Immigration, Globalization, and Unemployment Benefits in Developed EU States. Christine S. Lipsmeyer and Ling Zhu, American Journal of Political Science, July 2011, pp. 647-664. "At a time of mounting concern about how traditional welfare states will react to globalization, there has been increasing interest in specifying how global economic forces affect welfare policies in industrialized states. Building on theories from the political economy and comparative institutional literatures, we analyze the influence of an important aspect of globalization—the flow of immigration. Focusing on states in the European Union, we present a theoretical model that illustrates the interactive relationships between immigration, EU labor market integration, and domestic institutions. Our findings highlight how immigration in conjunction with domestic political institutions affects unemployment provisions, while labor market integrative forces remain in the background. The story of immigration and unemployment compensation in the EU is less about the opening of borders and the market forces of integration and more about the domestic political pressures." READ MORE Reconsidering US Immigration Reform: The Temporal Principle of Citizenship Elizabeth F Cohen, Perspectives on Politics, Sep 2011, pp. 575-583. "The uncertain political status of America's millions of undocumented immigrants and their children has exposed deep and ongoing disagreement about how US citizenship should be accorded to foreign-born persons. I identify the principle of jus temporis, a law of measured calendrical time, that has worked in concert with jus soli and consent to construct citizenship law since the nation's founding. Jus temporis translates measured durations of time such as "time in residence" or "time worked" into entitlement to rights and status. It creates temporal algorithms in which measured calendrical time plus additional variables (e.g., physical presence, education, or behavior) equals consent to citizenship. I explore recent scholarly references to temporal principles and trace the history of how jus temporis was invoked by the nation's first Supreme Court jurisprudence on citizenship and the first Congressional debates about immigration and naturalization. Scholarly convergence on the principle of jus temporis as well as its originalist pedigree imbue this principle with the potential to resolve contemporary disagreements about the rights and status of foreign-born persons in the US." READ MORE The Wrong and the Right: A Comparative Analysis of 'Anti-Immigration' and 'Far Right' Parties, Joost van Spanje, Government and Opposition, July 2011, pp. 293–320. "Across Western Europe, parties have emerged that are both right wing and in favour of restrictions on immigration. These parties are commonly referred to in terms of either ideology (e.g. 'far right') or policy ('anti-immigration'). This article compares far right parties, selected on the basis of their ideologies, and anti-immigration parties, selected based on their immigration policies. I argue and empirically demonstrate that, contrary to what the extant literature suggests, these sets of parties are not identical. I point out similarities and differences, showing why it is useful to distinguish between these two types of party. The article concludes by discussing the relevance of these differences to the relevant literature." READ MORE The Costs and Benefits of Immigration. Darrell West, Political Science Quarterly, Fall 2011, pp. pp. 427-443  "Darrell M. West seeks to reframe the public debate over immigration policy by arguing that the benefits of immigration are much broader than popularly imagined and the costs more confined. He contends that in spite of legitimate fear and anxiety over illegal immigration, immigrants bring a 'brain gain' of innovation and creativity that outweighs real or imagined costs." READ MOREEducation for inclusion: strategies to reduce immigrant marginalisation in Europe and the U.S. Source: EPC, June 27, 2011.The Geography of Immigrant Skills: Educational Profiles of Metropolitan Areas. Immigration, Jobs and the Economy, Demographics, Ethnicity. Source: The Brookings Institution, June 2011.Why Go to France or Germany, if You Could as Well Go to the UK or the US? Selective Features of Immigration to the EU 'Big Three' and the United States. Wido Geis, Silke Uebelmesser, Martin Werding, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, July 2011, pp. 767–796. "Building on a new data set which is constructed from a combination of national micro-data bases, we highlight differences in the structure of migrants to four countries – namely, France, Germany, the UK and the US – which receive a substantial share of all immigrants to the OECD world. Looking at immigrants by source country, we illustrate the important role of distance, both geographical and cultural, immigration policies and migrant networks. Differentiating immigrants by their educational attainments, we observe interesting patterns in the skill composition, employment opportunities and wages of migrants to the different destination countries. Focusing on migration between the four countries in our data set, we find that migration within western Europe is small and rather balanced in terms of skill structures, while there appears to be a brain drain from Europe to the US." READ MOREThe Fragile Success of School Reform in the Bronx. Jonathan Mahler, New York Times Magazine, April 2011, var. pages. "Ramón González’s middle school is a model for how an empowered principal can transform a troubled school, but the forces of reform are now working against him." READ MOREImmigration: The New American Dilemma. Roger Waldinger, Daedalus, Spring 2011, pp. 215-225. "The American dilemma was once distinctively American, rooted in the particular history of the United States and in the conflict between liberal principles and exclusionary practice. The contemporary American dilemma takes a different form, arising from the challenges that emerge when international migration confronts the liberal nation-state. Solving the earlier dilemma called for extending and deepening citizenship so that it would be fully shared by all Americans. However, that more robust citizenship is only for Americans, who alone can cross U.S. borders as they please. Consequently, rights stop at the national boundary, where the admission of foreigners is controlled and restricted. Because entries are rationed, migration policies select a favored few, creating new forms of de jure inequality that separate citizens from resident aliens and distinguish among resident foreigners by virtue of their right to territorial presence. Thus, the encounter between citizens wanting to preserve their national community and newly arrived foreigners seeking to get ahead yields an inescapable social dilemma, one that America shares with other rich democracies."  READ MOREAffirmative Action: The U.S. Experience in Comparative Perspective. Daniel Sabbagh, Daedalus, Spring 2011, pp. 109-120. "Broadly defined, affirmative action encompasses any measure that allocates resources through a process that takes into account individual membership in underrepresented groups. The goal is to increase the proportion of individuals from those groups in positions from which they have been excluded as a result of state-sanctioned oppression in the past or societal discrimination in the present. A comparative overview of affirmative action regimes reveals that the most direct and controversial variety of affirmative action emerged as a strategy for conflict management in deeply divided societies; that the policy tends to expand in scope, either embracing additional groups, encompassing wider realms for the same groups, or both; and that in countries where the beneficiaries are numerical majorities, affirmative action programs are more extensive and their transformative purpose is unusually explicit."  READ MORETransatlantic Cooperation on Travelers’ Data Processing: From Sorting Countries to Sorting Individuals. Paul De Hert and Rocco Bellanova, Migration Policy Institute, March 2011, var. pp. This report, the second in a joint project of MPI and the European University Institute examining US and European immigration systems, details the post-9/11 programs and agreements implemented by US and European governments to identify terrorists and serious transnational criminals through the collection and processing of increasing quantities of traveler data. The report analyzes how governments, which once focused their screening primarily on a traveler’s nationality (“sorting countries”), increasingly are examining personal characteristics (“sorting individuals”). READ MOREEffects of the Global Recession on Immigrants across the Transatlantic and on European Immigrant Integration Programs, Elizabeth Collett, Migration Policy Institute, March 2011, var. pp. MPI’s Transatlantic Council on Migration is releasing companion efforts that examine the global financial downturn’s effects on immigrant integration funding in the European Union and on immigrants on both sides of the Atlantic. In her paper, Immigrant Integration in a Time of Austerity, MPI European Policy Fellow Elizabeth Collett offers fresh analysis of how immigrant integration programs are faring in EU countries with rising debt levels and a new focus on austerity. And in its fourth edited volume, Prioritizing Integration, the Council takes stock of the slowdown’s fallout on migration flows, labor force participation, and immigrant well-being in Europe and the United States. READ MOREThe Enforcers. Fawn Johnson, The National Journal, March 24, 2011, var. pp. The White House, aware that any hopes for comprehensive reform depend on convincing skeptics that the administration is doing all it can to enforce existing laws, touts its record. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano cites the highest level of criminal deportations in history and a sharp increase in workplace audits to ferret out illegal immigrants. “What we have been doing is unprecedented in terms of the actual enforcement lay-down at the border,” she told National Journal. “It’s never been more extensive, and the president intends to sustain that.” But Republican critics, such as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas, accuse the administration of paying lip service to crackdowns. “They clearly don’t want to enforce immigration laws,” he charged in an interview. Against that political backdrop, the upcoming debates over immigration enforcement are almost certain to be contentious. What follows is a look at the state of play with major components of the issue, both in terms of current activity and proposals for change. READ MORE