Participant Biographies

Neil G. Ruiz

Neil G. Ruiz

Associate Director of Global Migration & Demography, Pew Research Center
Session 2 - "Immigrants or Refugees?"

Dr. Neil G. Ruiz is associate director of global migration and demography at the Pew Research Center. He studies the international movement of people across borders, the impact of migration on sending and receiving countries, high-skilled immigration to the U.S., and comparative immigrant visa systems. Prior to joining the Center, Dr. Ruiz was the executive director of the Center for Law, Economics & Finance at George Washington University, and he has also worked as a migration expert at the Brookings Institution, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. He is a political economist with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.Sc. from Oxford University, and a B.A. (with high honors and Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of California, Berkeley. He regularly speaks about U.S. immigration and international migration research with major print and broadcast media.