Professor Emeritus Dr. Ray Marshall, the founder of our Center and holder of the Audre and Bernard Rapoport Centennial Chair in Economics and Public Affairs, is completing another book on immigration, which is tentatively titled Managing Immigration: Benchmarking International Best Practice.  This book examines the best practices of other immigration countries - particularly Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.K. - and discusses how the United States can adapt these lessons to create a more effective employment-based migration system.  It is increasingly clear that the U.S. system, which relies largely on family-based immigration, will need to shift to a system that emphasizes migrants who have the skills and education to allow the U.S. to better compete in an increasingly knowledge-intensive global economy.

Learn more about the book here.

With immigration reform being front and center these days, Dr. Marshall has responded to several requests since the election from print and broadcast media to discuss immigration-related issues.  In addition, he is consulting with a coalition of labor and other organizations who have reached out to him to help craft a plan for comprehensive immigration reform.  Two recent meetings hosted by Dr. Marshall in Austin, TX, brought together members of the AFL-CIO, United Way Worldwide, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Economic Policy Institute to delve deeper into the issues.

Learn more about the meetings here.

In addition to immigration issues, Dr. Ray Marshall remains heavily involved in education-related issues, particularly in his work with the   National Center on Education and the Economy, whose board he co-chairs.  NCEE has done extensive international education benchmarking; operates the   National Institute for School Leadership, the nation's largest organization to train principals for high-performance schools; and is working with the National Conference of State Legislatures and a number of states to develop high-performance school systems based on models derived from international best practice.  The NCEE's goal is to help create a world-class education system that will effectively educate all Americans to high international standards.

Dr. Heath Prince, RMC Director and Research Scientist, traveled to Amman, Jordan, from February 4th-9th during a recent trip to the Middle East to conduct a proposal planning workshop.  He, along with colleagues from Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST) and Brandeis University, were invited to submit a full proposal for a grant sponsored by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) titled "Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: Jordan."

Read more about the workshop and it's related activities here.

RMC Director and Research Scientist Heath Prince was invited to present a paper at the   Social Justice in the Arab World since 2010: Changing Conditions, Mobilizations, and Policies conference held at the American University of Beirut February 2-3, 2017.  The two day academic conference was sponsored by AUB's Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs and Princeton University's Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice and included speakers and panelist from across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.  Heath presented his paper " Economic Growth, Youth Unemployment, and Political and Social Instability: A Study of Policies and Outcomes in Post-Arab Spring Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia, 1990-2013" which discusses youth unemployment policy in the MENA region Post-Arab Spring.