August is typically a slow policy month in Washington, DC, due to Congress’s summer recess. But while the Members are out of sight, their collective failures remain top of mind and on full display. We’ve watched countless state and local officials point to critical labor shortages that are holding their…

Welcome to Emerson Collective’s Immigration Update, a monthly newsletter that tries to make sense of important immigration-related developments by situating them in broader policy, political, and human contexts. A recurrent theme of this monthly missive is that, in the absence of a functioning system, federal agencies and courts have been…

Welcome to Immigrant Heritage Month! Since June of 2014, Immigrant Heritage Month has prompted people across the United States to explore their own heritage and celebrate our shared diversity. It reminds us that America is defined in no small part by the resilience, courage, and ingenuity of everyone who seeks…

Notwithstanding April’s reputation as “the cruelest month”, immigration policy largely skated free of spring’s torments. Instead, we saw the seeds of progress sprout on regional migration collaboration at the national and local levels, long overdue health care access granted to DACA recipients, and a farmworker organizer appointed to run Biden’s…

Once again, this month brought into sharp relief the tragic human costs of our broken immigration system: at least 39 migrants died in a fire at an immigrant detention facility on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border, while historic numbers of people are forced to traverse deadly routes in…

February started with welcome news that the Administration intends to end the national health emergency, thus terminating the dubious legal justification for rapidly expelling asylum seekers. Despite the auspicious beginning, the month proved to be challenging. From a deeply misguided asylum proposal to a heartbreaking report that more than 3,800…

In late December, in a final act of political obstruction before handing the reins to a new Congress, Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan agreement that would have invested in border security infrastructure and established a path to permanent status for Dreamers. Unfortunately, prospects for resolving the inhumane legal limbo of…

November’s midterm elections shifted the political landscape with significant implications for immigration policy. Most clearly, it has undermined the prospects for creating a path to legal status for Dreamers in the next Congress. The likely next Speaker of the House has vowed to oppose any relief for DACA recipients, while…

October revealed unprecedented shifts in size, direction, and composition of migration in our Hemisphere. Mirroring record-high levels of mobility and displacement across the globe, the number of migrant encounters along the southern U.S. border in FY22 set a stunning new mark of 2.4 million. …