Andrew Selee: "Root Causes of Immigration Issues at Our Southern Border"

Seminars at Steamboat

When Andrew Selee became president of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) in 2018, his predecessor noted that Selee “has a distinguished track record not only as a serious policy scholar but a leader who has thought deeply about think tank strategy and administration.”

Those qualities are especially apt for the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan body working with a wide range of stakeholders on immigration and integration policies, with a focus on fact-based research, dialogue, and the development of new ideas in response to complex policy questions.

MPI has published more than 500 research reports and books, provided testimony before the U.S. Congress and parliamentary bodies in more than a dozen countries, advised numerous governments and civil-society organizations, and organized countless public and private conferences.

Dr. Selee’s own research focuses on migration globally and especially on immigration policies in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean. He has written extensively on U.S.-Mexico relations, Mexican politics, U.S. immigration policy, organized crime, and democracy in Latin America. His most recent book is Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together (PublicAffairs, 2018).

Before joining MPI, Dr. Selee spent 17 years at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., where he founded the Center’s Mexico Institute and served for three years as executive vice-president, managing the Center’s day-to-day operations and global research agenda for its 135-member staff. Previously, he was a professional staffer at the U.S. Congress and worked on YMCA programs for migrant youth in Tijuana, Mexico.

His public opinion articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Americas Quarterly, and other media, and he writes a biweekly column for the Mexican newspaper El Universal. He is often interviewed in the press, including PBS, NBC, CBS, Fox News, NPR, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Economist.

He holds a PhD in policy studies from the University of Maryland; an MA in Latin American studies from the University of California, San Diego; a BA, Phi Beta Kappa, from Washington University in St. Louis; and a certificate in strategic perspectives on nonprofit management from Harvard Business School. He was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow in 2017-2018, is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and has previously taught at Johns Hopkins and George Washington universities and El Colegio de México.