Op-ed/Articles

GMC affiliate Kevin Johnson and Karla McKanders of Vanderbilt's Law School recently published an Op-Ed arguing the importance of recognizing how systemic racism is rooted in immigration laws.

To read the full opinion piece, click here.

GMC Graduate Student Affiliate Jeremy Rud recently published an article for Davis Vanguard stressing the current difficulties in the Sacramento Afghan community in filing Humanitarian Parole applications for loved ones still in Afghanistan.

To read the original article, click here.

For the readers who wish to get involved, contact Norcal Resist.

A new memo by GMC Director Giovanni Peri and GMC Graduate Student Affiliate Reem Zaiour notes the effect of travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 Pandemic on immigrant arrivals in the United States. The data suggests that there has been two million fewer migrants than expected based on previous trends, where one million of those would have been college educated. This drop in foreign labor supply evidently seems to be a contributor of the current job shortage and could remain as an impediment as employment recovery as the economy heats up.

A New Policy Brief by Zofia Wlodarczyk and Joanna Regulska has been added to the Policy Briefs page on the Global Migration Website. We encourage everybody to check it out!

GMC Affiliate Jeffrey Kahn wrote about the decision from the Biden administration to support Title 42 expulsions. What Kahn finds particularly disturbing is that the administration's justification demonstrates the same err in logic as it did in the 1990s - that public health safety necessitates a retraction of asylum protection to Haitian immigrants. This logic rhymes with reasoning employed in the 1990s when HIV-positive Haitian immigrants were detained in Guantánamo, despite the opposition from the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the CDC, and WHO.

GMC Affiliate Jeffrey Kahn's article on the role of Guantanamo Bay as a detention center for Haitian migrants and its connection with the ongoing events at the southern border was featured by the Boston Review. 

Read the full article here.

Robert Irwin has published a feature article, "The Biden Administration's Waning Credibility on Humanitarian Migration Policy: The Unethical Treatment of Haitians at the Texas Border," on the foreign policy news and commentary website.

Find the article here.

In his recent opinion editorial titled "Forget ICE. Tax Law is Becoming the New Border Patrol", Sarkar demonstrates how the lack of tax benefits extended to partially or entirely undocumented families may be a greater deterrent for US immigration than ICE. Sarkar argues that the ethics and legalities of denying tax credit must be placed under greater scrutiny.

Research by Pérez and coauthors found itself in a recent opinion piece by David Brooks. Brooks attempts to answer a question on the minds of many individuals in the contemporary: just how racist is America? Brooks used the research by Pérez and company in his discussion of financial mobility rates for immigrants. The research revealed that children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than children of the US-born. But to Brooks, is this enough to conclude that America is free of any race related sins?

Biden's plan of comprehensive immigration reform generated grievances from many anti-immigrant activists and politicians. What is lost upon these critics is how the proposed legislation pertains to two separate populations of migrants: those who have been deported and those who seek asylum. Irwin illustrates that the difference between these two groups creates a necessary dissimilarity in the proposed policies of the Biden administration.