The University of Oregon invites you to hear from guest speaker Keith Hall, director of the Congressional Budget Office, with remarks from Sarah Nutter, dean, Lundquist College of Business.

Since 1975, the Congressional Budget Office has produced independent analyses of budgetary and economic issues to support the Congressional budget process. Each year, the agency’s economists and budget analysts produce dozens of reports and hundreds of cost estimates for proposed legislation.

Keith Hall has directed the Congressional Budget Office since 2015. He has more than 25 years of public service, most recently as the chief economist and director of economics at the International Trade Commission (ITC). Before that, he was a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, chief economist for the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, chief economist for the Department of Commerce, a senior international economist for the ITC, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas, and an international economist at the Department of Treasury. In those positions, he worked on a wide variety of topics, including labor market analysis and policy, economic conditions and measurement, macroeconomic analysis and forecasting, international economics and policy, and computational partial equilibrium modeling. He earned his Ph​D​ and MS​ in economics from Purdue University.

Sponsored by the University of Oregon Lundquist College of Business, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.

In the United States and across Europe, nation-states are slamming their doors on immigrants and refugees. This nationalist reaction to the diversity that globalization has brought seems to portend depressed immigration levels for the foreseeable future. Yet employers still demand immigrant labor in a growing economy. Even as U.S. President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies drove undocumented workers deeper into the shadows, his administration also approved a record-breaking quarter-million temporary agricultural worker visas, known as H2A or “guestworkers.” Similar patterns are in effect around the globe. In this panel, historians join key Oregon advocates for both agricultural and workers’ interests to contextualize the “guestworker” phenomenon locally and globally, and ask whether it represents the future of immigrant labor in the United States and beyond.

Organized by Julie Weise, 2018-19 Wayne Morse Resident Scholar.

Panelists: 

Michael Dale is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Workers' Justice Project, and non-profit law firm that represents low wage, immigrant, and contingent workers with respect to civil employment law problems. He worked for 25 years as an Oregon legal aid attorney, and helped establish the Oregon Law Center in 1995. Over the last ten years he has been engaged in extensive litigation over the rules governing the use of H-2B temporary workers, winning cases in the 3rd, 11th, and 4th Circuit Courts of Appeals.

Christoph Rass is one of Germany’s leading historians of twentieth-century European labor migration. A professor at Osnabrück University’s Institute for Migration and Intercultural Studies, Rass concentrates on institutions and knowledge production in migration regimes, forced migrations, and GIS-based modeling of migration patterns. Rass is a recent recipient of the Kalliope Prize for Migration Research from the German Emigration Center.

Jeff Stone is the CEO of Oregon Association of Nurseries and formerly chief of staff to Metro Council. Stone has a BS from the University of Oregon in political science and has deep experience in Oregon and national political affairs. He has served as an executive and board member of numerous business and nonprofit organizations.

Julie M. Weise is a scholar of twentieth-century Mexican migration history in global context. An associate professor of history at the University of Oregon, Weise is the author of the prize-winning Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910 (UNC Press, 2015). Her current book project, “Citizenship Displaced: Migrant Political Cultures in the Era of State Control,” places postwar Mexican migration history in conversation with parallel histories in Europe and southern Africa.

Cosponsored by the UO Office of International Affairs, the UO Department of History, and the Global Studies Institute's Global Oregon Faculty Collaboration Fund. Part of the Wayne Morse Center's 2017-19 theme on Borders, Migration, and Belonging. 

Refreshments will be served. 

 

Featuring Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for public interest technology and local initiatives at New America.

Prior to joining New America, she served for eight years on President Obama’s senior staff, first as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs followed by five years as Director of the Domestic Policy Council. Before working in government, she was Senior Vice President at the National Council of La Raza (now UNIDOS US), the nation’s largest Hispanic policy and advocacy organization, where she served for 20 years.