By  Ximena Canal Laiton

This paper explores the use of smugglers by Latin American and Caribbean migrants on their journeys to North America. It is based on responses to more than 3,000 4Mi surveys conducted in Costa Rica, Honduras and Mexico in 2022 and 2023 and includes findings on profiles of migrants who hired smugglers as well as information on the services they sought and their general perceptions of smugglers. As such, this paper provides a wealth of solid empirical evidence with a view to informing the work of policymakers and humanitarian actors.

Geneva, SWIT: Mixed Migration Centre. 2024, 14pg

By Shreya Bhat and Hui Yin Chuah

Mixed migration from Myanmar to countries in South and Southeast Asia has become a common phenomenon driven by various factors, including violence, insecurity, conflict, deprivation of rights, and economic reasons. The complexity of migration journeys is evident, often involving transit through multiple locations over extended periods. This report underscores the integral role of smugglers in facilitating migration from Myanmar to Malaysia and Thailand, influenced by a complex interplay of factors that result in considerable variation in the dynamics of smuggling among different population groups and on different routes. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for developing targeted interventions aimed at addressing the vulnerabilities and challenges faced by refugees and migrants in the region.

Geneva, SWIT: Mixed Migration Centre. 2024, 17pg

By Julia Black

Nearly 60 percent of deaths documented during migration are linked to drowning. Search and rescue capacities to assist migrants in distress at sea must be strengthened to help save lives, while working with IOM, partners, and governments to facilitate regular migration pathways. More than two-thirds of those whose deaths were documented through IOM’s Missing Migrants Project are unidentified. Without knowing the fate of migrants from their households and communities, families and those communities of origin must face the lasting impacts of the ambiguous loss of a loved one. More than one in three migrants whose country of origin could be identified come from countries in conflict. This implies attempts to leave areas of conflict without safe pathways to do so. One of IOM’s strategic priorities is to work with countries to facilitate safe, regular, and orderly pathways to ameliorate unnecessary loss of life through dangerous, irregular means.   

Berlin: Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC) International Organization for Migration (IOM). 2024, 19pg

By Andy Shen and Loria-Mae Heywood  

A new report published today by UNU-CPR’s Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST) initiative argues that a small but significant change to the international anti-money laundering regime – the laws, regulations, and procedures used to tackle money laundering – could have enormous consequences for the fight against human trafficking and forced labour.    

Making knowingly benefitting from human trafficking or forced labour a predicate offense to money laundering, the report stresses, would close the gap between the billions generated from these crimes and the meagre compensation provided to its victims and survivors. This is a challenge that persists despite international law codifying remedy for human rights violations.

New York: United Nations University Centre for Policy Research. 2023, 112pg

By Robin Ghertner, Suzanne Macartney and Meredith Dost

Between 1990 and 2022, the United States welcomed over 2.1 million refugees and accepted over 800,000 asylees. While the purpose of granting visas to refugees and asylees is humanitarian, they do impact the United States economically. This analysis estimates the fiscal impact of refugees and asylees on federal, state, and local governments from 2005 to 2019.

Key Points

• The net fiscal impact of refugees and asylees was positive over the 15-year period, at $123.8 billion. This means that refugees and asylees contributed more revenue than they cost in expenditures to the government. The net fiscal benefit to the federal government was estimated at $31.5 billion, and the net fiscal benefit to state and local governments was estimated at $92.3 billion.

• Governmental expenditures on refugees and asylees totaled an estimated $457.2 billion over the 15-year period. Expenditures by the federal government represented 72.5 percent of the total, at $331.5 billion. State and local government expenditures were 27.5 percent of the total, at $125.7 billion.

• Refugees and asylees contributed an estimated $581 billion in revenue to federal, state and local governments. They contributed an estimated $363 billion to the federal government through payroll, income, and excise taxes, and $218 billion to state and local governments, through income, sales, and property taxes.

• Including refugees and asylees and their spouses and children under age 18, most of whom are U.S. citizens, expenditures totaled $723.4 billion. Refugees, asylees, and their immediate families contributed an estimated $739.4 billion in revenue to all levels of government.

• When compared with the total U.S. population on a per capita basis, refugees and asylees had a comparable net fiscal impact.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2024. 53p.

By Amnesty International

In recent years, human rights defenders and civil society organizations that have helped refugees and migrants have been subjected to unfounded criminal proceedings, undue restrictions of their activities, intimidation, harassment, and smear campaigns in several European countries. Their acts of assistance and solidarity have placed them on a collision course with European migration policies. These policies are aimed at preventing refugees and migrants from reaching the EU, at containing those who make it to Europe in their first country of arrival, and at deporting as many as possible back to their countries of origin.

By rescuing refugees and migrants in danger at sea or in the mountains, offering them food and shelter, documenting police and border guard abuses, and opposing unlawful deportations, human rights defenders have exposed the cruelty caused by immigration policies and have become themselves the target of the authorities. Authorities and political leaders have treated acts of humanity as a threat to national security and public order, further hindering their work and forcing them to divest their scarce resources and energy into defending themselves in court.

This report shows how European governments, EU institutions and authorities have deployed an array of restrictive, sanctioning and punitive measures against individuals and groups who defend the rights of people on the move, including by using immigration and counter-terrorism regulations to unduly restrict the right to defend human rights.

London, Amnesty International. 2020, 92pg

By Marta Gionco and Jyothi Kanics 

The European Union (EU) is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights.8 The Treaty on European Union (TEU) underlines that these values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and gender equality prevail.9

Yet, in recent years, these values have been under threat within the EU, as many Member States’ policies and actions have led to a “shrinking space” for civil society. Perhaps this trend is nowhere more evident than in the treatment of migrants in Europe and the human rights defenders working to assist them. The “criminalisation of solidarity” strikes at the heart of European values and contributes to the erosion of rule of law and democracy, while seriously impacting the rights and welfare of the most vulnerable in our societies and those who seek to protect and assist them. The criminalisation of solidarity with migrants remains a widespread phenomenon across the EU. According to our media monitoring, at least 89 people were criminalised in the EU between January 2021 and March 2022.10 Out of them, 18 people faced new charges, while the other 71 were ongoing cases from previous years. Four of them are migrants themselves. Three people were convicted and 15 acquitted, while all the other cases are still ongoing. People have been criminalised for actions including providing food, shelter, medical assistance, transportation and other humanitarian aid to migrants in dire conditions; assisting with asylum applications; and rescuing migrants at sea. In the vast majority of the cases (88%), human rights defenders were charged with facilitation of entry, transit or stay, or migrant smuggling (depending on how the crime is defined in the national legislation).11 It is also notable that the criminalisation of solidarity has continued, and in certain cases even soared (see section 1.2), during periods in which many countries adopted COVID-19 restrictions, at a time when human rights defenders risked their own personal safety and health to leave their homes to help others. Emergency measures adopted to address the COVID-19 pandemic have been used to limit access to reception facilities and detention centres, to impose fines on organisations providing services during lock-downs or after the curfew, and to limit the right to freedom of assembly. National data further contributes to give an idea of the magnitude of the criminalisation of solidarity in the EU. For example, according to the Polish civil society network Grupa Granica, nearly 330 people were detained for helping people crossing borders irregularly between Belarus and Poland between August and November 2021.12 Those detained include EU nationals as well as migrants and their family members, many of whom had residence permits in Belgium, Germany and Poland. Many are likely to have been motivated by humanitarian reasons, including helping family members. In another example, a total of 972 people were convicted in Switzerland in 2018 on grounds of facilitation of irregular entry or stay.13 The vast majority, almost 900 people, acted out of solidarity or family reasons.

Belgium, PICUM. 2022, 66pg

By  Alyna C. Smith and Michele LeVoy

  Impact of insecure residence status on safety and access to justice The criminalisation of irregular migration makes people who are undocumented fearful of engaging with public authorities, and especially with the police, because of the risk that they will be detained and ordered to leave the territory as a result. This distrust is worsened by policing and surveillance of migrant and minority communities. The detention and deportation of people who have experienced abuse and mistreatment is a form of secondary victimisation. The systematic failure of the state to recognise, investigate and remedy abuses committed against undocumented victims denies them recognition and accountability.   

Belgium, PICUM, 2021, 44pg

By PICUM -  Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants

This paper outlines and addresses the particular circumstances and impacts of criminalisation frameworks on the human rights and dignity of undocumented migrant sex workers. Understanding the intersection of the criminalisation of migration and criminalisation of sex work enables an approach which safeguards the human rights and dignity of undocumented migrant sex workers. A number of undocumented migrants work in sex work. They face multiple layers of discrimination, social exclusion, stigma and poverty, due to their migration status and their occupation (as well as any other intersectional forms of discrimination including gender, ethnic or social origin, sexual orientation or gender identity, disability, etc.). PICUM’s concern is not about the judgment of sex work itself, but whether undocumented migrant sex workers have protections and their rights upheld. As more people fall into irregularity across Europe, more undocumented migrants will likely engage in sex work for survival and to generate an income. It is therefore important that PICUM outlines how criminalisation frameworks exacerbate the myriad issues faced by undocumented migrants and works to reduce the harmful impacts of these frameworks. PICUM has worked for eighteen years to address the impacts of criminalisation frameworks on undocumented migrants. Over the past four years, PICUM has had discussions with organisations working with undocumented migrants selling sexual services, both within and outside of PICUM’s membership, including sex worker-led organisations. Several workshops on the challenges facing undocumented migrant sex workers were held at PICUM’s Annual General Assemblies, in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. During the same time period, dedicated sessions on this issue were held within PICUM’s Executive Committee, and having considered the available evidence, this paper is a result of this process. The paper concludes that criminalising the purchase and facilitation of sex work impacts negatively on sex workers, and that the impacts are multiplied when sex workers are undocumented migrants.

Being an undocumented sex worker adds a layer of discrimination, social exclusion and precarity vis-à-vis public services and authorities. Many undocumented sex workers experience theft, violence, harassment, exploitation, evictions and homelessness. They are unable to report crimes to the police without risking deportation, and police are sometimes the perpetrators of violence. They have limited access to essential services including health care, and face immense barriers to accessing protection and justice. Undocumented sex workers are disproportionately subject to police harassment and targeted for immigration enforcement, including as a result of anti-trafficking initiatives. A holistic response is needed to address the human rights violations and lack of opportunities faced by undocumented migrant sex workers. Reforms of policies addressing poverty and discrimination, social services and security, labour rights, immigration and housing, among others, are all needed to provide people with the resources and security they need, both while they are sex workers, and so they don’t have to engage in sex work. Within this, decriminalisation is one of the crucial steps to support the empowerment, human rights and dignity of sex workers. Nonetheless, PICUM will continue to engage in dialogue and work with those of our members and partner organisations with different approaches, focusing on areas of shared concern and action.    

Brussels, Belgium: PICUM. 2019, 32pg

By Nicole Ward and Jeanne Batalova

The United States is in the midst of an historic period in its immigration history, facing a changing composition of the immigrant population, pandemic-related pent-up demand for permanent and temporary visas resulting in extensive backlogs, record pressure at the U.S.-Mexico border, and somewhat decreasing public support for expanded immigration. Legal permanent and temporary immigration rose in 2022 after a few years of chill brought about by the COVID-19 public-health crisis and the Trump administration’s restrictive policies and rhetoric. Amid crises around the world, the Biden administration extended or expanded Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for certain eligible immigrants already in the United States and announced special humanitarian parole programs allowing some migrants from several countries to enter the United States and stay temporarily. At the southwest border, record numbers of migrant encounters in 2022 accompanied court orders preventing the Biden administration from revoking the Title 42 public-health order authorizing the rapid expulsion of asylum seekers and other migrants. The administration has proposed a revised system to govern asylum at the border, but as of this writing the situation remains in flux. To promote orderly arrival and processing of asylum seekers and expedite the expulsion of unauthorized migrants, in January 2023 the Biden administration announced another humanitarian parole program to include up to 30,000 authorized newcomers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela every month if they have a U.S. sponsor. This program was followed by controversial proposed changes to U.S. asylum system. Worldwide, the United States is home to more international migrants than any other country, and more than the next four countries—Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United Kingdom—combined, according to the UN Population Division’s mid-2020 data. While the U.S. population represents about 5 percent of the total world population, close to 20 percent of all global migrants reside in the United States. This Spotlight offers information about the approximately 45.3 million immigrants in the United States as of 2021, by compiling the most authoritative and current data available. It provides an overview of historic immigration trends in the United States, sociodemographic information about who is immigrating, through which channels, and how many immigrants become naturalized citizens. It also provides data on the government’s enforcement actions and adjudication efforts to process visas.

Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2023. 34p.

Edited by Sally Baker

Welcome to this open access annotated bibliography, which has been curated by a collective of scholars who share an interest in the impacts of forced migration on people from refugee, asylum seeking and Culturally and Linguistically Marginalised (CALM) migrant backgrounds. These resources are intended to be shared with the international community of researchers, students, educators, and practitioners who work with, or are interested in, forced migration, education, employment, and resettlement. This bibliography offers a snapshot of some of the available literature that relates to the following areas of scholarly and practitioner interest:

• Refugees and access to, participation in, and transition out of higher education.

• Schooling and refugee youth.

• Adult Education (including learning host language and literacies).

• Resettlement of refugees and CALM migrants.

• Employment of refugees and CALM migrants in resettlement contexts.

• People seeking asylum in Australia.

• Discourses and media narratives relating to forced migration.

• Methodological and ethical discussions relating to research with refugees.

• Citizenship and refugees.

• Complementary pathways, including education pathways.

In this library, you will find summaries and annotated bibliographies of literature with a common focus on refugees and asylum seekers (and to a lesser extent CALM migrants more broadly). This literature has been organised thematically according to patterns that have emerged from a deep and sustained engagement with the various fields that relate to the access to, participation in and ‘success’ of people from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds in resettlement, education and employment. The thematic organisation of the bibliography does not reflect the intersecting and complex overlaps of the various foci in the literature, so please keep in mind that this is an interpretive exercise and one that could easily be reworked by another set of authors.

Sydney: Refugee Education Special Interest Group. 2024. 764p.

By Jukka Könönen

Notwithstanding claims about the emergence of ‘crimmigration’ systems, immigration law and criminal law entail two different sets of instruments for authorities to control foreign nationals. Drawing on an analysis of removal orders for foreign offenders in Finland, this article demonstrates that significant administrative powers in immigration enforcement are employed largely autonomously from the criminal justice system. Immigration law enables the police and immigration officials to issue removal orders based on fines or penal orders for (suspected) minor offences, without obtaining criminal convictions. In addition to disproportionate administrative sanctions for foreign nationals, removal orders involve a preventive rationale targeting future risks for the society based on the assumed continuation of criminal activities. While criminal courts adjudicate all severe offences, punitive application of immigration law enables authorities to bypass criminal justice procedures and safeguards, resulting in a distinct, administrative punitive system for visiting third-country nationals.

Theoretical Criminology Volume 28, Issue 1, February 2024, Pages 70-87

By Milena Belloni

Tens of thousands of Eritreans make perilous voyages across Africa and the Mediterranean Sea every year. Why do they risk their lives to reach European countries where so many more hardships await them? By visiting family homes in Eritrea and living with refugees in camps and urban peripheries across Ethiopia, Sudan, and Italy, Milena Belloni untangles the reasons behind one of the most under-researched refugee populations today. Balancing encounters with refugees and their families, smugglers, and visa officers, The Big Gamble contributes to ongoing debates about blurred boundaries between forced and voluntary migration, the complications of transnational marriages, the social matrix of smuggling, and the role of family expectations, emotions, and values in migrants’ choices of destinations. 

Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 2019, 242pg

By Vinh Nguyen

In a world increasingly shaped by displacement and migration, refuge is both a coveted right and an elusive promise for millions. While conventionally understood as legal protection, it also transcends judicial definitions. In Lived Refuge, Vinh Nguyen reconceptualizes refuge as an ongoing affective experience and lived relation rather than a fixed category with legitimacy derived from the state.

Focusing on Southeast Asian diasporas in the wake of the Vietnam War, Nguyen examines three affective experiences—gratitude, resentment, and resilience—to reveal the actively lived dimensions of refuge. Through multifaceted analyses of literary and cultural productions, Nguyen argues that the meaning of refuge emerges from how displaced people negotiate the kinds of safety and protection that are offered to (and withheld from) them. In so doing, he lays the framework for an original and compelling understanding of contemporary refugee subjectivity.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 2023, 186pg

By Julia Neusner and Kennji Kizuka. Eleanor Acer, Robyn Barnard, Licha Nyiendo, and Sydney Randall

On August 8, 2022, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the end of the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” (RMX) policy. The announcement came after a federal district court, following a Supreme Court ruling in June 2022, lifted an injunction that had blocked the Biden administration’s termination of the policy and had compelled its reimplementation.

While the district court order was in effect, thousands more asylum seekers were returned by DHS to dangerous regions of Mexico. There they were forced to wait for immigration court hearings despite being almost entirely cut off from lawyers who could represent them in their requests for refugee protection. In December 2021, DHS stated that in reimplementing RMX it had taken steps to “enhance[] protections” and “protect[] individuals’ rights to a full and fair hearing.”

But the RMX policy—and others like it that would force asylum seekers to wait outside the United States for their cases to be heard—simply cannot be implemented lawfully, safely, fairly, or humanely. During the court-ordered reimplementation of RMX (or RMX 2.0), asylum seekers reported horrific kidnappings, rapes, and other violent attacks after DHS returned them to Mexico. RMX hearings also remained a due process farce. Only a tiny percentage of the individuals whose cases were decided under RMX 2.0 managed to find attorneys to represent them. A vanishingly small number of the mainly Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans subjected to the policy were granted asylum—just 63 people out of more than 1,600 completed cases. This slow winddown process comes as state politicians aligned with the former Trump administration are, yet again, seeking to force the return of RMX. After the Supreme Court rejected their initial case, they amended their lawsuit to challenge the memoranda DHS issued to re-terminate the policy. In early September 2022, the same district court that ordered the Biden administration to restart RMX will consider this latest cynical ploy to force the policy’s continuation—an attempt to again block asylum seekers from safety and subject them to the horrifying human rights abuses detailed in this report. At the same time, the similarly harmful Title 42 policy remains in effect. A court order blocking its termination has resulted in the continued shutdown of normal asylum processing at ports of entry and continued expulsions to highly dangerous places, which at the moment overwhelmingly target asylum seekers and migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. Working closely with many other organizations, Human Rights First has monitored and reported on the Remain in Mexico policy since its inception in January 2019, conducting in-depth research and issuing a series of reports in February 2019, August 2019, October 2019, December 2019, January 2020, May 2020, December 2020, December 2021, and January 2022. This report is based on in-person interviews Human Rights First conducted with attorneys and RMX enrollees in Tijuana in April and September 2022; remote interviews held between April and September 2022 with attorneys and asylum seekers returned to Mexico under RMX 2.0; a review of anonymized notes from nearly 2,700 interviews conducted by pro bono law firms and non-governmental organizations providing legal information to individuals placed in RMX 2.0 (representing approximately one quarter of all people enrolled in RMX during the Biden administration); government data, media accounts, and other human rights reports.

New York: Human Rights First, 2022. 26p.

By Karolina Sobczak-Szelc, Marta Pachocka, Konrad Pędziwiatr, Justyna Szałańska, Monika Szulecka

This book sheds light on the complex experiences of asylum seekers and refugees in Poland, against a local backdrop of openly anti-refugee political narratives and strong opposition to sharing the responsibility for, and burden of, asylum seekers arriving in the EU. Through a multidimensional analysis, it highlights the processes of forced migrant admission, reception and integration in a key EU frontier country that has undergone a rapid migration status change from a transit to a host country. The book examines rich qualitative material drawn from interviews conducted with forced migrants with different legal statuses and with experts from public administration at the central and local levels, NGOs, and other institutions involved in migration governance in Poland. It discusses both opportunities for and limitations on forced migrants’ adaptation in the social, economic, and political dimensions, as well as their access to healthcare, education, the labour market, and social assistance. This book will be of particular interest to scholars, students, policymakers, and practitioners in migration and asylum studies, social policy, public policy, international relations, EU studies/European integration, law, economics, and sociology.

London; New York: Routledge, 2023. 256p

Edited by Kimberly Gauderman

This multidisciplinary volume brings together experienced expert witnesses and immigration attorneys to highlight best practices and strategies for giving expert testimony in asylum cases. As the scale and severity of violence in Latin America has grown in the last decade, scholars and attorneys have collaborated to defend the rights of immigrant women, children, and LGBTQ+ persons who are threatened by gender-based, sexual, and gang violence in their home countries. Researchers in anthropology, history, political science, and sociology have regularly supported the work of immigration lawyers and contributed to public debates on immigration reform, but the academy contains untapped scholarly expertise that, guided by the resources provided in this handbook, can aid asylum seekers and refugees and promote the fair adjudication of asylum claims in US courts. As the recent refugee crisis of immigrant mothers and children and unaccompanied minors has made clear, there is an urgent need for academics to work with other professionals to build a legal framework and national network that can respond effectively to this human rights crisis.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2023. 211p.

Edited by Irina Isaakyan, Anna Triandafyllidou, Simone Baglioni

Through an inter-subjective lens, this open access book investigates the initial labour market integration experiences of these migrants, refugees or asylum seekers, who are characterised by different biographies and migration/asylum trajectories. The book gives voice to the migrants and seeks to highlight their own experiences and understandings of the labour market integration process, in the first years of immigration. It adopts a critical, qualitative perspective but does not remain ethnographic. The book rather refers the migrants’ own voice and experience to their own expert knowledge of the policy and socio-economic context that is navigated. Each chapter brings into dialogue the migrant’s intersubjective experiences with the relevant policies and practices, as well as with the relevant stakeholders, whether local government, national services, civil society or migrant organisations. The book concludes with relevant critical insights as to how labour market integration is lived on the ground and on what migrants ‘do’ with labour market policies rather than on what labour market policies ‘do’ to or for migrants.

Cham: Springer, 2023. 231p.

By Tom K. Wong 

On May 13th, 2023, the U.S. Immigration Policy Center (USIPC) at UC San Diego interviewed asylum seekers detained by Border Patrol (BP) in the Jacumba desert. Over 1,000 people seeking asylum and refuge from nearly every part of the world were held in three makeshift encampments on the U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexico border without adequate food, water, or shelter. Under the hot desert sun, the USIPC donated supplies and joined volunteers as they brought food, baby food, water, hygiene kits, clothes, blankets, diapers, and other supplies to these migrants. Using stratified random sampling during aid distribution in Camp 2, USIPC conducted fifteen structured interviews with asylum seekers. With approximately 150 people in Camp 2, these interviews represent a 10 percent sample. These data make clear that despite assertions by Border Patrol that the migrants were not being detained, they were surrounded by Border Patrol agents and would be apprehended if they tried to leave. This is consequential because those in Border Patrol custody, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search (TEDS), are entitled to basic humane treatment. The asylum seekers that we interviewed were only given one water bottle each day in the morning, were not given any food, were not given any shelter to protect themselves from the sun, and were not given blankets to keep themselves warm at night. Lastly, the data show that those seeking asylum have been ignored by Border Patrol agents, have been unable to formally request asylum, and have been denied due process.   

La Jolla, CA:  US Immigration Policy Center University of California San Diego (UCSD), 2023. 8p.

By Daniela Alulema and Jacquelyn Pavilon

New York City is a “welcoming city” that encourages “all New Yorkers regardless of immigration status” to access the public benefits and services for which they qualify (NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs or “MOIA” 2021a). Moreover, it invests significant resources in educating immigrant communities on this core commitment and its lack of participation in federal immigration enforcement activities. However, this report by the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) finds that immigrants in New York City still face significant barriers to accessing public benefits and services.

The report is based on CMS research that examined immigrant fear and other barriers in three general areas: the use of public benefits, with a particular focus on the public charge rule; the use of public health services; and access to law enforcement and the courts. The report documents how Trump-era immigration policies perpetuated fear among immigrant communities, in the context of other barriers to accessing services and benefits, and why its detrimental impacts have persisted and outlived the Trump administration.

The research included semi-structured interviews with 75 immigrants across all five boroughs of New York City and two focus groups with immigrants in both English and Spanish. The interviews documented the prevalence and impact of fear and other factors that impede (and facilitate) immigrants’ use of public benefits and services. The respondents were from 30 countries across all regions of the world and had varied legal statuses and lengths of stay in the United States. The CMS research team also interviewed 16 social service providers from community-based organizations (CBOs) and New York City agencies, including the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH) and the Human Resources Administration/Department of Social Services (HRA), and eight healthcare providers and social workers from the city’s public hospital system, NYC Health + Hospitals, who worked with immigrants across the city.

The project ran from January 2020 through October 2021, spanning most of the last year of the Trump administration and most of the first year of the Biden administration. Data collection started in November 2020 and extended through the COVID-19 vaccine rollout starting in spring 2021. The report finds that Trump-era anti-immigrant rhetoric and immigration policies, including aggressive enforcement tactics and a new rule on the public charge ground of inadmissibility, exacerbated long-standing fear pertaining to lack of status, family separation, detention, and deportation. The COVID-19 pandemic has further increased the need for services and assistance for all New Yorkers, including immigrants.

The report also finds that the change in administration, the widespread recognition of the essential work of immigrants in response to COVID-19, and the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on immigrant and minority communities did not eliminate immigrants’ fear or other barriers to accessing public benefits and protection in one of the most immigrant-welcoming communities in the country. Misinformation, language barriers, culturally-rooted concerns, and discrimination continued to impede immigrants from coming forward for needed services and benefits for which they or their family members are qualified. As one immigrant explained: Yes, I’m aware the public charge act has been rescinded by the Biden administration, but people still think it is not safe. People will tell you, ‘Yes, but you never know when [the rule could] come back.’ They say they don’t want to jeopardize their chances of bringing their children, so they want to focus on the bigger picture as opposed to some money.

The report finds that while government agencies, hospitals, and CBOs have all taken steps to minimize gaps in service provision and to mitigate immigrants’ fear, more can and should be done. It offers the following top-line findings, supplemented by additional findings in the body of the report:

The Public Charge Rule and Immigrants’ Concerns on the Use of Public Benefits

Many respondents underutilized benefits for which they were eligible due to fears pertaining to immigration status, family separation, detention, and deportation. For example, a service provider recounted a case in which a mother feared that her US citizen children would be negatively impacted in the future for having used food stamps: She’s an immigrant. It’s her husband and her, and [her] two American citizen [children]. The husband died due to COVID. When she applied [for food stamps,] she really didn’t want to apply. She was under the impression that also her kids are going to be penalized and they’re going to have to pay this back when they grow up. Because she doesn’t have any status, she was afraid. If she want[ed] to apply, she could, for the kids. … I had mentioned to her [what] the requirements [were], which [were] proof of income and address, and she said that she will get a letter from the employer, because that’s part of the requirements. When she asked for the letter, she got fired. She was just so devastated, because she was at her wit’s end. I called her, and she said, no, she didn’t want to be bothered. She was just so frustrated and devastated, and she just let it go.

Trump administration policies and rhetoric led immigrants to increase their efforts to secure a safer immigration status, including citizenship, and obtain identification documents for themselves and their children. The study found that service providers had to step out of their regular roles to provide the services that the immigrant community needed. In the midst of an unprecedented public health crisis, for example, hospital workers were also helping to fill out patients’ citizenship applications.

Context and location strongly influenced the comfort level of immigrants in sharing information which would allow them to access benefits and services. Many immigrants feared sharing identifying information in government buildings, but not as much in other settings or online.

Large numbers of respondents feared the use of public benefits, including by their US citizen children, due to misinformation about the impact of the new public charge rule on their ability and the ability of family members to secure legal status or permanent residence. Social media has made it easier to spread incomplete information or misinformation about the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in local neighborhoods, as well as about the details of the public charge rule........

New York: Center for Migration Studies, 2022. 69p.