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About the Center

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The Center’s Co-Directors

Michael Fix
MPI Vice President and Director of Studies and Co-Director, National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy

Michael Fix is Vice President and Director of Studies at MPI, as well as the Co-Director of the National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy.  Prior to joining MPI in 2005, Mr. Fix was Director of Immigration Studies at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC.  His research has focused on immigration and integration policy; race and the measurement of discrimination; and federalism.

Mr. Fix is a Research Fellow with IZA, Bonn Germany.  He served on The Committee on Redesign of US Naturalization Tests of the National Academy of Sciences and is a member of the Advisory Panel to the Foundation for Child Development’s Young Scholars Program.  In November 2005, Mr. Fix was a New Millennium Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Columbia University’s School of Social Work.

Margie McHugh
Co-Director
National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy

Margie McHugh is the Co-Director of the National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy at the Migration Policy Institute. Prior to joining MPI, Ms. McHugh served for 15 years as the executive director of The New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella organization for over 150 groups in New York that uses research, policy development, and community mobilization efforts to achieve landmark integration policy and program initiatives.

During her time with the NYIC, Ms. McHugh oversaw research, writing, and publication of over a dozen reports dealing with issues such as the quality of education services provided to immigrant students in New York’s schools; the lack of availability of English classes for adult immigrants; the voting behavior of foreign-born citizens; and barriers faced by immigrants seeking to access health and mental health services. She is the recipient of dozens of awards recognizing her successful efforts to bring diverse constituencies together and tackle tough problems, including the prestigious Leadership for a Changing World award.


The Center’s Goals

The National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy at MPI is a crossroads for elected officials, grassroots and nonprofit leaders, educators, journalists, researchers, local service providers, state and local agency managers, and others who seek to understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities today’s high rates of immigration create in local communities.

Key services the Center provides include policy focused research, policy design, leadership development, technical assistance and training for government officials and community leaders, and an electronic resource center on immigrant integration issues with a special focus on state and local policies and data.  MPI’s primary reasons for creating the Center are to:

Shine a spotlight on these hugely important but generally neglected issues.  Immigrant integration issues are among the most overlooked set of issues in US public policy today.  We seek to bring this neglected set of issues to the fore of national and local debates and promote constructive solutions that will advance the economic mobility and social inclusion of immigrants in the United States.    

Set the record straight.  MPI’s Center will provide an unbiased look at the needs, costs, and contributions of immigrants and provide a balanced analysis of the integration policy options facing local communities and our nation.

Organize and strengthen a nascent field.  Many officials in state and local government, as well as researchers and community activists, have begun to tackle integration issues in areas such as PreK-12 education, workforce development, adult literacy, and health access.  However, they often work in isolation, unaware of one another’s efforts and unable to leverage their expertise and energy into more systemic and powerful outcomes.  Our Center will provide a hub that allows these stakeholders to connect with one another, inform and nurture their efforts, and facilitate the entry of new actors into integration and its various subfields.

Identify and promote effective policies and practices.  Those working on these issues at the local, state, and national levels need research and data that will guide them toward effective policies and practices.  The need for such knowledge and expertise will only grow as migration to “new destination” states continues, as the question of legal status for the country’s roughly 12 million undocumented individuals is decided, and as concerns about the competitiveness of US workers and products in a globalized economy become more urgent.

MPI has created the Center to focus attention on this neglected set of policy issues and to build a more coherent and knowledge-driven field of researchers, community leaders, government officials, and other stakeholders who have the knowledge and skills to effectively address them.  The Center thus seeks to not only expand the knowledge base in the field of immigrant integration, but the field itself.


Sources of Support

MPI’s work on immigrant integration is supported by the following organizations:

Carnegie Corporation of New York

Russell Sage Foundation

The Tinker Foundation

Foundation for Child Development

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

The Center’s Advisory Board
Susan Downs-Karkos
Director, Community Integration Strategies, Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning
 
Lourdes Gouveia
Professor of Sociology and Director of the Office of Latino/Latin American Studies of the Great Plains, University of Nebraska at Omaha
 
Mark Greenberg
Special Advisor and Executive Director of the Task Force on Poverty, Center for American Progress; and Director of Policy, Center for Law and Social Policy
 
Chung-Wha Hong
Executive Director, The New York Immigration Coalition
 
Jane Leu
Founder and Executive Director, Upwardly Global
 
Delia Pompa
Vice-President, Education, National Council of La Raza
 
Sylvia Puente
Director of the Metropolitan Chicago Initiative, Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame
 
Maria del Rosario Rodriguez
Director, Florida Immigrant Coalition
 
Frank Sharry
Executive Director, America's Voice
 
Ruby Takanishi
President, Foundation for Child Development
 
Veronica Tobar Thronson
Attorney, Clark County Legal Services, Nevada
 
Ted Wang
Public Policy Consultant