Policy Briefs and Reports

By Raquel E. Aldana

This policy brief documents and contextualizes the legal and humanitarian aid responses to the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Largely through temporary protection mechanisms, Ukrainian refugees have experienced open-door policies and practices that have facilitated their mobility and economic and social integration. There are many important lessons to be learned from the world’s welcoming and generous response to Ukrainian refugees. This policy brief provides four recommendations centered around important reforms to temporary protected measures, continuing permanent resettlement options, adopting fair burden-sharing mechanism, and granting equal treatment to other refugee populations.  

By Erin R. Hamilton, Paola D. Langer, and Caitlin Patler

The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program granted work authorization and protection from deportation to more than 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who arrived to the United States as minors. In a recent study, we investigated the association between this expansion of legal rights and birth outcomes among 72,613 singleton births to high school-educated Mexican-immigrant women in the United States from June 2010 to May 2014 using birth records data from the National Center for Health Statistics. We found that DACA was associated with improvements in the rates of low birth weight and very low birth weight, birth weight in grams, and gestational age among infants born to Mexican-immigrant mothers. Policymakers should consider this evidence of DACA’s direct and intergenerational health benefits in future reforms of immigration legislation.

By Zofia Włodarczyk, in collaboration with Joanna Regulska

Thousands of women, children and men are trapped at the Polish-Belarusian border between Belarussian soldiers, barbed-wire fence and Polish border guards with neither of the two countries allowing them in. Refugees and migrants that are being pushed back and forth in between Belarus and Poland come from a wide range of places: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen, Cuba, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon and more.

By María Dolores París-Pombo, Translated in collaboration with Robert McKee Irwin

Joseph Biden’s administration has failed to pass the much- announced comprehensive reform of the immigration system. Nor has it restored the right to asylum at the border with Mexico. Instead, it has increased the number of illegal expulsions to this country. With the consent and collaboration of its Mexican counterpart, it puts migrants, asylum seekers and families with children in grave danger on a daily basis, expelled at different times of the night, through distant, lonely and extremely dangerous places.

By Giovanni Peri and Reem Zaiour

Putting undocumented immigrants on a pathway to citizenship would increase U.S. GDP by up to $1.7 trillion over the next decade, raise wages for all Americans, and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, advancing the country’s economic recovery.

By Robert McKee Irwin, University of California, Davis; Juan Antonio Del Monte, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte

With the onset of the global covid-19 pandemic, a series of measures were put into place at the US-Mexico border, which have had significant effects on the dynamics of border cities and on the migrants in transit that arrive in or move through them. This assessment aims to concisely review the measures affecting migrants at the border, as well as the actions being taken by migrants, in order to put forward a series of recommendations to ensure the safety and health of migrants, as well as the general public.

By Giovanni Peri (University of California, Davis), Kevin Shih (Queens College, CUNY) and Chad Sparber (Colgate University)

On July 6, 2020, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, 2020) announced that for the Fall 2020 semester, “F-1 and M-1 students attending schools operating entirely online may not take a full online course load and remain in the United States.”  This abrupt and arbitrary change to migration and education policy will inflict lasting and unnecessary damage to international students, and risk massive economic losses to US higher education and to the US economy overall.

By Annie Hines, University of California, Davis

The recent pandemic has highlighted both health disparities across the U.S. and the importance of health care access. Health and health care access vary widely by racial and ethnic groups, geography, and socioeconomic status, as well as immigration status.  While immigrants are typically healthier than the native population, they also face substantial barriers to health care access. This report discusses the impact of immigration enforcement on health care access for immigrants and their families.

By Giovanni Peri, University of California, Davis and Chad Sparber, Colgate University

On June 22, the Trump Administration issued a proclamation suspending the processing of new visas for high skilled foreign workers seeking US employment through the H-1B and related programs.  This action represents just the latest of several recent decisions from the current administration designed to discourage many forms of legal entry for skilled foreign workers. In fact, economic evidence suggests that such restrictions will reduce long-term economic growth while also failing to increase the employment of Americans.

By Kevin R. Johnson, Dean (School of Law) and Mabie/Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicanx Studies, University of California, Davis

This Policy Brief offers background about DACA and its creation, impacts, and threatened dismantling by the Trump administration.  It then discusses the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s decision in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California.

By Caitlin Patler, PhD, University of California, Davis; Altaf Saadi, MD MSc, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School; Hamid Yazdan Panah, JD, Immigrant Defense Advocates

Conditions of confinement in immigrant detention facilities make them a ticking time bomb for COVID-19 infections. The health risks are dire and urgent, but federal and state governments can still take legal action to prevent infections, flatten the curve, and save lives.

By Robert McKee Irwin, University of California, Davis; Juan Antonio Del Monte, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte

As of April 15, Baja California is the state with the third largest number of cases in the nation, and Tijuana is the hardest hit city in the state. Policies on both sides of the border have radically changed daily life in Tijuana for migrants in only a matter of weeks, and service providing agencies are clearly struggling to adjust. As an onslaught of COVID-19 in the coming weeks seems likely, a rapid response is needed to ensure that vulnerable migrants do not take the brunt of the blow.