How states of origin regulate the rights, obligations, and services they extend to their emigrants has remained mostly in the shadows of migration policy research. We have tackled this gap in the literature by advancing the Emigrant Policies Index (EMIX), which was designed for comparing the degree of adoption of emigrant policiesalso called 'diaspora-engagement policies'across countries in a whole region and, with the update provided in this paper, for the first time in a longitudinal

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... . Having previously introduced the EMIX in a synchronic frame, this article presents its scores for 14 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean in 2015 and 2017. This effort already shows that some emigrant policies (e.g. citizenship policies) endure more than others (e.g. social policies). These suggestive findings support the need to compile not only cross-national, but also longitudinal datasets on these policies. Policy implications • Emigration is not a loss for states of origin. Documenting and comparing more than a hundred programs for emigrants across countries, the EMIX shows the amplitude of efforts by states of origin to channel and encourage emigrant participation. While other researchers have abundantly shown that emigrants keep participating in their societies of origin by sending money and making political claims from abroad, our research suggests that states of origin encourage linkages also in social and cultural domains. • Designing good emigrant policies will not suffice if there are no administrations to support them. To reduce windowdressing and implementation gaps in the realm of emigrant policies, states of origin must develop administrative structures both at home and abroad (e.g. by improving their consular networks).