Areas of expertise
U.S. immigration law and policy • International labor migration • Farm labor • Forced migration
Biography
Daniel Costa is an attorney who first joined the Economic Policy Institute in 2010 and was EPI’s director of immigration law and policy research from 2013 to early 2018; he returned to this role in 2019 after serving as the California Attorney General’s senior advisor on immigration and labor. Costa’s areas of research include a wide range of labor migration issues, including governance of temporary labor migration programs, migration for both professional occupations and lower-wage jobs, worksite enforcement, and immigrant workers’ rights, as well as farm labor, global multilateral processes related to migration, and refugee and asylum issues.
Costa has testified on immigration before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as state governments, been quoted and cited by many major news outlets, and appeared on radio and television news. His commentaries have appeared in publications like The New York Times, Roll Call, Fortune, La Opinión, and others, and he was named one of “20 Immigration Experts to Follow on Twitter” by ABC News. Costa is currently a visiting scholar at the Global Migration Center at the University of California-Davis, and was previously a visiting scholar at U.C. Davis, School of Law (2019–2020) and an affiliated scholar with the University of California-Merced (2015–2017). He is also the proud son of immigrants and fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.
Prior to his tenure at EPI, Costa worked on developing the legal and normative framework for disaster response and humanitarian relief operations with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva, Switzerland, and completed the International Law Seminar with the UN International Law Commission. He was also a policy analyst at the Great Valley Center, a former University of California think tank, where he managed an immigrant integration program.
Education
LL.M., International and Comparative Law, Georgetown University Law Center
J.D., International Law, Syracuse University
B.A., Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley
By Content:
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Immigrants are not hurting U.S.-born workers: Six facts to set the record straight
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News from EPI › Senate should reject deal that would punish asylum seekers and trade away human rights for temporary defense funding
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EPI comments on State Department’s proposed rule on the J-1 Au Pair Program
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EPI comments on DHS’s “Modernizing H-1B” proposed rule
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Congress and President Biden should not trade away human rights and asylum protections for temporary defense funding
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EPI comments on DHS’s proposed rule on “Modernizing H-2 Program Requirements, Oversight, and Worker Protections”
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EPI comments on DOL’s proposed rule on “Improving Protections for Workers in Temporary Agricultural Employment in the United States”
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The farmworker wage gap: Farmworkers earned 40% less than comparable nonagricultural workers in 2022
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How many farmworkers are employed in the United States?
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Testimony prepared for the U.S. House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions for a hearing on ‘The Impact of Biden’s Open Border on the American Workforce’
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Record-low number of federal wage and hour investigations of farms in 2022: Congress must increase funding for labor standards enforcement to protect farmworkers
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Supreme Court decision affirms President Biden’s power to set immigration enforcement priorities and protect labor standards through deferred action
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Supreme Court justices’ close ties with business interests threaten workers’ rights
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Congress should vote against overturning an updated rule that protects farmworkers from being underpaid
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Testimony prepared for the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary for a hearing on ‘From Farm to Table, Immigrant Workers Get the Job Done’
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Testimony for the Maine Legislature, Labor and Housing Committee: An overtime pay threshold for farmworkers in Maine should be set at 40 hours per week
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Tech and outsourcing companies continue to exploit the H-1B visa program at a time of mass layoffs: The top 30 H-1B employers hired 34,000 new H-1B workers in 2022 and laid off at least 85,000 workers in 2022 and early 2023
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EPI comment on DHS and EOIR’s proposed “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways” asylum rule
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EPI comments on USCIS fee schedule regulation
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EPI comments on DHS and DOL Temporary Rule to increase the fiscal year 2023 numerical limitation for the H-2B visa program and portability for H-2B workers
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The Department of Homeland Security took a positive step by clarifying and streamlining the process to protect migrant workers in labor disputes
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Threatening migrants and shortchanging workers: Immigration is the government’s top federal law enforcement priority, while labor standards enforcement agencies are starved for funding and too understaffed to adequately protect workers
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Victory on overtime for New York farmworkers
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In a year of tremendous legislative gains for California workers, Governor Newsom was wrong to veto a bill to protect 300,000 migrant workers
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Overtime pay will help, not hurt, New York’s farms
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California is on the brink of enacting the first significant law to combat international labor recruitment abuses and protect 300,000 temporary migrant workers. Will Governor Newsom sign the bill?
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As the H-2B visa program grows, the need for reforms that protect workers is greater than ever: Employers stole $1.8 billion from workers in the industries that employed most H-2B workers over the past two decades
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Second-class workers: Assessing H-2 visa programs’ impact on workers
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Biden can fix the anti-worker H-1B immigration visa scam
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The Biden administration can stop H-1B visas from fueling outsourcing: Half of the top 30 H-1B employers were outsourcing firms in 2021