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: Policy and Advocacy
The Scope of Displacement: Reading the Watson Institute Working Paper
Last week, a working paper from the Watson Institute at Brown University made a small stir in the immigration advocacy community. The paper’s hook is that U.S. military interventions are responsible for huge numbers of displacements: “at least 37 million people have fled their homes in the eight most violent wars the U.S. military has […]
Recent Developments in the H-2B Visa Program and the Impacts on Horseracing Industry in the United States
A statue of the famous American racehorse Secretariat stands at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, one of the world’s largest international equestrian competition centers. Led by his longtime groom Eddie Sweat and Canadian jockey Ron Turcotte in the irons, the bronze Secretariat memorializes the historic 1973 Triple Crown win. The sculptor specifically included Sweat […]
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 […]
Casting a Wide Net: Climate Change, Migration, and the Hidden Victims of the Fishing Industry
At the end of January, the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled for the first time that countries may not deport refugees who face climate change-induced conditions that put their lives at risk, or place them in danger of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.1 While the landmark judgment is not binding, it does emphasize that […]
When You Cease to Exist: The State of Statelessness in the Former Soviet Union
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, […]
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 […]
