THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Doris Meissner
“”The National Women’s Political Caucus was an amazing outlet to channel our own struggles with who we were as young women and how we were going to move forward in our lives.”
Co-founder and first executive director of the National Women’s Political Caucus. White House Fellows Program. Commissioner of the Department of Justice’s Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from 1993 to 2000. Assistant director of the Office of Policy and Planning, deputy associate attorney general, and both acting and executive associate commissioner of the INS. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.
Interviewed by Judy Waxman, March 2021
Photo 1. 1972 National Women’s Political Caucus. Photo 2. President Bill Clinton unveils his immigration initiative at the White House in 1995. He was joined by Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner, Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Attorney General Janet Reno. (Doug Mills/Associated Press)
More About Doris:
- A Former Immigration Official on How Much Harm Trump Could Do, By Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, April 9, 2019
- Doris Meissner Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization Service, October 18, 1993 – November 18, 2000, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
- Wisconsin Alumni Association – Doris Meissner
- National Academy of Public Administration
- Women’s Media Center
- Migration Policy Institute website
- National Women’s Political Caucus Records, 1970-2006; Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
- National Women’s Political Caucus website
- On C-SPAN
- Wikipedia page