“Voices on the Underground Railroad” is a collection of short narratives that Cornell University students have written, with maps that documented and rumored underground railroad stations and safe houses in Central and Western New York.

Estelle McKee and Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer are clinical professors at Cornell Law School, in Ithaca, who have worked with asylum seekers for decades. Their clients are often residents of Upstate New York, where they have joined communities in places such as Syracuse, Utica, and Ithaca — all thriving cities that have welcomed immigrants in recent years, but some of which are located in counties now banning new arrivals.

While anti-immigrant politicians in border states are seeking to score points by manufacturing a “migrant crisis” in destination cities and states, elected officials seeking to offer welcome are far from powerless. Responding to these challenges will require significant resources and ingenuity, but governors have tools at their disposal to rise to the occasion.

One of those tools is to allow new migrants to work. 

Recent uncertainties regarding the legal status of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program underscore the urgency for policymakers to reassess long-standing restrictions on government-sponsored healthcare subsidies for all immigrants, according to a new analysis by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell Law School, and Harvard Medical School.

Angel Alfonso Escamilla García, our Migrations postdoctoral fellow, writes about his work on people migrating from the U.S. to Mexico. His research has shown that migrants pay close attention to any information that can give them clues about the dangers that lie between them and the U.S.

“Any executive action that a president might try to end birthright citizenship would be challenged in court and would be likely struck down as unconstitutional,” says Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law.

Mary Jo Dudley, director of the CALS farmworker program, discusses concerns about training this workforce.

“These orders are going to be discriminatory in impact and on their face, meaning in their text, because in the order they explicitly singled out migrants and asylum seekers,” says Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer, professor of law.

A year after their graduation, hear from some of our past undergraduate Migrations scholars about their lives and work after Cornell, including some advice for the class of 2023!

Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of law, says, “They were caught at the border, either at a port of entry or between a port of entry. So perhaps ‘caught attempting to cross the border’ would be more accurate.”