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June 10, 2020

Dear John,

The COVID-19 pandemic has paused refugee resettlement around the world, to the detriment of those awaiting travel to their permanent new homes. The slowdown in international protection operations does offer a window, however, for policymakers and resettlement program designers to elevate monitoring and evaluation (M&E) from an afterthought to center stage.

As more countries have piloted, established, or scaled up resettlement programs over the past decade to respond to unprecedented levels of human displacement, the success of resettlement programs has tended to be measured by the number of vulnerable refugees resettled. But beyond these numbers, governments, international organizations, and civil society often do not systematically collect information regarding refugees’ quality of life after arrival, how resettlement affects receiving communities and the communities refugees leave behind, and how resettlement fits with other policy objectives.

A new Migration Policy Institute Europe report offers a road map to create an M&E framework within resettlement programs to support systematic learning and improvements, encouraging policymakers and practitioners to take advantage of this pandemic-induced pause in operations to get underway.

Research

One Year after the U.S.-Mexico Agreement: Reshaping Mexico’s Migration Policies

Much has changed in the year since the U.S. and Mexican governments signed a migration cooperation agreement, including the arrival of a global pandemic that has made already difficult conditions for asylum seekers waiting at the U.S.-Mexico border even more precarious. This policy brief includes a section focusing on the limits on nonessential travel and other mobility restrictions agreed by the United States and Mexico in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. "With many living in shelters, tents, and cramped tenements, there are widespread concerns about COVID-19 transmission among this vulnerable population," the policy brief says, referring to asylum seekers waiting in Mexico for their U.S. hearings under the U.S. Migrant Protection Protocols program.

Read more

Infographic

Immigrants in the U.S. Food Supply Chain

About 2.1 million immigrants work in jobs growing, harvesting, processing, and selling food in the United States, serving an essential role in feeding America. While immigrants accounted for 17 percent of all civilian employed workers in the United States between 2014-18, they play an outsized role in food production, making up 22 percent of workers in the U.S. food supply chain. They represent far larger shares in certain food-related occupations, and in particular states. This infographic accompanies a fact sheet that examines the role immigrants are serving in frontline industries responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as their share in industries among those hardest hit by the outbreak.

See the full infographic

Have You Read

"The CDC order is just being used to prevent unaccompanied children from coming into the country," Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow with the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, tells the USA Today Network.

“New Migration Policy Institute data analysis of unemployment according to age, gender, race or ethnicity, nativity, and sector of employment find that Latina immigrants had the highest unemployment rate of all the ethnic and racial groups in April at 22 percent," the Latin Post reports, citing a recent MPI fact sheet and interactive data tool looking at how the coronavirus-related job disruption has affected U.S. workers.

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The Migration Policy Institute is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank in Washington, D.C. dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide. MPI provides analysis, development and evaluation of migration and refugee policies at the local, national and international levels. For more on MPI, please visit www.migrationpolicy.org.

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