The Center for Migration Studies (CMS) is an educational institute devoted to the study of migration, to the promotion of understanding between immigrants and receiving communities, and to public policies that safeguard the dignity and rights of migrants and newcomers. CMS was established in 1964 and formally incorporated in 1969 by the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles, Scalabrinians. It was co-founded and directed over its first several decades by Fr. Lydio Tomasi, C.S., Ph.D. (now pastor of Holy Rosary Church in Washington, DC) and Fr. Silvano Tomasi, C.S., Ph.D. (now Archbishop and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva). CMS operates as a legally distinct, tax-exempt agency, with an independent Board of Trustees.
Since its founding, the Center has carried out its mission in three principal ways. First, it has published cutting-edge journals, books, magazines, conference proceedings, occasional papers, and policy-related analysis. Its signature publication, the International Migration Review (IMR), is the leading social science journal covering the field of international migration. Second, it has sponsored conferences, meetings, briefings, and seminars on migration-related issues and policies. Its gatherings have served as fora for the dissemination of research, policy analysis, information and ideas between a broad range of stakeholders on migration issues, including United Nations entities, government officials, non-governmental organizations, scholars, community-based organizations, the media and the private sector. CMS convenes and engages diverse stakeholders in order to elucidate and to identify policy responses to the recurrent challenges in the field. Third, CMS maintains an extensive set of archives on the history of immigration in the United States, which has served as an invaluable resource for generations of researchers and scholars. The archives provide a first-hand, primary source account of how key leaders, institutions and communities addressed the opportunities, hostility and difficulties faced by successive waves of immigrants to the United States.
