North America
Recent Activity
In 2008, there were just under 800,000 apprehensions, the lowest number since 1975. MPI's Kristen McCabe and Jeanne Batalova take a detailed look at the latest immigration enforcement statistics.
This report examines existing collaborative teacher exchange programs some U.S. states and districts have established with Mexico and Spain, and identifies such programs as a relatively unexplored, yet promising strategy for alleviating endemic teacher shortages and meeting the needs of LEP students.
This report analyzes employment and unemployment patterns from 1994 to 2008, offers possible explanations for why labor market outcomes for immigrants have been more cyclical, and proposes possible public policy solutions for mitigating immigrants’ vulnerability to the business cycle.
MPI's Muzaffar Chishti and Claire Bergeron report on immigrant provisions in current health-care reform legislation, ICE's plans to make detention more "civil," a small drop in the size of the U.S. foreign-born population, and more.
Voters’ brains connect words, phrases, images, values, and emotions, and these connections — known as networks of association — influence their receptiveness to political messages, often far more strongly than facts and rational arguments. This report shows that to reach those who have not yet made up their mind on a particular issue, advocates and leaders need to understand the associations a term such as “immigrant” spark in the mind of the electorate and strengthen positive associations while weakening negative ones.
Recent developments in the United States (including the 2008 elections and shifts in organized labor’s stance on immigration) have created new openings for comprehensive immigration reform, possibly including a path to legal residence and citizenship for illegal immigrants. But the author argues that the extent of this opening may be overstated by some advocates.
U.S. media coverage of immigration has hindered effective policy reform for years, a trend which has been exacerbated by the recent transformation in the ways Americans get their news. This has conditioned and even distorted public perceptions by portraying a largely gradual, orderly, and legal phenomenon as chaotic, criminal, and controversial.
Canada's New Tech Talent Strategy Takes Aim at High-Skilled Immigrants in the United States
Canada’s Tech Talent Strategy is highly unusual for its explicit targeting of visa holders in another country. Opening a dedicated stream specifically for high-skilled immigrants in the United States who hold an H-1B visa is the latest salvo in a growing global competition for talent—one in which some countries are racing ahead of the United States in terms of policy dynamism, as this commentary explores.