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WASHINGTON, DC — The United States has made real progress in elevating border security as a national priority — and sustaining that progress is essential. But the country's long-term prosperity will depend on whether policymakers build a modern legal immigration system suited to a rapidly changing economy. Meeting both imperatives at once is not only possible, it is necessary. The last time Congress meaningfully updated immigrant selection policies was in 1990 — before the internet, much less artificial intelligence.
WASHINGTON, DC — Cities that invest strategically in the economic inclusion of migrants and refugees can significantly boost local growth, expand their tax base and fill critical labor gaps.
WASHINGTON, DC — Proposed federal funding cuts under the Trump administration threaten to disrupt English instruction and other adult education services for hundreds of thousands of immigrants and U.S.-born English learners, with 27 states relying for half or more of their support for these programs from federal funding under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity (WIOA) Act, a new analysis reveals.
WASHINGTON, DC — Immigrant workers in Napa County’s wine and hospitality industry account for about $1.5 billion, or 11 percent, of the county’s total economic output annually, according to a new Migration Policy Institute (MPI) report conducted through a grant from the Napa Valley Community Foundation.
WASHINGTON, DC — The fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's regime in December 2024, largely ending a civil war that sparked one of the world’s biggest displacement crises, triggered a flurry of chiefly ad hoc policy announcements across Europe. Some governments suspended asylum processing for Syrians. Others are offering financial incentives for voluntary return or are carrying out status reviews of cases involving Syrians with criminal convictions, with an eye to returning them.
WASHINGTON, DC — The immigrant population in the United States has reached a record high both in terms of its size and its share of the overall U.S. population. According to the most recent data available, 14.8 percent of the country’s population as of 2024 was foreign born, matching the record set in 1890. This represents a dramatic turnaround from 1970, when immigrants comprised just 4.7 percent of the U.S. population.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Carnegie Corporation of New York this week awarded a two-year, $2 million grant to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), continuing its decades-long support for one of the world’s premier nonpartisan think tanks working on international migration issues.
WASHINGTON — A new analysis finds that while a growing number of states now offer assessments of academic knowledge in public school students’ home languages, English Learners (ELs) in 15 states still have no access to native language assessments in core subjects, complicating efforts to accurately gauge what they know and can do.
BRUSSELS — Poorly designed work visa requirements and procedures risk excluding otherwise qualified applicants at a time where countries are competing for international talent. As the European Union implements its new visa strategy and other countries explore their own reforms, a new tool developed by Migration Policy Institute Europe can help assess how accessible work visas are for refugees and other international applicants.
WASHINGTON, DC — Long dominated by arrivals from the Caribbean, the Black immigrant population in the United States is now nearly evenly split between immigrants from Africa and those from Latin America and the Caribbean. This demographic shift has implications for communities, labor markets and immigration policy nationwide, a new Migration Policy Institute (MPI) fact sheet notes.
WASHINGTON, DC — The future for unauthorized immigrant children graduating from U.S. high school each year is becoming increasingly uncertain as federal and state policies narrow pathways to college, work and security. In its latest analysis of this population’s size and characteristics, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates close to 90,000 unauthorized immigrant students reach their final year of high school annually, with 75,000 graduating.
A statement from Migration Policy Institute (MPI) President Andrew Selee:
We at MPI mourn the loss of Rita Süssmuth, who was a trailblazer in German politics and policy and was the first woman to become president of Germany’s parliament.
WASHINGTON, DC — Even as the Trump administration narrows the federal government’s role in supporting the provision of information and services in languages other than English, a growing number of states and localities continue to advance their own language access measures. Since 2020, nine states and 31 local jurisdictions have enacted new language access laws or policies, a new report from the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy finds.
WASHINGTON —The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) Board of Trustees welcomes its new chair, attorney Lynden Melmed, and new secretary, law professor 
Cristina M. Rodríguez, who assume their offices this month.
BRUSSELS — Counselling and reintegration assistance plays a modest but meaningful role in helping migrants decide whether to accept assisted return to their country of origin after receiving a departure order, according to new research that examines how policy and practice shape those decisions.
WASHINGTON, DC — Preschool programs across the United States increasingly rely on classroom assessments to track the development of young children and guide their instruction. Yet for the growing share of Dual Language Learners (DLLs)—children ages 0 – 5 who have at least one parent who speaks a language other than English at home—many of the instruments used in U.S. classrooms are a poor fit.
WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. immigration courts are facing an historic crisis, struggling to handle a backlog of nearly 3.8 million deportation cases through a system capped at a maximum 800 immigration judges—resulting in average wait times of about four years for an initial asylum hearing.
BRUSSELS — As return and reintegration rise higher on the agendas of countries of origin, governments are refining how they manage these processes while balancing domestic priorities, development goals and cooperation with destination countries. A new Migration Policy Institute Europe policy brief released today analyses how these approaches are evolving amid origin-country governments’ growing concern over precarious conditions for returnees and pressures over readmission and reintegration conditions.
WASHINGTON, DC — Maine's immigrant population, though small, contributes to key industries in the state—from health care and manufacturing to aquaculture—and is poised to play an increasingly important role as the working-age population is projected to shrink, a comprehensive new Migration Policy Institute (MPI) report reveals.