Ian Kysel, visiting assistant clinical professor of law and co-director of the Asylum and Convention Against Torture Appellate Clinic, says, “Going back decades, the U.S. Government has failed to adequately invest in making rights and human dignity the cornerstone of U.S. policy in the region—on migration or otherwise. Human rights are key to addressing the major challenges facing migration.”

“Given that these doctorates often possess highly specialized skills and training at the leading edge of research in areas like vaccines, artificial intelligence, robotics and space,” Michael Roach said, “blanket visa restrictions could significantly impact U.S. firms’ ability to hire and retain the best and brightest scientists.”

Ian Kysel co-writes an article about the U.S. immigration system, calling for fixes to long-standing legal problems.

The Migrations initiative has won a three-year, $5 million grant that will bring together scholars across the university and beyond to study the links between racism, dispossession, and migration. Research, teaching, and community engagement supported by the grant will “respond to historical and ongoing nativist and racialized violence in the U.S. by turning the university into a living laboratory."

Migrations postdoc Eleanor Paynter works with Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli to produce a timeline that illustrates how, since 2013, Europe has gone from prioritizing rescue to focusing on exclusionary policies. It also highlights the high rate of death at sea for migrants attempting to cross the Central Mediterranean route from North Africa to Southern Europe, and it shows how Europe has criminalized rescue practices.

In this op-ed, Klarman postdoctoral fellow and sociologist Chiarra Galli writes that the Biden administration must hire more asylum officers, end systematic detaining of asylum seekers, provide legal representation at no cost to asylum-seekers, and expand a law allowing victims of domestic violence to qualify for asylum.

“The rule would have been the death knell for many asylum seekers,” says Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law. “The court’s decision today leaves the door open for people fleeing persecution.”

“As humans, we breathe, we ventilate, we bring air into our lungs and we exhale,” said Ian Hewson, professor of microbiology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “Sea stars diffuse oxygen over their outer surface through little structures called papulae, or skin gills. If there is not enough oxygen surrounding the papulae, the starfish can’t breathe.”

Amanda Rodewald, professor and senior director of conservation science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, writes this opinion piece about the Trump administration’s missed opportunity to protect the air.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law practice, Cornell Law School, said, “Barring temporary foreign workers from entering the country was a mistake in June. It remains a mistake today.”