Silva Mathema is a Senior Policy Analyst on the Immigration Policy team at the Center for American Progress, or CAP – a think-tank based in Washington D.C. Her research primarily focuses on the U.S. immigration policies, immigrant integration, and refugee issues. More specifically, she has worked on a variety of research projects such as estimating the economic impact of executive actions, studying the importance of government-issued identification cards for unauthorized immigrants, refugee integration, and exploring regional solutions for the Central American refugee crisis. Under CAP, she has managed several publications including a large research project that estimated the economic impacts of removing all unauthorized workers from the United States.
Prior to joining CAP, she worked as a Research Associate for the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, a civil rights advocacy organization, where she her work centered around the intersections between race and ethnicity issues and policies regarding affordable housing and education. Previously, as a graduate assistant, she worked on a project exploring innovative ways to improve health care among the Hispanic population in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina.
Silva earned her Ph.D. in Public Policy from University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where her dissertation analyzed the impacts of an interior immigration enforcement program on the integration of Hispanic immigrants in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. She received her bachelors of arts in economics from Salem College.
She came to the United States in 2002 from Kathmandu, Nepal to pursue her higher studies.
