Doris Meissner

Meissner is currently serving or has previously served on a number of distinguished boards and panels. These include the National Academy of Public Administration (Senior Fellow, 2003 to present) and the Administrative Conference of the United States. She is also a member of Washington D.C. based think tank the Inter-American Dialogue.

After finishing her tenure at the INS, Meissner' returned to work at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on the Immigration Policy Project. In July 2001, Kathleen Newland and Demetrios G. Papademetriou created the Migration Policy Institute from the International Migration Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment, and Meissner's Immigration Policy Project subsequently moved to MPI. Meissner currently holds the title of Senior Fellow and Director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program.

In June 1993, Meissner was nominated by then United States President Bill Clinton and worked as INS Commissioner under then United States Attorney General Janet Reno. The nomination came at a time when there was a growing demand for stronger but humane immigration and border enforcement. It occurred shortly after the accident where the Golden Venture, a cargo ship smuggling 286 undocumented immigrants from China ran aground on the beach in New York.

In 1986, Meissner moved to the private sector as Senior Associate and Director of the Immigration Policy Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.

In 1981, under the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, she became Acting Commissioner of the INS and then Executive Associate Commissioner, then the third-ranking post.

In 1973, Meissner joined the U.S. Department of Justice as a White House Fellow and Special Assistant to the Attorney General. She served in a number of policy posts:

While still a student, she managed the political campaign of Democratic politician Midge Miller, an opponent of the Vietnam War. The campaign was successful, with Miller defeating her opponent, a 20-year incumbent, in the Wisconsin state legislature, and assuming office in 1971.

With assistance from Midge Miller, whose campaign she had managed, Meissner became a founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus and its executive director in 1971. During the 1972 Democratic National Convention and Republican National Convention, she and groups of volunteers worked to change party rules to mandate larger rules for women in both parties.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1963 and a Master of Arts degrees in 1969 (the latter in political science) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Doris Marie Meissner (born November 3, 1941) is a former Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the agency previously responsible for immigration enforcement in the United States. She headed the INS from October 18, 1993 (nominated June 1993) to November 18, 2000, under United States President Bill Clinton and United States Attorney General Janet Reno. She is currently Senior Fellow and Director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute and has previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Meissner was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on November 3, 1941 to Hertha and Fred Borst, emigrants to the United States from Germany, who had arrived in the country via the Ellis Island inspection station in the 1920s. Meissner has cited her personal experience as a second-generation immigrant in a family speaking a foreign language as critical to helping her better empathize with the migrant perspective as she took on key roles in managing the United States immigration enforcement apparatus. Recalling an incident where her father, who had arrived in 1927, lost his naturalization papers in a fire, and was anxious if he could get a copy, she said: "When your parents are immigrants, you grow up understanding immigration in a way that you never could from a textbook: how precious and difficult it is."