Migration Policy Institute - Policy Briefs
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The vast majority of UN Member States in December 2018 adopted the first-ever international agreement to cooperate on migration. This policy brief traces the trajectory of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration's negotiation and endorsement. It also explores the factors that will determine whether the compact lives up to its aim of improving how states cooperate on international migration.
Development actors are well positioned to help close the gap in refugee protection system capacity that exists between high-income countries and those that have fewer resources. With 85 percent of the world's refugees in low- or middle-income countries that lack the means to support them fully, strengthening protection systems would benefit from new thinking and tapping the expertise of well-placed actors to assure a more comprehensive approach.
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.
This brief looks at the potential impact of Brexit on British families in the EU-27, a group that is much less studied than their counterparts in the United Kingdom. As it explores, legal systems are not always designed to cater to the needs of families rather than individuals, and the patchwork of differing rights and benefits for EU citizens and non-EU nationals could mean some family members—third-country nationals, adult dependants, and same-sex or unregistered partners—will fall through the gaps.
As Brexit approaches, British pensioners in the EU-27 face a series of issues beyond those of the wider British population of the EU-27. This issue brief explores the diversity of the pensioner population and unique challenges ranging from whether UK state pensions will rise with the cost of living, to tax, health care, and access to social assistance issues, before considering key policy questions and recommendations for both EU and UK policymakers.
Most recent U.S. legal permanent residents could have found themselves at risk of green-card denial had they been assessed under a proposed Trump administration public-charge rule that would apply a significantly expanded test to determine likelihood of future public-benefits use. This analysis finds the effects would fall most heavily on women, children, and the elderly, while potentially shifting legal immigration away from Latin America.
To successfully integrate, immigrants and refugees need a variety of skills and knowledge—from English proficiency to understanding how school systems and local services work. Yet the adult education programs in place to support them have narrowed in scope. This policy brief proposes a new instructional model, English Plus Integration, to help states more comprehensively meet the diverse needs of their adult immigrant learners.
In recent years, questions of whether, when, and how to return failed asylum seekers and other migrants to their origin countries have dominated migration debates in many countries. These issues were also taken up in the negotiation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, moving the discussion beyond the typical bilateral one. This policy brief outlines how states might more constructively work together on returns and reintegration programs.
While partnerships to facilitate skilled migration have had mixed success in the past, the Global Compact for Migration is advancing a new approach that may change this. This policy brief compares this new partnership model with the traditional one, highlighting the questions policymakers will need to answer if they are to encourage mobility, sustain employer engagement, and see development benefits in countries of origin.
EU policy debates about moving asylum seekers from overburdened frontline countries, such as Greece and Italy, to other Member States rarely consider how migrants form and act on preferences for certain destinations—and how difficult it may be to change these views. This issue brief explores decision-making among migrants in Greece, including how living conditions, jobs, and legal status factor in.
As policymakers look for ways to address the drivers of illegal immigration, many have called for migration aims to be incorporated into development work and development tools into migration partnerships. This policy brief analyzes the benefits and risks of heightened cooperation between actors in these fields, and identifies areas where joint initiatives may prove fruitful.
The programs U.S. schools use to support English Learners (EL) take many shapes and forms. At a time when parents and community members are encouraged to work with educators to close achievement gaps, this guide aims to help them understand the differences between EL program models, as well as why schools make different choices about which to use.
As states make more data about student outcomes and schools available online, it can be difficult to decide where to turn for information about English Learners (ELs). This guide breaks down common questions about finding and using student (and specifically EL) data. It also explores some common challenges data users may face.
As policymakers in a number of countries, the United States among them, debate limiting family-based immigration, this issue brief explores family-migration trends and policies in the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and several other European countries. Family admissions play a key role, even in countries that prioritize economic or other immigration streams.
Though much attention focuses on the 85,000 temporary high-skilled visas issued each April through a computer-generated lottery, in reality far more H-1B visas are awarded outside the cap. This brief takes stock of changing trends in the program, finding that the largest H-1B dependent employers pay less and hire fewer foreign workers with advanced degrees than other top users that rely less on the temporary visa.
Although in many countries immigrants fill labor gaps in fields such as agriculture and construction, few legal migration pathways exist for low-skilled workers. As states meet to negotiate a Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, this policy brief takes stock of the channels available for such workers to move legally and take up work abroad, highlighting promising practices and policy gaps.
Development assistance may be a blunt tool for reshaping migration patterns—and indeed one that could increase flows over the short term. Shifting the focus away from increasing individuals’ skills and assets toward investments in the broader economic or governance structures that are a prerequisite for growth and stability may offer more alternatives to emigration in the long run.
Enactment of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015 introduced opportunities to use federal funds to strengthen the early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce as a means of better meeting the needs of the growing and increasingly diverse young child population.
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.