Twelve months after the devastating earthquake, some of the fresh ideas CGD policy experts proposed to help Haiti through non-aid channels have gained traction, while others remain relevant, but have yet to be tried. The anniversary is a time to revisit progress and shine a light on untapped opportunities to assist Haitians in their reconstruction efforts through U.S. policies on trade, debt, migration, and more:
A new year calls for a development policy wish list. My wish list is about what the rich and powerful global actors– mostly but not solely in the United States – can do to improve lives among the poor and vulnerable around the world in the coming year.
This post is originally appeared on Owen Abroad: Thoughts from Owen in Africa.
President Obama spoke yesterday on overhauling U.S. immigration. He went straight to the thorniest issue, what to do about the millions of unauthorized migrants already here. Obama wants a third path between the extremes of blanket amnesty and mass deportation.
That compromise approach, he goes on to sketch, would be a combination of sending troops to the border, cracking down on employers, and obliging unauthorized immigrants to:
Do the costs of international migration outweigh its benefits for the poor? Many people I talk with suspect that migration should be regulated on development grounds—because it might bring large social costs, as well as private costs that the migrant is too poorly informed to account for.
A good first step is to measure the private benefits, because that gives us an idea of how large those other costs would have to be in order for international migration to be a net harm.
The spotlight in Washington on Sunday was on health care reform. But something else big happened here that day: Tens of thousands marched on the National Mall to ask for reform of U.S.
I attended a conference convened and hosted by Jean-Michel Severino, the head of the French bilateral agency, outside Paris last week. The question participants addressed was: What should be the goals of the international development community in the post-MDG period after 2015? Should the MDGs be retrofitted and complemented with go
If you could do one thing to make the world a better place, where would you start? The current issue of The Atlantic suggests fifteen ways to fix the world.
Next week, President Obama will meet with Congress to begin discussing changes in the way that the United States regulates who can enter this country and what they can do here. The elephant in the room: global development. U.S. immigration policy transforms the lives of low-income people from all over the world, but you won’t hear much about them.
This is a joint post with Joel Meister.
Efforts in the U.S. Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform kicked off last Thursday with a hearing convened by Senator Chuck Schumer, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security. Though conventional wisdom may hold that prospects for reform would only dim in times of economic decline, the hearing, entitled, "Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do It and How?”, brought together eight panel witnesses offering diverse perspectives but an underlying consensus that Congress should act on immigration this year. And with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s testimony yesterday before the full Senate Judiciary Committee, the stage is being set for President Obama to address the issue of comprehensive reform later this month.