3“I was born in a country that doesn’t exist anymore.” This was something our Russian language professor said to my class on the first day of Russian 101 my freshman year of college. For Americans, this concept is foreign and hard to wrap our heads around. Our history as a country is shorter than most, […]
Category: Policy and Advocacy
Understanding Migration: Why “Push Factors” and “Pull Factors” Do Not Explain Very Much
Five years ago, Michael Clemens and Justin Sandefur, in an interesting essay for Foreign Affairs, wrote that “in many crises, assistance in the original country of origin largely cannot deter departure” of migrants. Elsewhere they wrote, “What each rich country can do is alter what pulls people to that country specifically, once they have decided […]
World Refugee Day 2020 In the Time of COVID-19
Message from USCRI President and CEO Eskinder Negash This year’s celebration of World Refugee Day on June 20th takes place during a global health pandemic and civil unrest in many parts of the world, including the U.S. Yet, we cannot turn our attention away from the over 70 million displaced people worldwide–26 million of whom are […]
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer Declares June Immigration Heritage Month
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has declared June, “Immigration Heritage Month.” By taking time out from managing a public health crisis, Governor Whitmer is making a powerful statement about the immense contributions immigrants have made to the State of Michigan and to the United States in general. “Governor Whitmer and her staff have supported USCRI’s work […]
USCRI Advocates to Protect Unaccompanied Children at our Border
A recent New York Times article tells the story of just one of the hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children being turned away at our border. Gerson is ten years old. Let that sink in. His mother so feared for his safety in Honduras that she put him in a makeshift raft to cross the Rio Grande, […]
Human Trafficking Awareness Month Kick-off
As a society, we often believe that trafficking only takes place in sordid hotel rooms or the backend of a massage parlor. While this can be true, the broader truth is that human trafficking largely happens in plain sight. It’s in our restaurants, nail salons, construction sites, and private homes. It’s right in front of […]
USCRI Publication on unaccompanied immigrant children: In the Best Interest of Child
by AnnaMarie Bena, Esq. Most Americans learned about unaccompanied immigrant children during the summer of 2018 when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began separating immigrant children from their parents at the southern border. Once separated from their parents, these children met the definition of “unaccompanied alien children” (UAC) under section 462(g) of the […]
Almost 20 years later: Human Trafficking Survivors Need More Than a Patchwork of Benefits
Almost twenty years ago, Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), a trifecta of measures intended to address the rise in human trafficking—prevention, protection and prosecution. 1. The protection measures of the law were written to provide victims with services needed to rebuild their lives. For adult foreign national victims of trafficking, the law […]
