Tom K. Wong

Associate Professor of Political Science and USIPC Director
tomkwong@ucsd.edu
http://www.tomwongphd.com/

Tom K. Wong is an associate professor of political science and founding director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center (USIPC) at the University of California, San Diego. He served as an advisor to the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (WHIAAPI) under the Obama administration where he co-led the immigration portfolio and was appointed by Governor Gerry Brown to serve on the State of California 2020 Census Complete Count Committee (CCC). He is also winner of the ACLU Presidential Prize, which is given to an academic who has made outstanding contributions to civil rights and civil liberties. He is also Co-Director of the Human Rights and Migration program. His research focuses on the politics of immigration, citizenship, and migrant "illegality." As these issues have far-reaching implications, his work also explores the links between immigration, race and ethnicity, and the politics of identity. His first book, Rights, Deportation, and Detention in the Age of Immigration Control, analyzes the immigration control policies of twenty-five Western immigrant-receiving democracies (Stanford University Press, 2015). In analyzing over 30,000 roll call votes on immigration-related legislation in Congress since 2005, his second book, The Politics of Immigration: Partisanship, Demographic Change, and American National Identity (Oxford University Press, 2017), represents the most comprehensive analysis to date on the contemporary politics of immigration in the United States. 

Wong's research has been used by policymakers both in the U.S. and in Mexico, as well as by organizations that serve immigrant communities. Wong’s research has been used in several federal lawsuits to defend DACA, end family separation at the southern border, and prohibit indefinite child detention, among others. Wong and his work has been covered by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NPR and major media outlets across the country in hundreds of articles.

He is also on the board of the California Immigrant Policy Center. Wong also consults on campaigns elections and has run large-scale c3, c4, and independent expenditure campaigns specializing in mobilizing low-propensity voters of color and immigrant communities. He is lead evaluator for the Four Freedoms Fund civic engagement program and lead evaluator for the RISE Together Fund civic engagement program.

Josefina Espino

Josefina Espino received her bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in operations management from CSU San Marcos (CSUSM). While at CSUSM she co-founded the Latino Business Student Association and the Cougar Career Closet. She has worked closely on the UndocuResearch project and on several other grant-funded research projects prior to joining the USIPC team. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. in organizational management with a focus on diversity and inclusion within organizations. She intends to develop management methods to ensure that under-represented groups have equal opportunities within organizations.

Marisa Abrajano

Professor of Political Science
USIPC Faculty Affiliate

Marisa Abrajano is professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests are in American politics, particularly racial and ethnic politics, political participation, voting and campaigns, and the mass media. She is the author of several books, the most recent one entitled White Backlash: Immigration, Race and American Politics (with Zoltan Hajnal), published by Princeton University Press in 2015. It was the recipient of the American Political Science Association's Ralphe Bunch Award for the best book on Race and Politics in 2015. Her other award winning book, Campaigning to the New American Electorate: Television Advertising to Latinos , was published in 2010 by Stanford University Press. She is also the author of New Faces, New Voices: The Hispanic Electorate in America (with R. Michael Alvarez) published by Princeton University Press in 2012. Her other work has been published in leading journals in political science.

Wayne Cornelius

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science
USIPC Faculty Affiliate

Wayne A. Cornelius is an expert on comparative immigration policy and the mass politics of immigration, focusing on the U.S., Spain, and Japan, as well as Mexican politics and development. He is the author, co-author, or editor of nearly 300 publications dealing with these subjects, including 15 books on Mexican migration. His most recent book is The New Face of Mexican Migration (2016). A frequent contributor to national news media, he has written most recently on immigration for The Los Angeles Times. His research has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and other nationally circulating newspapers, as well as on CBS’ “60 Minutes” (twice), PBS’ “NewsHour” and “Frontline,” the NBC, CBS, and ABC nightly news programs, CNN, and the BBC World Service.  A summa cum laude graduate of The College of Wooster (Ohio), he earned his Ph.D. in political science at Stanford University. He has taught at Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Oxford University’s Nuffield and St. Antony’s colleges, the University of California-San Diego, the University of Portland, and Dickinson College. He has also been a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Faculty Fellow at Stanford University, the University of Tokyo, and the Institute for Labor Studies (IZA) at the University of Bonn (Germany). He received six national and local awards for excellence in undergraduate and graduate teaching from the University of California and MIT. He did field research with his students on Mexican migration to the United States nearly every year from 1976 through 2015, from 2004-2015 as founding Director of UCSD’s nationally recognized Mexican Migration Field Research and Training Program. He was also the founding director of two internationally respected, interdisciplinary research centers based at UC San Diego: the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies and the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies. He is an emeritus professor in the UCSD School of Medicine’s Division of Global Public Health, where he specialized in immigrant health. He is also Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, and the Theodore Gildred Professor of U.S.-Mexican Relations, Emeritus, at UCSD. He is the former President of the Latin American Studies Association, the world’s largest, cross-disciplinary organization of scholars specializing in Latin America. In 2012 President Felipe Calderón awarded him the Order of the Aztec Eagle, Mexico’s highest decoration for foreign citizens, in recognition of lifetime contributions to immigration research and improvement of U.S.-Mexican relations. In 2015 the University of California awarded him the Dickson Prize for distinguished post-retirement contributions to student training, research, and national and community service. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Rafael Fernández de Castro

Professor School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) and Director of the Center of U.S.-Mexican Studies (USMEX)
USIPC Faculty Affiliate

Rafael Fernández de Castro is a professor at the School and director of its Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies (USMEX). A former foreign policy adviser to President Felipe Calderón, he is an expert on bilateral relations between Mexico and the U.S.

Fernández de Castro is founder and former chair of the Department of International Studies at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City. He has published numerous academic articles and written several books, including “Contemporary U.S.- Latin American Relations: Cooperation or Conflict in the 21st Century?” and “The United States and Mexico: Between Partnership and Conflict” with Jorge Domínguez.

He also worked as the Project Director of the UNDP’s Human Development Report for Latin America 2013-14, “Citizen Security With a Human Face: Evidence and Proposals for Latin America.” He is the founder and editor of Foreign Affairs Latin America and contributes to the daily newspaper El Financiero and a regular contributor to Televisa.

His current research includes a book on leadership and decision-making in Mexican foreign policy and he serves as a principal investigator along with Professor Jenny Pearce from the London School of Economics for the project “Co-constructing Security Provision in Mexico: A Methodology and Action Plan from Communities to the State”. The project, funded by Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology and the UK’s the Economic and Social Research Council, works with community, civil society and state actors to build shared understandings of the differential impacts of violence, insecurity and security provision to develop local security agendas constructed from the ground up in four cities severely affected by violence: Tijuana, Apatzingán, Acapulco and Guadalupe.

Zoltan Hajnal

Professor of Political Science
USIPC Faculty Affiliate

Zoltan Hajnal is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.  A scholar of racial and ethnic politics, urban politics, immigration, and political behavior, Dr. Hajnal is the author of White Backlash: Immigration, Race, and American Politics (Princeton – 2015 – Winner Choice Outstanding Academic Title), Why Americans Don’t Join the Party: Race, Immigration, and the Failure of Political Parties to Engage the Electorate (Princeton 2011 – Winner of the APSA’s Best Book on Race/Ethnicity), America’s Uneven Democracy: Race, Turnout, and Representation in City Politics (Cambridge 2010 – Winner of APSA’s Best Book on Urban Politics) and Changing White Attitudes toward Black Political Leadership (Cambridge 2006) and has published in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Perspective on Politics and numerous other journals, edited volumes, and newspaper editorial pages.  He has received numerous honors for his research and writing including the Best Paper in Urban Politics Awards from the American Political Science Association.  Before joining the faculty at UCSD, Dr. Hajnal was a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Brandeis University.

Karina Shklyan

Graduate Research Fellow
Sociology
www.karinashklyan.com

Karina Shklyan is a doctoral student in Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests include immigrant integration, local contexts of reception, and immigration policy. She is pursuing research to understand the experiences of immigrants living in 'welcoming cities' in the United States and how cities proffer rights and services to immigrant communities. Her work is driven by her prior policy research experience at Pew and the Migration Policy Group, combined with a desire to incorporate sociological perspectives into policy conversations. Karina earned her Master's degree in International Migration from the University of Kent in Belgium and a Bachelor's degree in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Sebastian A. Bonilla

Undergraduate Research Fellow
UCSD Class of 2020 
Political Science - International Relations

Sebastian is currently an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego. He is majoring in Political Science with an emphasis on International Relations. He is also pursuing a minor in History. Sebastian is also currently a Resident Assistant for the Raza Living Learning Community at Eleanor Roosevelt College where he helps Latinx students navigate their first years in college. He also serves as a Student Minister on the Social Justice Committee at the Newman Center Catholic Community where he is in charge of planning and executing social justice events for students to participate in. Sebastian plans to attend law school and pursue a career in immigration law where he can use his degree to help advocate for immigrant communities.

Andrea R. Cendejas

Undergraduate Research Fellow
UCSD Class of 2022
Political Science — Public Policy | Global Health Minor

Andrea is an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego. She is majoring in Political Science with an emphasis on Public Policy. She is also pursuing a minor in Global Health. Upon completing her undergraduate studies, she plans to attend graduate school and pursue a career in public service as an advocate for human rights and immigrant communities.

Dalixa Chuquillanqui

Undergraduate Research Fellow
UCSD Class of 2021
Political Science | Public Law & Sociology — Law and Society

Dalixa is an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego. She is double majoring in Political Science with an emphasis on Public Law and Sociology with an emphasis on Law and Society. Dalixa is also currently the VP of Administration for the Multicultural Greek Council where she helps manage the 17 cultural and identity-based sororities and fraternities at the university. She also serves as a JusticeCorps member at the Hall of Justice in Downtown San Diego where she provides self-represented litigants legal information and helps with legal forms. Dalixa plans to attend law school so she can provide legal assistance to underserved communities.

Jack Trent Dorfman

Undergraduate Research Fellow
UCSD Class of 2022
Political Science

Jack Trent Dorfman is an undergraduate student at the University of California, San Diego. He is majoring in Political Science and minoring in History and Environmental Studies. Jack is currently working as a research apprentice in the political science department, studying the role that racial minority interest groups play in California policymaking. Jack is also the managing editor at the UCSD campus newspaper, The UCSD Guardian. Jack plans to pursue careers in journalism and policy to help connect sports with political and policy change.

Janelle Eley

Undergraduate Research Fellow
UCSD Class of 2021
Political Science | Human Rights Minor and Business Minor 

Janelle is an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego. She is majoring in Political Science and is also pursuing minors in Human Rights and Business. Janelle is the Executive Director of the Civic Engagement Office in the External Office of Associated Students where she coordinates all voting related efforts for UCSD students. She also sits as the Social Justice Chair in Kappa Kappa Gamma. Upon completing her undergraduate studies, she plans to attend graduate school and pursue a career in public policy, law, or journalism as an advocate for human rights and criminal justice reform.

Natalie Gold

Natalie is currently an undergraduate student at the University of California, San Diego. She is majoring in Data Analytics with a concentration in Political Science and a minor in Middle Eastern Studies. Natalie also works as a data intern at the tech start-up Occuspace, managing data calibration. She hopes to pursue a career in data-driven research, focusing on peace initiatives and global health.

Miguel Higuera

Undergraduate Research Fellow
UCSD Class of 2022
Political Science — Public Policy | Philosophy Minor

Miguel is an undergraduate student at the University of California, San Diego. He is majoring in Political Science with an emphasis in Public Policy. Miguel is also minoring in Philosophy. Upon completing his undergraduate studies, he plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Political Science. His research will explore the ways that immigration policy affects the socioeconomic status of migrant groups. 

Rami Ibrahim

Undergraduate Research Fellow
UCSD Class of 2021
Political Science — Race, Ethnicity, and Politics

Rami is an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego. He is majoring in Political Science with an emphasis on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, and is also pursuing a minor in Ethnic Studies. Before becoming an undergraduate research fellow at the USIPC, Rami worked on two congressional campaigns, lobbied on behalf of the University of California in Washington D.C., and was appointed as a Delegate to the California Democratic Party. After graduation, he plans on continuing his studies and pursuing an internship in Germany, as well as researching the experiences of asylum seekers in the European Union.

Maya Lu

Undergrad Research Fellow | Civic Fellow at the International Leadership Foundation
UCSD Class of 2022
Political Science-Data Analytics | Data Science Minor

Maya is an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego. She is pursuing a Bachelor’s in Political Science/Data Analytics and minoring in Data Science. Maya has conducted research on human trafficking in Southeast Asia, as well as research on discrimination against Muslims in Africa. She has also interned with an immigration legal service provider, has tutored refugee youth in San Diego, and is an executive member of No Lost Generation, which is a refugee oriented service club on campus. Maya plans on attending graduate school to pursue a degree in applied data science in order to contribute to literature that empowers refugees, asylum seekers, and victims of human trafficking. 

Brianna M

Undergraduate Research Fellow
UCSD Class of 2021
Political Science — Public Policy | Public Health

Brianna is an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego. She is double majoring in Political Science, Public Policy and Public Health. Brianna has interned in the D.C. office of Congresswoman Susan Davis (CA-52) and in the district office of Congressman Scott Peters (CA-52). She plans on continuing her involvement with public policy at the local level, where she can advocate for improving the health and economic outcomes of marginalized communities.

Jenna Morris

Undergraduate Research Fellow
UCSD Class of 2021
Political Science | Sociology

Jenna is an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego. She is pursuing a double major in Political Science and Sociology. Jenna currently serves as the lead for UCSD’s Student Involvement Leadership Consultant team where she oversees a team of 16 people who work to help students become more involved on campus. She also volunteered for the JusticeCorps program during the 2019-2020 academic year where she assisted self-represented litigants at the San Diego County Family Law Facilitator’s Office. Jenna plans to attend law school and pursue a legal career so she can advocate for marginalized groups and work toward criminal justice reform. 

Shelveen Ratnam

Undergrad Research Fellow  | External Relations Associate for the Executive Office within the CA Student Aid Commission
UCSD Class of 2020 
Political Science - International Relations

Shelveen Ratnam is currently an undergraduate student at the University of California, San Diego. He is studying Political Science with an emphasis in International Relations.He became an undergraduate research fellow for the USIPC in the spring of 2019. Before joining the USIPC, Shelveen conducted research on morality in politics as part of  the political science research apprenticeship program. Shelveen is also currently working as a Project Assistant in the Provost Office. Shelveen plans to pursue a career in public policy, particularly as it relates to policymaking in Sacramento.

Zachary Romano

Zachary is currently an undergraduate student at the University of California, San Diego. He is majoring in Political Science with an emphasis in Data Analytics. He is also pursuing minors in Computational Social Science and History. Upon completing his undergraduate studies, Zachary plans on working toward a graduate degree in data analytics and pursuing a career in political analysis.

Mikayla S. Sanchez

Undergraduate Research Fellow
UCSD Class of 2021
Psychology | Political Science-Data Analytics
Cal Western Law School

Mikayla is an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego. She is pursuing a double major in Psychology and Political Science with an emphasis on Data Analytics. Before joining the USIPC, Mikayla participated in UCSD’s Academic Internship Program where she conducted research on challenges in the U-Visa application process while interning at an immigration law firm. Upon completing her undergraduate studies, she plans to attend law school and pursue a career in immigration law in the public sector. 

Marianne Sawires

Undergraduate Research Fellow 
UCSD Class of 2021
Political Science — International Relations | Economics Minor

Marianne is an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego. She is majoring in Political Science with a specialization in International Relations and is minoring in Economics. Marianne plans on attending graduate school in order to pursue a career in international development. She plans on working on poverty alleviation projects in developing countries.

Daniel Schudson

Undergraduate Research Fellow
UCSD Class of 2020
Political Science - International Relations

Daniel is a recent graduate from the University of California, San Diego, majoring in Political Science with an emphasis in International Relations. He is pursuing a career in social justice activism and local politics. He plans to teach English and work in human development in Southeast Asia, an area where he has traveled extensively. Daniel worked on several voter information campaigns during the 2020 election providing leadership in outreach efforts to provide detailed information to voters in San Diego County as well as Florida and Georgia. He recently provided research assistance to scholar and author of the “Color of Law” Richard Rothstein, gathering information on the history of housing policy and discrimination in Lakewood, CA and the current experiences of Black Lives Matter protestors fighting against racial injustice.