Land of hope and dreams? The future of U.S. immigration policy

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.

Anne C. Richard, the James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center, 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. 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.

Karen Tumlin is a nationally recognized impact litigator focusing on immigrants’ rights. She has recently founded a new non-profit, the Justice Action Center, that will pilot an innovative model that advances the rights of immigrant communities by connecting cutting-edge impact litigation and compelling narrative and communications content. Tumlin formerly served as the director of Legal Strategy and legal director for the National Immigration Law Center (NILC). She has successfully litigated numerous cases of national importance, including challenging President Trump’s Muslim Ban and his effort to end the DACA program as well as the constitutional challenge to Arizona’s anti-immigrant SB 1070 law.  Karen has testified before the U.S. Congress on immigrants’ rights issues. Before joining NILC as a Skadden Fellow in 2005, Tumlin clerked for Judge Dorothy W. Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to law school, she worked as a research associate at the Urban Institute, where she coauthored studies on immigration, welfare, and language access issues. She also spent a year as a Luce Scholar in Bangkok, Thailand, where she conducted a study on child trafficking in the region for the U.N. International Labor Organization.