By U.S. Citizenship And Immigration Services

From the Message From the Director, Ur M. Jaddou: "I am proud to share the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2023 to 2026. This plan is grounded in USCIS' longstanding mission and firm commitment to making the United States a stronger, more inclusive, and welcoming nation, and preserving the integrity of the U.S. immigration programs we administer. At its core, USCIS has the responsibility to deliver decisions about immigration service requests to individuals while ensuring the security of our nation. The work of USCIS employees makes the possibility of the American dream a reality for immigrants, the communities and economies they join, and the nation as a whole. [...] This new strategic plan is the continuation and expansion of activities stemming from the five priorities I announced in FY 2022, illuminating our pathway into the future. Our new strategic plan will be our roadmap to realize our own promise as an agency of transparency and responsiveness - an agency that upholds the legal immigration system, supports, and engages its employees, and fosters collaboration to deliver high-quality results. While USCIS has made strides in reducing undue barriers to immigration benefits and services, we have much more to do to achieve a modern, fair, and effective immigration system."

Washington. DC. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services., 2023. 28p.

By The Global Detention Project

Mexico has one of the largest immigration detention systems in the world, employing several dozen detention centres—euphemistically called estaciones migratorias—and detaining tens of thousands of people every year. Intense pressure from the United States and continuing migration from turmoil-wracked Central America have helped drive up detention numbers, which surpassed 180,000 in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic further stressed the country’s migration response. It temporarily released most detainees after the onset of the pandemic even as the United States continued deporting both Mexican and third-country nationals to Mexico. In late 2020, the country adopted reforms to its migration law prohibiting the detention of all children, though many observers expressed scepticism over whether it would be respected.

Geneva: Global Detention Project, 2021. 37p.

By  Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson 

This policy proposal is a proposal from the author(s). As emphasized in The Hamilton Project’s original strategy paper, the Project was designed in part to provide a forum for leading thinkers across the nation to put forward innovative and potentially important economic policy ideas that share the Project’s broad goals of promoting economic growth, broad-based participation in growth, and economic security. The author(s) are invited to express their own ideas in policy proposals , whether or not the Project’s staff or advisory council agrees with the specific proposals. This policy proposal is offered in that spirit.  

  Immigration is good for the US economy and for the fiscal picture at the federal level, but some local areas experience adverse fiscal impacts when new immigrants arrive. Edelberg and Watson propose a transparent system for redistributing resources from the federal government to these localities. Local areas would receive $2,500 annually for each adult immigrant who arrived to the US within the past five years without a college degree—those more likely to generate negative fiscal flows at the subnational level. The funds would take the form of unrestricted transfers to local educational agencies through the existing Impact Aid program and to Federally Qualified Health Centers. This support would help to offset educational, health, and other costs to local areas associated with immigrant inflows, and more equitably share the overall fiscal and economic benefits of immigration.   

Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution and The Hamilton Project , 2022.   26p.

By Kathleen O’Connor, Claire Thomas-Duckwitz, and  Guillermina Gina Nuñez-Mchiri  

The 1951 Refugee Convention of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) defines a refugee as someone who "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country." Further, the UNHCR is particularly concerned with refugees in Latin America and the Caribbean and uses the term refugee to describe persons fleeing from violence in Central America (U.N. High Commission for Refugees 2014). Thus, in this document, we refer to immigrants detained in the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (“Dilley”), as refugees because they have been persecuted by virtue of their membership in a social group, are outside their country of origin, are fleeing extreme violence, and fear returning to their countries of origin, which provided no protection from violence and persecution. Throughout the report, refugees who agreed to speak with the team and to an assessment of mental health outcomes are also referred to as study participants, participants, or respondents. During fieldwork from July 22 to July 24, 2015, a team of mental and behavioral health specialists collected the following data at Dilley, at the Greyhound Bus Station in San Antonio, and at the Hospitality House, a shelter in San Antonio where refugees are housed temporarily en route to resettlement areas throughout the United States  

 Cambridge, MA: Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), 2015. 82p.

By George Fishman

  • Juveniles commit a large number of serious offenses. In 2020, there were 1,353 known juvenile homicide offenders. In 2019, juveniles constituted 21 percent of all arrests for robbery, 20 percent for arson, 17 percent for car theft, 12 percent for burglary, 10 percent for larceny-theft and weapons offenses, eight percent for murder, and seven percent for aggravated assault. In 2012, the last year for which data is available, juveniles accounted for 14 percent of all arrests for forcible rape. • Despite the successful framing of DREAMers and DACA recipients as young people with no criminal records, it turns out that many were affiliated with gangs and many had arrest records when granted DACA benefits, and many others saw their DACA status terminated because of criminal activity. As USCIS has admitted, “[t]he truth is that we let those with criminal arrests for sexually assaulting a minor, kidnapping, human trafficking, child pornography, or even murder be provided protection from removal.” • Juvenile perpetrators are much more likely to be processed through a juvenile justice system than a criminal court. The Los Angeles County District Attorney made the decision (still largely in effect) to not send any juveniles to criminal court, no matter the gravity of their crimes. • Most juveniles adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court are not placed into any sort of out-of-home detention, including for such offenses as aggravated assault and robbery. • Congress has determined that all aliens (regardless of their immigration status) are subject to removal upon conviction for a wide range of crimes. Congress has also determined that aliens are subject to mandatory detention and are ineligible for a wide range of immigration benefits and relief upon conviction for a wide range of crimes.

Washington, DC: Center for Immigration Studies, 2022. 33p.   

By The Global Human Rights Clinic (GHRC) of the University of Chicago Law School and  United Stateless (USL) 

  Statelessness — the condition of lacking citizenship or nationality in any country of the world — affects more than 10 million people globally. In the United States, conservative estimates put the number of stateless persons at over 200,000. Given that the U.S. provides citizenship to people born on the territory, nearly all stateless persons within the U.S. were born elsewhere. However, the U.S. immigration framework is silent with respect to statelessness, in effect leaving stateless people unrecognized, unprotected and invisible before the law. As persons relegated to a life without legal status, stateless people in the United States are subject to being detained by immigration officials. Because they do not have a country of nationality where they can be deported to, stateless detainees have remained in immigration detention for months or years without any prospect of release, in violation of the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law. In some cases, after undergoing prolonged detention, stateless detainees have been forcibly deported to “third countries” (countries where they are not citizens), thereby perpetuating their condition of legal limbo and further depriving them of protection as required by international law. This report by the Global Human Rights Clinic (GHRC) of the University of Chicago Law School, in partnership with the non-profit organization United Stateless (USL), documents how the U.S. government violates international law by subjecting stateless persons to prolonged, repeated and arbitrary detention. Drawing from interviews with impacted stateless individuals and experts on statelessness, the report sets out specific recommendations for the U.S. government to bring its laws and policies in compliance with international human rights law.  

Chicago: The Global Human Rights Clinic (GHRC) of the University of Chicago Law School,    2022. 88p.

By Teresa Hayter

In this new edition of Open Borders, Teresa Hayter assesses the impact of the increasing severity of border controls since they were first introduced and makes the controversial case for their abolition. Hayter focuses on postwar immigration controls, especially the use of such controls against the peoples of former European colonies and East Europeans, and their effects on asylum seekers. She examines the recent history of European coordination of border controls and the notion of ‘Fortress Europe’. Hayter argues that the existence of controls leads to great suffering and abuse of human rights, and that immigration controls are racist and help legitimate racism. She demonstrates that immigration controls have actually had a limited impact on controlling numbers. To illustrate her arguments, she draws on empirical material, especially from Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, relating in particular to the use of detention, arbitrary decision-making and the denial of benefits. She compares British government policies with policies elsewhere in Europe and calls for the free movement of people and the abolition of border controls. The new edition brings this seminal work up to date with a lengthy preface exploring how the practices of the British government over the past few years has continued the process Hayter outlines in the main text – of abusive and irrational border controls and the criminalisation of entire communities. This second edition also updates the bibliography and list of campaigning groups, and ends with a new manifesto for a world without borders, declaring 'no one is illegal!'

London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2004. 240p.

Edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gil Loescher, Katy Long and Nando Sigona

This Handbook critically traces the birth and development of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, and vividly illustrates the vibrant and engaging debates that characterize this rapidly expanding field of research and practice. The contributions highlight the key challenges faced by academics and practitioners working with and for forcibly displaced populations around the world, as well as identifying new directions for research in the field. Since emerging as a distinct field of study in the early 1980s, Refugee and Forced Migration Studies has grown from being of concern of a relatively small number of scholars and policy analysts to become a global field with thousands of students worldwide studying displacement, either from traditional disciplinary perspectives or as a core component of newer interdisciplinary programmes across the Humanities and Social and Political Sciences. Today the field encompasses both rigorous academic research as well as action-research focused on advocating in favour of refugees’ needs and rights and more directly concerned with influencing policy and practice. The Handbook’s fifty-two state-of-the-art chapters, written by leading academics, practitioners, and policymakers working in universities, research centres, think tanks, NGOs, and international organizations across every continent, provide a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the key intellectual, political, social, and institutional challenges arising from mass displacement in the world today.

Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 800p.