Research and Data

To what extent—and under what conditions—are immigrants and host-country natives better off overall as a result of migration? By using happiness as a proxy for overall well-being, researchers have begun to fill these gaps, focusing on what migrants hope to ultimately gain from the experience and life more generally.

This blog from USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration presents responses to the executive order Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation regarding migration, family separation, and the broader societal consequences of immigrant detention.

The United States has no visa for immigrant entrepreneurs who want to come here, start a business, and create jobs. DHS's regulatory measure to give foreign entrepreneurs a chance to grow their firms in the United States, called the International Entrepreneur Rule (IER), was a first step in remedying this situation. Despite the inherent job-creating potential of the IER, its future remains uncertain.

Nearly 2.5 million immigrants have passed through the U.S. immigration detention system since 2003. As the United States has expanded detention in recent decades, it has increasingly relied on contracts with facilities run by for-profit companies to house large numbers of detainees. This article traces the growing involvement of the private prison industry in U.S. immigration enforcement.

Over the past 18 months, the country has witnessed massive shifts in immigration policies and rhetoric, as the Trump administration furthered efforts to increase immigration enforcement, reduce immigration, and scale back protections for people without citizenship. Harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric both during and after the 2016 election has increased fear among many immigrant communities and may be connected to recent rises in hate crimes .

As policymakers in a number of countries, the United States among them, debate limiting family-based immigration, this issue brief explores family-migration trends and policies in the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and several other European countries. Family admissions play a key role, even in countries that prioritize economic or other immigration streams.

American hospitals depend on foreign physicians to fill their residency programs each year—in 2015, nearly 25 percent of residents across all medical fields were born outside of the United States. In subspecialist residency programs, foreign medical graduates accounted for more than a third of residents.

The conduct of arresting officers is rarely scrutinized in the overwhelmed immigration courts, which focus squarely on whether arrested individuals should be removed from the United States. While deportation proceedings are civil, they afford immigrants fewer rights than criminal defendants to challenge their apprehensions.

While research shows immigrants in the United States become integrated over time, this is only a partial account of the changes that immigration brings. As newcomers reshape their communities, longtime residents themselves adjust to shifting social, economic, and political contexts—sometimes re-engaging with their own ethnic or cultural identities. This article explores this process of relational assimilation in Silicon Valley.

A federal judge in Washington issued an injunction on Friday preventing the Trump administration from interfering with the ability of undocumented teenagers in U.S. custody to have abortions or obtain abortion-related services. 

As of 2017, according to Gallup polls, almost half of Americans agreed that immigrants make crime worse. But is it true that immigration drives crime? Many studies have shown that it does not.

Results from PPIC Statewide Surveys from January 2017 to January 2018 analyzes political interest, opinions and ideology of California's immigrants.

With federal immigration policy playing a lead role in today’s polarized political discussions, will California’s immigrants have an impact—and to who’s advantage—in the 2018 gubernatorial election?

CLASP conducted the first ever multi-state study of the effects of the current immigration climate on young children under age 8. 

In low-wage industries, from construction to food service, labor-standards violations have become widespread—with major consequences for law-abiding employers, state tax revenue, and native-born and immigrant workers. 

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit Friday against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying agents are forcibly removing asylum-seeking parents from their children without reason. 

How do residents feel about the state and local governments making their own policies and taking actions, separate from the federal government, to protect the legal rights of undocumented immigrants? This blog highlights Californians' view on immigration from PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Their Government.

Although in many countries immigrants fill labor gaps in fields such as agriculture and construction, few legal migration pathways exist for low-skilled workers. This policy brief takes stock of the channels available for such workers to move legally and take up work abroad, highlighting promising practices and policy gaps.

Even as the 1.8 million number swirls in the discussion of how many DREAMers would be placed on a path to citizenship, proposals debated in the Senate in February 2018 would have resulted in the legalization of smaller numbers, as this commentary explains. It offers estimates of potential beneficiaries of several Senate proposals, including one backed by the White House, and analysis of key criteria.

On September 5, 2017, the Trump administration terminated the DACA program and permitted only a subset of current DACA recipients, whose protections were set to expire on or before March 5, 2018, to file renewal applications. What we know post-March 5.

In 2014, the Annie E. Casey Foundation issued a report, Noncitizen Youth in the Juvenile Justice System, aimed at ensuring the safe and fair treatment of noncitizen youth in detention. This update picks up where the 2014 report left off.

Although research demonstrates the benefits of teacher diversity, many Latinx students rarely encounter teachers who share their ethnic background. This issue brief explores the extent of the Latinx teacher diversity gap by state and provides policy recommendations for increasing the number of Latinx teachers.

Dual Language Learners (DLLs) grow up in U.S. families with a wide range of languages, origins, and socioeconomic characteristics. Yet little is known about which practices and program models work best in superdiverse classrooms where no minority language is dominant. This report explores DLL diversity at national, state, and local levels, highlighting its implications for early childhood programs and schools.

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation conducted focus groups with 100 parents from 15 countries and 13 interviews with pediatricians to gain insight into how the current environment is affecting the daily lives, well-being, and health of immigrant families, including their children.

Majorities of voters support family-based immigration and continued immigration from disadvantaged countries. This memorandum highlights key takeaways from a national, targeted Congressional district study conducted in 86 Congressional districts. 

New analysis finds that the Trump-Grassley legislation will significantly reduce opportunities for women to immigrate to the United States and will disproportionately affect immigrant women in their prime working age.

The United States is by far the world's top migration destination, home to roughly one-fifth of all global migrants. In 2016, nearly 44 million immigrants lived in the United States, comprising 13.5 percent of the country's population. Get the most sought-after data available on immigrants and immigration trends, including top countries of origin, legal immigration pathways, enforcement actions, health-care coverage, and much more.

Smiling, and showing emotions in general, is more common in countries that are historically diverse than in homogenous places, say researchers from Niedenthal Emotions Lab, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

An unannounced sweep of 98 convenience stores by U.S. immigration authorities—resulting in the arrest of 21 unauthorized workers—may signal a new approach to worksite enforcement under the Trump administration, moving away from a strategy of paper-based audits that resulted in higher employer fines and fewer worker arrests. This article explores worksite enforcement over recent decades.

A common thread behind each of them is that they actively recruit, retain, and integrate immigrants. It’s part of their economic strategy. And as Amazon’s decision shows, it’s working.

Diversity visa applicants are generally better educated than Americans as a whole.

This report briefly examines how some of the key policies and programs that support the long-term integration success of immigrants and refugees are faring in this volatile era of immigration policy change, as well as key areas to watch ahead.

In 2016, nearly 1.2 million immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region lived in the United States.This article offers the latest data on the MENA population in the United States, which is more likely to come via humanitarian routes and less likely via family reunification than the foreign-born population overall.

How does perceived racism vary across salient marginalized groups in the U.S.? To answer this question, ISPU’s 2017 poll asked a sample of the general population and a sample of American Muslims to report how often they faced racial discrimination over the previous 12 months both within and outside their faith communities.

This analysis is Part 1 in a two-part series on intersectionality. 

How do marginalized communities compare in their responses to racism and the increasingly hostile environment for minorities since the 2016 election?

This analysis is Part 2 in a two-part series on intersectionality. 

A tool which allows users to generate charts on the characteristics of children, age 0 to 17, in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Data drawn from the American Community Survey. Users can compare populations of children defined by the nativity and citizenship of the child or their parents.

This New American Economy report suggests that African immigrants punch well above their weight in many respects. These immigrants naturalize at high rates, they attain higher levels of education than the overall U.S. population as a whole, and are more likely to have earned their degree in a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, or STEM, field. 

Learn about participation in the DACA program nationally and by state, as well as by top countries of origin. The data tools offered here provide the numbers of DACA recipients at U.S. and state levels and offer an estimate of participation rates as of 2017, by geography as well as by country of origin.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump made immigration the centerpiece of his campaign, offering a more detailed policy agenda than on any other issue. In the year since the election that propelled the Republican into the White House, how has the Trump administration’s record matched up with the rhetoric? This policy brief examines the executive orders and other changes to existing policy and practice made during 2017.

The migration world in 2017 was marked by large-scale displacement in Southeast Asia and Africa, rightward political shifts in the United States and parts of Europe, and varied approaches to migration management across the world. MPI experts highlight the biggest migration developments of the year in this countdown of the Top 10 Migration Issues of 2017.