The New Labor Forum has a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

In the spring 2019 issue of New Labor Forum, just off press, Gabrielle E. Clark examines the push/pull factors that led to the dramatic rise of Mexican migration to the U.S. between 1970 and 2000. She argues that – despite the marked decline of that migration during the past two decades and the fact that there has never been a mass migration of Central Americans to the U.S. – detention and deportation along the southwest border have since become a big business. And just how big a business restrictionism has now become is simply jaw dropping. According to a report by the Migration Policy Institute released earlier this month and included here, “in fiscal year (FY) 2018, Congress allocated $24 billion to fund the principal immigration enforcement agencies . . .[or] 34 percent more than the $17.9 billion allocated for all other principal federal criminal law enforcement agencies combined.” Included here, too, are articles from The Nation and The Intercept that capture the cruelty and immense human toll of the expanding immigration industrial complex.

1. The Business of Mass Migration: Fear, Exploitation, and the Political Economy of Immigration Restriction/ Gabrielle E. Clark, New Labor Forum
2. Eight Key U.S. Immigration Policy Issues: State of Play and Unanswered Questions/ Doris Meissner and Julia Gelatt, Migration Policy Institute
3. How Private Contractors Enable Trump’s Cruelties at the Border/ David Dayen, The Nation
4. Solitary Voices: Thousands of Immigrants Suffer in Solitary Confinement in ICE Detention/ The Intercept and The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

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