data Guide On Finding, Using the Most Accurate, Recent Immigration Data Resources
The Immigration: Data Matters guide shows where to locate some of the most credible, up-to-date US and global immigration-related data compiled by government and non-governmental sources. The online guide, also available in hard copy, includes clickable links to resources that offer immigrant population estimates; the size of the unauthorized immigrant population; English proficiency rates; the share of immigrants in the workforce; education, health, and income and poverty statistics relating to immigrants; and other data.
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