• New proof surfaces that family separation was about deterrence and punishment

    Just-releases government documents reveal that the underlying intent of the Trump administration’s brutal practice of separating migrant families at the border was, in fact, to deter additional immigration and asylum petitions. Beth Van Schaack writes in Just Security that this is significant, because Trump administration officials have earlier claimed that the forcible separations were mandated by law (thus necessitating congressional action to end the policy) or compelled by “national security” concerns. “We now know neither of these purported justifications is true—this was nothing short of a deliberate policy choice to brutalize parents and their children in order to stop others from seeking refuge in the United States,” Van Schaack writes. “This strengthens the argument I made in an earlier post that the family separation policy is a form of torture for both parents and their children.”

  • Why long-term separation from parents harms kids

    As a society, we often wax eloquent about how important it is to nurture, support and protect our children. The sad reality, however, is that all too often major, life-changing decisions are made without any consideration of their potential lifelong and devastating impact on kids. Case in point: children separated from their parents at borders as new immigration policies are debated. Separation from parents for even short periods can cause anxiety disorders that can last a long time.

  • Mexico says it would deport U.S. border-rushers

    The government pf Mexico has said that anyone approaching the border in a “violent way” will not be allowed to stay in Mexico. Forty-two refugees have been arrested on U.S. soil after running for the border.

  • Border wall came at high cost and low benefit to U.S. workers: Economists

    Researchers find the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which built a partial wall across the U.S.-Mexico border, had a negative economic impact on U.S. citizens. From 2007 to 2010, the United States built an additional 548 miles of fencing across the U.S.-Mexico border. The fence came at a high cost to American taxpayers and only minimally reduced unauthorized Mexican migration, according to the new research.

  • Federal judge blocks Trump order limiting asylum

    A U.S. federal judge has granted a temporary restraining order preventing the Trump administration from carrying out new immigration rules that would block asylum status for people who did not enter the United States at a designated port of entry. President Donald Trump issued the rule in a November 9 proclamation, saying it was necessary to deal with the expected arrival of thousands of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border who he said “appear to have no lawful basis for admission into our country.”

     

  • Trump signs immigration order to curb asylum claims

    The Trump administration has issued an executive order which would effectively ban migrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border from qualifying for asylum. The administration’s move comes as thousands of Honduran migrants are making their way north. The order means that the United States will no longer allow certain people who enter the country illegally to qualify for asylum.

  • Can birthright citizenship be taken away?

    University of Illinois labor and employment relations professor Michael LeRoy is an expert on immigration and employment law. In a recent interview, LeRoy discusses the implications of President Trump’s bid to potentially end birthright citizenship in the U.S.“After the Civil War, Northern lawmakers had a basic choice: Do we enact laws to end slavery, or do we go beyond and enact laws to achieve America’s ideal that “all men are created equal”? They said yes to both propositions, and part of this idea included birthright citizenship,” LeRoy says.

  • 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.

  • White supremacists' anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant sentiments often intersect

    Robert Bowers, the suspect in Saturday’s deadly shooting spree in Pittsburgh, appears to have hated Jews for a variety of reasons, but one anti-Semitic trope in particular seems to have motivated him in the days prior to the shooting, and may have even played a role in his decision to unleash his hateful attack: the common white supremacist conspiracy theory that Jews are behind efforts to impose mass immigration on the United States, with the goal of harming or destroying the white race.

  • 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.

  • White Americans see many immigrants as “illegal” until proven otherwise: Study

    Fueled by political rhetoric evoking dangerous criminal immigrants, many white Americans assume low-status immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Syria, Somalia and other countries have no legal right to be in the United States, new research suggests. In the eyes of many white Americans, just knowing an immigrant’s national origin is enough to believe they are probably undocumented, the study’s co-author says.

  • The power of negative thinking: why perceptions of immigration are resistant to facts

    Research shows consistently high levels of concern among people in the UK over the scale of immigration and its impact on jobs and services. New research on how people use and understand information about the economic impacts of immigration shows that there is a tendency to rely on personal accounts rather than on economic statistics.

  • Hiring highly educated immigrants leads to more innovation and better products

    Much of the current debate over immigration is about what kind of impact immigrants have on jobs and wages for workers born in the United States. Seldom does anyone talk about how immigration leads to a wider variety of better products for the American consumer. We recently conducted a study to shine more light on the matter.

  • Undocumented immigrant population roughly double current estimate

    The number of undocumented immigrants in the United States is roughly twice as high as commonly believed, according to new research. The research found that the number of undocumented immigrants living in the country is about 22.1 million, nearly twice the most prominent current estimate of 11.3 million. Even using extremely conservative parameters, the study estimates a population of 16.7 million undocumented immigrants, nearly 50 percent higher than the widely-accepted population figure.

  • Former U.S. officials challenge report linking terrorism, immigration

    A group of former national security officials is pushing back against a controversial Trump administration report on the link between terrorism and immigration, saying the report gives the false impression that immigrants are responsible for the majority of terrorist attacks in the United States.