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Global Greater Boston: Immigrants in a Changing Region

February 14, 2024

In 2024, Greater Boston is home to immigrants from all over the world who came here to work, study, find safety, and build economic prosperity for their families. Most immigrants to our region are now from Latin America and Asia rather than from Europe, as was the case for most of our history. Then and now, immigrants contribute a great deal to our region's innovation and diversity of perspective.In recent years, immigration has become the target of heated rhetoric and intense debate. At the same time, political, economic, and climate instability around the globe has led to increased migration to our region. For these reasons, immigration is front of mind for many Bostonians.In this report, Boston Indicators partnered with the Immigration Research Initiative to analyze who makes up immigrant communities in Greater Boston, quantify what they contribute to our regional economy, and detail the immigration pathways they take to get here. To do this, we organized the report into three sections:PART 1: Demographic Profile, which analyzes the composition of immigrant populations in our region and looks at how this has changed over time.PART 2: Economic Contributions, which examines the socioeconomic contributions and well-being of immigrants in our region. This section looks both at current conditions and the economic trajectory of immigrants over their careers and across the generations.PART 3: Immigration Pathways, which details the complex system that immigrants contend with in order to settle in Greater Boston.We hope this analysis of Greater Boston's immigrant population will help policymakers and service providers better understand immigrant communities and effectively implement programs and policies that make our region an even more welcoming and thriving place. 

Being African: How Africans Experience the Diaspora

February 1, 2024

It is difficult to establish the exact population of the African diaspora in the world. The definitions vary regarding the number of generations that constitute still being part of the diaspora, and also because national statistic bureaus differ in how they gather information about diasporas. However, according to the latest available figures on foreign-born Africans, there are more than 619 000 in France, 1.2 million in the UK and 2.1 million in the US. Given the many stereotypical narratives about Africa, we set out to investigate how these narratives were impacting on perceptions about Africa among diasporic youth, and on their identity and sense of belonging in France, UK and US. We were interested in how young African migrants experience the diaspora, how they define their being African and the bases of their belonging, and how they negotiate relationships with other Africans.This report, which focuses on an underresearched group, offers unique, firsthand accounts and analysis of conversations and interviews with young African diasporans, as part of a larger African diaspora community located across the world. We collected data through in-depth interviews, asking what they know about Africa, how they feel about Africa, how Africa is represented in the media, and their views/attitudes on markers of African identity. 

Green Light to Growth: Estimating the Economic Benefits of Clearing Green Card Backlogs

November 8, 2023

Millions of people sit in green card backlogs, waiting to receive lawful permanent resident (LPR) status in the United States. Some of these individuals are waiting for their petition to be adjudicated and, they hope, approved. Even if approved, many still wait decades before they receive their green card due to annual green card limits set in law. Hundreds of thousands of people will likely die before they can receive the green card for which they have already been approved.These backlogs have clear human costs. Many people face the risk of having to leave the country if they lose their jobs before they achieve LPR status. The backlog also has serious consequences for Americans, as essential jobs, such as nurses and national security staff, go unfilled while foreign workers remain in the backlog to receive their green cards.Importantly, the backlogs also have considerable economic costs. Restrictions on the jobs people can take while in the backlog prevent individuals from working in roles best suited to them, constricting productivity. Keeping people outside of the country when they have been approved for a green card prevents them from joining the U.S. labor force, contributing their knowledge and skills, and supporting an economy that is struggling with declining labor force participation due to its aging population. This report quantifies the economic benefit that would be achieved if the current employment and family-based green card backlogs were cleared.

New American Fortune 500 in 2023: The Largest American Companies and Their Immigrant Roots

August 29, 2023

Immigrant entrepreneurs have long been an important part of America's economic success story. Some of the largest and most recognizable American companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants, hence our report uses the moniker "New American" to describe these companies. This includes household names such as Apple and Costco, as well as newcomers to the Fortune 500 list like Coupang and Lululemon. Immigrants have long been economic catalyzers, known for igniting innovation and growth across industries.Since our first New American Fortune 500 report in 2011, the Council has found that more than two out of every five Fortune 500 companies—the 500 largest corporations by revenue in the country—had at least one immigrant or child-of-immigrant founder. This year, we find that 44.8 percent of Fortune 500 companies were "New American" companies that were founded by immigrants or their children.Venturing into uncharted territories, immigrants and their children have created new businesses that fuel job creation for American workers and strengthen our nation's economy. The New American Fortune 500 companies that they founded stand as testaments to not only their success but also the strength of the American economy and character that welcomes them and embraces their entrepreneurial spirit.

Deepening the Divide: Abortion Bans Further Harm Immigrant Communities

August 15, 2023

Immigrants, especially undocumented individuals and those in mixed-status families, are particularly vulnerable to the harmful impacts of abortion bans due to their unique barriers to care and increased risk of criminalization based on immigration status. Immigrants' barriers to abortion care include arbitrary Customs and Border Protection (CBP) checkpoints, a five-year waiting period for legal permanent residents to enroll in public health insurance programs, and agreements between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. Individuals in immigrant detention face additional threats to their reproductive health and overall well-being, including denial of abortion care and medically unnecessary gynecological procedures like forced hysterectomies. This factsheet highlights how the overturn of Roe v. Wade exacerbated pre-existing barriers to abortion care for immigrants. We propose a set of concrete recommendations for Congress and the Administration to support immigrant access to abortion.

Ready to Learn, Eager to Earn: A youth-led market and wellbeing assessment in Rohingya camps

July 28, 2023

Without access to quality, relevant education, or dignified work, Rohingya refugee youth face bleak and limited futures. Within the camp setting, they are unable to meet their immediate basic needs and are at high risk of violations of their rights, wellbeing, and security.The Rohingya community is about to mark six years since its exodus from Myanmar. The state of Rohingya youth remains a blur: what are the barriers related to livelihood opportunities and social engagement? What are the skill-development needs for Rohingya youth residing in the refugee camps of Cox's Bazar?

Why the United States Still Needs Foreign-Born Workers

July 25, 2023

Without continued net inflows of immigrants, the U.S. working-age population will shrink over the next two decades and by 2040, the United States will have over 6 million fewer working-age people than in 2022. Announcements of high-profile layoffs and concerns about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) obscure America's continuing need for additional workers at the top and bottom of the skill distribution. International migration is the only potential source of growth in the U.S. working-age population in the coming years.The research involved analyzing data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, including the Current Population Survey and the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

Facing an Impossible Choice: Experiences of Asylum Seekers in Matamoros and Reynosa Two Months into the Biden Asylum Ban

July 24, 2023

The National Immigration Project and Together & Free document their observations from trips to Matamoros and Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico in June and July 2023, where they conducted interviews with asylum seekers, service providers, and advocates. The report calls on the Biden administration to end and rescind the Asylum Ban and to urgently make changes to the CBP One appointment system.

"You Suffer a Lot": Immigrants with Disabilities Face Barriers in Immigration Court

July 19, 2023

Immigrants with disabilities face many barriers as they navigate deportation proceedings in U.S. immigration courts, where they must gather and submit evidence, testify, and present their case, often without a lawyer. These proceedings are adversarial, confusing, and terrifying for many immigrants, particularly people facing deportation to persecution or torture. As detailed in this report, the barriers that disabled immigrants face are exacerbated by a lack of resources and information about immigrants' rights under disability law in immigration court proceedings, absence of an established protocol for exercising those rights, denials of reasonable accommodations and safeguards to meaningfully participate in their proceedings, the use of detention to jail people during their immigration court cases, and disability discrimination in immigration court, including bias, stigma, and hostility from immigration judges. These barriers and harms violate federal disability law, Constitutional due process protections, and immigration law.

Changing the Narrative for Multilingual Learners

July 14, 2023

In 2022, California funders focused on multilingual and early education gathered for a series of learning conversations about how narrative change could positively impact the movement for multilingual education. In the sessions, narrative practitioners, advocates, funders, and evaluators offered these key insights for understanding and supporting narrative change:Narratives, which shape how people see the world and each other, are at the heart of movements for social change.Narrative change is collective work that has more impact when many voices and partners organize themselves around the same narrative.In developing narratives to support multilingual learners, it's essential to engage people with lived experience including students, educators, and families.When partners embrace a unifying narrative, it can align and accelerate work across policy advocacy, organizing, communications, the arts, and other areas.Narrative change is long-term work that requires persistence and multiple strategies to challenge and shift the deep-seated beliefs that uphold injustice.Evaluators have many ways to measure the progress and impact of narrative strategies upon organizations, networks, and in the public dialogue.Funding narrative change requires a different way of thinking than traditional grantmaking focused on discrete projects with short-term outcomes.

Refugee Protection Travesty: Biden Asylum Ban Endangers and Punishes At-Risk Asylum Seekers

July 12, 2023

On May 12, 2023, the Biden administration began implementing its new bar to asylum through a final rule (the asylum ban).  While Biden administration officials have inaccurately touted it as "working," the grim reality is that the asylum ban is a refugee protection, humanitarian, and legal travesty. As detailed in this report, in the two months since its implementation, the Biden asylum ban has stranded vulnerable people in places where they are targets of kidnapping and violent assaults, rigged the credible fear process against people seeking asylum, and deported many without meaningful access to counsel and despite potential eligibility for asylum under U.S. law. The harm inflicted by the asylum ban is compounded by U.S. and Mexican government policies that block, deny, meter or further impede access to asylum and leave people in atrocious conditions as they wait to seek asylum under the ban.

The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program

July 5, 2023

The United States has the largest refugee resettlement program in the world and has resettled over 3 million refugees since 1975. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) resettles and assists refugees in host communities nationwide through public-private partnerships between the U.S. government and 10 resettlement agencies. HIAS is one of these agencies and is the oldest resettlement organization in the world. This explainer provides an overview of how the USRAP admits, resettles, and integrates refugees in the United States, and the role refugee resettlement agencies like HIAS play in this program.