CMS Reports
CMS Reports offer original research based on rigorous investigation and fieldwork. These reports, supported by literature reviews, direct observation, interviews, collective discussions, and expert and community engagement, seek to provide all stakeholders with quantitative and qualitative analysis and new perspectives on emerging issues in the field of international migration.
Reports
Jacquelyn Pavilon and Vicky Virgin
Social Determinants of Immigrants’ Health in New York City: A Study of Six Neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens
More than 3.1 million immigrants reside in New York City, comprising more than a third of the city’s total population. The boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens are home to nearly 940,000 and more than 1 million immigrants, respectively. According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s (DOHMH) Community Health Survey (CHS), foreign-born New Yorkers have poorer health and less access to healthcare than their US-born counterparts.
For this study, the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) focused on six neighborhoods in these two boroughs whose immigrant residents were identified by a previous CMS study, Virgin and Warren (2021), as most at risk of poor health outcomes. The CMS research team conducted a survey of 492 immigrants across these six neighborhoods and convened one focus group to collect data on immigrants’ health and well-being. CMS also surveyed 24 service providers including community health clinics, health-focused community-based organizations, and hospitals that work with immigrants in the studied neighborhoods. Analysis of these data, together with the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the DOHMH’s CHS, provides insight into the factors that affect immigrants’ health and wellbeing across these neighborhoods.
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Jacquelyn Pavilon and Vicky Virgin
Climbing the Ladder: Roadblocks Faced by Immigrants in the New York City Construction Industry
Economic exploitation and safety hazards are prevalent across the entire construction industry. However, despite the essential role immigrants play in the construction industry in New York City and the United States, immigrant construction workers are especially vulnerable to exploitation and dangerous conditions. Lack of employment authorization, social safety nets, English proficiency, credentials recognition, and training opportunities, as well as discrimination place immigrants at a stark disadvantage as they try to enter, negotiate, and advance in this industry.
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Daniela Alulema and Jacquelyn Pavilon
Immigrants’ Use of New York City Programs, Services, and Benefits: Examining the Impact of Fear and Other Barriers to Access
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.
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Donald Kerwin, José Pacas, and Robert Warren
Ready to Stay: A Comprehensive Analysis of the US Foreign-Born Populations Eligible for Special Legal Status Programs and for Legalization under Pending Bills
This report offers estimates of US foreign-born populations that are eligible for special legal status programs and those that would be eligible for permanent residence (legalization) under pending bills. It seeks to provide policymakers, government agencies, community-based organizations (CBOs), researchers, and others with a unique tool to assess the potential impact, implement, and analyze the success of these programs. The report views timely, comprehensive data on targeted immigrant populations as an essential pillar of legalization preparedness, implementation, and evaluation. The report and the exhaustive estimates that underlie it, represent a first attempt to provide a detailed statistical profile of beneficiaries of proposed major US legalization programs and special, large-scale legal status programs.
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Donald Kerwin and Daniela Alulema
The CRISIS Survey: The Catholic Church’s Work with Immigrants in the United States in a Period of Crisis
The CRISIS Survey documents the reach, diversity, and productivity of Catholic institutions that work with immigrants and refugees during a pandemic that has particularly devastated their communities and an administration whose policies and rhetoric made their work far more difficult. At a time of rampant “Catholic decline” narratives, the survey also documents the reach, vitality, and relevance of Catholic immigrant-serving institutions. It identifies the obstacles encountered by immigrants in accessing Catholic programs and ministries – both organizational (funding, staffing, and siting) and exogenous (federal policies, the pandemic, and community opposition). It underscores the threat posed by US immigration policies to immigrants and to the work of Catholic institutions.
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Donald Kerwin, Robert Warren, and Charles Wheeler
Making Citizenship an Organizing Principle of the US Immigration System
This paper proposes that the United States treat naturalization not as the culmination of a long and uncertain individual process, but as an organizing principle of the US immigration system and its expectation for new Americans. It comes at a historic inflection point, following the chaotic departure of one of the most nativist administrations in US history and in the early months of a new administration whose executive orders, administrative actions, and legislative proposals augur an entirely different view of immigrants and immigration.
The paper examines two main ways that the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration agenda can be realized – by expanding access to permanent residence and by increasing naturalization numbers and rates. First, it proposes administrative and, to a lesser degree, legislative measures that would expand the pool of eligible-to-naturalize immigrants. Second, it identifies three underlying factors – financial resources, English language proficiency, and education – that strongly influence naturalization rates. It argues that these factors must be addressed, in large part, outside of and prior to the naturalization process. In addition, it provides detailed estimates of populations with large eligible-to-naturalize numbers, populations that naturalize at low rates, and populations with increasing naturalization rates. It argues that the administration’s immigration strategy should prioritize all three groups for naturalization.
The paper endorses the provisions of the US Citizenship Act that would place undocumented and temporary residents on a path to permanent residence and citizenship, would reduce
family- and employment-based visa backlogs, and would eliminate disincentives and barriers to permanent residence. It supports the Biden-Harris administration’s early executive actions and proposes additional measures to increase access to permanent residence and naturalization. It also endorses and seeks to inform the administration’s plan to improve and expedite the naturalization process and to promote naturalization.
Vicky Virgin and Robert Warren
Mapping Key Determinants of Immigrants’ Health in Brooklyn and Queens
This study maps the determinants of immigrant health in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. In doing so, it seeks to enable healthcare providers, government agencies, and non-profit immigrant-serving entities – including faith-based entities – to identify gaps in their services to immigrant populations, and to help meet the need – healthcare and other – of diverse immigrant communities at heightened risk of adverse health outcomes.
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Donald Kerwin and Mike Nicholson
Center for Migration Studies
Charting a Course to Rebuild and Strengthen the US Refugee Admissions Program
This report analyzes the US refugee resettlement program – known as “USRAP” (the US Refugee Admissions Program) – leveraging data from a national survey of resettlement stakeholders conducted in 2020. The survey examined USRAP from the time that refugees arrive in the United States. The survey’s design and questionnaire were informed by three community gatherings organized by Refugee Council USA in the fall and winter of 2019, extensive input from an expert advisory group, and a literature review.
This report finds that USRAP serves important purposes, enjoys extensive community support, and offers a variety of effective services. Overall, the survey finds a high degree of consensus on the US resettlement program’s strengths and objectives, and close alignment between its services and the needs of refugees at different stages of their settlement and integration. Because USRAP’s infrastructure and community-based resettlement networks have been decimated in recent years, the Biden administration’s main challenges will be to rebuild and revitalize the program, educate the public on it, and try to regain broad, bi-partisan support for it. The report also points to specific ways in which USRAP’s programs and services should be strengthened.
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T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Donald Kerwin
Improving the U.S. Immigration System in the First Year of the Biden Administration
The Biden administration will face substantial challenges in putting immigration and refugee policy back on track—not just reversing ill-advised policies of the past four years but also improving a system that was in need of reform well before the current administration took office. In this paper, T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Donald Kerwin highlight a number of reforms that should be prioritized by the Biden administration in its first year.
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Donald Kerwin
Immigrant Detention and COVID-19: How a Pandemic Exploited and Spread through the US Immigrant Detention System
This report reviews US detention developments from March 1 to August 1, 2020, a period when COVID-19 established itself and spread through the sprawling US detention system and beyond it. The report – which CMS updated regularly during this period – documents ICE’s fatally flawed response to this crisis, paying particular attention to the role of the private corporations that largely operate this system. It explores how the pandemic exploited and exacerbated longstanding problems in this system, such as its privatization, prison-like facilities, correctional standards, lack of transparency, and perverse financial incentives.
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Donald Kerwin, Mike Nicholson, Daniela Alulema, Robert Warren
US Foreign-Born Essential Workers by Status and State, and the Global Pandemic
This paper provides comprehensive estimates on immigrant (foreign-born) workers in the United States, employed in “essential critical infrastructure” categories, as defined by the US Department of Homeland Security. It finds that immigrants in the labor force and age 16 and over, work at disproportionate rates in “essential critical infrastructure” jobs. In particular, 69 percent of all immigrants in the labor force and 74 percent of undocumented workers are essential infrastructure workers, compared to 65 percent of the native-born labor force
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Center for Migration Studies
Immigrants Comprise 31 Percent of Workers in New York State Essential Businesses and 70 Percent of the State’s Undocumented Labor Force Works in Essential Businesses
This paper provides estimates on “essential” immigrant workers in New York State. These workers play a central role in safeguarding and sustaining state residents during the COVID-19 pandemic, often at great risk to their health and that of their families. Based on estimates drawn from 2018 US Census data, the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) estimates that 1.8 million immigrants work in jobs in the “essential businesses” identified by New York State. These businesses fall into 10 categories that meet the health, infrastructure, manufacturing, service, food, safety, and other needs of state residents. The majority of the New York foreign-born essential workers – 1.04 million – are naturalized citizens, 458,400 are legal noncitizens (mostly lawful permanent residents or LPRs), and 342,100 are undocumented.
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Donald Kerwin, Daniela Alulema, Michael Nicholson, and Robert Warren
Statelessness in the United States: A Study to Estimate and Profile the US Stateless Population
This report describes a unique methodology to produce estimates and set forth the characteristics of US residents who are potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness. It also lifts up the voices and challenges of stateless persons, and outlines steps to reduce statelessness and to safeguard the rights of stateless persons in the United States.
As part of the study, CMS developed extensive, well-documented profiles of non-US citizen residents who are potentially stateless or potentially at risk of statelessness. It then used these profiles to query American Community Survey data in order to develop provisional estimates and determine the characteristics of these populations.
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Daniela Alulema
DACA and the Supreme Court
On June 15, 2012, President Obama announced the establishment of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The program opened a floodgate that allowed thousands of young Americans to pursue higher education, better job opportunities, and deepen their social ties in the country. DACA soon proved to be a program of national scope and importance with life-altering impact for its beneficiaries, their families and communities. This paper provides provides a demographic and social portrait of DACA recipients, which shows their deep level of integration and their extensive ties in US communities. For the report, CMS also interviewed several DACA recipients in the New York metro area on DACA’s impact in their lives and what its termination would entail.
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Donald Kerwin, Robert Warren, and Mike Nicholson
Proposed Public Charge Rule Would Significantly Reduce Legal Admissions and Adjustment to Lawful Permanent Resident Status of Working Class Persons
On October 10, 2018, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued its long-anticipated proposed rule on inadmissibility on public charge grounds. Under the proposed rule, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officers would consider receipt of cash benefits and, in a break from the past, non-cash medical, housing, and food benefits in making public charge determinations. This focuses on the potential effect of the proposed rule on two populations, undocumented immigrants and nonimmigrants that would otherwise be eligible for legal permanent resident (LPR) status based on a legally qualifying relationship to a US citizen or LPR living in their household. This CMS report analyzes how these populations in 2016 would have fared under the proposed rule. After placing the rule in historic context, the paper profiles these two populations and examines the characteristics that would mitigate in favor of and against their inadmissibility. The study offers a snapshot of these two groups based on estimates derived from the 2016 American Community Survey (ACS).
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Kino Border Initiative, Center for Migration Studies of New York, and Office of Justice and Ecology (OJE) of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States
Communities in Crisis: Interior Removals and Their Human Consequences
The Kino Border Initiative (KBI), CMS, and the Office of Justice and Ecology (OJE) of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States released a new report examining the characteristics of deportees and the effects of deportation. This report details findings from the CRISIS Study (Catholic Removal Impact Survey in Society), which interviewed deportees at KBI’s migrant shelter in Nogales, Sonora, and those affected by deportation in Catholic parishes in Florida, Michigan, and Minnesota. The interviews explored: (1) the impact of removals on deportees, their families, and other community members; (2) the deportation process; and (3) the relationship between deportees and their families. The report also includes policy recommendations to mitigate the ill effects of the administration’s policies and promote the integrity of families and communities, including: using detention as a “last resort;” reducing funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); and limiting collaboration between police and ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
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Scalabrini Migration Study Centers
2018 International Migration Policy Report: Perspectives on the Content and Implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration
The global network of seven Scalabrini think tanks on migration released its second international migration policy report, “Perspectives on the Content and Implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration.” The report examines the issues discussed and negotiated by UN member states in developing the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (“the Compact”). Section 1 explores the issues that have been controversial in negotiations of the Compact and features research on migration challenges, including return migration, labor migration, and unaccompanied migrant children. This section also offers recommendations for how to resolve these issues and ensure the Compact’s successful implementation. Section 2 showcases short essays addressing “on the ground” issues confronting migrants in vulnerable situations, with a focus on how faith-based organizations help fill service and protection gaps. Finally, section 3 presents the numerous interventions made by Scalabrini International Migration Network (SIMN) and CMS during the consultation and negotiation phase of the Compact.
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The US Refugee Resettlement Program – A Return to First Principles: How Refugees Help to Define, Strengthen and Revitalize the United States
This paper examines the integration, achievements and contributions of 1.1 million refugees resettled in the United States from 1987 to 2016. It does so in three ways. First, it compares the household, demographic and economic characteristics of refugees that arrived between 1987 and 2016, to comparable data for non-refugees, the foreign-born, and the total US population. Second, it compares the characteristics of refugees by period of entry, as well as to the foreign-born and total US population. Third, it examines the characteristics of refugees that arrived from the former Soviet Union between 1987 and 1999, measured in 2000 and again in 2016. By all three measures, it finds that refugees successfully integrate over time and contribute immensely to their new communities. Perhaps most dramatically, the paper shows that refugees that arrived between 1987 and 1996 exceed the total US population, which consists mostly of native-born citizens, in personal income, homeownership, college education, labor force participation, self-employment, health insurance coverage, and access to a computer and the internet. The paper also explores the successful public/private partnerships — with a particular focus on Catholic agencies — that facilitate refugee well-being and integration, and that leverage substantial private support for refugees. Overall, the paper argues that the United States should expand and strengthen its refugee resettlement program. The program has advanced US standing in the world, saved countless lives, and put millions on a path to work, self-sufficiency, and integration.
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Center for Migration Studies and Cristosal
Point of No Return: The Fear and Criminalization of Central American Refugees
On World Refugee Day 2017, CMS and Cristosal (El Salvador) released a report detailing ten cases from the Northern Triangle of Central America—four from El Salvador and three each from Guatemala and from Honduras—which chronicle the journeys of refugees in search of protection, how the system did not protect them, and what they face upon return to their home countries. The report concludes that the United States and Mexico are returning Central American asylum-seekers to danger, and, as a result, are violating the international principle of non-refoulement. Overall, 18 cases were interviewed and analyzed for the study. The report includes several policy recommendations for the governments to consider....
Scalabrini Migration Study Centers
International Migration Policy Report: Responsibility Sharing for Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants in Need of Protection
This inaugural report of the Scalabrini migration study centers covers responsibility-sharing for large-scale refugee and migrant populations in need. The report consists of chapters that describe the situation of refugee and migrant populations in select regions around the world and analyzes the responses of states, regional bodies and the international community....
Kevin Appleby
Mission to the Middle East 2017: The Plight of the Displaced
This report from a fact-finding mission to Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Greece offers findings and recommendations based on the delegation’s conversations with actors in the region, including refugees and displaced persons, care providers, representatives of the Catholic Church, their aid agencies, and United Nations officials....
Donald Kerwin and Kyle Barron
Building Structures of Solidarity and Instruments of Justice: The Catholic Immigrant Integration Surveys
In this report, CMS details findings from two surveys distributed to two broad sets of US Catholic institutions – (1) Catholic social and charitable agencies and (2) parishes and schools – to capture their work in helping integrate immigrants in the United States. ...
Donald Kerwin, Roberto Suro, Tess Thorman and Daniela Alulema
The DACA Era and the Continuous Legalization Work of the US Immigrant-Serving Community
This CMS Report documents performance and growing capacity of the immigrant servicing-community during the Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program ...
CMS and SIMN
The Central American Humanitarian Crisis and US Policy Responses
CMS and the Scalabrini International Migration Network (SIMN), a not-for-profit organization focusing on protection and development programs for migrants, report back from a fact-finding mission in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico where the delegation toured migrant detention and return facilities, met with public officials and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and assessed how the US-Mexico policies of deterrence and interdiction have impacted the region and particularly those seeking to flee the record levels of violence in the Northern Triangle states of Central America....