Institute for Immigration Research Newsletter

Dear Friends of the IIR,

It has been a busy five weeks since I officially became the Director of the IIR! I am grateful for Jim Witte’s impactful leadership since IIR’s founding in 2012 and that he has agreed to continue to support the Institute by serving on the Advisory Board. I encourage you to read the article about him in the newsletter to learn more about his legacy and what he plans to do in his next chapter.

The last two months have been a whirlwind. We established ourselves in a new location (6th floor of Horizon Hall), hired and onboarded new staff, submitted a major grant proposal, and are designing a new project. It’s been a steep learning curve, to say the least. But it has also been truly gratifying. I am grateful for the strong organization built by Jim and his team over the years and for the support of the leadership and staff of Mason’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

I am enjoying meeting members of IIR’s Advisory Board, Affiliate Faculty Donors, and existing and potential partners. My intention is to listen and continue to build the IIR around what our constituents find to be most valuable. As part of listening, I am sharing my plan as a work-in-progress, ready to listen to feedback from you, the readers of our newsletter. 

Under my leadership, the IIR will continue its mission to provide clear and impartial information on immigrants and immigration in the United States to scholars, policymakers, and the wider community.

We will simultaneously establish a second focus in arts, culture, and storytelling, building on the foundation of existing IIR projects, including “Immigrant Stories,” “New American Voices Award,” “Immigrant Nobel Prize Laureates,” and “Immigrants, Sports, and Civic Engagement.”

Across the two pillars—collecting and disseminating data-driven information and arts, culture, and storytelling, the IIR has three primary goals:

Goal #1 Research: Shift attitudes through impactful research and dissemination of information about immigrant contributions to U.S. society (economic, occupational, social, and cultural).  

Goal #2 Center: Build and promote Mason as a center of immigrant research and programming nationally and internationally.  

Goal #3 Outreach & Education: Produce accessible materials and events to build community and educate the public to equip them with the tools they need to document and promote the value of immigrant contributions to U.S. society. 

Our signature program iDod, Immigrant Data on Demand, under the leadership of Dr. Marissa Kiss, continues to provide unbiased and objective information related to immigrants and immigration in the United Sates to academics, policy makers, and the public. Our graduate assistants Umida Hashimova (Sociology) and Zach Nauful (Linguistics) are actively updating the system to open the portal for this year’s requests in early October.

Dr. Ezgi Benli-Garcia, an ethnomusicologist who joined our team as the "Shrivastava Family Postdoctoral Research Fellow" this fall, and graduate research assistant Aditi Goel (Communications) are working with me to develop the arts, culture, and storytelling focus. We are currently conceptualizing a digital storytelling project called “Leaving and Belonging.” It aims to emphasize the shared humanity and experience of migration by producing short multimedia stories about George Mason University students’ experiences with leaving a place to enter some place new (e.g., country, city, neighborhood or school). The goal is to strengthen community on campus by highlighting that migration is part and parcel of human experience, whether someone’s family has lived in the same country for generations or recently moved somewhere new.  

To build Mason as a center of immigrant research and programming, our team has been gathering the missions and activities of other immigrant-focused research centers in the United States to identify IIR’s unique contributions and to determine what we should be doing to augment what is already being done and to fill in gaps. We are also collecting information about immigrant related work on campus to determine how best IIR can serve as a hub to bring visibility, add value, and promote collaboration for immigrant-related research and programming at Mason.

To augment our impact with students, the IIR is hosting a student gathering on Monday, October 27 at 2:30 pm for students with immigrant-related research interests to come together and share information and resources and to brainstorm how the IIR can best support student research.

Being part of such a talented, dedicated team and having the support of generous and thoughtful partners is a gift. I look forward to settling into this position and working hard with our team to continue to do the work that IIR has been doing while also shifting our energies to respond impactfully to the moment. 
 
Sincerely, 
Lisa Gilman, PhD 
Director, Institute for Immigration Research 
Professor, Folklore and English 

Director of the Institute for Immigration Research, Dr. Lisa Gilman, was quoted in The Washington Post

Dr. Jim Witte and Dr. Marissa Kiss op-ed was published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Research from the Institute for Immigration Research was featured in The Washington Informer

IIR Affiliate Faculty, Dr. Eric McGlinchey is featured in: A Place to Belong, A Space to Grow: Learning Communities at the Schar School

IIR Affiliate Faculty, Dr. Michael Clemens: Visa application pause 'will be felt in every corner' of US Deutsche Welle

IIR Affiliate Faculty and Economics Professor, Dr. Tyler Cowen is named to TIME100 Philanthropy List

IIR Affiliate Faculty Michael Clemens Quoted: “Promises kept: negative net migration (in the U.S.) for the first time in 50 years!”

IIR Affiliate Faculty Ilya Somin Wrote: Perils of the Pentagon's Plan to Use Military Lawyers to Adjudicate Immigration Cases

IIR Affiliate Faculty Michele Waslin Quoted: Business leaders respond to H-1B reform, weekend turmoil

Obituary for ILC Board Member: Penny Garver