This is another crippling blow not just to high-skill immigration in America, but specifically to the talented students who come here to study at US universities in the hope of staying to contribute their skills to the US.

There won't be many chances to do that anymore. Door slammed in their faces.

You can read the paper here:
www.andreapvelasquez.com/uploads/1/2/...

I also want to thank my amazing co-authors. We learned a lot writing this paper. Every iteration made it better, & I truly enjoyed every single one of our meetings & brainstorming sessions. We are more motivated than ever to keep working on these important topics for the region!

This paper greatly benefited from seminar discussions & from the thoughtful suggestions of two anonymous referees & our editor, Lucas Davis.

It was a rewarding & intellectually engaging process. The feedback helped us strengthen the evidence we present on this important topic.

These findings go beyond El Salvador. Approx. 30 million farms in low-income countries operate under similar conditions: high climate risk, limited formal insurance, & access to remittances.

Understanding these dynamics is key for increasing the resilience of countries to extreme weather events.

Migrant networks matter.
The migration response is strongest in areas with more established U.S. networks, which help lower the cost of migration and make it a viable option.

We find multiple responses:

• Reduced use of production inputs
• Decline in demand for non-household labor
• Increased reliance on international migration

One additional week of extreme heat raises migration among corn-producing households by 0.15% points, a 23% increase relative to the mean.

We start by showing that extreme temperatures during the main growing season reduce corn yields by 3% and hired labor by 3.6%. So how do agricultural producers respond to these shocks?

In this paper, we study how extreme temperatures affect international migration in El Salvador—a country with strong U.S. migration networks and a population heavily reliant on remittances and subsistence agriculture.

Big thanks to the scientific committee for including our paper, to all the participants, and to the founders of HUMANS, Ana María Ibáñez, Marcela Meléndez, Antonella Bandiera, and @sandrarozo.bsky.social, for building such a strong network of people working on migration.