Andrew Selee
Experts & Staff
Andrew Selee
President
Andrew Selee has been President of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan institution that seeks to improve immigration and integration policies through fact-based research, opportunities for learning and dialogue, and the development of new ideas to address complex policy questions, since August 2017.
Prior to that, he spent 17 years at the Woodrow Wilson Center, where he founded the Center’s Mexico Institute and later served as Vice President for Programs and Executive Vice President. He has also worked as staff in the U.S. Congress and on development and migration programs in Tijuana, Mexico.
Dr. Selee’s research focuses on migration globally, with a special emphasis on immigration policies in Latin America and in the United States. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together (PublicAffairs, 2018) and What Should Think Tanks Do? A Strategic Guide to Policy Impact (Stanford University Press, 2013). He is also coauthor of the MPI policy reports Trump’s First Year on Immigration Policy: Rhetoric vs. Reality (January 2018), Creativity amid Crisis: Legal Pathways for Venezuelan Migrants in Latin America (January 2019), and Changing Patterns of U.S.-Mexico Migration (forthcoming).
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He has published opinion articles in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego Union Tribune, CNN.com, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, and he writes a regular column in Mexico’s largest newspaper, El Universal. He has been an Adjunct Professor at both Johns Hopkins University and George Washington University, and was a visiting scholar at El Colegio de México.
Dr. Selee was a Co-Director of the Regional Migration Study Group, convened by MPI with the Wilson Center to look at regional migration flows among the Central American countries, Mexico, and the United States, and was part of the steering committee for MPI’s Independent Task Force on Immigration and America’s Future, which helped lay an important conceptual foundation for immigration reform efforts in recent years. He was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relation’s Task Force on Immigration. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he served on the Board of Directors of the YMCA of the USA, the nation’s largest membership organization, and on several committees of the Geneva-based World Alliance of YMCAs.
He holds a PhD in policy studies from the University of Maryland, an MA in Latin American studies from the University of California, San Diego, and a BA, Phi Beta Kappa, from Washington University in St. Louis. He was selected as an Andrew Carnegie Fellow for the 2017-18 period.
Bio Page Tabs
Over recent months, the number of Central American migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border has surged, presenting a critical challenge in the relationship between the two neighboring countries. Experts from a Study Group on U.S.-Mexico Migration convened by El Colegio de México and MPI discuss current trends, policies, and politics surrounding migration from the Northern Triangle of Central America and the U.S.-Mexico relationship, ways to improve U.S. and Mexican asylum systems, possible new approaches to labor migration, ways to address smuggling networks, and modernize border management.
MPI's Kathleen Newland, Refugee Council USA's Mary Giovagnoli, and David Scott FitzGerald, author of Refuge beyond Reach, discuss how and why international and national responses to the rising challenge of refugee displacement are diverging.
Durante su primera visita oficial a Washington, DC, la Secretaria de Gobierno Olga Sánchez Cordero presento un discurso público sobre la nueva política migratoria de México en el Instituto de Políticas Migratorias.
On her first official trip to Washington, DC, Secretary of the Interior Olga Sánchez Cordero offered a public address on Mexico’s new approach to migration policy at MPI. Her remarks and the event discussion were mostly conducted in Spanish, and this recording is of the simultaneous English interpretation.
Convocamos un seminario en línea (webinar) en español en la ocasión del lanzamiento del informe, Creatividad dentro de la crisis: opciones legales para inmigrantes venezolanos en América Latina, que describe donde se han radicado los migrantes venezolanos; las medidas que
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Recent Activity
Testimony of Andrew Selee, President of MPI, before Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on April 4, 2019 regarding response to changing migration flows at the Southwest border.
"Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Peters, and Members of the Committee:
Enfrentados con la llegada de más de 3 millones de venezolanos huyendo de una economía colapsada y conflictos políticos, los países latinoamericanos han respondido con creatividad y pragmatismo. Pero, a medida que la crisis venezolana y la migración que ha impulsado se extienden, es necesario examinar más allá de la facilitación de la entrada legal y la otorgación del estatus temporal para planificar a largo plazo.
Faced with the arrival of more than 3 million Venezuelans fleeing economic collapse and political upheaval, Latin American countries have responded with creativity and pragmatism. But as the migration spurred by the crisis stretches on, there is a need to look beyond facilitating legal entry and granting temporary status to plan for the long term. This brief explores the policy response thus far and challenges ahead.
Testimony of Andrew Selee, President of MPI, before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration on December 12, 2018 regarding the intersections of transnational crime, immigration, and border security.
President Trump has made reshaping the U.S. immigration system a top priority. Yet the fragmented nature of policy-making in the United States—with power split between branches and levels of government—has made it difficult to pursue some of his most ambitious proposals. This report explores the evolution of migration policy under Trump, and what these changes may mean in the long run.
Wall or no wall, deeply intertwined social, economic, business, cultural, and personal relationships mean the U.S.-Mexico border is more like a seam than a barrier, weaving together two economies and cultures, as MPI President Andrew Selee sketches in this book, which draws from his travels and discussions with people from all walks of life in Mexico and the United States.
Looking back after one year in office, it is striking how just closely the Trump administration’s actions on immigration have hewed to priorities Donald Trump outlined in an uncommonly detailed policy speech in August 2016. This report revisits those pledges to assess where the administration has made the most and least headway, and what its policy agenda ahead might look like.
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump made immigration the centerpiece of his campaign, offering a more detailed policy agenda than on any other issue. In the year since the election that propelled the Republican into the White House, how has the Trump administration’s record matched up with the rhetoric? This policy brief examines the executive orders and other changes to existing policy and practice made during 2017.