New Zealand drew global attention for its unity and support for the Muslim community targeted during the horrific Christchurch attacks. Yet the country's road to inclusion has been far from straightforward, and amid rising diversity it is grappling with the best way to achieve inclusion for its multiethnic population, including indigenous Māori peoples and migrants. This article outlines the opportunities and challenges to fostering multiculturalism against a backdrop of bicultural policies.

This event hosted by MPI Europe and the Research Unit of the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration featured a discussion of research into legal migration pathways for work and training for low- and middle-skilled migrants.

Amid ongoing debates about the costs and benefits of free movement, this MPI Europe webchat examines big-picture trends of East-West migration; considers possible policy responses at regional, national, and EU levels to alleviate some of the challenges; and reflects on realistic actions that could be taken under the incoming European Commission.

In fiscal year 2018, the U.S. State Department issued 9 million temporary visas, a 7 percent decrease from the previous year. Temporary visa issuance has been declining in recent years, and the Trump administration’s immigration priorities may help explain this trend. This Spotlight explores visa issuance and admission, and highlights key demographic information on visitors for pleasure and business, temporary workers, and foreign students.

Nearly 2.5 million Chinese immigrants lived in the United States in 2018—the third largest foreign-born population in the country. Chinese immigration has grown nearly seven-fold since 1980, and China became the top sending country of immigrants in the United States in 2018, replacing Mexico. Chinese immigrants tend to be highly educated and employed in management positions, as this Spotlight article explores.

While low-skilled workers generally have limited opportunities to legally migrate to the European Union, seasonal migration forms an important exception. This MPI Europe-SVR webinar explores lessons from Europe on managing seasonal worker programs that are responsive to labor market needs but also prioritize the well-being of seasonal workers and interests of receiving countries. 

Japan is hoping to bring in as many as 350,000 medium-skilled foreign workers over five years to fill labor market gaps in its rapidly aging society. Yet does this system of Specified Skilled Workers represent an effort to secure a workforce without making long-term settlement possible? And considering its linkage to a Technical Intern Training Program much criticized for abusive practices, does this change represent real reform? This article examines these and other issues.

This event will feature a screening of the short documentary The Fields of Immokalee, and include a discussion on immigration and politics in Florida and other swing states in the run-up to the 2020 election. 

As governments have reacted to the coronavirus pandemic by closing borders, seasonal workers have been kept out, raising a pressing question: who is going to produce the food amid agricultural labor shortages? Policymakers in the Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America have responded by seeking to recruit residents, lengthen stays for already present seasonal workers, and find ways to continue admitting foreign seasonal labor, as this commentary explores.

Border closures and lockdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic have put a chill on intra-EU labor mobility, most immediately with the difficulty for European farmers to gain access to much-needed seasonal workers and for health-care institutions to get care workers. This article explores how these workers, who often face difficult situations, may be more vulnerable now. It also takes on implications for intra-EU labor mobility post-pandemic.

For children in U.S. homes where a language other than English is spoken, early childhood programs that are responsive to their needs can be key to later academic success. But as states refine their Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) to assess such programs, immigrant early childhood workers with in-demand language and cultural skills may be left behind. This report examines the challenges these workers face and promising practices to serve diverse communities.

Enactment of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015 introduced opportunities to use federal funds to strengthen the early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce as a means of better meeting the needs of the growing and increasingly diverse young child population.

Economists project a shortage of 5 million U.S. workers with postsecondary education and training by 2020. Yet 2 million immigrant college graduates in the United States are either unemployed or work in jobs that require no more than a high school degree. How can this skill underutilization, known as "brain waste," be remedied? MPI asked the experts, and this report summarizes their discussion and recommendations.

The Houston metro area, home to 1.6 million immigrants, is diverse and rapidly growing. This report sketches the area's immigrant population, examining top origin countries, key socioeconomic measures, and more. It also explores how Hurricane Harvey affected the immigrant population, and how national policy changes under the Trump administration are being felt locally, including by DACA recipients and asylum seekers.

This webinar discusses the first-ever profile of the 30 million immigrant-origin adults in the United States who lack a postsecondary credential such as a college degree, apprenticeship certificate, or occupational license. The researchers discuss their findings and policy implications with leading experts.

U.S. debates about immigration from Mexico often center on the low skilled, but this analysis shows a population in change. Nearly one in five Mexican immigrants arriving between 2013-17 had a college degree, compared to slightly more than 1 in 20 during the 1996-2000 period. Mexicans now make up the fourth-largest group of highly skilled immigrants. This fact sheet explores their characteristics at U.S. and Texas levels.

Below I share some details about SACNAS and some of the mathematical events that happened at this year’s SACNAS National Conference.  I hope that this may also serve as an invitation/motivation for anyone interested in diversity and mathematics to participate … Continue reading →

There is so much that is peculiar, irregular, silly, or downright twisted in mathematical verbiage that, certainly, we could all benefit from some soul-searching on the language of our culture. Some of mathematics usage is confusing (e. g. overuse of … Continue reading →

Recently, Abigail Thompson, a Vice President of the AMS and Professor at UC Davis, wrote a short opinion piece coming out against the use of diversity statements in hiring. As I read her piece, I found myself troubled by some … Continue reading →

In which I write about the wonderful mathematics that I learned inspired by a graphics design student I met at a Halloween party.

In case you want to catch up: here are Parts 1 & 2 of my first-year journey. We like to think that our life stories have happy endings, perhaps that we can carefully partition our lives into fourths of each … Continue reading →

I didn’t go to the joint meetings (JMM) this year. This is despite the following good reasons I had to go:  I’m in my fifth year, applying for jobs, and this is the time when you’re supposed to get out … Continue reading →

Acknowledgments: Special THANKS to Matthias Beck, Ben Braun, Pamela Harris, Max Hlavacek, Mariel Supina, Julie Vega, and the Discrete Geometry Group/The Villa at FU Berlin. I recently came back from a research visit to the Freie Universität in Berlin where … Continue reading →

I have never watched Hidden Figures. Was that a bad way to start off an article concerning the late Katherine Johnson, the NASA legend whose persistence, precision, and proclivity for mathematics sent America to space in the 1960s? Maybe it was. … Continue reading →

Hi all, 2020 has been a complicated year so far, and things are only going to get more complicated as the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve been thinking a lot about teaching recently, (as I’m the instructor for a class of undergrad … Continue reading →

So around two months ago, as the novel coronavirus was just breaking in the Western media, I wrote a post bemoaning the culture of carbon-intensive academic travel. Funny — here we are, barely a quarter of the way into the … Continue reading →

Six months on from the original March 2019 Brexit date and staring a new deadline in the face, many EU countries still had only skeletal plans for how to adjust the status of their resident UK nationals should a no-deal Brexit come to pass. This policy brief highlights critical gaps in these plans, the groups most likely to be affected by them, and strategies Member States and the United Kingdom could adopt to soften the impact.

Migration between Mexico and the United States has changed dramatically in recent years, but policies and political rhetoric in both countries have not always kept up. This report, which draws from discussions of a high-level Mexico-U.S. study group convened by MPI and El Colegio de México, explores this new migration reality and how the two governments could work more closely together to address shared policy challenges.

La migración entre México y Estados Unidos ha cambiado dramáticamente en los últimos años, pero las políticas y la retórica política en ambos países no se han actualizado a este contexto a la misma velocidad. Este reporte explora esta nueva realidad migratoria y cómo los dos gobiernos podrían trabajar juntos para abordar los desafíos de políticas públicas que tienen en común.

As EU Member States struggle to deliver on the European Union's call to expand channels for foreign workers, they should focus more on attracting the middle- and low-skilled third-country nationals needed by the labor market yet for whom few opportunities for admission exist. They also would do well to consider their migration policies in light of labor market, foreign policy, and development objectives, rather than as a means to reduce irregular migration, this report cautions.

One of the major challenges Canada faced during its extraordinary push to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees during a four-month period was to find housing for these newcomers. This report explores how the government, resettlement case workers, and private citizens tackled this challenge—balancing cost and location, access to services, and more—and how lessons learned can improve refugee housing practices for other countries going forward.

Rising numbers of refugees and asylum seekers in Europe and North America have been matched by an equally unprecedented outpouring of public support. How can service providers most effectively harness this volunteering? This report considers where community members can add the most value to integration efforts and offers recommendations for how policymakers can facilitate the effective engagement of communities in integration initiatives.

Seasonal worker programs in the European Union have a long history, but have yet to find the sweet spot of working for migrants, employers, and countries of destination and origin alike. This policy brief explores some of the challenges common to these programs—drawing on examples in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand—and highlights promising practices.

Brussels is searching for bright ideas on how to fix the Common European Asylum System. While recent EU-level legal reforms have stalled, this report examines the many innovative, operations-focused approaches Member States have used since the 2015-16 migration crisis to improve registration and reception systems, asylum case processing, and options for returning failed asylum seekers.

Six million immigrant workers are at the frontlines of keeping U.S. residents healthy and fed during the COVID-19 pandemic, representing disproportionate shares of physicians, home health aides, and retail-store pharmacists, for example. They also are over-represented in sectors most immediately devastated by mass layoffs, yet many will have limited access to safety-net systems and to federal relief, as this fact sheet details.

The U.S. government has made important progress in shoring up weaknesses at the nexus of immigration and national security since September 11, 2001. But as new threats emerge and evolve—including public-health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic—the question is whether the post-9/11 system is up to the task of meeting these challenges, as this report explores.

In an era of stepped-up immigration enforcement, speakers at this event present their research on the impact of enforcement policies on children from immigrant families and U.S. public schools. 

As the number and share of Dual Language Learners (DLLs) continues to grow across the United States, diversity within this population is also increasing. This webinar marks the release of a report providing analysis of the diversity within the DLL population nationwide and at the state and local levels. Speakers discuss data on the three rapidly growing subgroups within the DLL population: Black and Asian American and Pacific Islander DLLs and young children of refugees, and the implications for the early education and care field and K-12 education systems. 

Marking the release of an MPI report, this webinar examines the challenges and successes major host countries in Europe and North America are experiencing in providing high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) services for children from refugee and asylum seeker families.

Marking the release of two research reports that highlight promising, effective approaches to teaching and learning for Dual Language Learners in multilingual, multicultural classrooms, report authors present their findings on this webinar and discuss key implications for policy and practice.

Marking the release of an MPI brief, experts on this webinar examine the key features of English Learner (EL) instructional models and discuss state- and district-level approaches to supporting schools in implementing effective EL program models, with a particular focus on what is being done in New York and Madison Wisconsin. 

Experts on this webinar discussed the effects of trauma on the development of young refugee children, and how early child-care programs can address these traumatic experiences. The discussion featured practical strategies that child-care providers in Canada are implementing to support refugee children and families. 

Dual Language Learners (DLLs) are a growing segment of the Minnesota young child population, and a particularly "superdiverse" one with myriad origins, cultures, and languages—a new reality other states and communities will face. Drawing on interviews with policymakers and service providers, as well as analysis of census data, this report examines what this incredible diversity means for the state’s early childhood policies and programs.

During this webinar, speakers discuss a MPI policy brief that explores the intersection of trauma and early childhood development, exploring how migration-related trauma and stressors can influence the wellbeing of young children of immigrants, and points to key opportunities for states to support, through early childhood and other programs.

Marking the release of an MPI report, this webinar examines the intersection between immigration and child welfare systems and promising child welfare policies and agency approaches to address the needs of children of immigrants and their families.

Across the United States, nearly 2 million immigrants with college degrees are unemployed or stuck in low-skilled jobs. This skill underutilization, known as “brain waste,” varies significantly by state. These fact sheets offer a profile of these highly skilled immigrants and estimate their forgone earnings and resulting unrealized tax receipts in eight states: California, Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.

These fact sheets provide a sociodemographic sketch of parents with children ages 0 to 8 in the 30 states with the largest number of immigrant families, offering data and analysis of some of the key parental characteristics to help stakeholders identify populations that could be targets for early childhood and parent-focused programs working to improve child and parent outcomes.

As states work to build high-quality early childhood systems and implement the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) and Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), having detailed knowledge of the characteristics of immigrant parents can help maximize the effectiveness of programs that seek to improve child and family outcomes, as this commentary explains.

Marking the release of an MPI report, researchers and practitioners on this webinar discuss brain waste among college-educated immigrants and initiatives that ease the barriers foreign-educated newcomers confront with regards to credential recognition, employment, and relicensure, as well as recent policy developments and ongoing challenges in the field.

Nearly 2 million college-educated immigrants in the United States, more than half coming with academic and professional credentials, are unable to fully utilize their professional skills and instead are stuck in low-skilled work or are unemployed. This report explores a range of programs and policies that are providing cutting-edge career navigation, relicensing, gap filling, and job search assistance to remedy this brain waste.