Border Security
Recent Activity
The exponential growth of international travel since the 1960s has left border management systems worldwide struggling to keep up and has exposed weaknesses in states’ abilities to effectively manage their borders, especially regarding terrorist attacks, human trafficking, and illegal migration.
Over the past half century, migration from Mexico and Central America to the United States has been driven in part by regional demographic and human-capital trends. As the U.S. labor force became better educated, fewer native workers accepted certain low-skilled jobs. This report offers a look at the economic changes that have coincided with a Mexican and Central American population boom.
Noncoercive, pay-to-go, voluntary, assisted voluntary, and nonforced returns generally can offer paid travel and/or other financial incentive to encourage unauthorized immigrants to cooperate with immigration officials and leave host countries. A look at three key rationales for governments to choose pay-to-go and other returns.
Migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries rarely collaborate on migration issues because the structure of global migration systems ensures they often disagree about core policy issues. This report shows that migration collaboration makes sense when states share common goals they cannot achieve on their own.
Doris Meissner, Director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at MPI, offers her knowledge and expertise regarding border security in this testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
This discussion focuses on the MPI report, "Executive Action on Immigration: Six Ways to Make the System Work Better," which outlines administrative actions that can be implemented to improve the immigration system.
Information and technology are centerpieces of a new border architecture that seeks to respond to the competing demands of facilitating mobility and managing cross-border risks while remaining cost-efficient and respectful of rights and privacy. This report shows how governments must approach border management systems to ensure properly balanced development.