Cuatro Mucho Bueno Immigration Websites

I would like to highlight some important research work that has been published recently by four institutions that do U.S. immigration-related research with strong enmphasis on Mexican/Hispanic issues.

The first one is the Pew Hispanic Center. Its section of Publications on Immigration offers the most updated and accurate research work on Hispanic immigration in the United States. This section focuses “specifically on trends in migration flows, the characteristics of the foreign-born population and attitudes towards immigration policy issues.”

Recent research include: After the Great Recession: Foreign Born Gain Jobs; Native Born Lose Jobs; Illegal Immigration Backlash Worries, Divides Latinos; Hispanics and Arizona’s New Immigration Law; Latinos and the 2010 Census: The Foreign Born Are More Positive; Statistical Portrait of Hispanics in the United States, 2008; Mexican Immigrants: How Many Come? How Many Leave? and Mexican Immigrants in the United States, 2008.

The Migration Policy Institute, which defines itself as an “independent, non partisan, nonprofit think tank dedicated to the study of the movement world wide,” offers a whole set of intelligent and objective works that bring highly valuable information and analysis into the U.S. immigration debate.

Recent research include: Migration and Immigrants Two Years after the Financial Collapse: Where Do We Stand?; Still an Hourglass? Immigrant Workers in Middle-Skilled Jobs; The Demographic Impacts of Repealing Birthright Citizenship; DREAM vs. Reality: An Analysis of Potential DREAM Act Beneficiaries; The Impact of Immigrants in Recession and Economic Expansion; and Protection through Integration: The Mexican Government's Efforts to Aid Migrants in the United States. Not to mention Francisco Alba's Mexico: A Crucial Crossroads.

In the Urban Institute’s “Immigrants” section you may find the work of immigration experts who have “analyzed immigrants' contributions to the labor force and the economy, tracked fast-growing immigrant communities, studied the effect of No Child Left Behind on immigrant children and English Language Learners, and surveyed foreign-born households’ health, well-being, and economic mobility.”

Recent research include: Metrotrends: Immigration and Employment; Five Questions: Rosa Maria Castaneda on immigration raids and their effects on children and communities; Children of Immigrants: 2008 State Trends Update; Decision Points 08: Unauthorized Immigrants; and Thumbs Off the Scale: Evidence-Based Studies of the Impacts of Immigration.

Finally, in the website of the International Network on Migration and Development you may find high quality research on Mexican migration in the United States from a multidisciplinary perspective. Highly recommended its books and journal sections; material can be found in English or Spanish. You may even find little wonderful jewels, like Steven Vertovec’s Migration and other Modes of Transnationalism: Towards Conceptual Cross-Fertilization, for example.

With exception of the Pew Hispanic Center and the Urban Institute websites, you really need to have developed browsing skills to deal with the other two websites. If you do not have them, no problem, this is a great and fun opportunity to develop them.