Immigration strategies

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Every day, organizations worldwide are engaged in a collective two steps forward, one step back march toward improved immigration services and policies. What hard-earned lessons are these nonprofits, and the foundations that support them, learning from their persistent efforts? This collection of evaluations, case studies, and lessons learned exposes and explores the nuances of effective collaboration, the value of coordinated messaging, the bedrock of ongoing advocacy efforts, and the vital importance of long-term and flexible funding.

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Building Meaningful Refugee Participation into Protection Policymaking

June 14, 2023

Around the world, many refugees find themselves in situations of protracted displacement. As states and international actors search for more effective ways to address protection and displacement challenges, one promising—but often underutilized—approach is to meaningfully involve refugees in crafting and implementing policy responses.Engaging affected communities in protection policymaking can take a variety of forms, including one-off consultations, individual refugee advisors or advisory boards, and refugees being appointed as senior leaders or hired as staff within organizations. Such approaches hold the potential to foster policies that better reflect the needs and priorities of refugee communities and, in doing so, improve protection outcomes. But care must be taken to go beyond tokenistic and inconsistent engagement, and more evidence is needed to understand which approaches are most impactful and under what circumstances.

Refugees & Asylum Seekers

Key Tensions in Refugee Education

November 16, 2022

Globally, education is in crisis, with steep inequities, low learning outcomes, irrelevant content, and ineffective learning and teaching strategies in many settings. The global education crisis is also a global refugee education crisis, as far too many refugee students must contend with barriers to access, low quality, and limited relevance in their learning opportunities. Refugee education continues to be under-supported in policy dialogue and funding. As advocacy efforts push for global and national commitments to equitable, high-quality education for all, this paper is intended to help ensure refugee education is part of the education transformation agenda.This paper is intended for refugee education donors, policymakers, and implementers and aims to inform policy dialogue by answering the following three questions:Why is refugee education more urgent than ever?What are the key tensions in refugee education and how might they be addressed?How does centering refugee voices and engagement in education policy and programming advance the sector?

Refugees & Asylum Seekers

Facing Crises with Resilience: HIAS 2021/2022 Impact Report

September 15, 2022

With more than 100 million forcibly displaced people around the world, an ongoing pandemic, and a war in Ukraine that has caused the largest displacement of people in Europe since World War II, our work at HIAS in recent times has been both extremely difficult and urgently vital.Thanks to committed partners like you, we were able to open our arms in welcome, helping more than 1 million displaced people realize their rights and rebuild their lives in safety and freedom.Read through our 2021/2022 Impact Report to learn more about the essential work your support made possible.

10 Best Practices for Engaging with Refugee Leaders: A Guide for Centering Displaced People in Policy Advocacy

May 9, 2022

For too long, people who have experienced displacement have been absent from the policy tables and discussions that affect their lives. Increasingly, however, advocates, policymakers, members of the media, and others are more proactively collaborating with refugee leaders to inform and drive their work forward. This is a positive development, and ultimately it makes for more authentic and impactful work. But these engagements must be rooted in equal and meaningful partnership. Ten best practices below, identified by refugee leaders from our network, can help ensure that this collaboration is meaningful and not extractive.

Refugees & Asylum Seekers

A Path Forward: Building a Future for Refugee Students Through Post-Secondary Education

April 20, 2022

The education gap between refugees and their host community peers is wide, especially at the higher levels of education. Today, only five percent of refugees have access to post-secondary education and training , but these learning and educational opportunities are essential to their success. Opportunities to work, earn a living, and be self-reliant are the most effective ways for refugees to rebuild their lives.This brief summarizes the challenges that prevent access to post-secondary opportunities and highlights programs and people that are increasing refugee participation, including students supported by Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS). When programs open doors to post-secondary training and education, refugees can rebuild their lives and maintain a sustainable livelihood. Therefore, governments, practitioners, and communities have a collective responsibility to provide access to fulfilling and meaningful post-secondary opportunities for refugees who seek them.

Refugees & Asylum Seekers

Bridging Language and Work: Solutions to Invest in Immigrant and Refugee Talent

February 8, 2022

Finding, retaining, and developing talent is a top priority for business leaders today. Refugees represent an incredible pool of talent that can fill worker shortages and enhance diversity. Yet, many employers overlook refugee candidates due to perceptions that workers cannot succeed in a role if they have limited proficiency in the local language. Bridging Language and Work: Solutions to Invest in Immigrant and Refugee Talent outlines how companies can implement solutions to overcome language barriers to help local language learners – including refugees – get into jobs faster as they work towards proficiency. The guide provides key information for employers, including:A framework for companies on the ways in which they can invest in local language learners beyond expanding access to language trainingSpecific solutions that can be implemented across the talent management cycle to help local language learners succeedThe business benefits of hiring refugees and other local language learnersA list of resources that companies can tap into to support local language learnersThis guide is a collaboration between the Tent Partnership for Refugees and JFF (Jobs for the Future), a national nonprofit that drives transformation in the U.S. workforce and education systems. This guide was developed as part of JFF's Corporate Action Platform, which helps uncover and share talent solutions that enable companies to address both business and social needs.

The Case against COVID-19 Pandemic Migration Restrictions

February 1, 2022

The possibility that free migration could exacerbate the spread of COVID-19 has caused many nations to enact severe restrictions on both international migration and domestic freedom of movement. Unfortunately, these restrictions have done little to stop the spread of the disease while inflicting enormous harm on hundreds of thousands of innocent people. In some respects, they even make the spread of disease worse. In the long run, migration restrictions also curtail the scientific and medical innovation that we need to protect against future pandemics and other health threats.This publication focuses primarily on restrictions on international movement by people seeking to take up long‐term residence in a new country rather than short‐term travelers, such as tourists or people on business trips. However, some of the points made also apply to the latter. This publication also does not examine the other nonpharmaceutical interventions that governments have enacted that may have reduced COVID‐19's spread or death toll, many of which may be correlated with different types of travel or migration restrictions. It will likely be years—if ever—before scholars understand how nonpharmaceutical interventions of all kinds, including migration and travel restrictions, affected COVID-19.

What Works for Improving Refugee Outcomes in High-Income Countries? Policy Insights for the UK

January 28, 2021

There is a growing body of evidence showing that refugees face significant challenges in terms of integration in the host country and that they are at a substantial disadvantage compared to other migrants when looking at their different socioeconomic outcomes (Bevelander, 2011; Ruiz and Vargas-Silva, 2018; Fasani et al., 2019; Brell et al., 2020). While much of the discussion around this evidence has focused on understanding the reasons for these outcomes, not enough discussion has centred on analysing and discussing what works in terms of improving the outcomes of refugees, particularly the potential of early interventions and related policy changes in this context. This is important for the formulation of informed policies in this area. Refugees are often less likely to return home compared to other migrant groups (Borjas 1987; Cortes 2004) and, therefore, there is a potentially higher long term payoff of early investments in this group. This report provides a discussion of the evidence on early interventions and related policy changes that affect the outcomes of refugees.

Refugees & Asylum Seekers

Tackling the global refugee crisis: From shirking to sharing responsibility

October 16, 2016

This report documents the precarious situation faced by many of the world's 21 million refugees, the vast majority of which are hosted in low and middle-income countries, while many of the world's wealthiest nations host the fewest and do the least. If all – or most – countries were to take a fair share of responsibility for hosting refugees then no one country would be overwhelmed and the lives of refugees would be significantly improved. Amnesty International is calling for all countries to put in places refugee resettlement programmes and to increase safe and legal routes for refugees to enter the country.

Refugees & Asylum Seekers