Expert Alert: Baker Institute’s Tony Payan available to comment on Obama administration’s immigration announcement

Jeff Falk
713-348-6775
jfalk@rice.edu 

Rice expert available to comment on Obama administration’s immigration announcement
Baker Institute’s Tony Payan is author of ‘The Three U.S.-Mexico Border Wars: Drugs, Immigration and Homeland Security’

HOUSTON — (June 15, 2012) — The Obama administration’s announcement today that it will issue work permits to and stop deporting as many as 800,000 young illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and have never committed a crime is being seen by many commentators as a major game changer in how the country approaches immigration. 

Tony Payan, a scholar for immigration studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, is available to comment on this election-year policy change, its context and the potential ramifications.

Payan is an associate professor of political science at the University of Texas at El Paso and also holds an appointment at Universidad Autónoma de Juárez, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. His areas of study are in the field of international relations, with an emphasis on U.S. foreign policy, Mexican foreign policy and U.S.-Mexico relations. He is the author of “The Three U.S.-Mexico Border Wars: Drugs, Immigration and Homeland Security.”

To arrange an interview with Payan, contact Jeff Falk at jfalk@rice.edu or 713-348-6775. 

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Founded in 1993, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston ranks among the top 20 university-affiliated think tanks globally and top 30 think tanks in the United States. As a premier nonpartisan think tank, the institute sponsors more than 20 programs that conduct research on domestic and foreign policy issues with the goal of bridging the gap between the theory and practice of public policy. The institute’s strong track record of achievement reflects the work of its endowed fellows and Rice University scholars. Learn more about the institute at www.bakerinstitute.org or on the institute’s blog, http://blogs.chron.com/bakerblog.