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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.

Understanding Migrant Destitution in the UK: Literature Review

June 30, 2023

In 2020, it was reported that a fifth of destitute households were migrants (JRF 2020). In many of these cases, the destitution arose primarily from the households' immigration status, specifically the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) condition, which restricts access to the welfare safety net (including most mainstream benefits such as Universal Credit). Attempts to tackle destitution in the UK, therefore, must consider the characteristics of the NRPF condition, its impacts and the characteristics of the parallel welfare safety net which is in place for (some) migrants and delivered by local authorities.This literature review is part of COMPAS' Understanding Migrant Destitution in the UK research project, a UK-wide study (2022-2023) focusing on local authority practice and provision for vulnerable people with no recourse to public funds (NRPF) facing destitution. Building on COMPAS' (2015) research on Safeguarding Children From Destitution: Local Authority Responses To Families With 'No Recourse To Public Funds' (NRPF), we will be using a mixed methods approach exploring the following core research questions across all four nations of the UK:How has the cohort of people with NRPF and at risk of destitution changed since 2015?How has social care provision for people with NRPF at risk of destitution changed, including in relation to decisions made on who is eligible for services?How have outcomes for destitute people with NRPF changed since 2015?

An Immigration Advocate's Need-to-know for Policy Change: A Conversation with the APA's Katherine B. McGuire

June 27, 2023

This policy brief is based on a conversation with Katherine B. McGuire, chief advocacy officer of the American Psychological Association (APA) and a special guest at the Baker Institute Migration Initiative's "Conversations on Immigration" event on April 25, 2023. McGuire suggested that, instead of losing sight of their goals, immigration reform advocates learn to navigate today's political environment and use opportunities to push for progressive legislation on immigration by engaging with policymakers on both sides of the aisle as well as their constituents. According to McGuire, immigration reform advocates should work toUnderstand the political landscape at both the federal and state levels.Find common ground with members of Congress.Soften resistance at the state level.Educate the American public on the harmful mis- and disinformation about immigrants through storytelling, a powerful tool to prime the political landscape for change — the key objective of advocacy work.

AI and Immigrants

June 27, 2023

Immigrants have founded or cofounded nearly two-thirds (65% or 28 of 43) of the top AI companies in the United States, and 70% of full-time graduate students in fields related to artificial intelligence are international students, according to a new National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) analysis. Seventy-seven percent of the leading U.S.-based AI companies were founded or cofounded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Forty-two percent (18 of 43) of the top U.S.-based AI companies had a founder who came to America as an international student.

ICE’s New Young Adult Case Management Program: Why It Falls Short of Case Management Best Practices and Puts Youth at Risk

June 26, 2023

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched the Young Adult Case Management Program (YACMP) in January 2023 to target and monitor 18- and19-year-old youth who the agency deems "low flight risk" and "non-dangerous." ICE characterizes this program as an "Alternative to Detention," but the program's design makes clear that it will not decrease reliance on detention and instead increase the number of young people under government monitoring. Rather than work collaboratively with youth to match them with support services based on their individual needs, ICE unilaterally and arbitrarily enrolls youth in YACMP if they are facing immigration court proceedings and are not detained, irrespective of their specific needs.This policy brief examines: 1) who are the youth impacted by this new ICE program; 2) what this program entails and how it compares with traditional case management programs; and 3) what we know about the corporation ICE has contracted to run this program. It has recommendations for effective case management for impacted youth.

Limits on Access to Asylum After Title 42: One Month of Monitoring U.S.-Mexico Border Ports of Entry

June 23, 2023

Following the end of Title 42 and the implementation of new restrictions, a working group of U.S., Mexican, and international NGOs that provide humanitarian and legal support to asylum seekers and migrants in the border region conducted targeted in-person monitoring at ports of entry to understand the impact of these policy shifts on access to asylum. Between May 11 and June 12, 2023, observations took place at six ports of entry in California (San Ysidro and Otay Mesa), Arizona (Dennis DeConcini), and Texas (Bridge of the Americas, Paso Del Norte and Ysleta) that adjoin the Mexican cities of Tijuana, Nogales, and Ciudad Juárez.The monitors' key findings include practices by U.S. and Mexican authorities that restricted asylum seekers without CBP One appointments from physically reaching ports of entry; limited processing or metering of asylum seekers without CBP One appointments; and a lack of adequate and accurate information for asylum seekers.