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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Research & Analysis

Mika Baumeister

Governments around the world turned to border closures, travel restrictions, and in a few cases bars on asylum—initially in hopes of keeping the COVID-19 virus from entering their countries, and later at the pandemic stage as part of a wider suite of mobility restrictions. MPI's research, data, and commentary on the migration responses to the pandemic, including policies regarding health-care and seasonal workers, are collected here.

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Commentaries

September 2020

Greece’s Moria Tragedy: The Crash Test for the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum

Rick Bajornas/UN

The fires that devastated the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos have further raised the stakes for the soon-to-be unveiled EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. If Moria persists as a concept—with asylum seekers prevented from onward movement elsewhere in Europe—this becomes an integral pillar of future EU asylum practice, whatever is written on paper, as this commentary explores.

Reports

September 2020

Immigration Enforcement and the Mental Health of Latino High School Students

byronv2/Flickr

This study explores the relationship between immigration enforcement and the mental health of Latino high school students, finding that majorities surveyed in both high- and low-enforcement environments reported fear that someone close to them could be deported, with resulting symptoms of conditions such as depression and PTSD. The report provides examples of how schools are responding to support the mental health and engagement of these students.

Reports

July 2020

Dismantling and Reconstructing the U.S. Immigration System: A Catalog of Changes under the Trump Presidency

President Trump emerges from the White House to deliver remarks

Delano Scott/White House

Now into its fourth year, the Trump administration has reshaped the U.S. immigration system in ways big and small via presidential proclamations, policy guidance, and regulatory change. This report offers a catalog of the more than 400 administrative changes undertaken in areas such as immigration enforcement, humanitarian admissions, DACA, and visa processing—including a look at measures put in places since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Commentaries

July 2020

Millions of U.S. Citizens Could Be Excluded under Trump Plan to Remove Unauthorized Immigrants from Census Data

U.S. Census Bureau

The Trump administration's plan to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the 2020 Census data used to reapportion 435 congressional seats among the 50 states could misclassify as many as 20 million U.S. citizens, as the result of expected data-matching errors. The effects of this exclusion could be most pronounced in low-income urban and rural communities, reducing their voting power relative to more affluent ones, as this commentary explains.

Commentaries

June 2020

USCIS Budget Implosion Owes to Far More than the Pandemic

Gulbenk/Wikimedia Commons

Citing coronavirus-related disruptions, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services urged Congress to provide $1.2 billion to address its severe budget shortfall. Without this emergency infusion, the agency warned it might have to furlough up to 80 percent of its staff by mid-July 2020. Yet a deeper look at USCIS operations shows it was facing serious budget problems long before the pandemic—ones that are the logical results of actions undertaken by the Trump administration.

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