U.S. Immigration Policy Program
Recent Activity
MPI President Andrew Selee and two colleagues who joined him at the U.S.-Mexico border to examine increasingly sophisticated U.S. Customs and Border Protection operations discuss the evolution of policies and procedures to address asylum seekers and other migrants arriving at official ports of entry.
How are U.S. border operations and policies evolving at the U.S.-Mexico border to address rising and diversifying flows? And what is driving increasing immigration from across Latin America, the Caribbean, and beyond? MPI President Andrew Selee speaks with two colleagues who traveled from one end of the nearly 2,000-mile boundary to the other, touring U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities and interviewing U.S. and Mexican officials, NGO leaders, and others.
Marking the launch of MPI’s Global Skills and Talent Initiative, this webcast features senior policymakers and other experts discussing the extent to which labor market needs should shape future immigration policy decisions, and how countries are adjusting—and could adjust—their immigration systems to meet human capital and competitiveness needs.
Focusing on top immigration policy issues at federal and state levels, this 2022 Immigration Law and Policy Conference featured keynotes by Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson exploring the growing role states are taking in the national immigration debate.
Experts on this webinar examined the scope and reality of skills shortages and the role of immigrants in the U.S. labor market, ways to address the underemployment of highly skilled immigrants, and how immigrants and immigration policy can be used to fulfil needs in the education sector, STEM occupations, and other skills needs.
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Recent Activity
This report examines the connections between the United States’ temporary and permanent systems of admission to the United States. It describes the goals and structure of each system, discusses the relationship between immigrant and nonimmigrant admission flows, and describes the critical data gaps that impede understanding of the underlying realities of immigration to the United States.
Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States Department of Justice has sought to engage local police in the systematic enforcement of routine civil immigration violations, marking a sea change in immigration and local law enforcement practices. This report provides the first public glimpse of how the new NCIC policy has affected on‐the‐ ground policing strategies across the country and which immigrant groups have been most heavily impacted.
This policy brief examines the flaws in the United States’ existing employer sanctions regime and proposes six types of reform that could strengthen the system: improvements to document security, document consolidation, mandatory use of employment databases, increased enforcement staffing, a revised penalty structure, and better worksite access for investigators.
This report provides an overview of United States border enforcement throughout the 20th century, highlights how it has changed since the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act nearly two decades ago, and further examines its unprecedented expansion in the aftermath of 9/11. The author concludes with a set of policy questions.
This report explores the successes and failures of various attempts to create an employment verification system that reliably establishes an employee’s eligibility to work since the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986. Through this analysis, the author evaluates the effectiveness and potential contributions of the current system and seeks to inform proposals for future initiatives.
This brief provides a historical overview of various attempts at implementing workplace enforcement in the United States before arguing in favor of a process not unlike credit-card verification that allows employers to swipe a card at the point of hire and receive a response in real time from the Social Security Administration informing them whether an employee is authorized to work in the United States.
This report examines the sweeping changes in the way identity documents are issued and used under the REAL ID Act, an effort to enhance the security of identity documents in post-9/11 America. It takes a detailed look at how this legislation will affect document issuing agencies, state budgets, and the employment verification system, in addition to immigrants and citizens.
This report closely examines the rapid growth of government appropriations directly targeted to immigration enforcement activities since the passage of the Immigration Control and Reform Act of 1986 (IRCA). Focusing primarily on data between 1985 and 2002, authors highlight trends in the overall immigration enforcement spending as well as in specific activities.
As Europe and the United States Face Similar Migration Challenges, Spain Can Act as a Bridge
Spain and the United States both receive their greatest number of immigrants from Latin America, and have worked collaboratively together on displacement crises and other migration issues. As shared immigration challenges dominate debate on both sides of the Atlantic, Spain can serve as a vital bridge in the policy conversation, this commentary notes.
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