Luxembourg's stable, prosperous economy would not be possible without foreign workers, most of whom come from other EU countries. But this small country has also struggled to cope with asylum seekers from the former Yugoslavia and to integrate children of immigrants, as Serge Kollwelter explains.
MPI's Julia Gelatt reports on immigration and integration funding in the 2008 budget, plans to raise immigration and naturalization application fees, reports of substandard conditions in immigrant detention facilities, and more.
Mexico has often been cited as a successful example of the positive relationship between migration and development. But Raúl Delgado-Wise and Luis Eduardo Guarnizo show why Mexico's model is unsustainable.
A number of governments and institutions are determined to ride international migration toward a future of greater prosperity. MPI's Kathleen Newland outlines what they all should know about the pluses and minuses of the most basic issues that frame the debate on migration and development: remittances and the brain drain.
HTAs are active throughout the United States, Europe, and parts of East Asia. Manuel Orozco and Rebecca Rouse of the Inter-American Dialogue provide an overview of HTAs and look at the development role they play.
India receives more remittances than any other country in the world. MPI's Muzaffar Chishti explores the factors responsible for remittance growth in the last 15 years.
Temporary workers, generally seen as a solution to the changing and growing economic needs of developed countries, rarely focus on the needs of migrant-sending countries. MPI's Dovelyn Agunias reviews relevant research and the policy options proposed for closing this gap.
Thousands of Ecuadorians live in the United States and Spain, making migration-related development policy a major issue for the government. At the same time, the country has received economic migrants from Peru but has done little to address the Colombian refugee situation, as Brad Jokisch of Ohio University explains.
Julia Gelatt reports on legislation plans of the new Congress, a proposal to revise and expand the Visa Waiver Program, the postponement of tracking visitor exits, the Swift & Co. raids, new cost estimates for a border fence, and more.
Latin America and the Caribbean account for the largest percentage of the foreign born in the armed forces. MPI's Laura Barker and Jeanne Batalova report.
Nebraska's foreign-born population grew faster than that of any other Midwestern state between 1990 and 2000. Lourdes Gouveia and Mary Ann Powell of the University of Nebraska at Omaha shed light on the second generation's progress in the country's heartland.
The addition of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union means another round of anxieties about labor migrants. Catherine Drew and Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah of the Institute for Public Policy Research in London explain how this enlargement is different from the historic one in 2004 and why most EU Member States favor temporary restriction.
Cities, especially a few large ones, are the places disproportionately impacted by immigration. Marie Price and Lisa Benton-Short of George Washington University, who have examined the data for 150 cities worldwide, share their findings.
The United States has been a destination for education and research for generations of foreign students and scholars. MPI's Jeanne Batalova explores why the country has become less dominant in the global education market in recent years.
Historically a diverse country, Singapore since the 1980s has become a top destination for Asian and Western professionals as well as low-skilled migrants from across the region. Brenda S.A. Yeoh of the National University of Singapore reports.
MPI’s Julia Gelatt reports on the prospects for comprehensive immigration reform in 2007, the role of immigration reform in the November elections, plans to raise fees for immigration benefits, the first phase of Boeing’s border control strategy, and more.
In January 2004, President George Bush declared the current immigration system "broken" and proposed a temporary worker program open to the unauthorized as well as new foreign workers. Nearly three years later, the United States has not come much closer to that goal although events in 2006 may have changed the political climate in which immigration will be debated next year.
For the first time in its history, the United Nations this year hosted a major multilateral discussion devoted exclusively to global migration — a subject that, for years, was considered taboo in international diplomacy.
With the U.S. Congress unable to reconcile vastly differing views of immigration legislation (see Issue #3: U.S. Immigration Reform: Better Luck Next Year), the city of Hazleton, in eastern Pennsylvania, decided to act, passing its "Illegal Immigration Relief Act" in August.
It seems the most palatable migrant to the world's developed nations in 2006 is still the one in the medical, scientific, IT, or business and finance fields. The question some countries grappled with this year, though, was how to attract the highly skilled who will actually do well in the labor market.
Not every migrant crosses a vast ocean or flies halfway around the world to reach safety or a land of opportunity. In fact, regional migration has been the major form of migration for centuries, and was noteworthy in North America, Europe, and Asia in 2006.
Multiculturalism was supposed to be the ideal middle ground where immigrants could adapt to a country's norms and values while maintaining their culture and traditions. Today, different countries are trying to find the right "mode" of conversation with immigrants and where within the society to have that conversation.
Lebanon's 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990, forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese to flee to other countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and Brazil. Although this summer's fighting between Hezbollah forces in Lebanon and Israel lasted just over a month (July 12 to August 14), the conflict essentially wiped out 15 years of postwar reconstruction and development and displaced an estimated one million Lebanese, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).