This year is the fifteenth anniversary of the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM), a part of the School of Foreign Service. In 1998, ISIM was established as a policy relevant research institute, which means that the questions that ISIM attempts to answer through research come from policy debate on international migration. Although not all of the research focuses on the policies themselves, the findings are of relevance to policymakers.
Dr. Susan Martin is the Director of ISIM and holds the Donald G. Herzberg Chair in International Migration. There are 5 major program areas that ISIM studies: immigration law and policy, immigrant integration, forced migration, the impact of immigration on source countries, and governance. One of her recent publications, Mexico-U.S. Migration Management: A Binational Approach, comments on the need for cooperation between the two countries over the issue of immigration. Dr. Martin emphasizes two ways that we have been examining the need for cooperation – first, what Mexico does in terms of its own economy and social safety net programs affects how people feel about migration. In that sense, as a source of immigration, Mexico has its responsibilities towards its own population. Beyond that, Dr. Martin highlights the role of Mexico as a transit country, a role which brings about some major problems. “Migrants are held hostage for ransom, killed by the drug cartels – for example, there was an incident in which 70 migrants had been killed by the drug traffickers. Mexico has responsibilities as we do to protect the migrants that are transiting to get to the U.S.”
Another issue of cooperation is the return of immigrants to Mexico. From 2005 to 2010, 1.4 million Mexicans moved to Mexico – a figure that includes 300,000 children born in the United States and represents a large increase from earlier figures. Dr. Martin attributes the change partially to enhanced enforcement and partially to the economic downturn, and explains that no matter the case, it can be difficult to reintegrate the immigrants into Mexican society. “We found that probably about 3 quarters of a million are U.S. children born here, and we recommend that there be a joint responsibility of Mexico and the United States to make sure that the children are able to go to school, that the transcript of their grades are accepted by Mexican schools, and that they can come back to the U.S. without impediments.”
One recent area of research for the ISIM pertains to the access that children of undocumented workers have to resources, particularly education and healthcare. In terms of healthcare, their options are very limited. The children are not eligible for any publically supported programs and their parents are generally not in jobs that offer health insurance as a benefit. There are lots of clinics that provide services for the undocumented, sometimes paid for by the city, but it is all very much dependent on the individual municipality or state.
In the United States, the children of undocumented workers are eligible to go to school regardless of their citizenship status; however, Dr. Martin points out that if there aren’t legal impediments, then there are practical ones. “Some kids come as teenagers, here to work and earn money, and are responsible for sending money back home to support younger brothers and sisters. Sometimes kids never go to school – even though they could if they wanted to, they don’t go and are redirected to the workforce. Sometimes they go because their parents want to help them have a higher level of education, but their families are very nervous about whether their kids will come to the attention of the authorities. In interviews, we discovered that the families will tell their children not to get noticed. Don’t excel, because that will draw attention to yourself. Don’t fail, because the school might want to come by and talk to us.”
Additionally, these family dynamics affect not only the students that are undocumented, also the students with citizenship. “Our research found that teachers will make the assumption that all of the Latino students must be here illegally, even though in many of the cases they are U.S. citizens. Some teachers are sending messages that there’s no future for them, why bother coming to school – even if they go to college, they can’t get a job after college.”
In general, Dr. Martin describes rights for immigrants in the United States as a very mixed picture: “Certainly, because we have such a large portion of the immigration population here without status, they are vulnerable to exploitation. They are very hard to organize [into unions], as their workers will threaten to call immigration on them. Even though they are technically eligible for receiving back wages, it’s really difficult for someone who is here illegally to go through that process. Some of our temporary work programs have been criticized for being exploitative. In that circumstance, your right to be in the country is tied to a specific employer, and it’s hard to challenge that employer if your working conditions are poor, because if they fire you, you no longer have the legal right to reside in that country. The closer one gets to permanent citizenship, however, the more mobility and more protections there are for the individual”.
Prior to joining the ISIM, Dr. Martin was the Executive Director of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, a bipartisan commission formed by Congress that analyzed immigration policies and provided recommendations for reform. Between 1994 to 1997, the commission issued 4 reports, all of which were either passed unanimously or with one dissenting vote because of details (not overarching purpose), which Dr. Martin points to as evidence that it is indeed possible to get a bipartisan consensus on immigration.
Recently, the work of the commission has been resurfacing in current political debates. Congressional committees have been returning to the reports and the research of the commission. On March 18th, Dr. Martin testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressing the views of the commission as well as her own on how comprehensive reform would address the needs of families and women. A lot of the issues discussed by the commission continue to be problems – particularly the mechanisms for curbing undocumented immigration. Dr. Martin pointed to an undue focus on border security, but relatively little on place of employment. “In my testimony, I said that there was a need for better systems to verify the eligibility of workers along with better labor standards for employment, or else workers could be driven underground and into more exploitive situations. Whether workers are coming into jobs because the demand for workers is not being met by the American labor force needs to be carefully determined, because it may be that the shortages exist because the wages and working conditions of these jobs are terrible. Employers should not be able to import cheap labor rather than improve the labor and working conditions of these jobs.”
When asked about the potential for comprehensive immigration reform, Dr. Martin described her view as “cautiously optimistic”, believing that the political mood is much better for arriving at an immigration deal. “For a long time, there has been agreement on the general outline of what a deal should look like – more enforcement, more legal entry visas – but it has always broken down over the details, and it is still not known whether the agreement will continue”.
