Research and Data

Mission Asset Fund is offering $495 scholarships for DACA renewal.

With a 0.0% interest rate, and no application fee, Self-Help Federal Credit Union's DACA loan is an easy and affordable way to cover the cost of the renewal application. Applications will be taken up through October 4th 2017.

DACA-related infographics in Spanish from the Centro de Información y Asistencia a Mexicanos. 

Haas Institute report on the anti-Sharia movement in the United States addresses the legalized othering of Muslim communities across the nation through anti-Muslim legislation and bills between the years 2000 and 2016.

These three charts outline the different requirements for acquiring and deriving citizenship. Because the law governing acquisition and derivation has changed many times and is generally not retroactive, these charts detail what the eligibility requirements are depending on the time period in question.

Citizen Lab, Open Effect, University of New Mexico and artist Jason Li have launched Secure Accounts to teach anyone to secure themselves online (in multiple languages). 

This issue brief presents a profile of young adults eligible for DACA in terms of their educational attainment and labor force participation, as well as what is at stake should the program be terminated.

Following the 2015­–16 crisis that saw record numbers of refugees arrive in Europe, policymakers have shown interest in creating managed, legal alternatives to the dangerous, unauthorized journeys many asylum seekers make. While these discussions should be informed by an understanding of current pathways and protection channels, it is 'nearly impossible' to know how protection seekers enter and what legal channels are available to them, as this MPI Europe report explains.

Threat of mom’s deportation drives anxiety, behavioral disorders in children.

This fact sheet examines pending DREAM Act bills in the House and Senate, offering estimates of who might earn conditional legal status—and ultimately legal permanent residence—based of educational, professional, and other requirements in the legislation.

For children in U.S. homes where a language other than English is spoken, early childhood programs that are responsive to their needs can be key to later academic success. But as states refine their Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) to assess such programs, immigrant early childhood workers with in-demand language and cultural skills may be left behind. This report examines the challenges these workers face and promising practices to serve diverse communities.

ISPU American Muslim Poll 2017: Muslims at the Crossroads, a poll which offers a timely and groundbreaking look into the American Muslim community.

While the DACA program remains in effect at this time, this ILRC community advisory contains some things to keep in mind should the program end.

In this practice advisory, ILRC focuses specifically on how absences of varying lengths of time affect the continuous residence requirement.

The fiscal cost of immediately deporting the approximately 750,000 people currently in the DACA program would be over $60 billion to the federal government along with a $280 billion reduction in economic growth over the next decade.

Following the recent introduction of a bipartisan DREAM Act in the Senate, National Skills Coalition is releasing a new fact sheet on the role immigrant Dreamers can play in meeting business needs for middle-skill workers.

This new report finds that undocumented Californians pay hundreds of millions of dollars each year in local taxes to the counties where they live (more than $1.5 billion) and collectively $3 billion combined in state and local taxes.

US: Immigrant arrests soar under Trump, fewer deported Associated Press Wednesday, May 17, 2017 comments SANTA ANA, Calif. — U.S. immigration arrests increased nearly 40 percent in early 2017 as newly emboldened agents under President Donald Trump detained more than 40,000 people suspected of being in the country illegally — with a renewed focus on immigrants without criminal convictions.

The Adelanto Detention Facility, which houses immigrants from across Southern California, is among such facilities with the highest number of sexual assault complaints, an advocacy group alleges. The facility, located in San Bernardino County’s High Desert, ranked third on a list of the five detention centers with the most such complaints, the nonprofit group Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement alleges.

This report examines serious lapses in health care that have led to severe suffering and at times the preventable or premature death of individuals held in immigration detention facilities in the United States. The lapses occur in both publicly and privately run facilities, and have persisted despite some efforts at reform under the Obama administration, indicating that more decisive measures are urgently needed to improve conditions. At time of writing, it was unclear how the Trump administration would address the issue, but its pledge to sharply increase the number of immigrants subject to detention and reports it is also planning to roll back protections for immigrants in detention, raise serious concerns that the problems fueling the unnecessary suffering could grow even worse.

Difficulty with data storage and transmission from local departments to the Department of Justice is only one of the reasons why anti-Muslim hate crimes might not make it into the state’s annual report.

Linguistic barriers, trust barriers and training barriers keep hate crimes from being reported and recorded properly, said Brian Levin, a former New York Police Department officer who now serves as a criminal justice professor at California State University San Bernardino, where he is also the director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism.

May. 2, 2017, 1:43 AM LM Otero/AP FILE – In this May 25, 2010 file photo, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent walks down the aisle among shackled Mexican immigrants a boarded a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter jet for deportation in the air between Chicago, Il. and Harlingen, Texas.

Posing significant challenges for educators, about 1 in 8 students in California schools has at least one parent who is undocumented, according to a new brief from the Education Trust-West. Undocumented children as well as U.S. citizen children with undocumented relatives have experienced heightened anxieties for several years as a result of deportation policies begun under President George W. Bush and tightened ones under President Barack Obama.

President Trump has threatened to prohibit “sanctuary cities” from receiving federal funding. In an Executive Order on January 25, 2017, the President directed that jurisdictions that wilfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. § 1373, a federal statute, shall not be eligible to receive federal grants.1 8 USC § 1373 is already federal law and already binding on all states and local governments. So what does 8 USC § 1373 actually require, and how does it affect federal grant distribution?

On January 25, 2017 President Trump issued an Executive Order that “sanctuary cities” will not receive federal funding.1 So far, two counties and three cities have filed lawsuits against this Executive Order: San Francisco County, CA, Santa Clara County, CA, Chelsea and Lawrence, MA (jointly), Richmond, CA and Seattle, WA. This brief advisory explains what is happening in the lawsuits and why these cities and counties claim Trump’s order regarding “sanctuary cities” is unconstitutional.

In an Executive Order on immigration enforcement issued January 25, 2017, the President directed that sanctuary cities will not be eligible to receive federal grants. What exactly this means, what exactly is a sanctuary jurisdiction, what funds may be affected, and how or when any of this will be administered remains unclear. However, on April 25, 2017, a federal judge enjoined Section 9 of the the Executive Order (the section regarding sanctuary jurisdictions). The judge found many constitutional problems with Order, and ruled that it must be put on hold until its legality is settled in court. This FAQ seeks to address what the order means, what is unclear, and what remains to be determined.

Human rights and legal groups say a scathing Senate report on offshore processing and conditions inside detention highlights the government’s “wilful inaction” and bolsters their calls for the closure of the Manus Island and Nauru centres. On Friday the government released a report by the Senate committee on legal and constitutional affairs, which followed a seven-month inquiry into allegations of abuse on Manus and Nauru sparked by the Guardian’s publication of the Nauru files .

Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee Chair's foreword Australia's policy of offshore processing has been the subject of a number of Senate inquiries. These inquires have been highly critical of many aspects of the Regional Processing Centre (RPC) policy.

Despite President Donald Trump's push to reduce immigration and deport millions of immigrants here illegally, a majority of Texans believe immigration helps the state more than it hurts, oppose a plan to build a border wall and favor a pathway to citizenship if certain conditions are met. A whopping 90 percent support allowing immigrants here illegally to become citizens after a long waiting period, payment of taxes and a penalty, passing a criminal background check and showing English proficiency, according to a poll released Tuesday. [...] the overwhelming approval of such an idea seemed surprising in redder-than-red Texas where most respondents cast immigration and border security as the state's No. 1 problem. By comparison, a poll last summer by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin found that just 49 percent of Texans, and only 29 percent of Republicans, support comprehensive reform including a pathway to citizenship for most immigrants here illegally. '[...] if you have a waiting period, a penalty, a requirement to pay taxes, all of a sudden people say, 'Yeah, we're OK with this,'' Blank said. What we saw was that the left and the right can't agree on what the definition of long is, what constitutes a significant criminal record, and what is a sufficient penalty and acceptable level of English … these are the building blocks of reform. Bill Hammond, a lobbyist who headed the Texas Association of Business for 18 years and vocally supported comprehensive immigration reform, said the high support for a path to citizenship in the survey represents the disconnect between mainstream Texans and GOP primary voters. On state level issues, however, Texans were more supportive of restrictive immigration policies. About half of all Texans, and 86 percent of Republicans, said local law enforcement agencies should hand over immigrants here illegally to federal officials.

For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education. In other words, the overwhelming majority of immigrants are not “criminals” by any commonly accepted definition of the term. For this reason, harsh immigration policies are not effective in fighting crime.

Follow all of ScienceDaily's latest research news and top science headlines ! Science News Higher wages linked to immigrant diversity Date: University at Buffalo Summary: Diverse immigrant populations do more than enrich a city’s cultural fabric. According to geographers, they also boost wages -- by as much as 21 percent. Share: Abigail Cooke, assistant professor of geography, University at Buffalo.

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- An advocacy group said Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's internal watchdog fielded more than 1,000 complaints of sexual assault or sexual abuse from people in custody in a little more than two years. Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement is the latest group in recent years to document allegations of abuse at immigration detention centers, based on information obtained from public records requests.

As the Trump administration begins to implement its immigration policy agenda, the issue of local assistance with federal immigration enforcement officials is back in the spotlight. So-called sanctuary jurisdictions are one focus of that debate. Sanctuary counties—as defined by this report—are counties that do not assist federal immigration enforcement officials by holding people in custody beyond their release date.1 Using an Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, dataset obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center,2 the analyses in this report provide new insights about how sanctuary counties perform across a range of social and economic indicators when compared to nonsanctuary counties.

Refugees in Canada have experienced mixed success when it comes to economic outcomes. While they struggle to enter the labor market, over time they catch up to other immigrants and the Canadian born. This report examines the web of programs that facilitate refugee integration, as well as differences in outcomes—including for those who are privately sponsored or resettled by the government.

Even for an administration that has made anti-immigrant rhetoric routine, the speech that Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave on Tuesday was shocking in both tone and content.

Sessions was ostensibly announcing a set of tough new measures targeting gangs, which he described as “criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into warzones, that rape and kill innocent citizens and who profit by smuggling poison and other human beings across our borders.” But in practice, these measures apply to almost everyone without papers. And that’s not by accident. “For those that continue to seek improper and illegal entry into this ...

Study: Undocumented farm workers put food system at risk Bartholomew D Sullivan, USA TODAY 3:00 p.m. PT April 4, 2017 CLOSE x Share Farmworkers share their struggles of working under extreme conditions in the fields. Mauricio Peña and Omar Ornelas/The Desert Sun Buy Photo Farmworkers get paid $10 an hour plus a bonus for every box they fill. They usually work before sunset and finish a couple of hours after noon.

These scholars address the thorniest issues in immigration, the ones at the root of our present crisis, with all the ballast we need to oppose simplistic talking points: Should immigrants, regardless of status, have constitutional rights? How solid in law and morality is Trump’s reliance on the plenary power doctrine to implement far-reaching changes? Is Trump’s deportation policy an anomaly, or does it have roots in recent bipartisan legislation?

share Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images George Washington set in motion a strategy so radical that it made this country the wealthiest and strongest on Earth — it made America great. Immigration. He embraced a vision for an open America that could almost be read today as a form of deep idealism or altruism. “America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions,” he told newly arrived Irishmen in 1783 .

Immigration has been a touchstone of the U.S. political debate for decades, as policymakers must weigh competing economic, security, and humanitarian concerns. Congress has been unable to reach an agreement on comprehensive immigration reform for years, effectively moving some major policy decisions into the executive and judicial branches of government, and fueling debate in the halls of state and municipal governments.

The need to address the mental health of children of immigrants is critical. The Administration’s immigration enforcement policies are causing severe physical and emotional suffering for immigrants and their loved ones. Children bear witness to family separation which causes anxiety, depression, behavioral problems at school, and physical and emotional distress. In addition, family separations have a devastating impact on local communities, local economies, and the state as a whole.

These anti-immigrant policies will have a lasting effect on the health and well-being of children in immigrant families – including U.S. citizen children who live in mixed-status households. This is why we have collaborated with The Children’s Partnership on a joint project to address the mental health needs of children of immigrants.