This episode of CMSOnAir is a conversation on the ways in which Catholic Charities Diocese of San Diego (CCDSD) is assisting migrants through vital welfare and legal services, recent threats and allegations against CCDSD staff for assisting migrants, and US border policies. Mario Russell, Executive Director of the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS), and Vino Pajanor, Chief Executive Officer of CCDSD, sit down to address these topics. Born and raised in India, Vino grew up in a Cathol...
Aug 22, 2024•35 min
This episode of CMSOnAir is a conversation on the role of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA) in responding to the needs of and developing opportunities for migrants in New York City. Mario Russell, Executive Director of the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS), and Commissioner Manuel Castro, MOIA, sit down to address this topic. MOIA's work recognizes that immigrant New Yorkers and their children make up a significant proportion of the City's population. Their charter-mand...
May 09, 2024•43 min
This episode of CMSOnAir is a conversation on immigration detention in the United States: should it be used? And if so, how, when, and why? Mario Russell, Executive Director for the Center for Migration Studies (CMS), and Dr. Dora Schriro - a career public servant who has served as an executive level administrator, policymaker, and Homeland Security advisor - sat down to discuss insights into these issues. Dr. Schriro is a Principal at Dora B. Schriro Consulting Services LLC. She has led three s...
Mar 13, 2024•35 min
This episode of CMSOnAir is a conversation on current migration policy issues in the United States. Kevin Appleby, Interim Executive Director for the Center for Migration Studies (CMS), and Víctor Genina, Director of Development and Policy for the Scalabrini International Migration Network (SIMN), sit down to discuss insights into these issues. SIMN is an umbrella organization established in 2007, and inspired by Saint John Baptist Scalabrini. SIMN encompasses more than 250 grassroots Scalabrini...
May 22, 2023•26 min
In the United States, 9.6 million children are living in poverty. Federal and state tax credits are among the most effective policy tools for fighting child poverty. However, nearly 2 million children – 1.6 million US citizens and 270,000 non-citizens – are living in poverty and are ineligible for these poverty-fighting tax credits because they have at least one undocumented parent. In this episode of CMSOnAir, Roberto Suro explores this inequality and other findings from the paper, “Tax Equalit...
Sep 16, 2021•30 min
This episode of CMSOnAir is the third in a series featuring academics, policymakers, and advocates who have written for the Center for Migration Studies’ (CMS) Journal on Migration and Human Security (JMHS). In this interview, Dora Schriro speaks with Michele Pistone and Jack Hoeffner about family residential facilities and her 2017 paper, “Weeping in the Playtime of Others: The Obama Administration's Failed Reform of ICE Family Detention Practices.” During the Obama administration, Schriro serv...
Jul 15, 2021•30 min
This episode of CMSOnAir is the second in a series featuring academics, policymakers, and advocates who have written for the Center for Migration Studies’ (CMS) Journal on Migration and Human Security (JMHS). In this interview, Jennifer Podkul, the Vice President of Policy and Advocacy at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), describes the United States’ recent history with respect to the humanitarian protection of children and offers an overview of the current situation at the US-Mexico border for ch...
May 06, 2021•20 min
This episode of CMSOnAir is the first in a series featuring academics, policymakers, and advocates who have written for the Journal on Migration and Human Security (JMHS). Created by the Obama administration in 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program offers certain young immigrants who came to the United States as children work authorization and a temporary reprieve from deportation. As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments regarding the Trump administration’s efforts to...
Apr 14, 2021•25 min
The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) is an international Catholic organization with a mission to accompany, serve, and advocate on behalf of refugees and other forcibly displaced persons, that they may heal, learn, and determine their own future. In this episode of CMSOnAir, Joan Rosenhauer, the Executive Director of JRS-USA, shares how JRS is adapting its advocacy for a new administration and transforming its programs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She also shares stories about the “proactiv...
Mar 25, 2021•34 min
This episode of CMSOnAir features four students at the University of Notre Dame who are doing research about international migration. Syeda (Fiana) Arbab, Sofia Piecuch, and Kara Venzian are graduate students pursuing their Masters in Global Affairs at Notre Dame’s Keough School. They partnered with Catholic Relief Services on a research project about how internally displaced persons and refugees describe and create home. Elsa Barron examined migrant integration, dialogue, and religious acceptan...
Feb 19, 2021•23 min
Dominican University is unique among Catholic colleges for its commitment to immigrants. About 10 percent of the students at Dominican University are undocumented or have temporary legal status, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients. This episode features an interview with Donna Carroll, president of Dominican University. She reflects on the challenges facing undocumented college students, including: lack of federal financial aid funding, the difficulty of career pla...
Dec 14, 2020•34 min
In recent years, many Catholic grade schools have had to shut their doors due to funding issues. This trend has accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Partnership Schools, a network of nine elementary and middle schools in urban areas of New York and Cleveland, is trying to stem the tide of Catholic school closings. Their network is taking a unique approach to funding, relying heavily on philanthropic support and keeping costs down, while maintaining high-quality education. In this episode, w...
Nov 30, 2020•39 min
Sister Gabriela Ramírez, MGSpS, is the Director of Hispanic Catholic Social Services (or “La Casita” as it’s known to community members) in the Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama. In “normal times,” La Casita provides low-cost immigration legal services, language assistance, adult education, and religious formation. Since the start of the pandemic, La Casita has shifted many of its regular services to remote platforms and sent food boxes to community members. Sr. Gabriela has also been instrumenta...
Nov 02, 2020•16 min
The mission of the Scalabrinian order is to accompany people on the move. In the COVID-19 era, it is harder than ever to live out that mission. In this episode, we hear from Rev. José Juan Cervantes González, c.s., a Scalabrini priest who runs the Casa Scalabrini – Centro de Pastoral Migratoria in Guadalajara, Mexico. He is working to get the permission of the Mexican government to reopen the organization’s shelter and has stepped up advocacy efforts on behalf of migrants during the pandemic. We...
Oct 26, 2020•38 min
This episode of CMSOnAir features an interview with Anna Gallagher, the executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc. (CLINIC). She explains how CLINIC supports lawyers across the country as they adapt to the fast-paced policy changes of the current administration. She also discusses her concerns about access to asylum on the US-Mexico border and CLINIC’s Estamos Unidos Asylum Project in Ciudad Juarez — a response to the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or “Remain in Mexico...
May 29, 2020•19 min
This episode of CMSOnAir features an interview with Josiah Heyman, Professor of Anthropology, Endowed Professor of Border Trade Issues, and Director of the University of Texas, El Paso’s Center for Interamerican and Border Studies. CMS’s communications coordinator Emma Winters asks Josiah Heyman about a CMS Essay he authored with Jeremy Slack and Daniel E. Martínez. The essay, titled “Why Border Patrol Agents and CBP Officers Should Not Serve as Asylum Officers,” examines findings from the Migra...
Mar 02, 2020•40 min
This episode of CMSOnAir features an interview with Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso Texas. CMS’s communications coordinator Emma Winters asks Bishop Seitz about his recent pastoral letter, “Night Will Be No More.” The letter, a direct response to the August 3 [2019] Walmart massacre, condemns racism and white supremacy, examines the legacy of hate in the borderlands, and says to all: “Tú vales, you count.” Bishop Seitz also discusses the 2019 Border Mass, the El Paso Diocese fund to aid asylum s...
Nov 26, 2019•37 min
This episode of CMSOnAir features an interview with David FitzGerald, Theodore E. Gildred Chair in US-Mexican Relations, Professor of Sociology, and Co-Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. CMS’s researcher Mike Nicholson asks FitzGerald about the concept of “remote controls,” new constraints on asylum seekers, and the impact of wealthy democracies closing their doors to migrants. FitzGerald’s book, Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich De...
Nov 05, 2019•21 min
The Khmer Rouge led by Marxist leader Pol Pot came to power in Cambodia in 1975. For four years, the regime emptied cities and forced virtually all of Cambodia’s population into labor camps where people were starved, overworked, tortured, and executed. It is estimated that nearly two million people died. This two-part CMSOnAir series features an interview with author, chef, and manufacturer of Cambodian foods, Channy Chhi Laux. In her memoir, Short Hair Detention, Chhi Laux chronicles the suffer...
Aug 09, 2019•24 min
The Khmer Rouge led by Marxist leader Pol Pot came to power in Cambodia in 1975. For four years, the regime emptied cities and forced virtually all of Cambodia’s population into labor camps where people were starved, overworked, tortured, and executed. It is estimated that nearly two million people died. This two-part CMSOnAir series features an interview with author, chef, and manufacturer of Cambodian foods, Channy Chhi Laux. In her memoir, Short Hair Detention, Chhi Laux chronicles the suffer...
Aug 02, 2019•19 min
This episode of CMSOnAir features an interview with Joanna Williams, director of education and advocacy for the Kino Border Initiative (KBI). KBI is a bi-national organization based in Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, Mexico that works to “affirm the dignity of the human person and a spirit of bi-national solidarity” through: Direct humanitarian assistance and accompaniment with migrant; Social and pastoral education with communities on both sides of the US-Mexico border; and Participation ...
Apr 03, 2019•31 min
This CMSOnAir episode features an interview with Her Excellency Ms. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, president of the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly. President Espinosa Garcés speaks with Kevin Appleby, CMS’s senior director of international migration policy, on global migration issues in advance of the upcoming intergovernmental conference to adopt the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration, which will be held in December 2018 in Marrakesh, Morocco.
Nov 26, 2018•23 min
This episode features a conversation with His Eminence Joseph William Cardinal Tobin, Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey. Ordained in 1978, Cardinal Tobin served as a pastor in Holy Redeemer Parish in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan until 1990. He also served in a number of diocesan assignments within the Archdiocese of Detroit, including: Episcopal Vicar; member of the Presbyteral Council, and; official in the Metropolitan Tribunal. In addition, throughout much of his career,...
Apr 23, 2018•32 min
The Community of Sant’Egidio, a Catholic lay association, provides services to and advocates on behalf of underprivileged, disadvantaged, and low income social groups around the world. Started in Rome by Andrea Riccardi in 1968, the Community has grown to 60,000 members across more than 73 countries and four continents. In this episode, CMSOnAir speaks with Paola Piscitelli, president of the Community’s chapter in the United States, on one of the Community’s innovative programs – The Humanitaria...
Feb 09, 2018•34 min
This episode features a conversation with the co-facilitators leading the development of the Global Compact on Migration – Ambassador Juan Jose Gómez Camacho, Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations and Ambassador Jürg Lauber, Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the United Nations. Among the issues discussed, Ambassador Gómez Camacho and Ambassador Lauber speak with Kevin Appleby, CMS’s senior policy director of international migration, on the challenges posed by rising x...
Oct 20, 2017•25 min
CMSOnAir features an interview with Ron Nixon, a Washington correspondent for the New York Times who covers homeland security issues. Mr. Nixon has reported from Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Belgium, Mexico, Malaysia, Senegal, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He also teaches investigative reporting and data journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Mr. Nixon is author of the book Selling Apartheid: Apartheid South Africa’s Global Propaganda War....
Aug 02, 2017•47 min
Fr. Thomas Reese, SJ discusses, “Barriers to Protection: The Treatment of Asylum Seekers in Expedited Removal,” a report from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). Appointed to USCIRF in 2014, Fr. Reese now serves as chair of this independent, bipartisan US federal government commission that reviews the facts and circumstances of religious freedom violations and makes policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress. Among his professional ac...
Jan 06, 2017•44 min
Cecilia Muñoz, Assistant to President Barack Obama and Director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, joins CMSOnAir to reflect on the Administration’s efforts on immigration during the past eight years. She offers a candid assessment of the major immigration and refugee issues and challenges the Administration faced, from legislative reform to Executive action to immigration enforcement and national security. In this episode, Ms. Muñoz speaks with CMS's Executive Director Donald Kerwin ...
Nov 29, 2016•35 min
In this episode of CMSOnAir, Linda Rabben, Associate Research Professor at the University of Maryland discusses her work studying the history of sanctuary and sanctuary movements. Her research has just been published in a second edition of her book, Sanctuary and Asylum: A Social and Political History (University of Washington Press 2016).
Nov 23, 2016•39 min
A few days before the 15th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) is releasing a new in-depth report examining refugee protection and national security. The paper, titled “How Robust Refugee Protection Policies Can Strengthen Human and National Security,” is part of a special collection of CMS’s Journal on Migration and Human Security on "Rethinking the Global Refugee Protection System." In this episode, Rachel Reyes, CMS's Directo...
Sep 09, 2016•35 min
