Hometown Associations: An Untapped
Resource for Immigrant Integration?
 By Will Somerville, Jamie Durana, and Aaron Matteo Terrazas
Hometown associations, the organizations that immigrants create
for social, economic development, and political empowerment purposes,
play an important – and underexamined – role in immigrant
integration. Though policymakers focus chiefly on the associations’ development
potential, this MPI Insight recommends cooperative interventions
to strengthen their immigrant integration capacity.
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Report | Press Release
Purchase a hard copy at the MPI bookstore: US | International
Click
here for
a webcast of the 5th Annual Immigration Law & Policy Conference
which MPI co-hosted on May 20, 2008, with Georgetown University
Law Center and Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC)
Los Angeles on the Leading Edge:
Immigrant Integration Indicators and Their Policy Implications
By Michael Fix, Margie McHugh, Aaron Matteo Terrazas, and Laureen
Laglagaron
April 2008
As Los Angeles makes the transition from being a city of immigrants
to one dominated by their US-born children, it can serve as a
policy laboratory for other cities facing the need to better
integrate immigrants into US classrooms, workplaces, and civic
life. MPI’s
report details the imperative for integration policies that will
benefit immigrants and the broader US society alike.
Download
Report | Press
Release
Weaknesses in the Visa Waiver
Program
Testimony of Susan Ginsburg, Director of MPI's Mobility and Security
Program, before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on
Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security
Feb. 28, 2008
Role of Foreign-born
Voters in Elections
Election profiles for Texas and Ohio, as well as the 48 other states and the
District of Columbia, examine voter registration by nativity, providing breakdowns
for foreign-born citizens as a share of total state population, their turnout
in the 2004 general election, and ethnicity.
Behind the Naturalization Backlog
By Claire Bergeron and Jeremy Banks
Fact Sheet No. 21, February 2008
The processing time for naturalization applications has risen
dramatically since mid-2007, to an 18-month average, as the federal
government has struggled to cope with a surge in applications
driven in part by a substantial fee increase. More than 460,000
people filed naturalization applications in July 2007 right before
the fee hike took effect — fully
one-third of the nearly 1.4 million applications that were filed
during the entire fiscal year. This MPI fact sheet examines the
causes, context, and concerns surrounding the backlog.
Fact
Sheet | Press Release
 Language
Portal: A Translation and Interpretation Digital Library
National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, February 2008
The Language Portal is a digital library of nearly 600 resources
relating to the use of language access services in social services
and public safety agencies. The Portal includes legal guidelines,
service models, master contracts for service providers, hourly
translation and interpretation rates for different languages, pay
differentials for multilingual staff, and sample translated documents.
The Portal was created to provide “one-stop shopping” for
the many local government administrators, policymakers, and others
who are looking for ways to provide high-quality and cost-effective
translation and interpretation services.
The Iraqi Refugee Crisis: The
Need for Action
By Kelly O'Donnell and Kathleen Newland
Report, January 2008
As border restrictions both within and outside Iraq tighten and
sectarian violence persists, the options for Iraq's estimated 4.5
million internally and externally displaced appear bleak. MPI's
report on the Iraqi refugee crisis examines the situation in Iraq,
Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, as well as the response of the United
States and select EU Member States.
Full
Report | Press Release
Secure Borders and Open Doors:
Preserving Our Welcome to the World in an Age of Terrorism
Report of the Secure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee,
January 2008
The Secure Border and Open Doors Advisory Committee, created by
the US Secretaries of Homeland Security and State in December 2006,
has included 44 policy recommendations on travel and border issues
in this report. MPI Senior Fellow Susan Ginsburg co-chaired the
committee's Visa Policy and Processing Working Group.
Europe’s
Disappearing Internal Borders
By Hiroyuki Tanaka and Trinidad Macias
Fact Sheet No. 20, December 2007
The Schengen Area allows European
Union citizens and third-country nationals in 15 Schengen Member
States to, in almost all cases, travel freely to another Schengen
Member State. On December 21, 2007, the Schengen Area will enlarge
to include nine of the 10 countries that entered the European
Union in 2004. This MPI fact sheet provides 10 key facts about
the expanding Schengen Area.
Fact
Sheet | Press Release
Testing the Limits: A Framework for Assessing the Legality
of State and Local Immigration Measures
By Cristina Rodríguez, Muzaffar Chishti, and Kimberly
Nortman
Report, December 2007
In 2007 alone, the 50 state legislatures have considered over 1,000
pieces of legislation regulating immigrants and immigration. This
paper provides a framework for assessing the legal validity of
five of the most common or high-profile measures that address unauthorized
immigration specifically.
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