The Center for Immigration Studies is a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, D.C. Many of its researchers have concluded that current high levels of immigration are harming the country. The organization says it’s not anti-immigrant, however; instead, it favors a policy of fewer immigrants but a “warmer welcome for those who are admitted.” Mark Krikorian is executive director.

The Center for Immigration Research is housed in the sociology department at the University of Houston and previously had a Religion and Migration Project.

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo is a sociology professor at the University of Southern California and an expert on issues of illegal immigration and the illegal-immigrant rights movement in the United States. She is the author of Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence.

Josh DeWind is program director of the Migration Program of the Social Science Research Council in New York City. He was a founding member of the Center for Immigrants Rights, National Coalition for Haitian Rights and National Immigration Forum.

Ernie Cortes Jr., the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” award, is on the executive team of the Industrial Areas Foundation, which engages in community organizing to encourage social change. He is widely known for developing leadership among Latino immigrant communities.

Read an essay on the New Religious Movements website at the University of Virginia, by Timothy Miller of the University of Kansas. Miller examines the 1965 immigration reform and how it changed American religion and paved the way for New Religious Movements and the many “sects” or “cults” inspired by Eastern spirituality.

Robert M. Seltzer is a professor of history at Hunter College, City University of New York. He has written books on the Jewish experience in America, including Toward the 21st Century: Is There a Modern Judaism? (Hunter College of the City University of New York, 1997).

Listen to an April 3, 2006, Talk of the Nation program on National Public Radio about the contentious issues of African-Americans, immigration and social justice.

Read a June 13, 2007, New York Times story about an African-American congregation in Mamaroneck, N.Y., that serves as an official hiring site for largely Hispanic day laborers. One expert says very few of the nation’s hiring sites are associated with African-American churches.