Media reports on conditions at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia paint a picture of neglect, mistreatment and abuse of migrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The facility houses immigrant detainees, along with inmates for Irwin County and the U.S. Marshals Service. Most concerning are reports of women being subjected to […]
Category: Asylum
U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants Statement on the COVID-19 Pandemic
ARLINGTON, VA – The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) expresses its solidarity with our global community in their efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. This kind of pervasive and far-reaching global event reminds us all that we share one planet and our lives are inextricably linked together in an unbroken chain of […]
USCRI Statement on the Decision to Further Restrict Immigration
ARLINGTON, VA – Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a rationale for further eroding legal immigration to the U.S., the Administration has halted issuing green cards to applicants outside of the country until the end of the year. The ban also includes many temporary work visas, including H-1B visas, used by the technology sector, and H-2B […]
Understanding Migration: Mixed Migration
In an earlier brief, we discussed the common pushpull model of migration. To recap, push factors and pull factors are approximations—part of a cognitive model of how migration operates—to describe the reasons that individuals might emigrate (push factors) and the reasons why individuals might settle in a particular location (pull factors). However, the push-pull model […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
