Demetrios Papademetriou is the president and co-founder of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank devoted to the study of worldwide migration. Papademetriou also has served as the director for immigration policy and research at the U.S. Department of Labor.
How has the role of MPI changed over the past decade or so?
Certainly, we have expanded our reach in both the topics we look at and geographically. Now, we are indeed an institution that has a reach that covers North America, Europe, and probably a dozen or so countries other than [in] Europe and America.
How do you remain nonpartisan on such a heated issue?
We look at numbers — we don’t start with an assumption. We tell the truth as we understand it best. People here at MPI have decades of experience in the government, in the private sector, in the economy. We know a lot about a lot of systems around the world.
Do you see President Obama tackling immigration reform in his first term?
Most of us at MPI are convinced that he wants meaningful, smart reform. [It’s] almost impossible to take any bet. It’s something that is festering — it will interfere with practically any other issue he wants to tackle. I don’t think it’s an issue that can wait forever.
Compare working in the government to your current job.
[In government], you work very hard, and there’s a lot of job satisfaction. Here, you get to shape how people think and talk about migration in a large amount of places. It is very validating to see how ideas we produce here find applications that get adopted.
You have described yourself as a “vindication of ultra-specialization.” Do you still feel that’s true?
We took a huge bet a few years ago when we first started. The 1970s, ’80s, ’90s [were] the decades of the journals. You needed to know about a lot of things. I liken this to [taking] a bet that has paid off, and paid off every day.
— David Sherfinski
