Economic Policy Instiute Hosts Dr. Ray Marshall and Panel Discussion of His New Book

Dr. Ray Marshall, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and founder of the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources, discusses his new book Value-Added Immigration: Lessons for the United States From Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom in a panel discussion and book signing event hosted by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) today in Washington DC. Invited panelists include Philip Martin, professor from the University of California in Davis, and chair of the U.C. Comparative Immigration & Integration Program; Ron Hira, associate professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and Research Associate at EPI; and Michael Teitelbaum, senior advisor at Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Wertheim Fellow at the Labor Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.

In this new volume, Dr. Marshall explores employment-based immigration policies from Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. These four countries share similar characteristics as advanced liberal democracies as well as “immigrant nations,” meaning they are increasingly dependent on migration for their economic and social welfare. However, the United States has immigration policies that are almost universally regarded as dysfunctional while Canada, Australia, and the UK considered to have some of the world’s best-managed migration systems. Dr. Marshall analyzes and comparatively assesses the immigration systems between these countries and then drawing upon the best of what those systems have to offer, proposes general principles for effective immigration reform in the United States.

Dr. Marshall has served in two Presidential administrations; first as U.S. Secretary of Labor under the Carter administration and then as a member of the National Skills Standard Board and the Advisory Commission on Labor Development in the Clinton administration. In 1970, Dr. Marshall established the Center for the Study of Human Resources while he was teaching at the University of Texas in Austin. In 1999, the Center was renamed the Ray Marshall Center to honor his retirement from teaching at the University. Dr. Marshall presently serves as senior advisor at the Ray Marshall Center, Audre and Bernard Rapoport Centennial Professor (Emeritus) of Economics and Public Affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin, and is a Distinguished Fellow and member of the board of directors of the Economic Policy Institute.