James D. Bachmeier is Associate Professor of Sociology at Temple University (Philadelphia), a founding Research Fellow of the Public Policy Lab at Temple University, a non-resident Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute (Washington, DC), and a non-resident research affiliate at the Population Research Institute at Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA).
Bachmeier is an expert in the sociology of immigration and immigrant integration, and in the demographic estimation of the U.S. foreign-born population. He is the co-author (with Frank D. Bean and Susan K. Brown) of Parents without Papers: The Progress and Pitfalls of Mexican American Integration (2015, Russell Sage Foundation). His work has also appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals including Demography, International Migration Review, Social Forces, Social Science Research, Demographic Research, and International Journal of Comparative Sociology.
Bachmeier’s research has contributed to immigration and related policy in myriad ways. For instance, his research on the measurement of legal status serves as the basis for statistics on the unauthorized foreign-born population published regularly by the Migration Policy Institute that are now widely used by policy makers, researchers, and immigrant service-providers across the nation. These estimates were also used to inform the Obama administration’s 2014 executive order, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). His innovative methodological work on estimating the undocumented immigrant population in the U.S. has also been cited in multiple amici curiae briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court on cases related to DACA and DAPA.
