• Human Trafficking’s Newest Abuse: Forcing Victims into Cyberscamming

    Tens of thousands of people from across Asia have been coerced into defrauding people in America and around the world out of millions of dollars. Those who resist face beatings, food deprivation or worse.

  • Importing Even More Crime

    The number of encounters with illegal immigrants recorded by the Border Patrol in FY2020 was 458,088. In FY22021, that number increased to about two million. The number of encounters with illegal immigrants who already had criminal records in FY2020 was 2,438. In FY2021, it rose to 10,763.

  • Unaccompanied Child Imposters Identified in El Paso

    U.S. Border Patrol agents in the El Paso Sector recently identified ten adults posing as unaccompanied minors while in custody. So far in FY 2022, nearly 700 adult migrants were discovered to be posing as minors.

  • Supreme Court: Biden Can Terminate “Remain in Mexico” Program

    Almost a year after the Supreme Court allowed a federal judge in Texas to order the Biden administration to restart the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) policy, also known as the “Remain in Mexico program, the Supreme Court on Thursday, 30 June, ruled in the Biden administration’s favor, allowing President Biden to end MPP.

  • Migration to the U.S. Is on the Rise Again – but It’s Unlikely to Be Fully Addressed During the Summit of the Americas, or Anytime Soon

    Migration in the Americas has dramatically increased over the past decade due to deteriorating political, economic and humanitarian conditions in several countries, particularly in Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti. High rates of crime, corruption, poverty, environmental degradation and violence all influence people’s decisions to migrate. The power of drug cartels, which can be embedded in government institutions like the police, also plays a key role in prompting migration.

  • Why Do the Russian and Chinese Governments Want Americans to Dislike Immigrants?

    The Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation arm, employs fake social media accounts, media properties, memes, and bots to conduct what the Russians call “active measures” campaign to influence U.S. public opinion. The IRA’s goal is to intensify political opinions on every issue, and one of the IRA’s prime targets is to deepen nativist sentiments among Americans.

  • Biden Administration Struggling for Coherent Message on U.S.-Mexico Border: Critics

    The president and his advisers have offered sometimes contradictory assessments of the seriousness of a surge of migrants overwhelming border officials, and have sent mixed messages to the migrants themselves about what would happen if they reached the United States.

  • Democrats Wand to Use Budget Proposal to Legalize Undocumented Immigrants

    Democrats will try to use the budget proposal – and the reconciliation process — to provide a direct pathway to legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants in America. The details of the measure have not yet been released, and passage is far from certain, as there are many political and procedural hurdles to overcome.

  • The Situation at the U.S.-Mexico Border Is a Crisis – but Is It New?

    The media create the impression that there is an unprecedented crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, with droves of children arriving alone, as well as families flooding to the border. There is a crisis. But as a law professor who studies child migration, I can tell you that it’s nothing new.

  • Undocumented Immigrants Far Less Likely to Commit Crimes in U.S. Than Citizens

    Crime rates among undocumented immigrants are just a fraction of those of their U.S.-born neighbors, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis of Texas arrest and conviction records. Compared to undocumented immigrants, U.S. citizens were twice as likely to be arrested for violent felonies in Texas from 2012 to 2018, two-and-a-half times more likely to be arrested for felony drug crimes, and over four times more likely to be arrested for felony property crimes.

  • Climate Change Triggers Migration

    Environmental hazards affect populations worldwide and can drive migration under specific conditions, especially in middle-income and agricultural countries. According to a new study, changes in temperature levels, increased rainfall variability, and rapid-onset disasters such as tropical storms play an important role in this regard.

  • Economic Benefits of Illegal Immigration Outweigh the Costs: Study

    The economic benefits of illegal immigration are greater than the costs of the public services utilized, according to experts. Indeed, for every dollar the Texas state government spends on public services for undocumented immigrants, new research indicates, the state collects $1.21 in revenue.

  • The Roots of Discrimination Against Immigrants

    All over the world, immigration has become a source of social and political conflict. But what are the roots of antipathy toward immigrants, and how might conflict between immigrant and native populations be dampened? New research finds that religion may matter more than ethnicity in how immigrants are treated, even if they comply with local social norms.

  • Rising ethnic diversity in the West may fuel a (temporary) populist right backlash

    When people’s neighborhoods or wider social contexts change in visible ways, as with increasing ethnic diversity, it can be disconcerting for established residents, and trigger perceptions of “threats” that evoke “backlash” political responses. Alternatively, the diffusion of ethnic groups may increase knowledge and tolerance. Drawing on a meta-analysis of studies on the topic, Eric Kaufmann and Matthew Goodwin argue that ethnic diversity transitions may contribute to a populist right backlash. However, such effects may be temporary.

  • What history reveals about surges in anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant sentiments

    In its early years, the United States maintained an “open door policy” that drew millions of immigrants from all religions to enter the country, including Jews. Between 1820 and 1880, over 9 million immigrants entered America. By the early 1880s, American nativists – people who believed that the “genetic stock” of Northern Europe was superior to that of Southern and Eastern Europe – began pushing for the exclusion of “foreigners,” whom they “viewed with deep suspicion.” As scholar Barbara Bailin writes, most of the immigrants, who were from Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, “were considered so different in composition, religion, and culture from earlier immigrants as to trigger a xenophobic reaction that served to generate more restrictive immigration laws.” The political climate of the interwar period has many similarities with the anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic environment today.