Immigration, asylum, and national security: A comparative perspective

William Antholis serves as director and CEO of the Miller Center. Immediately prior, he was managing director at The Brookings Institution, and from 1995 to 1999 he served in government. At the White House, he was director of international economic affairs on the staff of the National Security Council and National Economic Council, where he served as the chief staff person for the G8 Summits in 1997 and 1998. Antholis is the author of Inside Out India and China: Local Politics Go Global and, with Strobe Talbot,Fast Forward: Ethics and Politics in the Age of Global Warming.

Jeff Crisp is a specialist on refugee, migration and humanitarian issues. He has held senior positions with UNHCR, where he was Head of Policy Development and Evaluation, as well as the Global Commission on International Migration, the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues, Refugees International and the British Refugee Council. Jeff has first-hand experience of refugee situations throughout the world and has published, lectured and broadcast extensively on refugee-related issues. He has a PhD in African Studies from the University of Birmingham. Jeff is currently affiliated to the Refugee Studies Centre in Oxford and Chatham House in London. 

David Scott FitzGerald is the Theodore E. Gildred Chair in U.S.-Mexican Relations, professor of Sociology, and co-director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California San Diego. His research analyzes policies regulating migration and refugees in countries of origin, transit, and destination, as well as the experiences of people on the move. FitzGerald’s books include Refuge beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers, winner of the American Sociological Association (ASA) International Migration Section Best Book Award; Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas; and A Nation of Emigrants: How Mexico Manages its Migration. He is currently co-authoring a book titled Refugees: A Sociological Systems Approach.

Regina Jefferies is a teaching fellow and Scientia PhD Scholar at the University of New South Wales. She is also a consultant for the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law and an expert on US immigration and refugee law, with more than 10 years of experience practicing asylum and refugee law in the United States. Her work focuses on street-level bureaucrats, technology and legal compliance in international refugee law. 

Brian Kelly is the head of the Community Stabilization Unit for the International Organization for Migration. This position is based in Washington, D.C. Prior to this he was the regional emergency and post crisis advisor at the IOM Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. He has been with IOM since 2000 and has worked in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Nepal, Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Specializing in humanitarian operations, community stabilization, peace-building, reintegration, and the coordination of relief-and-recovery programming, Kelly helps governments, the United Nations, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector support vulnerable populations and stabilize communities. 

David Leblang, the Randolph P. Compton Professor at the Miller Center, is the Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Endowed Professor of Politics. He is also professor of public policy at the UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, where he is director of the Global Policy Center. A scholar in the area of international political economy, he is currently working on two major projects. The first is a book-length study of the role that global migration plays in linking host and home countries and how these linkages help explain observed patterns of international investment, remittance flows, and the spread of democracy. The second project is related but focuses on the destination choices of refugees and illegal migrants.

Erika Lee is a Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies and Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. The granddaughter of Chinese immigrants, Lee grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She is the author of four award-winning books: At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943; Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America (co-authored with Judy Yung); The Making of Asian America: A History; and the recently-published America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States.   

Dara Lind covers immigration policy for ProPublica in Washington, DC. Before coming to ProPublica, she spent five years as Vox's immigration reporter; she remains a regular cohost of the Vox podcast "The Weeds." She's been covering immigration in some form since the end of the George W. Bush administration. 

Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), is a senior fellow at MPI, where she directs the Institute’s U.S. immigration policy work. Her responsibilities focus on the role of immigration in America’s future and on administering the nation’s immigration laws, systems, and government agencies. She also has expertise in immigration and politics, immigration enforcement, border control, cooperation with other countries, and immigration and national security. She served as director of MPI's Independent Task Force on Immigration and America's Future, a bipartisan group whose recommendations address how to harness the advantages of immigration for the 21st century economy. From 1993-2000, she served in the Clinton administration as commissioner of the INS, and her accomplishments included reforming the nation's asylum system; creating new strategies for managing U.S. borders; improving naturalization and other services for immigrants; shaping new responses to migration and humanitarian emergencies; strengthening cooperation and joint initiatives with Mexico, Canada, and other countries; and managing growth that doubled the agency’s personnel and tripled its budget. 

Kathleen Newland is a senior fellow and co-founder of the Migration Policy Institute. Prior to MPI’s establishment in July 2001, Newland co-directed the International Migration Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment. Earlier, she was a lecturer in international political economy at the London School of Economics (1988–92) and special assistant to the rector of the United Nations University (1982–87). She has worked as a consultant to the International Labor Organization, the International Organization for Migration, the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the World Bank. Newland is a member of the Board of Directors of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), a nonprofit organization that provides pro bono legal services to unaccompanied children caught up in the U.S. immigration system. She is author or editor of nine books, including most recently All at Sea: The Policy Challenges of Rescue, Interception, and Long-Term Response to Maritime Migration.

Anne C. Richard is the James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center. She served as assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration in the Obama administration from 2012–17. Previously, she was vice president of government relations and advocacy for the International Rescue Committee. Earlier in her career, she served in other senior positions at the State Department, at Peace Corps headquarters, and at the Office of Management and Budget. Since leaving government service in 2017, Richard has taught at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, served as the Sol M. Linowitz Visiting Professor of International Affairs at Hamilton College, and has been a fellow of Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania.