Migration Policy Institute Podcasts

2017 Immigration Law and Policy Conference – Panel: Mapping Fast-Changing Trends in Immigration Enforcement and Detention

During the first six months of the Trump administration, arrests of noncitizens identified for removal rose nearly 40 percent over the same period a year earlier. At the border, apprehensions fell by nearly 50 percent from the first half of 2016, as fewer people sought to enter without authorization. And the White House announced plans to seek funding for thousands of Border Patrol agents and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel, and build new immigrant detention facilities. In this panel, a high-ranking ICE official, the Deputy Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a senior Department of Homeland Security official discuss the many immigration law enforcement and detention policy changes that have been occurring under the Trump administration.

2017 Immigration Law and Policy Conference – Panel: Humanitarian Relief Under Threat Across the Board

More than 1 million people in the United States receive temporary forms of humanitarian relief. Additionally, each year, tens of thousands are granted asylum or admitted as refugees. The Trump administration has sought to reduce these protections, by temporarily halting refugee admissions and reducing the number of refugee admissions to less than half of the prior level. Other forms of humanitarian relief, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS), are under threat from the administration, the courts, and Congress. In this panel, the Presidents of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) and HIAS, joined by the head of Hispanic and Migration Affairs at the Mexican Embassy, discuss the current state of humanitarian relief and the implications of the administration's policy decisions for the most vulnerable immigrants, including refugees, TPS recipients, and children.

2017 Immigration Law and Policy Conference – Panel: A New Age: Immigration Policy Under a New Administration

Within days of taking office, President Trump ordered sweeping changes to immigration enforcement both at the border and within the United States, kicking off dramatic changes in how unauthorized immigrants, would-be refugees, and international travelers are handled. In this discussion, a high-ranking former Bush administration Department of Homeland Security official, former Mexican Ambassador to the United States, and Brookings Institution scholar examine the administration’s initiatives, ranging from the contested travel ban and reductions in refugee resettlement to changes in enforcement policy and practice, repointing the legal immigration system into one focused on “merit-based” admissions, building a border wall, and more. This fast-paced panel, moderated by MPI’s Doris Meissner, discusses the policies and ideas, challenges in their implementation, and responses from states, Congress, the judicial branch, and other actors.

La Situación de Cambio Constante entre EE UU y México: Tendencias y Políticas de Migración, Incluyendo Menores No Acompañados

This is a Spanish language call. 
La migración de México a Estados Unidos ha disminuido debido a una combinación de factores en Mexico (una economía en mejora, una tasa de natalidad decreciente y mejores oportunidades educativas y laborales), asi como mas seguridad fronterizo del lado estadounidense. Hoy en dia el número de detenciones de migrantes de otros países supera el número de detenciones de mexicanos en la frontera. Por primera vez la Oficina del Censo de Estados Unidos ha reportado que China y India han superado a México en términos de nuevos flujos de inmigrantes al país. Al mismo tiempo, el Congreso de los Estados Unidos debate si se debe extender mas el muro en la frontera con México y agregar miles de agentes adicionales a la Patrulla Fronteriza. 
Durante los últimos años ambos países han incrementado el número de detenciones de migrantes de Centroamérica que transitan por México para llegar a los Estados Unidos. Con la reciente decisión de la administración Trump de poner fin al trámite de la libertad condicional para los menores que buscan ingresar a los Estados Unidos a través del Programa de Menores de Centroamérica (CAM, por sus siglas en inglés), el tema de los menores no acompañados en México, su tratamiento, protección internacional y otras necesidades serán cuestiones políticas más urgentes para México, que ha detenido a más de 50,000 menores no acompañados de Centroamérica desde 2014. Esta oleada ha cuestionado la capacidad de las autoridades mexicanas de inmigración para mantener los requisitos legales para la protección de menores. 
Durante este seminario, ponentes presentaron hallazgos de un reciente informe del Instituto de Políticas Migratorias (MPI, por sus siglas en inglés) que utiliza datos de agencias gubernamentales mexicanas, entrevistas con funcionarios clave y relatos de la sociedad civil para examinar el marco legal para la protección de menores no acompañados y su aplicación, al igual que las brechas entre este marco y su aplicación durante los procesos de detención, interrogación y alojamiento. El nuevo presidente de MPI, Andrew Selee, también expuso cómo el cambio en la dinámica política en Estados Unidos puede afectar las cuestiones migratorias con México, así como los efectos en la relación bilateral en medio de tensiones sobre el muro fronterizo, la renegociación del acuerdo del TLCAN y una cifra significativa de repatriaciones de migrantes mexicanos. Después de breves presentaciones, los ponentes respondieron preguntas de la audiencia. 

The International Migration System: Reflections on the Challenges and Opportunities Ahead

An estimated 244 million people—or about 3.2 percent of the world’s population—were international migrants in 2015. Migration will only grow both in size and complexity, partly in response to the inexorable aging and persistent low fertility of a growing number of wealthy and middle-income countries. It has become increasingly unclear, however, whether the migration system can be managed well enough so that all actors—immigrants, members of the communities they leave and in which they settle, and sending and receiving societies—can fully draw its many benefits. 
As Migration Policy Institute co-founder, President (2002-2014), and since then, Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus Demetrios G. Papademetriou steps down from his day-to-day work at the Institute, he provides a far-ranging presentation of what migration's challenges and opportunities are likely to look like in the next couple of decades. His presentation is followed by a conversation with Andrew Selee, MPI's incoming President. Drawing from his decades of experience as a thought leader on migration policy around the globe, Papademetriou sets forth his views on the immediate and long-term challenges governments face as they grapple with the economic, social, and political impacts of aging populations and low fertility—and the proper role for migration as one of the responses to it. He offers suggestions on how governments on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond might better manage migration and thus capitalize on the opportunities it presents while reducing its negative effects on those who lose from the process.  

Building an Evidence Base to Support Refugee Resettlement

The scale of the global refugee crisis has ratcheted up the pressure on governments and their international partners to find sustainable avenues for protection of the displaced. Successive international conferences, including the September 2016 UN summit for refugees and migrants, have highlighted the need for more resettlement places as an integral part of the international response to the crisis. At the EU level, Member State governments are under increasing pressure to open more legal channels to protection as part of a larger effort to reduce the demands on national asylum systems. Yet governments seeking to expand their resettlement program—or engage in resettlement for the first time—face a dearth of solid evidence on what resettlement practices work and why.
This webinar highlights the findings of an MPI Europe report on critical gaps in research and evaluation of resettlement programs, and recommendations for improving evidence gathering and knowledge sharing between resettlement countries. The discussion also includes insights from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and national resettlement actors on the knowledge and support needs that new and expanding resettlement countries face, and what role international initiatives such as the Emerging Resettlement Countries Joint Support Mechanism (ERCM) and the European Action on Facilitating Resettlement and Refugee Admission through New Knowledge (EU-FRANK) can play in filling these gaps.
This webinar is part of the European Action on Facilitating Resettlement and Refugee Admission through New Knowledge (EU-FRANK) project. The project is funded by the European Asylum, Migration, and Integration Fund (AMIF).

The Tech Turn in Refugee Protection and Integration: New Solutions or Hot Air?

Smartphones have become unlikely symbols of the global refugee crisis: selfies of refugees in harrowing situations abound on social media, people in conflict call for help on Skype or What’s App, and mapping and GPS technology have sometimes acted as a literal lifeline. Seeing an opportunity, numerous tech startups and social entrepreneurs have designed apps and tech tools to protect refugees along their journeys and help them settle in. The last few years have seen hundreds of “civic tech” initiatives emerge in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and beyond. But dozens of hackathons, hundreds of prototypes, and countless newspaper column inches later—has all this energy and enthusiasm actually made a difference to refugee lives? 
 
In addition to all the energy abounding in the tech sector for a tech-based solution to the current refugee crisis, more traditional stakeholders in the global protection system—such as national governments and NGO actors—have also made a major shift towards integrating technology into their protection strategy. Notably, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has set a goal of ensuring that “all refugees, and the communities that host them, are connected to mobile networks and the Internet so that they can leverage these technologies to improve their lives." 
 
This MPI webinar explores the recent “tech turn” in refugee protection and integration, and considers whether it is likely to make a lasting impact. Speakers discuss the most promising innovations and their broader implications for policymakers. They discuss the challenges and opportunities for governments, as they seek to work with new actors such as tech companies. And they discuss the broader digital infrastructure needs of refugee camps and services—including the crucial issue of Internet connectivity for refugees.
 
The reports discussed on this webinar are: 
A Global Broadband Plan for Refugees: http://bit.ly/2nwA400
Digital Humanitarianism: How Tech Entrepreneurs Are Supporting Refugee Integration: http://bit.ly/2dMiTlT 

Recognizing Changing Enforcement and Crossing Trends at the U.S.-Mexico Border

In the midst of efforts to further ramp up enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border even as illegal crossings are a fraction of what they were at their peak in 2000, MPI research sketches the changing realities at the border and offers data that should help inform the policy debate.
  
This discussion features the release of two MPI publications that provide a comprehensive analysis of U.S. immigration enforcement at the border and the Consequence Delivery System used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to analyze the effectiveness of its efforts, as well as map the significant changes in Mexican crossing trends and intent to re-enter the United States after deportation. 
   
MPI speakers, along with former U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske and former Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan discuss the contemporary border enforcement picture and progress in achieving “operational control” of the Southwest border; the next steps for the U.S.-Mexico border management relationship that has been built over the past two decades; and what policy responses by the United States, Mexico, and Northern Triangle would be most responsive to the changing nature of migrant flows in the region.
   
As the Trump administration and Congress consider the future of border policy and funding proposals for a border wall, this discussion evaluates the state of the border, the effectiveness of various enforcement strategies, current trends in apprehensions and the flows of migrants, and what the changing realities mean for the migration policies and agendas of the United States, Mexico, and the region.
  
The related reports are: 
- A Revolving Door No More? A Statistical Profile of Mexican Adults Repatriated from the United States
- Advances in U.S.-Mexico Border Enforcement: A Review of the Consequence Delivery System

The First 100 Days: Immigration Policy in the Trump Administration

April 29, 2017 will mark Donald Trump's 100th day in office. As a candidate, Mr. Trump laid out an ambitious plan on immigration for his first 100 days and provided greater detail in his immigration blueprint than on many other priorities for his administration. His promises included building a border wall paid for by Mexico, curtailing federal funding for sanctuary cities, deporting more criminal aliens, ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, "extreme vetting" for refugee admissions, and suspending immigration from terror-prone regions. This Migration Policy Institute discussion, with MPI's Doris Meissner and Muzaffar Chishti, former ICE Director Julie Myers Wood, and former DHS Assistant Seceretary for Policy and Planning C. Stewart Verdery, examines the administration's track record on immigration in its first months, the policies articulated in its executive orders, legal challenges, reactions by publics and policymakers, and what the long-term effects of these policies might mean.

Immigration and its Discontents: European Elections and Future Policy

Public anxiety about immigration and the fast pace of social change has reached a boiling point in many parts of Europe, contributing (in part) to the ascent of populist far-right parties. The strong showing of Geert Wilders' right-wing, anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) in the March 2017 Dutch elections, along with the increasing strength of Marine Le Pen’s National Front ahead of the first round of the French presidential elections on April 23rd, have raised questions about why so many are casting their votes in favor of radical change.
While these votes represent citizen discontent with many aspects of globalization, it is immigration, concerns about the loss of cultural identity, and the fear that the nation-state has been losing ground almost irreversibly to supranational institutions that may be at the heart of the popular reaction. This discussion focuses on what we can learn from Brexit and the Dutch elections, along with the election of Donald Trump in the United States, and what these results portend (if anything) for the next round of contests in France, Germany, and elsewhere.
Will this trend continue? Will national and subnational politicians in countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Austria, and Belgium, along with the leaders of the European institutions, learn the right or wrong lessons from these upheavals? And if the power shift continues, what impact will it have on migration policy at European Union and national levels? Finally, how will governments manage broader public concerns about rapid social change, economic opportunity, and security in ways that can reduce public anxiety about immigration and the pace of change it has brought while also regaining, slowly, the trust the public has clearly lost?
In this discussion, experts explore the implications of recent and upcoming elections for the future of migration policy.

Strategic Opportunities for Including English Learners in ESSA State Accountability Plans

Since the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed into law in December 2015, community-based groups have been working with states to ensure that English Learners (ELs) are appropriately included in the state accountability system. These systems are complex, leading to questions about the best practices states should adopt and processes to hold schools and states accountable for ELs’ achievement in the fairest and most accurate manner. This webinar, with MPI's Delia Pompa and Margie McHugh, and Susan Lyons from the National Center for Assessment, provides an overview of the decisions states are making. 
 
MPI has released a related set of 13 state fact sheets that provide a sketch of EL demographics, student outcomes, and accountability mechanisms under ESSA and its predecessor, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). These fact sheets (covering California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington) are on MPI's web page, English Learners and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The web page offers one-stop access to a number of resources that could help policymakers, community groups, parents, and others understand ongoing issues surrounding implementation of ESSA regulations at the state level.

Reducing Integration Barriers Facing Foreign-Trained Immigrants: Policy and Practice Lessons from Across the United States

Nearly 2 million college-educated immigrants in the United States are unemployed or working in low-skilled jobs, resulting in both a waste of the education and training they obtained as well as billions in forgone earnings and lost tax revenue. Foreign-trained doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers, and other professionals face diverse barriers to accessing skilled employment, including difficulty gaining recognition for education and training completed abroad, filling gaps in academic or work experience, building professional-level English proficiency, and navigating the U.S. job search and application process. Unnecessary licensing requirements also frequently prevent individuals with years of experience in their home countries from practicing in the United States.
 
This webinar marks the release of a Migration Policy Institute report examining programs and initiatives that ease the barriers to credential recognition, employment, and relicensure facing foreign-trained immigrants, as well as recent policy developments and ongoing challenges in the field. Speakers talk about lessons from policies and practices being pioneered across the United States to overcome obstacles to career re-entry, and discuss recommendations for community-based organizations, employers, and state and local governments to expand successful efforts aimed at preventing brain waste. They also examine recent initiatives launched by Michigan’s Office for New Americans that are designed to improve immigrants’ access to professional English-language instruction, employment services, and licensing guidance. 

European Union Third-Country Partnerships: Where Do We Go From Here?

As European leaders prepare to meet in Malta early next month, their search for means to reduce the number of boats departing the Libyan coast is becoming ever more desperate. In the year since the Valletta Summit, the European Union and Member State governments have ramped up cooperation with origin, transit, and hosting countries, yet questions remain over how effective these partnerships have been and how far they can be reasonably be pursued. Faced with mixed results thus far, there is a growing chorus calling for offshore processing for asylum seekers and greater efforts to bolster Libyan capacities in "pulling back" boats headed towards Europe. 
 
In this context, discussions around longer-term interventions —notably the ability of humanitarian and development support to affect migration drivers— are less prominent. While policymakers discuss the pros and cons of making development aid conditional on third-country cooperation, less focus has been placed on effectively forecasting humanitarian and development needs, shaping successful policy interventions, and filling gaps in our existing knowledge about who, why, and when individuals decide to move.  
 
In this webinar, experts assess how policymakers can best reflect on the lessons learned over the past year, align their objectives with the realities on the ground, and shape a longer-term agenda going forward. 

Hanging in the Balance: The Future of DACA and the Dreamers

Since 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has provided a two-year renewable reprieve from deportation and eligibility for work authorization to more than 750,000 unauthorized immigrants brought to the United States as children. Known as Dreamers, many are studying at U.S. colleges and universities or working legally in jobs throughout the U.S. labor market, and what will happen to these individuals is unclear as Donald Trump takes office. 
 
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump pledged to terminate DACA on day one of his presidency. Since then, he has said he would “work something out” because Dreamers have worked and attended school in the United States but face an uncertain future. Meanwhile, leaders in a number of sectors have mobilized strong opposition to a possible rollback. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers from both parties have reintroduced the Bar Removal of Individuals who Dream and Grow our Economy (BRIDGE) Act to maintain protection from deportation and work authorization to DACA recipients. In communities across the United States, officials are declaring or reaffirming their intent to limit their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. In higher education, administrators are declaring their campuses will be sanctuaries for students who may fear immigration enforcement. 
 
As the Trump administration assumes office and the impacts of rescinding DACA are under review, MPI hosts a discussion with University of California President Janet Napolitano; Donald Graham, former Chairman of The Washington Post Co. and cofounder of TheDream.Us, which is funding scholarships for thousands of unauthorized immigrant students; and Ike Brannon, Visiting Senior Fellow at the CATO Institute, and author of the just released study “The Economic and Fiscal Impact of Repealing DACA.”

Doctors as Taxi Drivers: The Costs of Brain Waste among Highly Skilled Immigrants in the United States

The United States has long attracted some of the world’s best and brightest, drawn by the strong U.S. economy, renowned universities, and reputation for entrepreneurship and innovation. But because of language, credential-recognition, and other barriers many of these highly skilled, college-educated immigrants cannot fully contribute their academic and professional training and skills once in the United States. As a result they work in low-skilled jobs or cannot find a job—a phenomenon known as brain waste.
 
On this podcast, MPI experts give a presentation of the first-ever U.S. estimates on the economic costs of this skill underutilization for immigrants, their families, and the U.S. economy, along with estimates on forgone earnings and tax payments for: California, Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Washington. The panel discusses the factors linked to immigrant skill underutilization; highlight the potential for current city, state, and U.S. labor policy (including implementation of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act) to reduce this brain waste; and offer an employer-based view of skill underutilization and how it can be addressed.
 
The report and related state research can be found here: https://bit.ly/mpiuntappedtalent

Including Immigrant and Refugee Families in Two-Generation Programs: Elements of Successful Programs and Challenges Posed by WIOA Implementation

Immigrants and refugees comprise almost one-quarter of all parents with young children ages 0-8 in the United States and represent an increasingly large share of U.S. families with young children that live below the poverty line. By addressing the needs of poor or low-income parents and their children simultaneously, two-generation programs hold the potential to uplift whole families and break cycles of intergenerational poverty. These programs seek to weave together high-quality early learning opportunities for children with parenting skills, adult education, workforce training, and other supports that improve family stability and thereby improve a child’s chances for lifelong success.
 
On this webinar, experts with the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy discuss findings of a new report that analyzes U.S. parent population data and draws from a field study of select two-generation programs that serve immigrant and refugee families. Speakers present data comparing the income, poverty, employment status, health insurance coverage, English proficiency, and education levels of U.S. foreign- and native-born parents with young children and their implications for the types of two-generation services many immigrant parents require. They also explore challenges and opportunities facing the two-generation field as it seeks to include the large and growing number of immigrant families with young children in its work, including implications of WIOA and recommendations for successful program and policy design.

Cooperation on Migration: The Role of the European Union in the Follow-Up to the UN Summit

World leaders gathered at the United Nations in September 2016 for an unprecedented summit focused on discussing major movements of refugees and migrants. This historic gathering, spurred in part by the massive asylum seeker and migrant flows to Europe in 2015, was intended to launch a strengthened global effort to coordinate responses to refugee and migration flows. The absence of concrete commitments in the resulting New York Declaration disappointed many observers. 
During this Migration Policy Institute Europe event in Brussels, leading experts discussed how the slow progress on multilateral cooperation around migration evidenced in New York has particular salience for the European Union. Speakers included the European External Action Service’s Managing Director for Global Issues, the Director General for Asylum and Migration Policy in Sweden’s Ministry of Justice, the International Centre for Migration Policy Development’s Southern Dimension Director, and a key advisor to the UN Special Representative for Migration, in a discussion moderated by the Director of MPI Europe. 
The discussants examined what lessons the European Union’s experience offers for the prospect of multilateral cooperation on migration at the global level? What implications might better global coordination have for cooperation within the European Union? And finally, is there a role for EU institutions, and the EU-28, to play in ensuring that the UN effort to strengthen global collaboration is concrete and meaningful? 

Taming the Seas: Safety, Protection, and Attempts to Create Order in Maritime Migration Corridors

In recent years, dramatic images of migration—struggling boats crammed dangerously beyond capacity; two sisters, champion swimmers, towing their foundering boat to safety; a little boy’s body lying face down in the sand—have seized worldwide attention and catapulted unauthorized maritime migration onto national and international policy agendas. Whether it is the overwhelming Mediterranean crisis or movements across the Bay of Bengal and the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden, in the Caribbean, or around Australia, crisis has followed crisis, leaving almost intractable problems for policymakers. The challenges have only become more complex, widespread, and dangerous in recent years.  
  
While the issues presented by unauthorized maritime migration are constantly evolving, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) provides analysis, in a book discussed at this event, on some common themes that have emerged over the past decade, along with practical recommendations. This book, All at Sea: The Policy Challenges of Rescue, Interception, and Long-Term Response to Maritime Migration, is based on case studies of unauthorized movements by sea in several parts of the world. This book discussion explores the different facets of maritime migration—the multiple state and nonstate actors; the mixed flows of refugees and other migrants; the overlapping and sometimes contradictory legal regimes; fluctuating state policies; the secondary movements of people from countries of first asylum; the constantly shifting sources, routes, and destinations; and the inter-relatedness with other equally complex problems—and how these together create a “wicked problem” for governments, civil society, the private sector, and international organizations to tackle together.

Farm to Table: The Role of Immigrants in U.S. Farm Labor in 2016

The slowdown in migration from Mexico since the 2008-09 recession has had a little-noted effect on farm labor in the United States: Increased use of the H-2A guestworker program. The H-2A program, long criticized by employers for cumbersome regulations, has doubled in size since 2007 and now provides workers to fill more than 150,000 farm jobs. Since agriculture relies on newcomers from abroad to replace farm workers who exit for nonfarm jobs, farm labor markets are ideal for observing employer adjustments to the reduction in the arrival of immigrant labor. Often identified as the source for unauthorized migration from Mexico because of the Bracero program, agriculture may also provide the template for future immigration reforms that involve legalizing currently unauthorized workers and making it easier to hire guestworkers in the future. 
This discussion features data that could help inform future reform debates. It also focuses on some of the adjustments that farm employers are making, including increased mechanization, improved wages and benefits, and the increased use of the H-2A program.  

The Mediterranean Dimension of the Refugee Crisis: Session II (New Solutions: Forging Alliances for Innovative Integration Models) & Closing Remarks

As record numbers of refugees and migrants undertake journeys across the Mediterranean, policymakers are faced with the challenging tasks of receiving, protecting, and integrating new arrivals—at every stage of their migration journey—while maintaining public confidence in an increasingly immigration-skeptic climate. 
  
This second session, in an event co-organized by the Migration Policy Institute during September 2016 in New York, examines what is known about promising approaches to settle and integrate newcomers, including the links between development and stability in the region and integration, and how to garner support for these policies in host communities. The session also examines what drives complex public reactions to immigration, and how policymakers and civil society can innovate to combat xenophobia, better understand rising support for populist parties, and assuage fears of loss of identity. The session is followed by brief closing remarks.