Our Mission

A staggering 89 million people worldwide have been displaced by violence or persecution. Immigration issues have roiled U.S. politics and upended the European Union. In these hot spots and beyond, policymakers have little trustworthy research to guide them, and public opinion is easily clouded by misinformation and partisanship. These challenges can seem insurmountable. But there’s no reason why immigration policy can’t benefit from the same kind of ingenuity that has brought us dramatic medical advances and game-changing technology—and it’s long overdue.

That’s where the Immigration Policy Lab comes in. With branches at Stanford University and ETH Zurich, we use large datasets, creative research designs, and cutting-edge analytical tools to bring new evidence to bear on the urgent problems practitioners face. By guiding the people who set public policy, as well as those who directly serve immigrant communities, our research can inspire solutions and ultimately improve countless lives.

Driving Policy Innovation

When helping our partners in government agencies and nonprofits better understand flaws in the status quo, we often are asked, “what’s next?” They need more than recommendations for small, incremental changes in the current way of operating. That’s why our work involves not just policy evaluation but also program design and experimentation.

Along the way, we’re discovering a way to increase the public impact of social science, reimagining its traditional research model to be more collaborative and responsive to real-world problems. We aim to make social science a catalyst for innovation, a force helping transform programs to meet 21^st-century challenges.