Former INS Commissioner Doris Meissner to Join the Migration Policy Institute

Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), will join the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) as a senior fellow on July 1, 2002. Bringing to MPI her extensive knowledge of U.S. and international migration policy, she will contribute to MPI's project on national security and immigration and will work on international migration and development, and immigration policymaking in an era of globalization.

Doris Meissner served as INS commissioner from 1993-2000. Since leaving the government, she has been a senior associate in the Global Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Prior to becoming commissioner, she held a series of posts in the Justice Department including executive director of the Cabinet Committee on Illegal Aliens, assistant director of the Office of Policy and Planning, deputy associate attorney general, and acting commissioner and executive associate commissioner of the INS. In 1986, she joined the Carnegie Endowment where she founded the Immigration Policy Project, which evolved into the International Migration Policy Program, and finally the independent Migration Policy Institute, established in 2001.

"We are so pleased to welcome Doris to the staff of MPI, an organization that in many ways benefited from her initial leadership in founding the Immigration Policy Project at the Carnegie Endowment. MPI will benefit greatly from her broad experience inside and outside government and her analytical contributions to the field of migration policy," said Kathleen Newland, co-founder and co-director of the Migration Policy Institute.