Jack Maguire

Background

About Jack Maguire

My research and interests have focused on how immigration status impacts immigrants' daily lives. I have mostly worked with asylum seekers, Temporary Protected Status recipients, and undocumented immigrants from Latin America in Miami. Through this research I have come to understand how painful, anxiety provoking, and damaging having such tenuous legal protections can be for immigrants and the magnitude by which our immigration system blocks many of these immigrants ability to live happy and fulfilling lives. My Ph. D research has involved three years of fieldwork in the Miami area where I have interviewed over 130 Venezuelan and Honduran immigrants, most of whom have been undocumented, in the asylum process, or who have Temporary Protected Status. This research has granted me the opportunity to work with vulnerable populations who have passed through some of the most traumatic events that human beings can experience. Through fieldwork, I have also come to work with various immigrant non-profit organizations such as Raices Venezolanas, Fundación 15 de Septiembre, Movimiento Nacido del Pavimento, the Florida Immigrant Coalition, Catholic Legal Services, and others to help provide services to immigrants in Miami as well as to advocate for immigrants rights in the United States. My roles at these organizations have varied from volunteer, to research collaborator, to Director of Immigration and have required me to take on numerous duties including translating, preparing legal documents, organizing protests, submitting Freedom of Information Act Requests, public speaking, and doing live tv and radio interviews primarily in Spanish. The Ph. D process has also given me extensive experience writing different types of essays, grants, and research presentations. At Florida International University, where I am currently finishing my Ph. D, I helped start the Global Immigration and Migration Initiative (GIMI) which seeks to establish an immigration research center at the University. GIMI has been endorsed by Florida International University through its School of International and Public Affairs and is now part of the Václav Havel Program for Human Rights and Diplomacy. I serve as the lead coordinator of GIMI and have worked to create intra-university research projects and events about immigration and human rights. This work has involved me writing grant applications and working with the University to find donors. Unfortunately, none of our research grants have been accepted and we have yet to find a donor to provide start up funds for the research center.