Last week, a bipartisan group of US senators known as the Gang of Eight introduced comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes a provision for increased temporary, low-skill work visas. CGD senior fellow Michael Clemens, a leading expert in migration, labor mobility, and development, has welcomed the proposal as good for development.
Migration from poor countries to rich countries can change people’s lives. A doctor-founded startup is exploring how migration can save people’s lives.
Republicans in the US House of Representatives have proposed a step toward immigration reform. The bill would change who can receive an annual block of 55,000 US permanent resident visas. Currently those visas go to people from countries with relatively low rates of immigration to the US via a lottery system. The new bill would close that program and reallocate the visas toward people earning doctorates in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
From Big Bird to malarkey to binders full of women, it’s been quite the presidential debate series (there was also that whole dramatic shift in the momentum of the race thing).
On Monday, we’ll hear from President Obama and Governor Romney for 1.5 Bob Schieffer-moderated hours on foreign policy. The topics have already been announced, and while it’s possible some development-related questions could come up (mostly likely under the basket of America’s role in the world), the odds aren’t great. Regardless, here are three questions that I’d like to hear the candidates answer.
Yesterday I discovered a development organization so revolutionary, most people wouldn’t even call it a development organization. It’s a non-profit called the Independent Agricultural Worker Center (CITA).
CITA is a matchmaker between farms and seasonal agricultural workers. The farms are in the United States; almost all of the workers are in Mexico. CITA brings them together and unleashes the vast economic power of labor mobility for development.
Congratulations to CGD non-resident fellow Devesh Kapur whose terrific book, Diaspora, Development, and Democracy: The Domestic Impact of International Migration from India (Princeton University Press) has just received the ENMISA Distinguished Book Award from the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Section of the International Studies Association.
I was sad and disgusted last week to see the highly-respected New York Times declare that “America is stealing the world’s doctors”.
I spent last Friday in rural North Carolina, talking with American farmers who employ farmworkers from developing countries. I wanted to get the hard facts on whether or not those workers displace U.S.
The story of Dubai is remarkable. In six decades it has grown from a small fishing village to a gleaming metropolis with a per capita GDP comparable to that of the United States. In many ways, Dubai must be seen to be believed. Even its skyline is unreal–rising straight out of the desert and dominated by the tallest building in the world—the 2625 ft., 160-story, silver-and-glass Burj Khalifa.
Last week the respected British Medical Journal published a back-of-the-envelope calculation by Mills et al. suggesting that the emigration of physicians from Africa cost the continent billions of dollars and saved billions for the countries of destination. I share and appreciate the authors’ concern for strengthening health care systems in Africa. But the numbers they calculate are deeply flawed, and their unfortunate arithmetic should be ignored by policymakers.