Visit: Immigration News Blog

The Bridge – Immigration News Blog is a place to join two spheres on the crucial topic of immigration – the depth and breadth of the social sciences, and the immediacy and story-telling power of journalism.

I had been a journalist for almost twenty years when I went back to graduate school for a master’s degree in Latin American & Caribbean Studies, eventually writing my thesis on Cuba. For much of my journalism career I had carved out coverage on immigration, and throughout that time and reportage thought that I had tapped into a deep well of studies and research that existed on those topics.

But it was only in graduate school that I encountered the scope of nuanced and peer-reviewed scholarship on immigration issues and Cuba underway the past several decades in the social sciences. ...Read more.

For the latest blog posts visit: Immigration Blog

February 12, 2015
House Hunters Havana?
When President Obama made his announcement in December about relaxing certain travel and trade restrictions with Cuba, my thoughts went almost immediately to Home Depot and Lowes. That’s because one of the biggest crises facing Cubans is a shortage of housing and home-repair materials. Official Cuban numbers put the shortage of housing… Blog article

February 12, 2015
Obama’s $1 billion budget proposal for Central America.
This month, the Obama administration announced it was including in its budget proposal $1 billion in aid for Central America in the wake of the migration of tens of thousands of Central American children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border the past several years. In the New York Times, Vice President Joe Biden touted…Blog article

February 6, 2015
How immigration detention became big business locking up border crossers and asylum seekers.
This week, three news outlets – Fusion, the New York Times Magazine, and the Texas Observer – each separately published investigations and in-depth pieces looking inside the booming new for-profit immigration detention industry. Taken together they paint a disturbing portrait of a taxpayer-funded, abuse-ridden private prison industry that was set up by federal…Blog article

February 3, 2015
#YoSoyMoises – Where is the outcry over the slaughter of Mexican journalists?
In the last several weeks, since the mass killings of staff members of French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo by Islamic extremists in Paris, millions of people have marched in France and around the world in support of the slain journalists and freedom of the press. The slogan #JeSuisCharlie became a rallying cry at marches…Blog article

January 30, 2015
Thawing frozen ideas of Cuba.
In the past month, there has been a flurry of news features and articles about Cuba ever since President Obama announced that his administration was working to restore ties with the island nation following five decades of hostilities between the two countries. Some of the articles took a political angle, some a business one,…Blog article