| | | | By Muzaffar Chishti, Kathleen Bush-Joseph, Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, and Madeleine Greene The Biden administration has taken significantly more executive actions on immigration than its predecessors, including the first term of the Trump administration, according to MPI's count. Yet President Joe Biden has been unable to escape criticism from both sides for his administration's response to record irregular arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border. The border overshadowed the administration's steps to modernize the legal immigration system and rebuild refugee resettlement. This article provides an analysis of Biden's track record on immigration. |
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| | By Françoise De Bel-Air As countries in the Gulf region rewrite their immigration rules to reflect changing economic futures, they have made reforms to their oft-criticized kafala sponsorship system. But not all migrants are set to benefit equally. This article provides an overview of the reforms and the growing inclusion gap between highly skilled professionals and low-skilled migrants. |
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| | | International migration trends, politics, and policies felt more frenetic perhaps than usual in 2024. They were punctuated by worsening and new displacement crises, faced a relentless public glare as more than 2 billion people went to the polls in dozens of countries, and were enmeshed in the ongoing economic recovery from a global pandemic. As a result, people on the move and destination, transit, and origin societies repeatedly found their paths shaped by fast-moving forces. What were the most impactful issues of the year? The Migration Information Source reviews in this annual list. |
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| | When we sat down to write our annual list of the Top 10 Migration Issues of 2024, we looked both at the events that shaped this year and those that are likely to have the most profound impact over the longer term. A few trends stood out. Politically, many voters around the globe chafed at incumbent leaders and threw their support to upstart and once-fringe figures who typically called for immigration restrictions. Asylum seekers faced new hurdles, as countries increased barriers and advanced complex processes to gain protection—or sometimes denied asylum outright. And as the world moved well past the mobility nadir of the COVID-19 pandemic, many high-income countries saw their immigrant populations balloon and responded with tighter policies; some leaders pointed to acute housing shortages in particular as evidence of the need for retrenchment on immigration. Yet for every sign of a new trend, there was often evidence of precisely the opposite, too. For instance, even as several countries sought to reduce their number of immigrants, nations in East Asia and Southern Europe made notable steps to ramp up immigration. Perhaps no place was this contradiction clearer than in the European Union, which expanded the free-movement Schengen Zone to include two new members (Bulgaria and Romania) while also erecting new internal border checks—threatening a cherished and central pillar of the European project. The year, in sum, was complex and multifaceted. And many key events were difficult to categorize. For instance, our list does not include the recent ouster of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, origin of the world’s largest refugee population. While Assad’s departure could be a landmark moment for the more than 13 million Syrians who have been displaced within and beyond their country’s borders, it is far too soon to say what will happen in the months and years to come. I hope you enjoy our Top 10, which we wrote with input from analysts and experts across MPI. Thank you for your continued readership of the Migration Information Source. The next year is sure to be another historic one, with a new political era on the horizon and major questions to be answered. As you look towards the end of the year, I hope you will consider donating to MPI to allow us to continue bringing you fresh, global, and authoritative analysis on international migration without a paywall or subscription fee. |
| | On behalf of all of us at MPI, I would like to wish you happy holidays and a great start to 2025. Best regards, Julian Hattem
Editor, Migration Information Source
[email protected] |
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| | "While it might seem obvious that violence is the primary and critical driver of migration during civil war, the reality is that fluctuations in violence do not necessarily align with variations in migration levels." |
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"Between 2005 and 2014, the number of Mexicans leaving the United States outpaced the number of new arrivals." |
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"In recent decades the top source countries for foreign-born physicians have included India, China, Pakistan, and Germany, among other high- and low-income countries, indicating that there are unique conditions surrounding medical migration." |
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| | | The Migration Information Source is a publication of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, DC, and is dedicated to providing fresh thought, authoritative data, and global analysis of international migration and refugee trends. |
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| | Copyright © 2024 Migration Policy Institute. All Rights Reserved.
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