2018-2019 News

Santiago Perez and Katherine Eriksson's Research on Immigrant Families' Success Featured in Davis Enterprise

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has made it a priority to restrict legal immigration to the United States. To bolster its anti-immigration policies, the Trump administration has pushed the narrative that poor immigrants are a drain on government resources. New research by UC Davis professor Santiago Pérez sheds light on the economic mobility of immigrants and suggests the government’s view may be shortsighted.

Giovanni Peri's Research on H-1B Visas and Employment Rates featured in Forbes

Important new research concludes immigration restrictions that prevent companies from hiring high-skilled foreign nationals in the U.S. represent bad economic policy and are counterproductive. “When we aggregate at the national level, inflows of foreign STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] workers explain between 30% and 50% of the aggregate productivity growth that took place in the United States between 1990 and 2010,” according to economists Giovanni Peri (UC, Davis), Kevin Shih (RPI) and Chad Sparber (Colgate University).

Giovanni Peri's Research on Correlation between Deportation and Crime Featured in the New York Times, The Marshall Project, The Cato Institute, and The Crime Report

In one of Donald J. Trump’s earliest moves as president, days after his inauguration, he revived the deportation program known as Secure Communities. A new study by Professor Giovanni Peri from the University of California, Davis, has cast doubt on the ability of Secure Communities to do either.

Katherine Eriksson's Research on Wealth Shock Featured in CityLab Article

It will end up costing the U.S. economy as much as $1 trillion between now and 2028 for the nation to maintain its longstanding black-white racial wealth gap, according to a report released this month from the global consultancy firm McKinsey & Company.  Professor Katherine Eriksson's reasearch found that “The Intergenerational Effects of a Large Wealth Shock: White Southerners After the Civil War,” that white resilience to economic catastrophe has been almost impenetrable.

Caitlin Patler and Leah Hibel's Article on the Administration's New Guidelines for Child Detention Published in the New York Times

In this article, Professors Caitlin Patler and Leah Hibel discuss last week's announcement by the Trump administration on a new regulation that would allow the government to indefinitely detain migrant families who cross the border. If it goes into effect, it would terminate an agreement known as the Flores settlement to ensure that children are kept in the least restrictive setting possible, receive certain standards of care, have access to lawyers, and are generally released within 20 days.