Week Nine: Immigration II – “Push"
Diplomats, policymakers, and other experts generally think of international migration as taking two forms. The first is “Pull” migration in which something positive – family, greater economic opportunity – “pulls” migrants toward a new place of residence. The second is “Push” migration in which something negative – war, extreme poverty – “pushes” migrants away from their homes and toward new places of residence. Over the long history of the United States, our experience has primarily been one of receiving “pull” migrants and so our immigration laws and procedures have been designed with that in mind. “Push” migrants from within the Americas is both a more recent and more complex phenomenon that our immigration laws and procedures were not originally designed to address.
Because of the importance of immigration among the challenges facing America in the summer of 2021, we devoted two weeks to immigration. We began last week with “Pull” migration and finish this week with “Push.”
In February 2021, the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University convened a conversation on immigration among its in-house experts. That session featuring Laura Collins, Holly Kuzmich, and Matthew Rooney took the ongoing situation on and near the US-Mexico border as the starting point for considering both the more complex problem of “push” migration and the even thornier problem of what might be a “smart immigration and border policy in the 21st century.”
Collins is the Director of the Bush Center - SMU Economic Growth Initiative and a former Republican appointee at both the state and federal levels. Kuzmich is Executive Director of the George W. Bush Institute, Senior Vice President of the Center, and a former member of the Bush Administration. Rooney is the Managing Director of the Bush Institute – SMU Economic Growth Initiative and a former Foreign Service Officer with the US Department of State. The video below from the Bush Center is longer than most used in this series and runs 44 minutes.