U.S. Legal and Moral Obligations at the Southern Border

INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICS OF GLOBAL MIGRATION

The twenty-first century is a time of unprecedented global migration. The Pew Research Center estimates that as of 2022, 3.6 percent of the human population lives outside of their birth country and 1.1 percent are displaced persons. Of these displaced persons, a third live outside their country of birth as refugees or asylum seekers, constituting a total of over thirty million people worldwide. Such a massive demographic transition inevitably raises major policy questions, particularly in countries that receive large numbers of new inhabitants.