Op-ed/Articles

European countries have faced a longstanding dilemma of how to best integrate refugees into their economies. Some countries elect to teach language skills to refugees while others opt to assist in job searching. The article published by Dr. Peri and coauthors investigates the impact of teaching language skills more closely. What they found was that providing language training greatly increased the employment rate and wage rate of refugees, along with many other benefits.

Irwin discusses the potential ramifications of Biden's proposed immigration overhaul. The most recent legislative pieces aim to end the practice of separating immigrant families. To illustrate the devastating effects that splitting family can have, Irwin features accounts from two immigrants who have fallen victim to family separation.

To read the full article in The Conversation, click here. 

The opinion-editorial is related to the recent minimum wage proposal by Senators Tom Cotton (R_Ark.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah). The proposal calls for the federal minimum wage to be raised to $10 per hour by 2025. Though it seems like a substantial increase from the current $7.25 per hour  , Costa shows that this minimum wage in real terms does not even surpass the minimum wage of the 1960s. Costa discusses how this would affect wage workers in the United States and how it relates to the economic outlook for immigrants.

Kevin Johnson got his op-ed featured on the website "The Conversation" last week. His editorial focuses on the the change in rhetoric regarding immigrants under the Biden administration. He argues that exchanging the word "alien" for "noncitizen" could dramatically influence Americans' views on the rights of noncitizens. This one-word shift, Johnson claims, could lead to huge changes in laws regarding immigration and civil rights. 

A new op-ed by GMC Graduate Student Affiliates Justin Wiltshire and Derek Rury was featured in the Orlando Sentinel. They cite their paper on the economic effects of Puerto Rican migration after Hurricane Maria to outline how better immigration policy by the Biden Administration can be used to bolster the post-pandemic economic recovery. 

Robert McKee Irwin's Humanizing Deportation project recently provided consulting for National Public Radio "Outside/In" program on "The Darién Gap", a notoriously perilous section of the migrant trail between Colombia and Panamá, where many migrants and asylum seekers pass on their northward journey, in hopes of reaching the US-Mexico border.

Despite the Trump Administration's effort to protect American jobs by closing off the United States to foreign workers, economic research shows foreign workers of all skill levels to be drivers of the U.S. economy. A new LA Times op-ed by Giovanni Peri and Chad Sparber was released today and cites multiple studies that show the importance of foreign-born workers as drivers of the U.S. economy, a counterpoint to the Trump Administration's efforts to halt the influx of foreign workers in April and June. 

In a post on ImmigrationProf, featured GMC affiliate Raquel Aldana of the UC Davis School of Law details the recent attempts by the Trump administration to dismantle the methods of litigation being used to protect asylum laws in the United States.

Read the full feature on ImmigrationProf here.

GMC Director Giovanni Peri's research was recently featured in a Forbes article on the potential halt to H1-B visas and their affect on U.S. job growth.

Read the article here.

Global Migration Center faculty Erin Hamilton, Caitlin Patler, and Robin Savinar have a new paper in Social Problems, one of Sociology's top journals: "Transition into Liminal Legality: DACA's Mixed Impacts on Education and Employment among Young Adult Immigrants in California."