20th Annual Immigration Law and Policy Conference

September 18, 2023 9:00 A.M.–5:00 P.M. 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. ET

Experts examined the Biden administration's immigration actions, border policy, state actions, legal representation, humanitarian parole for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan nationals, and other top issues in immigration policy.

The 20th annual Immigration Law and Policy Conference, organized by MPI, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., and Georgetown University Law Center, featured fresh, thoughtful policy and legal analysis, and discussion of some of the top immigration issues by leading government officials, attorneys, researchers, advocates, and other experts.

9:00 AM ET — Welcome and Opening Remarks

Anna Marie Gallagher, Executive Director, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC)
Muzaffar Chishti, Senior Fellow, Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and Director of MPI office at New York University School of Law
Andrew I. Schoenholtz, Professor from Practice, Georgetown Law; Co-Director, Center for Applied Legal Studies; Faculty Director, Human Rights Institute, Georgetown Law
Katharine Donato, Donald G. Herzberg Professor of International Migration and former Director, Institute for the Study of International Migration, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

9:15 AM ET — State of Play: Dynamism and Disorder
The U.S. immigration policy space has seen a high degree of dynamism—and disorder—over the past year. A raft of new humanitarian and legal immigration policies has been advanced amid record unauthorized arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border, a growing recognition that migration is increasingly hemispheric in nature, the end of a pandemic-era expulsions policy that the government had come to rely upon, and continued congressional inaction on immigration. The courts have been active players, in some cases blocking prominent executive-branch policies. And some states, led by Texas and Florida, have noisily entered the arena. Where is this turbulent period headed? How is the Biden administration executing on its vision for a new post-pandemic strategy at the border and beyond? Is long-standing executive branch pre-eminence on immigration eroding as the courts and states assume greater roles? And where is immigration likely to stand as an issue in upcoming national elections? This expert panel tackled these and other issues.

Doris Meissner, Senior Fellow and Director of U.S. Immigration Policy Program, MPI
Ronald Brownstein, Senior Editor, The Atlantic, and Senior Political Analyst, CNN
Linda Chavez, Senior Fellow, Open Society, Niskanen Center, and President, Becoming American Initiative
Angela Maria Kelley, Chief Advisor, Policy and Partnerships, American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA)
Blas Nuñez-Neto, Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy and Acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of International Affairs, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

This transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies. If you notice an error, feel free to email [email protected].

[00:00:02.00] - Doris Meissner

Well, thanks all and good morning. I'm glad to welcome you as well to this 20th year of this effort that we make every year to discuss these important issues. I am Doris Meissner. I'm a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, and I'm very pleased to introduce to you my fellow panelists this morning, beginning on my right with Ron Brownstein, who is a senior editor at The Atlantic, senior political analyst at CNN, Blas Núñez-Neto, who is the Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy and the Acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of International Affairs. Many big hats to wear at the Department of Homeland Security. And then next to him, Angie Kelly, who is the Chief Advisor Policy and Partnerships for AILA, the American Immigration Lawyers Association. And then on the screen, we have Linda Chávez, who is a senior fellow at Open Society as well as at the Niskanen Center. And president of the Becoming American Initiative. Linda is in an undisclosed location in Colorado. And very, very pleased, Linda, to be able to have you join us online. So the audience is here in the room as well as a very sizable online audience.

When we get to the question and answer period, we're going to ask those of you who are in the room to line up at these mics. So I'm telling you about them right now so that you can think about how to get there. Out when the time comes if you have a question. And for those who are online, those questions will come in, whatever, across cyberspace, and I will read them off of my iPad. The way that we do this this morning is that this panel, which we call State of Play, has traditionally become the opener for this conference. And we name it something different each year. This year we're naming it Dynamism and Disorder. But it is our effort to try to a broad overview of the critical policy developments of the past year and how they look in shaping the challenges that are ahead. I'll give you just a few opening comments to frame and set the scene, and then I'm going to ask an opening question to each of our panelists. After they have an opportunity to make those opening remarks, we're going to go into follow-up and I hope crosstalk. This panel works the best when panelists speak with each other and peek at— pick up on each other's points.

And then finally, we will have ample time, we hope, for questions from the audience. So with that, let me try to set the scene here. We're living in an era of massive and growing displacement globally. It's the result of wars, of failed states, of growing authoritarianism, climate disasters, post-pandemic weaknesses, poverty, and also real-time information for the first time for intending migrants through social media. For the United States and for the Western Hemisphere, this mass migration as a region-wide dilemma is actually quite new. It's best exemplified by what's going on in the Darién Gap these days. Last year, 2022, there were a record number of 250,000 people who passed through the Darién Gap on their way to the United States. This year, and it's only September, we're already at 360,000. Next year, the predictions are that that number could go to 500,000, a half a billion, half a million. These are people from many nationalities, certainly from the hemisphere, but also from Africa and Asia. And they are accessing this route through what is really a seriously well-developed supply chain of almost entirely corrupt practices. When you take that then and look at the issue from the standpoint of the United States, there are so many issues that we could discuss, but the crisis at the US-Mexico border is the one that continues to suck the oxygen out —asserting new roles in immigration enforcement and policymaking, and sending large numbers of migrants to large cities without family members or others that they know there to take them in.

So as a result, the politics surrounding immigration have risen several notches in visibility and in rhetoric in our public discourse. With President Biden running for reelection, Republicans are making no secret of their intention to keep Democrats on the defensive on the issue of the border and ride it hard as a top-tier campaign issue for 2024. So with that, let's start to talk in more depth. Ron, I'm gonna ask you the first question. You've written extensively on immigration issues over many years. And lately you've begun writing about immigration, not only immigration itself, but as one of a group of issues that are part of a broader divide in the country that you're terming a nation within a nation. Tell us what you mean by that.

What are you seeing? What accounts for it? What's brought us to this point?

[00:05:45.21] - Ronald Brownstein

Thank you, Doris. Thank you for having me on this great panel. You know, I first started writing about immigration covering Prop 187 in California. So it has been a— It's been a while. I think, to, you know, several speakers already have noted the increased assertiveness of red states on immigration and trying to assert the right to pursue policies that depart almost completely at the other end of the spectrum from what the national government is trying to do. And I think that has to be understood in a much broader context because what we have seen since 2021 trickling before that under the Trump presidency, but certainly accelerating under the Biden presidency, is an attempt by virtually every red state, every state where Republicans have unified control of government, to set their own rules on a broad range of civil rights and civil liberties issues. I mean, if you look at abortion, if you look at voting rights, if you look at LGBTQ rights, classroom censorship, book bans, public protests, a whole range of issues in which red states are moving aggressively and uniformly, you know, kind of in sync to restore a kind of pre-1960s vision of America in which your rights and liberties varied enormously depending on your zip code.

The general trend in American life since the '60s has been to nationalize more rights on every front, much of it through congressional action, much of it through Supreme Court decisions. We are beginning to see that dial turn back the other way and wider divergence opening between the basic rights available to citizens depending on where they live. And immigration falls very much within that overall construct, particularly in the border states. You know, we've seen with Operation Lone Star in Texas a variety of policies— I know you're gonna talk more about this in greater depth later— in which the state government is trying to insert itself into responsibilities that have historically been reserved to the federal government, the symbol being the razor wire along the border at the Rio Grande and the buoys in the river itself. Doug Ducey, when he was governor of Arizona, wanted to build his own border wall with freight boxcars. And Florida under DeSantis has passed a law that recalls the Show Me Your Paper law in Arizona from the Obama era, but is in many ways even more severe, offering criminal penalties to anyone who transport, transport an undocumented migrant in the state.

The, the Biden administration has pushed back against some of this to an extent. Um, they, uh, they, they pressured Doug Ducey to remove the boxcars. Uh, they have sued, uh, Texas over the, the barriers in the Rio Grande itself. But notably, that lawsuit did not include the razor wire on the shore. And the Biden administration, as far as I know, has not joined the litigation that private, you know, public interest law firms and so forth and civil rights groups have filed against the Florida legislation. And I think that reflects the political calculation, and I'm sure we're gonna talk about this, of the administration overall, which has tried to be responsive to concerns of immigrant advocates, but is also very much keeping one eye on the Republican opposition and the case that they are prepared to make against Biden in 2024, that he has in effect opened the borders. And I will just close by saying that with all of this occurring and all of this tension with red states that are moving to try to commandeer more authority to set their own immigration policy— and by the way, this is an area where traditionally the Supreme Court has provided almost, has deferred almost completely to federal authority over states.

Certainly in the Arizona case, not that long ago, there is a sense that the red states may be looking, much as Mississippi did on abortion, for a case that will allow the court to reexamine those earlier decisions and go in a different direction. But having said that, with all of that as the backdrop, all of this conflict with the red states that is ratcheting up, What is looming as the kind of intergovernmental relationship that is likely to have the biggest impact on 2024 is not any of this. It is the growing tension with the Democratic cities that are becoming the kind of, you know, the recipients of large numbers of these migrants. And getting that right with the mayors of New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and the other cities that are dealing with this influx I think is probably going to be more important for Biden, the Biden administration in 2024 than finding, you know, some sort of solution or agreement with Texas on Operation Lone Star. So I will stop there.

[00:11:13.13] - Doris Meissner

All right. Those put some very good points on the table. The getting it right is certainly something we should come back to. And, you know, the basic issue of federalism and federalism under real challenge is an incredibly important longer term. Trend here. So, Blas, let me turn to you and say what everybody knows, and that is that the president announced a set of policy changes in January that went into effect after the end of Title 42 in May that represented a sharp shift from the policies and practices of the first 2 years. What's the theory of the case? That the administration is making and tell us where you think we are. What's your latest assessment of what's working? What isn't working? What additional measures can or might we see? Give us the state of play.

[00:12:15.22] - Blas Nuñez-Neto

Sure. And thanks for the invitation to participate today. I think, as you noted, in May, we started implementing a new set of policies that essentially seek to disincentivize migrants from putting their lives in the hands of smugglers and crossing our border unlawfully, and instead provide legal, safe, orderly pathways for intending migrants to come directly to the United States. Some of those include the supporter-based parole processes for nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. We also announced the CBP One mobile application at the border, which is allowing us to process 4 to 5 times as many individuals at our ports of entry as we have been historically able to even prior to the pandemic. And the theory of the case is essentially that, which is that we believe quite strongly that individuals have a right to asylum in this country, and we are prepared to offer safe and orderly means for people to come and access the asylum system. But we can't allow individuals to cross unlawfully at the border in the, in the numbers that we have seen over the last few years. And so, you know, we have put in place measures again that seek to channel those flows into more orderly processes.

I will say, though, you know, that it's important to take a step back and just note that what we are seeing today is, and this word gets tossed around a lot, but I think it's absolutely the case, it's unprecedented, right? When we, when our immigration system was last updated by Congress decades ago, 98% of our encounters at the border were nationals of Mexico, and they were individuals who, you know, came to work seasonally and went back. And a very small fraction of the people were not Mexican and, wanted to access asylum. And so we created a system that was really very generous in giving individuals the opportunity to claim asylum in the US. You know, we saw these demographics start to shift at the border really about 10 to 15 years ago with a surge of migration from the northern Central American countries. And under the Obama administration, for the first time really ever, we saw more non-Mexicans at the border than Mexicans in 2016. And that was entirely driven by nationals of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. This past year, for the first time ever, we have seen the majority of encounters come from countries other than Mexico or the northern Central American countries.

And that is putting just an incredible amount of pressure on our system. Most of those individuals, you know, claim asylum either at the border or in the interior of the country. And even though at the end of the asylum process, very relatively small proportion of people who go through that process actually get granted asylum. But because of the way politics have shaped the discourse in this country around the border, What we've seen since the early 1990s is, you know, a cycle where there's a perception that the border is out of control and Congress provides a great deal of resources to our frontline personnel. This happened while you were at the INS, and it has happened cyclically since then, but we have not actually funded the rest of the system anywhere near as much. And so what we end up with is a system where the real-world incentive structures are the complete opposite of what the statute envisions, which is we are least generous to those who are willing to wait and come to the U.S. using a legal pathway. And unfortunately, you know, most generous to those who arrive unlawfully and claim asylum because that process now takes 4 to 6 years to go through the process.

And obviously, you know, for obvious reasons, we don't want people to become a public charge. And so We allow them to work during that process, but that has really turned into a new way for people just to come and work in the United States. And, you know, that is just the reality that we are facing with today. And so I say all of that because we have, as Doris noted, taken a series of steps, but we are clear-eyed that there really is no lasting solution here that does not involve congressional action. We have seen now going back, you know, 3 or 4 administrations, presidents from both parties trying to address this issue at the border through executive action. We have done that ourselves, and we're obviously committed to continuing to do that. But what that has really done is invited the courts to come into this space and really start to dictate border and immigration policy in the country in ways that are often contradictory and that make it extraordinarily difficult to actually manage what we are seeing. So we really do need a whole-of-society approach here, one that includes, you know, obviously NGOs, private stakeholders, but the U.S. Congress as well.

And one of the things I should have noted, and Ron, you referenced this, is that, you know, because of the changing demographics, And because we're seeing nationals of countries we've never really seen before at the border, these are people that don't have familial ties in the US. And so when they come, they don't have anywhere to go. And that means that they are vulnerable to programs like what the state of Texas is doing, which is kind of forced bussing of people to the interior. But it also means that they end up often in homeless shelters or in unhoused conditions. And that is just a a huge policy challenge, you know, obviously for us in the federal government, but for states and local governments throughout the country. I think the last thing I would note is, you know, Doris referenced the Darién jungle. You know, I was just there 2 weeks ago, and I can say that you can intellectually think you know what is happening there, but until you physically go there and see just how how impenetrable that jungle is, how large and rugged the mountains are that people cross. And then you see, you know, families with really small children, babies, you know, kids in diapers coming out of that jungle after having walked for 4 or 5 days with no food and little water, just in really dire conditions, and ending up in this little indigenous village of 200 people with no running water or electricity.

It is heartbreaking and it is a humanitarian catastrophe and also an ecological catastrophe because that is an unspoiled stretch of jungle that is quickly becoming spoiled. And so we, I think, have a humanitarian imperative to stop what is happening in the Darién. And we are obviously working with partner governments throughout the region to try to address that. It is a huge challenge. I think what we've seen through social media is just the, the role that smuggling networks are playing in shaping these flows and spreading sometimes accurate, sometimes inaccurate information about what's happening in order to drive migration and to put people's lives at risk. And we are unfortunately increasingly seeing drug cartels and really serious transnational criminal organizations becoming directly involved in the movement of people, which is a huge change in how things historically worked in this space that is obviously troubling because of the lack of regard for human life that the cartels have, but also for the way that they destabilize governments throughout the region. And you're seeing that right now in the Darién and, you know, referenced in that New York Times article. So the scale of the challenge is frankly enormous.

But, you know, I think we showed with the policies we created after, we put in place after the lifting of Title 42, that there is a vision that can work in this space. You know, unfortunately, I think the politics here really dominate the discussion from both political extremes, I would say. I think most people are actually pretty reasonable when it comes to the border, but unfortunately, in the public discourse, those voices tend to get drowned out by others. And so that is the real challenge I see is how do we, you know, lift up the middle ground here and come to an actual common sense solution? I think there are ways to do that, and we're committed to doing it, but we need willing partners to work with. That— I'll stop there.

[00:21:37.05] - Doris Meissner

Okay. Well, thank you, Blas. That certainly lays out very graphically what the difficulties are and that the administration recognizes the enormity of the challenge. But no matter what, I'm turning to you, Angie, because the polling for the administration on these issues is very negative. And it shows that border control is a serious weakness for this president going into a reelection period. You've been in the administration and you're now out seeing some of these policy changes in action, and you see the kinds of tensions even prior to this issue of the cities that dealing with immigration creates among Democratic constituencies. Those tensions are on steroids now.. And so what do you think, as a political strategist, the administration can do to reduce the political costs of the current and continuing large numbers? What kind of a message does Biden go to the public with on immigration, given the polling numbers and what they show?

[00:22:51.13] - Angela Maria Kelley

Thanks, Doris, for that really easy question. I am clearly undercaffeinated, but I'll do my best. So I think of this There's like 3 big points I wanna make. Let's talk about Biden's policies, what he's doing, but what he's not saying. I wanna talk about advocates and opponents and what the messages are that are breaking through. And then I wanna talk about what's needed, which I think of as like a home base. Like when kids are playing tag, but you can get to home base and you're safe there. I think what we need is a home base. So let's start with the administration. This administration is actually remarkably forward-leaning. On immigration policy, but it's fragile and it's outsized relative to its resources. It's fragile because there are internal dynamics and disagreement within the agency and the White House that play out all the time. This is— law is every day. And it's— and there are external circumstances that also make it fragile, like the numbers of people coming to the border. It's outsized because there's a lot of policy change happening. But there's not a lot of people and there's not a lot of money and resources to be able to do it.

Certainly not in the timeframe that the press reports on it and that advocates demand. This is gonna be a long haul, guys. And we have to think of it as a marathon. What this administration's done that it doesn't talk a lot about, it doesn't get much blowback either, which I think is interesting, is it's really modernized family immigration in that now we have family parole programs that have been greatly expanded. So if you have a family member here, you can come more quickly. It's expanded employment, particularly H-2As, H-2Bs, and also employment-based visas are now being used in greater numbers than before. There are more people covered with TPS than under any previous administration. That's significant. There are 2 million Americans that have come forward and said, I want to sponsor. I want to sponsor an immigrant, a Ukrainian, an Afghan, Cuban, Haitian, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan. 2 million Americans are sending the demand signal that we can be a welcoming country, but there has to be certain conditions. The numbers of refugees that are coming into the refugee resettlement program also grown. CBP One, not perfect, but we've set up an orderly process for people to come in with an appointment.

There's a lot that's not good about what this administration has done. If you look at it through the narrow lens, it's an important lens, but it's a very narrow lens of asylum seekers. I get that. I represented many vulnerable asylum seekers. But even with the difficult circumventing legal pathways rule, there are a significant number of exemptions of people who are still able to come in. Another thing that the administration's done well that I don't think gets a lot of attention, and I hope Blas can talk about it, is everyone had their eyes on the end of Title 42. We were certain the numbers were gonna go up. There were more cameras there than migrants though after Title 42 came down. And why is that? I think part of the secret sauce is that the administration disrupted the business model of smugglers and was able to talk directly to migrants. And I know of private polling that's been done of people in Northern Triangle countries who say, "We know we can't come because of the 5-year bar. We know we can't come because we need to get an appointment." So that message is actually breaking through to migrants in their countries.

And I think that's key because The bet that this administration has made, right? The cocktail that they're trying to perfect is, can we have legal pathways that are wide enough for people to choose to wait so that they can come lawfully with a visa and not a smuggler? So this is all great, right? A lot of what I've described, and there's many people who are going to disagree with my analysis, but these are the facts too. And these are the facts that don't break through. And why is that? Because this president is wildly uncomfortable with this issue. He is overpromised when he was a candidate. I oversaw the transition team's work on immigration, so I know very well what he promised, and he underestimated the blowback. So he is not speaking up because he's not comfortable. And that leads to my second point. What are the advocates and what are our opponents saying? You all know the Republicans' message, right? It's easy. It's united. It pounds away that the border is open. It pounds away at that over and over again. Now, advocates, the way our field now looks, and I've been in it for many decades, is we have a very robust activist wing that's loud but not particularly large in terms of representing the segment of the American people's opinion on what we should be doing about immigration.

The pragmatic progressives, like the center of this movement, has atrophied, and we have fewer voices that are coming forward with solutions. We're not speaking up. And there are people on the center-right, their voices have been completely overtaken by the Trump dogma on immigration. And we all know what that is. And that awaits us, by the way, if Biden doesn't win the next election. My former colleagues at CAP, Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin, did a really interesting survey project that I urge you all to look at. And it was looking at like, what are some of the big issues that are going to come forward in the 2024 election? 2024 election, and what are the Democrats' positions on it, and where does that sit relative to the center and most of the electorate, including in their party? So on the question of immigration, if you ask people, you say people around the world have the right to claim asylum and America should welcome more immigrants to the country, right? It sounds good. Fewer than 25% of Democrats actually support that position. America needs to secure its borders and create more legal and managed immigration paths to bring in skilled professionals and workers to help our economy grow.

Nearly 60% of Democrats support that. America needs to close its borders to outsiders and reduce all levels of immigration. Only 17%. Most, though, of what breaks through in terms of where advocates are is that first message. But most of where the American public is and where one time was a really robust central left movement was in the middle message. And I think that's how we get to home base. So let's talk a little bit about that. We need policy solutions, communication strategies, and we need stakeholders from across the political spectrum that will say a meta message in support of immigration. If we stay at a high level and a meta message, we win the American public. They wanna have legal immigration that builds on family relationships and workers with protections that get to come to the US. The American public wants legal status for 11 million people as long as they pass background checks, pay taxes, and learn English. The American public supports an enforcement of a system that balances control with compassion. That has to be fair, but also has to be fast and final. That's the comprehensive immigration reform of many year ago, but a 2.0 model that also addresses the conditions that Blas has described.

And it has to be catalyzed and driven by pragmatic progressives that reach across the aisle to centrist conservatives. So that to me, Doris, is the way forward. We draw contrast to those those mostly in the Republican Party who have no solutions. We emphasize legality and we point to what Biden has done and we say, more please.That's my thoughts.

[00:30:57.23] - Doris Meissner

Okay, so Linda, we're going to turn to you now, um, in order to understand better the other side of the aisle. I want to say at the outset that, uh, you're no longer a member of the Republican Party, but you have been a keen observer of right-of-center politics and struggle over immigration issues for a very long time. So we want you to draw on that wisdom and knowledge and tell us about the factions as you see them within the right, center-right, and, and across the conservative spectrum on immigration issues, and definitely what role you see this issue playing in 2024 elections. Will it again be a central strategy the way it seems to be? Is it a winning strategy? So what needs to happen? What do we need to understand about conservatives and conservative thinking on this issue?

[00:31:59.17] - Linda Chavez

Let me just say that it's clear that immigration is going to be a factor and an issue in the 2024 election. Those who watched the first debate with Republican candidates, saw that they were pretty uniform in their opposition to the Biden administration's approach on immigration, but they weren't really into trying to propose any kind of real solutions other than perhaps invading Mexico for the fourth time in U.S. history. And taking on the drug cartels, which in my view is a nonstarter. I mean, I think the real problem is that there are so many misconceptions with what has happened at the border, what is happening internally in the United States because of the kind of media coverage that we see. There is a sense that literally millions of people are pouring into the United States who do not have permission to be here. And we look at the numbers, the 2.4 million number of people who were encountered at the border last year. This is a number that the anti-immigrant forces actually inflate and claim that frankly there are twice that many people. Who have come into the United States. And so that kind of misinformation, there's very little pushback.

I am a senior fellow now at the National Immigration Forum, and the National Immigration Forum and other groups have in fact tried to push back to show that the encounters at the border do not equate to people actually coming into the United States even on a temporary basis and being here. Doris, thank you for your organization's work on updating the number of people who are undocumented in the United States and living here, which had fallen to about 11 million and which have now increased last year. I think the number that you were able to come up with was 11.2 million. 200,000 more people living here is not 2 million million more people living here, and I think that's one of the reasons we cannot have a productive debate on this issue. The second misconception is that the people who are in fact being allowed, even on a temporary basis, whether that's types of parole or whether they are applicants in the asylum process, are illegally present in the United States, and of course we know that's not true. Our asylum laws, in my view, need a hard look. I don't think that all of the people who are coming in and claiming asylum will— and you've already suggested this— they won't be granted asylum because they don't meet the definitions in the law.

But the law says that while those claims are being adjudicated, they can, in fact, be present here. And I think the tension that we've seen is really what's happening, and of course, the Republicans have been very good at this, at moving people out of border states and moving them north and to big cities where Democrats happen to be mayors, and that's kind of, gotten the attention even among Democrats, and that's why you're seeing the kind of polling data I think that you are among Democratic voters. But the bottom line is that none of what concerns Americans can be fixed by the administration. It can only be fixed by Congress because in fact we have an outdated immigration system, one that we have not seen a major overhaul in since Ronald Reagan, the president in whose administration I worked, and that's a very long time ago, 1986. I was recently going back and writing a piece that I think will appear later today or tomorrow in The Bulwark about Judge Hanen's decision on the Dreamers. And one of the things that I did was to go back and look at the way in which President Reagan, even as a candidate, talked about this issue.

And I found a quote from him from his debate with Walter Mondale in which he said, "I believe in amnesty." I think that statement is something that is unfathomable for any Republican to issue today. And yet, without our dealing in some way with the 11.2 million people who are undocumented and living in the United States, without dealing with the fate of the Dreamers, who frankly are now much more than ever under the sword of Damocles, which Judge Hanen has issued just inches from their necks in his latest decision without dealing even with groups that Americans supposedly welcomed a couple of years ago, namely Afghans. We haven't yet passed the Afghan Readjustment Act, or Afghan Adjustment Act, I should say. And all of these things show the kind of paralysis that exists in the United States Congress. You no longer have the voices of people like the 2013 version of Marco Rubio or Lindsey Graham. You don't have Republicans who are willing to stick their neck out and talk about the fact that you cannot solve the issue of illegal immigration until you solve the issue of reform legal immigration. It is amazing to me that people have not made a bigger point of the way in which the flow of immigrants into the United States has traditionally been a bulwark against inflation.

This administration is challenged not just by its policies at the border, but it's challenged on the issue of inflation. And in fact, I think it's been demonstrably shown over the years that the presence of immigrants, the influx of immigrants in the United States has been one of the reasons why our economy has succeeded. And yet again, no one is making that issue. Angela brought up the elephant in the room Donald Trump and his role and what that's going to be in 2024 and whether or not he's going to be able to do what he did in 2016, which was to make immigration the focal point of his campaign. I don't think that's going to happen this time. I think he is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, but I think he is so obsessed he's so obsessed with relitigating the 2020 election that he is not going to spend the kind of time that he did. And because of that, I think the immigration issue, while it will certainly be out there, there will certainly be all of the horror stories. We're going to get, you know, more so-called angel moms and others paraded on TV again, with telling stories about how they've lost family members as a result of crime by people who are undocumented in the United States, which again, those of us who study this issue know is simply not representative since immigrants in general commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans do.

But it is going to be an issue. Issue. It is going to be something that's debated. I will say that I give credit to the Biden administration for being willing to do what they can through their executive powers to be able to make changes to try to streamline the process for asylum, to try to give people who want to come to the United the opportunity to apply in different ways to— before they actually show up at the border. All of those things are good. The one thing that I do fault President Biden for, and I think Angela touched on it a bit, is I think he is uncomfortable with this issue. Unlike someone like George W. Bush, who was governor of a border state, the issue of immigration has not been front and center with President Biden in his political career. It's just not been his focal point, and therefore he's not, I think, he doesn't speak with the same kind of passion. I think he did probably overpromise when he was a candidate and even when he first came into office. And part of that is because I think he just doesn't really get this issue in the way that other presidents have.

I faulted President Obama for the same thing. I thought he was not— he, frankly, I still fault him for having been elected and having both the House of Representatives and the Senate in control of Democrats. Democrats in his first 2 years in office, and he chose not to make immigration reform a top priority, focusing instead on getting healthcare for Americans. But I think that failure meant that we lost the last real opportunity to get something passed. I look right now, and I think that even though I think comprehensive immigration reform is the only answer to solve the problem of illegal migration into the United States. I don't think we're going to see a comprehensive bill anytime soon. And so the— then the question is, can you gather support? And this is going to mean enlisting the support of moderate Republicans or even conservative Republicans who, like I do, do have an understanding of the important role that immigrants play in our economy. Without enlisting their support, you're not going to see it happen. But I do think you're going to have the possibility of seeing some piecemeal legislation push through. And I would say that the 3 areas where you might see some progress is, I hope, with the, the Hanen decision out of Texas and in the Fifth Circuit now, it'll be appealed to the Fifth Circuit, that Hanen's decision will push the Dreamers issue forward.

You're talking about 600,000 young people, average age of 29 years of age, most of them have some college education, who are out there working in workplace, paying taxes, joining the military, and leading responsible lives. I think even conservative Republicans, even Trump voters don't want these people ripped out of their communities and deported. So there might be some progress on Dreamers. I think the Afghan Adjustment Act is another area where you might see some progress. And of course, that bill has been reintroduced this summer. And then the final area I think you might see some more progress is in expanding the ability of people to come here to work temporarily. Certainly, that's something that even Republicans in red states understand in certain industries like agriculture, like the meat processing industry, that without those workers, not only would their jobs disappear, but they would have a kind of domino effect, and communities in red-state America would have a devastating consequence if we cannot get the ability of people to come here on a temporary basis to work. So I continue to be optimistic. I could not have been working on this issue as I have for 40 years if I didn't have some optimism.

But I think it's going to take an effort on both sides of the aisle. And that Democrats, I'm hopeful that those more centrist Democrats will be able to figure out a way to work with the few Republicans who are willing to take on this issue. Issue and at least to see some progress on those specific areas. Thanks.

[00:45:55.21] - Doris Meissner

Linda, there certainly is agreement across the board, as always, that legislation has to be— has to ultimately happen. And if it happens in bits and pieces, that's better than not. But it is also the case that, just sticking with you, Linda, that the points that you've made about DACA and about temporary workers and agriculture, as well as the Afghan Adjustment Act, have been in the mix and have been being talked about. Bills have been proposed, etc. And, and there's just no take. So what, you know, quickly, what would have to change in Republican ranks in order for even those small bites to make progress? Not, not make progress happen?

[00:46:41.16] - Linda Chavez

Well, I think I don't know that if the Republicans maintain control of the House of Representatives that you're going to see any progress on anything. And I say, you know, that I say that somewhat reluctantly, even though I'm not a Republican. I agree with Republicans on a lot of issues, not immigration certainly, but there are other issues with which I do agree with them. But I think if if the Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives in the next election, that you are more likely to see some movement. If Donald Trump is elected, then all bets are off. Then I think we go back, and it will no longer be 2024 in the United States. It will be 1924. We will see the kind of xenophobic anti-immigrant wave that we saw at the beginning of the 20th century. And I think that would be a tragedy.

[00:47:48.14] - Doris Meissner

All right, so elections matter. They absolutely matter. And that is a very bracing answer. Thank you very, very much. I, I, I, we're, we're We're running short on time, and so I wanna give any of you a chance to pick up on points others have made.

[00:48:06.19] - Ronald Brownstein

Well, I'll jump in. You know, there was kind of a test case of what Linda was talking about. At some point during the Trump administration, Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin, among others, offered the administration a deal that they would provide funding for finishing the wall in return for legal status for, for DACA. And that deal died because the Trump administration also demanded the largest cuts in legal immigration since 1924, um, against the backdrop of the decade of the 2010s being the second slowest population growth in American history, right? That from 2010 to 2020, the population grew slower than any other decade in American history except for the Depression. And in the midst of that, the Trump administration demanded— and at various points, a significant majority of House Republicans and Senate Republicans voted for the largest cuts in legal immigration, uh, against the backdrop of worker shortages in red states. Um, and of course, one of the reasons now we are dealing with inflation at the interest rates at the level we are, uh, is because the Fed is frustrated by the inability to get inflation under control. One of the reasons they can't get inflation under control is of worker shortages that are, you know, employers are saying are forcing them to pay more.

We can debate, you know, the value of that. But nonetheless, it is a period in which you can argue that all Americans are paying a tax of higher interest rates for the failure to bring in more people to the US. And yet there is still support in Republican ranks for cutting legal immigration. Forget about the proposals that we are seeing to essentially to end the asylum process that, that passed the House or to use force against Mexico. And that is just the reality that in the modern Republican coalition, the objection to immigration is fundamentally cultural rather than economic or even public safety. Over 70% of Republicans consistently say in polling now over a number of years that the growing number of immigrants threaten American tradition. Traditions and values. And that is just a rock in the road toward getting any meaningful cooperation. So in many ways, I think that if Democrat, slightly different from Angela in that I think Democrats are going to have to solve this largely on their own. That doesn't mean there still isn't a span of opinions to work with, but I think that so long as As Republicans believe there is value in portraying the border as out of control and they have evidence they can use to make that case, you're not going to see much effort to solve the problem from them.

[00:50:55.22] - Doris Meissner

Well, I'm really glad, Ron, that you made that point about the gut feel on this because at the end of the day, these issues always have been and they are particularly now issues of identity, issues of change, issues of who we are as a country.

[00:51:10.09] - Ronald Brownstein

And I forgot to make it real quick. I know I don't want to monopolize the time. A really important point in all of this and why this is evolving the way it is in the Republican Party is the fact that Donald Trump, between 2016 and 2020, took all sorts of unprecedented steps that were harsh in unprecedented ways, culminating in separating parents from their kids at the border. And his performance among Latino voters improved from 2016 to 2020. And That doesn't mean they necessarily supported those policies. It means that for— there were a number of Latino voters for whom that was not sufficient reason not to vote for someone who they thought was better on other grounds, such as the economy. And there is, I think, a widespread belief in the Republican Party that you can get the best of both worlds at this point. You can go as hard as possible shooting people at the border, drone strikes into Mexico, and animate the cultural base of the party that is so unsettled by, by the changing demography of the country. And you will not pay a price among Latino voters because even if they disagree with those policies, enough of them will still vote for you if they think you are better on the economy.

And right now, Latino voters are among the groups that are the most negative on Biden's performance on the economy. So part of what is driving this is the belief that it is a win-win politically.

[00:52:36.14] - Doris Meissner

Quickly. We need to go to Q&A, and so if there are people in the audience that have a question, please line up at the mic so I can tell how many of you there are and leave time for it. We don't have any questions yet online, so I'm going to keep us going up here because Ron has now said some very provocative things. As only Ron can. And I wonder whether anybody else would like to speak to any of them. Angie, do you have anything to say? And then I have a question for Blase.

[00:53:10.10] - Angela Maria Kelley

Yeah, I mean, a couple thoughts on the last point you were making regarding Latino voters. I'm a Latino voter. You know, we're like everybody else. It's the economy. And, you know, really good polling that was done by Equis showed that Latino voters felt in 2020 that they didn't know in 2016 when they didn't vote for Trump Trump is that he did better on the economy and that he was quicker to open up, uh, the, to, to call for reopening policies in the midst of COVID um, and that, that gave them space, frankly, um, to vote for him. So I also think the other reason is that, again, there lacks a home base, there lacks a framework for understanding how, uh, how we can have We have a solutions-oriented immigration policy and that's where we can stand. And then we can point to family separation. We can point to the hypocrisy of the Republican Party. And I think Latino voters are gonna be smart enough to see where they should go. That's what's lacking. The second point I wanna make is that I get that we're not gonna get legislation next year. I've been to this rodeo just a few times.

But I also, know what it took after 9/11 to get us to where we were in 2006, which is where House member James Sensenbrenner got a quick vote on the House that would've made felons of all the undocumented. The Senate's answer to that was something that John McCain and Ted Kennedy, who I pray to every day, devised, started on the House side, went over to the Senate, which was comprehensive immigration reform. That blunted Sensenbrenner. And what they also— what also happened organically, and this is just beautiful, it really should be taught in civics classes, is many of you might remember that immigrants, undocumented and otherwise, they marched, right? They wore white, they waved American flags. There was no violence. And they're like, we belong. We're not felons, we're family. And it was that confluence that was wildly powerful. That's what I think we can get back to. And is it going to happen in 2024? Nope. 2025? No. 2026? Maybe. But if we don't start now, we're only going to get more of the same.

[00:55:32.16] - Doris Meissner

Linda, did you want to speak to this?

[00:55:36.05] - Linda Chavez

Yes, I would. Yes, I would. I think the major difference, and it's really a positive trend that's happened on the progressive side of the aisle, is that I think as Ron suggested, much of the opposition to immigration is based on cultural factors, on the, again, misperception that, for example, Latino immigrants never learn English. And that's wrong. They do. And by the third generation, just like Italians, Greeks, Poles, and others before them, the grandchildren of immigrants from Latin America prefer English as their dominant language. But the fact that I think progressives now understand that when you march, you don't march with a flag of Mexico or El Salvador. You march with a an American flag, that you talk about the importance of American culture and of immigrants becoming Americans in their identity. All of these things, I think, will help us get to where we need to get. We can't create the sense that we are going to have a Balkanized America in which all groups, you know, retreat to their own little little subgroups and we have nothing in common with each other. And I think for too long that was the message that was coming out of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

I think they're finally getting the message. I hope it's going to play a role in getting more Americans to understand how important it is to have these newcomers here because they are our future.

[00:57:25.05] - Doris Meissner

Standing here and then we'll go over here. Please introduce yourself.

[[FOR THE Q&A PORTION OF THE TRANSCRIPT, SPEAKERS ARE NOT IDENTIFIED BY NAME. PLEASE SEE THE RECORDING TO IDENTIFY SPEAKERS.]]

[00:57:28.13] - Speaker 6

Yes, hi, thank you. I'm Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier, executive director of the Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers. We launched last week a constitutional challenge of closed work permits, employer-tied work permits, on the basis that it violates individual rights not to be held in servitude. If anyone wants to hear more about that later, I'm around. But also the timing was good because there was a UN rapporteur, human rights rapporteur, who went to Canada last week also and said the closed work permit was just breeding grounds for modern slavery. So when we talk about temporary workers as like a solution, do we also include some reflection on what kind of permits we want to issue? And yes, okay, open work permits that lead to permanent status, that's one thing. Thing, but on free labor regimes, growing ones? Is it really the United States that is envisioned? So I would like, yes, to hear a little bit more, the panelists, about that.

[00:58:39.10] - Speaker 1

Blas, why don't you say a little bit about what the administration's view is on issues of temporary workers?

[00:58:46.09] - Speaker 3

Yeah, thanks for that question. I mean, I think we have been committed to working within our statutory authorities when it comes to providing issuing, you know, employment authorization documents to individuals who come to the United States. And it's important to note that there are statutory limits to what we are able to do. You know, the law provides, for example, that your asylum claim has to be pending in the courts for 180 days before you can be issued an EAD. I think what we are seeing is how long it takes people to get to the point where they have an application pending in the court can be a full year or longer. And we've been trying to work with the states and the local governments to educate individuals about the process in order to, you know, increase the uptake, I would say, in EADs. We have also, as I think everybody knows through our CHNV, the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela parole process, US. Those individuals who come in through those processes can apply for EADs, you know, within when they enter, basically, and they can be issued EADs pretty quickly. However, you know, we are also cognizant that there's active litigation, frankly, from both directions in the space, as is so often the case for DHS and for immigration issues.

[01:00:12.10] - Speaker 3

And so, you know, I can't really say much more than that. I will say, if I can monopolize the mic for one second and respond to something Ron said, which I think is right, you know, we are clear-eyed that it is unlikely that Congress will move. We will continue to push for congressional action and try to put the onus on Congress, which is frankly where I think it belongs here. But we're also committed to working within our statutes in innovative ways to try to, you know, provide more lawful access to the country. You're seeing that right now through the Secure Mobility Offices, which I should have mentioned earlier, which is a new and I think really innovative and potentially transformative process that we're setting up in the region with our international organization partners, where we are providing people a place to go in different countries where they can apply for protection in the United States, but also in other countries like Canada and Spain. And they can also apply for lawful pathways, you know, labor pathways to countries as well. We are just getting these centers off the ground. So it's early days, but they do, I think, hold a lot of promise.

[01:01:28.01] - Speaker 3

We're hearing from our partners around the world, you know, first world countries have labor, acute labor shortages, as do we. And there's really a huge imperative for all of us to try to connect, you know, our labor pathways with people who have the requisite skills. And that changes by country and every— it's very complicated. But the IOs, I think, are really, you know, IOM and UNHCR are really well positioned to help us try to connect migrants with these opportunities. And so we're committed to exploring that kind of approach, you know, even as we are hemmed in a little bit by the statutory constraints that we, we have to deal with every day.

[01:02:08.02] - Speaker 1

Blas, I'm glad you mentioned that because it's one of the questions that's been on my, uh, uh, list. There's so many innovations that are underway, and, um, they can't all yield, you know, results immediately, but it's really important to have a mid, you know, near-term, midterm, and longer-term strategy here which those mobility offices, I think, exemplify. Question over here.

[01:02:35.06] - Speaker 7

Hi, thanks so much. Elaine Wood. I'm the chief legal officer at Hayman Woodward.

[01:02:39.20] - Speaker 7

We focus on employment-based visas.

[01:02:42.17] - Speaker 7

My question is about the people camped out at the Roosevelt Hotel with children and adults, and they're looking to send their children to school and people are just sitting around. And I'm wondering about solutions, right?

[01:02:58.18] - Speaker 7

So we're hearing about expanding temporary protected status.

[01:03:02.05] - Speaker 7

We're hearing about work permits.

[01:03:04.10] - Speaker 7

My firm's doing a lot of pro bono for asylum petitions, but what I'm realizing is that sometimes for affirmative asylum, what's happening is that the client actually isn't super eligible, but by the time 4 to 6 years processes, look, they've had work, which might be better than camping out at the Roosevelt Hotel, right? So in addition to what we've heard in the media or from someone like AOC about expanding temporary protected status, getting work permits. What can I do at my firm, let's say, besides do more pro bono for asylum, um, to help people move into EB-1, EB-2, EB-3, EB-4?

[01:03:42.02] - Speaker 7

There's a lot of people who legitimately are qualified, and I'm wondering how to sort of bridge that gap between people that are borderline public charge just sitting around with their kids and my firm the right where we can really help people.

[01:03:55.09] - Speaker 1

Thanks. Okay. That's— I'm glad that you asked that question because it converges with a question coming in from online. And we want to try to be responsive to our online audience as well. And that came in a slightly different but related form of what is the administration doing to improve reception in the U.S. to meet the needs of Changing populations, and these are some examples of it. Blas, can you speak to that? And Angie, if you would have anything to add, let's have you add.

[01:04:26.15] - Speaker 3

Sure. You know, first of all, thank you for the work you're doing because it is frankly critical. And we, I think, again, this is a space that is challenging for all of us because of just the idiosyncrasies of the way these statutes kind of interact, especially when it comes to employment authorization and especially when it comes to ways to transition, you know, to other visa categories. I wish I had a magic wand. I really, I don't here. I think we've been, we've been trying to work, as I said before, really closely with our state and local partners and private sectors and the NGOs to try to provide more education to migrants about what those options are for them. It's clearly an uphill battle, and one that we're committed to continue to wage. In terms of reception in general, I think this is another one where, you know, we have been provided funding by Congress through the Emergency Food and Shelter Program and the new SSP program that we're standing up to provide financial assistance to state, local governments, and NGOs to help with sheltering and transportation of migrants. We, however, we recognize that that is really just a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed.

[01:05:46.21] - Speaker 3

And there are things that we, the federal government, really can't pay for and that we can— we rely on local partners to pay for. And obviously all those partnerships and systems are under enormous strain right now. I mean, I'll be honest, I view these as the cost of just our fundamentally broken immigration system. And while we're doing our best to try to address some of these infirmities in the system. We keep saying it, but I'll say it until I'm blue in the face. We're never going to solve it without meaningful work in Congress.

[01:06:25.16] - Speaker 1

This is going to have to be a closing comment. Angie, do you want to add anything to that on reception?

[01:06:29.14] - Speaker 4

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, we just need more players on the field. Like somebody said it earlier, we need to have an all-of-government and civil society response. I think the administration has to redesignate Venezuela for TPS. I think other countries should also get TPS. It's a strong legal platform to stand on. And like, come on, like we have so many people with TPS and there's been no blowback to that. So it's not politically dangerous at all. It's politically smart. And we need to give work authorizations to people faster, particularly those who have come in with a 2-year parole. They're eligible to get them right away. And I also think we need to find ways that we can take the keys away from Abbott. And this administration needs to start working with cities and localities and and do its own transportation. I mean, I could go on and on about what Congress should do, but we all know that it's constipated. Sorry. State and local governments, I mean, come on, they need to step up and give money to attorneys and to legal service providers so we're not having to rely on the pro bono efforts of so many lawyers, particularly AILA lawyers.

[01:07:28.22] - Speaker 4

Philanthropy? There's a lot of money in New York, folks. Come on, they need to be giving money to local NGOs, again, for service providing, for making sure that people get what they need so they can get their kids in school, they can get housing, and they can show up in court, right? Because we need to see the process through. And we also need to consider the sponsorship program, which again, I mentioned before was working so well. There are Americans that want to help. They just need a legal orderly system to know how they can do it. And finally, business, like, you know, yes, you need workers. Well, stop whining. Like, figure out how you can connect with these new migrants as quickly as possible. Anyway, just some quick thoughts. Yes, I've been thinking about it just a little bit.

[01:08:09.04] - Speaker 1

All right. Well, thank you to the panelists and thank you for whetting our appetites for the rest of the day as we dig more deeply into these issues. We'll take a break now and come back at 10:50. If you could, for those people who were not able to ask their questions, feel free to come up and speak with the speakers. See you again at 10:50. Thank you.

10:30 AM ET — Coffee Break

10:50 AM ET — The States Rise: Florida and Other Governments Expand Their Role in the Immigration Arena
A new era of state policymaking and operational action on immigration has begun, led by Texas and Florida, which set off tensions with state and local officials elsewhere by busing and flying asylum seekers and other migrants from the Texas-Mexico border into the U.S. interior. While state-level involvement in immigration policymaking is not new, the Florida and Texas decisions to drop off migrants in other jurisdictions, often with little to no notice, has raised new tensions between states and city leaders. This panel, moderated by MPI Senior Fellow Muzaffar Chishti and featuring city and NGO leaders and other experts, examined the diverse directions states are going in. Some advanced immigrants’ rights even as Texas installs buoys on the Rio Grande and encouraged other states to send their National Guards to the border. The panel also focused on how cities such as Chicago, Washington, DC, and New York have addressed the arrivals of tens of thousands of migrants; the provision of services to these newcomers; and the fiscal impacts.

Muzaffar Chishti, MPI Senior Fellow and Director of the MPI office at New York University School of Law
Miriam Jordan, National Immigration Correspondent, The New York Times
Abel Nuñez, Executive Director, Central American Resource Center (CARECEN)
Beatriz Ponce de León, Deputy Mayor of Immigrant, Migrant and Refugee Rights, Office of the Mayor of Chicago
Michael J. Wishnie, William O. Douglas Clinical Professor of Law, Yale Law School

This transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies. If you notice an error, feel free to email [email protected].

[00:00:02.20] - Muzaffar Chishti

Welcome again to those of you who are here with us in person in the audience and people who are joining us virtually from across the globe, I understand. This is the panel which is provocatively called The State's Rights, which is basically another way of looking at the new activism of the states in the immigration policymaking. There's a lot to cover here. Some of that got touched on in the State of Play that Doris just finished talking about. And the idea is that some of those issues that got picked in the State of Play, we will, we'll dive into a little deeper. And to do this, I have really a star-studded panel. These are people who have studied this phenomenon from their vantage points for a long time. And you have their bios in the program. I won't spell all of them except to highlight some things about their careers. On my immediate left is Beatriz Ponce de León, Honorable Deputy Mayor of the City of Chicago. Our understanding is actually for the first time in our country that we have had a deputy mayor exclusively designated to migration issues, which not only tells you about her career, but also how our field has matured.

She was— she has been in this job in a difficult time, as we'll soon find out. And before that, she was in the state of Illinois. And so she has a state perspective on it too. And we're glad that you could join us today. On her left is Abel Nuñez, who is on his home front in DC. So you have a lot of fans here, I'm sure. He's the executive director of, uh, of, uh, the Central American Resource Center, popularly called CARECEN, here in DC. Uh, but before CARECEN, he was in Chicago. So the two of the cities that we'll be discussing at length today, he has had experience in both of them. On my right is Miriam Jordan, who many of you may have spoken to when she calls you for interviews, is the national correspondent on immigration for the New York Times and has covered this stuff from so many points of view, both abroad and here in the real lives of immigrants. Before that, before she came to the Times, she was a correspondent both for Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, which gives her, I think, a really important perspective on this issue for a long time.

And on the right of Miriam, and last but not least, is Mike Wishnie, who is a William Douglas Clinical Professor of Law, considered by many to be one of the most influential legal clinicians in the country. I'm always amazed by how many of his protégés are sprinkled in all three branches of the government by now. He is probably one of the— I think the only person who has clerked for two Supreme Court judges. But more important than anything, he is one of the earliest non-resident fellows of MPI. So welcome, welcome to all four of you. So we will do this in three distinct portions. One is what I like to call the busing chapter. In our immigration history. The second will be the rise of more punitive measures coming from states in the last 2 years. The third will be that, look, this, this not look only at the negative things. Positive things are happening at state and local communities, and we want to give space for that. And last is the sort of what is the state of federalism on immigration today? And as I said, these are 4 of the best people to deal with.

So let's start. So let's go to the busing first, because we can't help it. This is what defined the last 2 years. We have never had this kind of targeted, dramatic, politically motivated buses being sent from border states to the inner cities of the country for which they were not prepared. So let me start with ground reality. And I'm told nothing gets close to ground reality in the US than Chicago. So the Deputy Mayor, so tell me, how did you absorb the crisis first and how did you deal with it both politically and operationally?

[00:04:48.10] - Beatriz Ponce de León

Well, good morning and thank you for the invitation to be here. This is really an honor and a privilege to learn from my colleagues and to be able to share some of the story of Chicago and of Illinois. So last August 31st is the first bus arrived in Chicago from Texas sent by Governor Abbott. And at the time, The city had really quickly realized they did not have the infrastructure to absorb the folks that were coming in, be able to provide shelter and support folks on their journey. The state, and I was at the state at that moment at the Illinois Department of Human Services, stepped in and quickly worked to open shelters in hotels around the city. I think at a certain point we got to 11 hotels. And what came out of that work a year ago is that they developed sort of a new, a new model for how to support people who are arriving because we quickly saw it wasn't enough to just provide shelter, but people came with a wide range of needs. And Illinois has a program called the Illinois Welcoming Centers, which was funded to support 33, 34 nonprofit organizations that have flexible dollars to provide support for immigrants and refugees of all kinds, emergency housing, you know, help with education, transportation, whatever they need.

And so we plugged in those Illinois welcoming centers. We also had shelter operators and we had state staff. But that, that mission, we realized at a moment that we— it wasn't sustainable. And so there was a decision to close those hotels. And what that opened was a path for resettlement. So again, the state rose to the occasion, our General Assembly, and allocated dollars for a state rental assistance program called ASAP. And funding for Catholic Charities to do the housing case management. And we identified that there was also the need for people to actually help families move into apartments, so with basic furniture and moving. And that created this model of housing case management, moving support, and rental assistance that has extended through what we are doing now. So Chicago is a welcoming city. We have an ordinance that makes us a welcoming city. Illinois is a welcoming state, and living out what that means has meant that we are collaborating as a city and the state and our county to welcome new arrivals in ways that we help meet their basic needs of food, shelter, some medical care, and then wraparound resources to put them on this path to resettlement.

We have had now over 14,500, um, asylum seekers and other new arrivals come to Chicago in the— just from January to now, um, I believe it was 144 buses have arrived And from when the DNC was announced in Chicago, 132 of those 144 buses have arrived. That coincided as well with Title 42 changing and our new administration. So this new administration jumped in on the same weekend that Title 42 changed, and we've been going, going ever since. What we have developed is a parallel system to our crisis shelter response And if you just think about the capacity, so in our regular city shelters, we serve up to 3,000 people. We currently have 7,700 new arrivals in this new shelter system. There are 1,600 people in our police stations. Police stations used to be a place that if you couldn't find a shelter bed, you could go there for a night or two until a bed opened. But now they became a, a place for, for new arrivals who don't have, um, a more typical shelter situation. That is not sustainable. And so we are at a moment where we are shifting the priorities, we're shifting our strategy.

And number one is to replace those police stations with a different temporary shelter system over time to hasten the resettlement process so that people are in the shelter system for shorter periods of time and are on that path to have their own housing with the supports that the state is helping to provide. And then even in the longer term, is looking at this as a kind of a planning effort in terms of how we create affordable housing and integrate immigrants into the city. I will pause there. There's much more to say. I do wanna share that that's the situation on the ground in Chicago.

[00:09:25.29] - Muzaffar Chishti

Yeah. So I mean, I'm just curious, I mean, the last point you made, it looked like that you decided that you're going to turn this moment of crisis into an opportunity.

[00:09:33.29] - Beatriz Ponce de León

We have to. It is, as we see, imagine 14,000, 14,000 to 15,000 people coming to Chicago Chicago, our goal is to help them resettle in the area just like so many other immigrants have. And so we know that we need to move beyond this crisis response to think about how we integrate immigrants from a planning, city planning perspective, working to revitalize our neighborhoods. We're also in dialog with our neighboring suburbs and working with them to think about ways that they can be host communities for resettlement. Several of them have stepped up, are interested. We're trying to, you know, negotiate that. And, and And I would say that as we provide these services, it is a moment also to strengthen the infrastructure of the city because we may see climate refugees. The Great Lakes are, are a safer place in the country in some ways. We might see other people coming to our city and the city has to be ready to respond. So I'm seeing that there's a future where we are building a stronger infrastructure with multiple levels of government involved. And we are also developing a better system of care because what we're learning in providing services for this particular group of new arrivals is that we can also build off of that to improve our shelter system and permanent supportive housing for other people who are unhoused throughout Chicago.

So ultimately we'd like that, those two sheltering systems to merge and really just become a stronger crisis response, permanent supporting housing system for anyone in Chicago that needs that work.

[00:11:11.26] - Muzaffar Chishti

Great. So, Abel, I'm not sure that Governor Abbott had DC in mind if the vice president didn't live here and wanted to send buses to her home. And that happened in an obviously dramatic way. Just tell us, uh, what did you do when that happened, and what lessons have you learned from that?

[00:11:31.06] - Abel Nuñez

Uh, yes, so, uh, again, uh, welcome everyone. Um, I, I would start with this. I think the intention is from the governor said they would not be able to accommodate them, they will not want them, and they would expose their hypocrisy. That was the intention of the segregationists in 1962 when they sent African Americans on buses to the northern cities. So this is not new. But what do we do? We responded. April 1st, Governor Abbott makes an announcement that he was going to send immigrants to the doorsteps of Biden because he was in disagreement with his policy. And true to his word, April 15th, the first bus arrived. And so we responded as we do. So organizations got together and said, we need to provide just the basic services. At that time, most of the people that were coming in the buses were not making Washington, D.C. their home. They were still looking to move ahead. So our role was to get them some food, get them some shelter. And in the context, people had had just been released maybe a day or two from Border Patrol, got on those buses for about 30 hours, and then reached our city.

And so we did it. We had no infrastructure, as this is pointed out, in Chicago either, because we were not a border city, but we tried to just provide a helping hand, a warm meal, and then assistance to where they finally want to go. And we thought we were going to do this for 15 days. We thought it was going to be— something that Abbott was going to claim victory and then we were going to move on. And unfortunately, he kept sending buses. And so we had to develop the infrastructure, want to receive the immigrants, process them quickly, and then get them to where they wanted to go. But we also then began to deal with the fact that about 10 to 20% actually wanted to make DC their home. And that which Beatriz has mentioned is what's the hard part. It's one thing when you are a pass-through city, it's another thing when you're the actual final destination because it creates a whole host of other issues. And mind you, I would say this, that we were receiving immigrants at Union Station while there was a tent city at Union Station. So our inability to house people, period, makes it a harder challenge for us to then get these immigrants.

The fact that they didn't have any work authorizations, they were legal in the country, but they didn't have any work authorizations, makes it difficult for the city. And so our role has been to really build up infrastructure to get them connected with immigration services, caseworkers to help them access the services that they can that are available to them to do it. And we work with the city here in Washington, DC to create the Office of Migrant Services, you know, but DC is a strange place where you have multiple jurisdictions. You have a federal district, two states, multiple counties. And so we have to negotiate with multiple partners to make sure to create the easiest path, if there's a word for that, for immigrants to then integrate into our city. 'Cause most of them want to work, they want to be independent, but there are, There is really a difference of expectation. So what they think they're going to get the moment they cross the border, because most of them have done an arduous journey that just really breaks your heart when you hear some of those stories. But at the end of the day, they sometimes think that once they made it after the border, they're on Easy Street, and we have to tell them, no, The journey continues.

We need to work together because we need to build that infrastructure. So our role has been to build infrastructure to make sure that we can receive them the best way we can. And it's a work in progress. We're not where we want to be, but we're definitely better off than we were when the buses first started coming here.

[00:15:44.25] - Muzaffar Chishti

I'm glad you made a distinction between a transit city and the city of destination. So you kind of had to play the role. I understand that you made welcoming thing, something called USA 101.

[00:15:56.19] - Abel Nuñez

Yeah, so one of the things that we created here, we noticed that there was a lot of immigrants, like many immigrants, I was an immigrant myself from El Salvador, you have an expectation with the US and there's a reality with the US. So we created a document called Living in the US to give people like a, you know, basic 101 of what it is to be. I mean, things such as smoking, you know, don't leave your kids unattended, you know, Those are simple things that people may not think about, but they can really have implications while living here and trying to integrate, which usually is done by your family who receives you, right? Or your community who receives you. But in the absence of that, we felt that we needed to do that. And so part of that is just letting immigrants know, okay, whatever you know about the US, it's not the entirety. Probably 1% of what you really need to know to integrate. So this is a document that helps them and it's downloadable. It's an MP3 file, it's a YouTube video, and it's not meant to take on every issue that you need to know, but at least a start.

[00:17:06.28] - Muzaffar Chishti

So Miriam, let me turn to you. I mean, as a national correspondent, you have the ability to smell a story before it happens. So how did you start seeing this new chapter unfold, or both, even before people arrived here and then when they came, right?

[00:17:24.25] - Miriam Jordan

So yes, I indeed, I spend, I think, at least half of my time on the border, um, these days. And a few years ago, I started to see the world come to the United States. I think there was some reference to how we mainly saw Mexicans, and then like in 2012, '13, '14, we had this, uh, you know, arrival in large numbers of Central Americans, particularly families fleeing violence. I thought my job was gonna get repetitive. I'm sure others here like Julia who have so much experience, might not even have foreseen this. But, you know, I never expected to see the world at the doorstep of America as I began to see a few years ago. And I'm talking about, you know, Russians, Indians, Chinese, you know, more recently Afghans. And of course, Venezuelans. And I think that we cannot repeat enough how big this wave from Venezuela is, how unprecedented it is, and how it has been a huge and major factor in the crisis, if we can call it that, that has arrived to cities like New York and Chicago. Um, Venezuelans have no family ties by and large here. They have no, they have no friends where they could like spend a few nights on the couch or on the floor.

I've met mothers, you know, single mothers with children, one with 4 children who said she had to get out of Venezuela. She couldn't feed these kids anymore. And she was going to California. She didn't even realize that California was a state. She thought it was a city. I mean, they are so desperate. And I meet people all the time on the border from Venezuela who don't even know where they're going. So when these buses, you know, became available, they, they love this opportunity. And most of them tell me that they're extremely grateful for it. And more and more advocates are telling me the same thing after initially saying that this was horrific and that these people were pawns in a political chess game. I mean, the fact of the matter is that many of these Venezuelans, by the time they arrive have, um, at the border have nothing left. Um, if they had anything, um, they were robbed along the way. Many of them tell me that the journey through Mexico was worse than through the Darién Gap. And so when they're presented with this opportunity to board a bus, they take it. Now, what has happened is that as more of them have arrived in cities like New York and Chicago, they've told their friends who are on the way that if they come to New York, they They will get shelter.

If they come to Chicago, they will get help. And that's kind of snowballed. The other thing that I think is interesting about Venezuelans is that the ones I've met by and large are urban folks. It's not like they're campesinos. They're not, you know, they weren't working on a farm. They are not from like the highlands of Guatemala. They're not gonna bypass big cities. Like we've since the '90s, you know, many immigrants have bypassed big cities and gone to, work, you know, on, on chicken farms in, in, in Alabama and Georgia. They've gone to Iowa. These folks want to go to big cities. That's where they've come from. And that's another factor that I think is contributing to this wave into the cities. But having said that, it's not just Chicago and New York. I mean, there are people— they're going to Denver, they're going to Las Vegas. They're going to Salt Lake City. They're going everywhere. And they arrive with nothing and they need help. And this is unprecedented because undocumented immigrants who arrived in the millions in the past didn't want to seek help from authorities. They wanted nothing to do with authorities. They wanted to go straight to work, construction in Atlanta, or they were going to go to Alabama to work where their cousin had a job on a, you know, chicken plant line.

These folks, they're kind of operating in the dark. They don't have friends, they don't have families, I've said.

[00:21:55.15] - Muzaffar Chishti

No, that's very helpful. I mean, I think a lot of people argue that since this group of immigrants actually was screened by government officials at the border, they felt many more comfortable actually seeking help from government downstream. So this is obviously a very interesting new development. So Mike, let me just turn to you as, uh, you have a reputation of making your students push envelopes. So what theories are you developing for dealing with this new flow of people?

[00:22:26.15] - Michael J. Wishnie

Muz, you're supposed to lower the expectations, not raise the expectations. And I know that as soon as I leave, I need to go update my resume to make sure the non-resident scholar is right at the top.

[00:22:36.07] - Muzaffar Chishti

Yeah.

[00:22:37.25] - Michael J. Wishnie

Well, thank you. And it's great to be here and hear all of this. Work and thinking that's going on in the prior panel and this one and what's to come. So in the period after the first need, the first set of needs when people arrived were urgent needs for shelter, food, medical care, and so forth. But we're past that, those first days that you were just talking about in many places. And as people begin to make decisions about where they want to to settle more and more, at least in New York. And we have experts that— expertise on Chicago and D.C. and elsewhere. The call has gone out for work that people, at least in New York, one of the central demands has been allow people to work. People want to work. Employers want to hire them. Let people work. And on that score, I have to say I'm skeptical when I hear people, including the assistant secretary earlier today, say our hands are tied. The laws prohibit us, there's nothing we can do. Often politics prohibits things, resources might prohibit things, but law is pretty indeterminate and there's often a lot more play in the joints than policymakers want to acknowledge.

So I have to say I'm skeptical when I hear people say, I really wish we could help people work, we just can't, the law doesn't allow it. And so as we move into this next period, I think focusing more and more on allowing people who want to work and can work to do so becomes more central. So, first of all, on the federal side, you already heard, of course, the suggestion made by many to use TPS much more aggressively, which will bring with it much more immediate access to employment authorization. But I want to go a step farther. It was controversial, of course, but after Katrina, many will remember that President Bush suspended enforcement of employer sanctions for a period of time. It was not Bush. The Department of Homeland Security announced that it would not enforce the employer sanctions against employers hiring people during the initial reconstruction period. I think the initial period was 45 days, but there was nothing magical about 45 days. Employer sanctions, of course, are the statute that prohibits the employment of unauthorized migrants. So that has happened before and it could happen again.. And in fact, in recent years, the Supreme Court has made increasingly clear, and there was reference earlier to Judge Hanen's decision as well, that even this court sees a significant difference between non-enforcement or prosecutors not enforcing laws on the one hand versus conferring benefits on the other hand.

And in the DACA decision in Regents and the more recent decision in US against Texas, that one by Justice Kavanaugh instead of Chief Justice Roberts, a majority of the court has said that there is broad discretion to decide when to enforce particular laws against people and when not to. And you can't even come into court for that. So I think that there's, and that was exactly Judge Hanen's reasoning in saying that DACA is gonna be invalidated for the third or fourth time, he said, because it went beyond non-enforcement to confer benefits. I think that the Secretary of Homeland Security could tomorrow with a stroke of his pen say for a period of time, We are going to suspend enforcement of the employer sanctions provisions in New York City or New York State or Chicago or Illinois. Or maybe he says, Governor Abbott, you seem to have a lot of people in Texas. Why don't we suspend it in Texas? Let people work in Texas too, or in Tallahassee. That would be for others to sort out. But President Bush pointed to the particular needs and the time-limited exercise of helping Katrina. And I think that for the federal government to say there's nothing we can do to further employment opportunities beyond the 6-month delay for asylum seekers, and not everyone is even going to pursue asylum or is necessarily eligible for asylum and so forth.

There's a lot more that could be done. There are some things on the state side, state and local side as well, however. And again, I cannot at all speak to Chicago or Washington. We have a lot of expertise here far beyond what I would know. But there are a lot of forms of labor that do not constitute employment. But it constitutes independent contractor relationships in which there's no prohibition on working because it's not working for an employer. And I think that state and local governments could potentially in their own context be more proactive in supporting labor in independent contractor circumstances. So some famous examples in New York City are street vendors, taxi drivers, Uber and Lyft drivers. These are not the only forms of independent contractor work, not just gig economy jobs, But there are probably a lot of situations in which local governments could lawfully help people get to work without violating the employer sanctions laws, whether Homeland Security suspends their enforcement or not, simply by facilitating their ability to pursue labor in settings that are recognized and long have been recognized as not implicating an employer-employment relationship. Um, and I don't know whether there've been any initiatives to help those who are here who have skills or have an interest in working in such situations, um, to begin to do do so, at least in the temporary period until hopefully work authorization comes through.

Finally, and most ambitiously, many people in this room probably know about the organizing that's been underway in California to persuade the University of California system to hire unauthorized workers. And this proceeds on a legal analysis, which I've signed my name to and so have many others, that holds that the employer sanctions law does not apply to the states. There's a whole set of decisions about whether employment laws like Title VII and other ones apply to the states. In fact, many of them, including Title VII, the minimum wage and overtime laws, when initially enacted, did not apply to the states. And because of the 11th Amendment, in fact, you can't apply a federal law to the states without a clear statement or sort of explicit statement that that is the intent of Congress so as to override the 11th Amendment. Well, notably, Congress later amended Title VII, amended the Fair Labor Standards Act, and others to make them explicitly apply to people who worked for states so as to overcome amendment, the 11th Amendment. But that's never happened with employer sanctions. So in California, the argument is that the employer sanctions law doesn't mention states under the 11th Amendment.

Therefore, the state of California can lawfully hire undocumented workers because it is not subject to the employer sanctions laws. And there is robust organizing and legal work underway. I personally think that analysis is correct. So that won't help cities, but in a city like Chicago, in a state like Illinois, could potentially work with the state to test this out and start hiring people without work authorization and see if the Biden administration prosecutes.

[00:30:01.00] - Muzaffar Chishti

I promise you, I promise you there are Twitter feed is like a lie that Professor Wishnie has suggested that employer sanctions be suspended and states hire all unauthorized people. But that's what you get for getting smart people like Mike to come and ask us to, to test our limits. Uh, listen, we could go on busing for a long time, uh, but let me just shift, uh, to other, other issues. And, uh, Florida made news this year, in, in my estimation, to now enact the most ambitious anti-immigrant omnibus, uh, legislation in the state. I mean, states have been inching up to this for the last 15 years, but to me, this crossed a barrier. So Miriam, you wrote a very long story on that. Uh, just tell us what happened in Florida and what ripple effect has that had on people.

[00:31:01.26] - Miriam Jordan

Right, sure. So to quickly summarize, um, the law— I won't go into all the elements, but some of the main elements that make it so sweeping, um, it mandates hospitals that accept Medicaid to report, um, to the state how much, um, they're spending on undocumented immigrants, which of course means that they are to ask immigrants, uh, their legal— or their immigration status, whether they're in the country legally or not, um, when they're admitted. That of course is making immigrants freak out, or I mean intimidating them and inhibiting them already from seeking care. I've heard the law invalidates driver's license from several states that issue driver's license to undocumented immigrants. It criminalizes, punishable with a 15-year prison sentence, crossing into Florida or transporting undocumented immigrants. And Shortly after the law was signed by Governor DeSantis, who touted it as the most ambitious anti-immigration law or immigration law ever, I set out to speak with some employers about what effects they were seeing on the ground. And of course, it was still a little early to— and it still is currently early to measure sort of an economic impact on the state. I was most shocked that I couldn't get chambers of commerce, big companies, small companies to talk to me.

They literally told me they did not wanna touch this issue, which seems to underscore, you know, the gravitas that DeSantis has and how afraid they are of this, I guess, popular governor who is, you know, a contender to the White House. But the employers who did speak with me in the construction, agriculture, and service sectors told me that they had already lost workers, that rates for some of the jobs had already increased, and that, you know, projects were either slowing down or were obviously getting more expensive because they weren't able to hire the crew. There's a big roofing company in Northern Florida. I won't cite the name. And the head of that told me that he had a very large project and a contractor who had been extremely excited to bring his crew in to work on and then called like 3 days later after they'd agreed and said, I'm really sorry, but my workers, you know, who do jobs, work on projects in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina as well, do not want to go to Florida. And I've heard that from many other folks in construction. One subcontractor said he lost half of his crew, but I think it's still a fluid situation.

But recently what really crystallized the impact to me was after the latest hurricane. I set out to interview, um, undocumented workers who by and large have been crucial to recovery work after hurricanes. And one after the other told me that, you know, he or she would not be returning to Florida because of this law. And several of them told me that they had been working in the Fort Myers area for several months after Hurricane Ian and that they were there when the law passed and they felt that they were being more harassed, that the law enforcement sheriff's deputies were becoming emboldened by this law to follow them or not turn them over to ICE per se, but to harass them, tell them, "I don't want to cross paths with you again. Get out of here." I spoke to two workers who literally decided to leave with their crews. So I sense that there's an impact. I can't be sure.

[00:35:28.03] - Muzaffar Chishti

Yeah. But I understand, Abel and Beatriz, you've seen some impact of the Florida law even in places that you have been observing. Tell us from your perspective.

[00:35:40.18] - Abel Nuñez

Well, I mean, the laws are not practical, but what they do send is a chilling effect, right? Across the country. I think Georgia is thankful for that a lot because they're getting a lot of new workforce. But the reality is that our future is tied to immigrants and the labor that they bring. Unfortunately, we're running into what the previous panel talked about, cultural issues. And what I would like to also bring up, race issues. I think if we were having a huge influx of Nordic, immigrants, I think the treatment will be a little bit different. And I'm saying that because former President Trump basically said that. And I don't think it was his personal belief. I think he was just reflecting the belief of a lot of the people. And I think demographics is our future and we are turning into a browner country and that scares the dominant culture. And the culture wars will get worse and we will tolerate loss of this nature that hurts the economy. I mean, you go talk to any construction company and they are, before all of this, they couldn't hire anyone. Now it's even worse. And we have things like public charge and all of those things add up.

The fact that in the census they want to ask the citizens some questions. Now, what's that related to this law in Florida? Is the fact that there is this sense that we are not wanted here. And it permeates. So someone just has to kind of mention it and people say, "I need to get out of here because now I'm putting my life, my children's future in danger." And I think that this will just grow. And yes, we have little islands, like Chicago is an amazing place, Los Angeles, New York, but you're seeing the rifts that are happening there. So I think that, you know, at some point this will come to head and our country will be hurt by it.

[00:37:44.07] - Muzaffar Chishti

So how do you see this Florida kind of stuff having ripple effects in Chicago?

[00:37:49.21] - Beatriz Ponce de León

Well, anecdotally, I do know that people are concerned and they can't believe it because Chicago is such the opposite, right? We, we have a CityKey program that is a government-issued ID that we give to anyone who needs it. They don't have to have any type of immigration status for it. It becomes, you know, it's a library card, a transit card. You can even get a prescription discount with that CityKey. And as people think about— we have seen population move to Florida from Chicago, I think, over the past several years, whether lower taxes for these benefits. But for the immigrant community, they, they don't think of Florida as a friendly place. So I think that in that regard, people will, will choose Chicago. But in terms of seeing a ripple effect of folks coming into the city, what we are seeing is not only people that are being sent on the buses, but now higher numbers at, at the airports. So for a while we, and they're coming from different states, but primarily still from Texas. But I, I'm curious to see if we will see more, more folks coming in from Florida to Chicago through O'Hare and through Midway.

And I wanted to comment on the work authorization work, because our governor, mayor, and several of our elected, you know, federal delegation, as well as ABIC and IBIC, just recently called for a state work authorization, temporary work authorization program using, making the case of a significant public benefit. But it is in the hands of DHS to approve. And it is one of those ways that potentially as a state, we can begin to test past some of these ways of operating. So I'd like to talk to you more about that other possibility. And, you know, I think it is a special time in Illinois and in Chicago. And although the numbers are getting more challenging, we are trying to approach it in a way of opportunity and find ways to welcome our new neighbors differently.

[00:40:01.26] - Muzaffar Chishti

But here's the reporting on this.

[00:40:04.10] - Miriam Jordan

Yeah, so I must say that you are getting Floridians, I mean immigrants from Florida, because when I was last there reporting, I heard from several of them that they were going to "Ciudades Santuarias," which I had never heard immigrants actually refer to in that manner before. But they specifically cited Chicago, and I interviewed several people who were on their way to Maryland. Yeah, thank you.

[00:40:32.14] - Muzaffar Chishti

Interesting. So Mike, so is this, I mean, you followed federalism and state, is this the new high watermark of state assertion?

[00:40:42.13] - Michael J. Wishnie

Well, it's hard to know. The brief history is that for the first 100 years of our country, almost all immigration policymaking happened at the state and local level as people like Gerry Neuman have documented. And the dispute over slavery largely prohibited Congress from regulating immigration. So actually, for the first 100 years of this country, immigration rules were set almost entirely at the state and local level. After the Civil War, Congress began legislating on immigration robustly for the first time. And by the late 19th century, that was becoming more and more extensive. So in a way, for the next 100 years, there was this notion of federal supremacy, that immigration was exclusively federal, and that the states and cities had no role whatsoever in immigration. And of course, it is true under the Constitution that federal law trumps state or local law. So if there is a conflict, federal law does trump. But I think the last couple of decades have unsettled that conventional wisdom further, and there's been an enormous amount of activity by state, county, local governments, um, not just regulations that impact immigrants and other residents too, of course, but there's actually specifically contemplating immigrant residents in their jurisdictions.

And for most of that period, I think much of the activity was welcoming and inclusive efforts, not exclusively, of course, but predominantly. That's what's, I think, changed a bit in the last couple of years. And we're seeing much harsher and more extensive efforts by states to target, to punish, to inflict pain and suffering on immigrant communities. And of course, there's no such thing as immigrant communities. We all know households are mixed, neighborhoods are mixed, schools and churches are mixed. So it's not just pain on immigrants, it's pain on immigrants and everyone with whom immigrants live, love, worship, and so forth. But I don't know whether it's over. It may be that because Congress has been constipated, as Angie said earlier, for, you know, from doing major immigration updating and modernizing, let alone overhauling since 1996, arguably, that in that vacuum, our federal laws are creakier and less and less appropriate to the circumstances if they ever were. Um, and in that vacuum, states and localities have had no choice but to try to manage their schools and their cities and their transportation systems and all of that, and have stepped in. That said, it also seems that we are in this particular moment where not only on immigration but on abortion laws, on gun laws, states, uh, are going in very different directions, um, increasingly harsh certainly on abortion, and they're trying to extend their influence over state lines.

So to me, the Florida driver's license piece, which I feel like they're picking on Connecticut— we're one of those 5 states, you know, all those millions and millions of Connecticut licensed drivers in Florida are in such trouble now. Um, we're proud that our driver's licenses are available without regard to immigration status. I don't know how meaningful it is that you can't take a Connecticut license to Florida, but that's an effort to project your rules elsewhere, and That is different. So remember in the marriage equality fights when some states didn't want to recognize the marriage licenses issued in other states to same-sex couples, and there was a question about whether under the Full Faith and Credit Clause and other laws, one state had to recognize the licenses duly issued by another state or not. On the abortion side, Texas, I think, was one of the first states to say, not only are we going to prohibit access to abortion in all kinds of circumstances, but we're going to try to impose penalties on onto anyone outside Texas who provides abortion services to a Texas resident who might cross a border to seek an abortion or help someone cross the border to seek an abortion.

And so Connecticut, in response, said, passed a law that says any state that tries to impose liability on a Connecticut driver or provider or doctor or nurse or anything like that can be sued essentially for all that and more. So you can sue back and forth at each other, right? So Texas says, if you go to Connecticut and have an abortion, you can sue the doctor in Connecticut. And Connecticut now says if you get sued in Texas, you can sue back for all of that plus everything, all this other stuff. That feels a little different. Um, and the idea that Florida is trying to tell Connecticut how to operate its licenses or what it'll recognize or not feels a little bit more like the efforts to impose wills across state lines. Um, and I don't know, you know, I don't know where that goes, but as long as Congress remains, you know, absent on the field on immigration, there are going to be these struggles.

[00:45:34.07] - Muzaffar Chishti

So as long as Congress leaves this vacuum, some states and localities have started doing their own positive things. So I understand that Illinois actually just last week passed a law allowing foreign medical graduates to go straight to licensing of their, uh, so tell us what, from your perspective, what positive things are happening in states. All localities.

[00:46:02.04] - Beatriz Ponce de León

Well, I can go back to Illinois in terms of, um, I think as a state we are also a welcoming state. The Trust Act created that, and you see it. So we have this Illinois Welcoming Centers. It's, it's a significant investment in nonprofits to support those, um, organizations. Chicago now has a welcoming center connected to each shelter. We have, um, a healthcare law that allows undocumented people to access public health insurance. And so that is a significant move. Our driver's license also do not take immigration status. So in terms of Illinois, I think we have created a climate there that is welcoming, that is positive. And in collaboration with the city, which is also significant. There's so much alignment right now with the Pritzker administration and the Brandon Johnson administration in terms of how we are navigating this moment, which, you know, we've moved from calling it a humanitarian crisis to a humanitarian endeavor because it's not just a moment, a crisis, but it really is a new reality. And as we look to how we integrate our new neighbors, it will take significant collaboration from state and city And I wanna point out that we, someone mentioned earlier, I believe, this effort couldn't have happened in Chicago or even like in New York or DC without mutual aid volunteers, philanthropy, community-based organizations.

People have stepped up in ways that we never could have imagined. And I think they don't always get the recognition and they should, right? Folks have found ways not only to provide care, but then to advocate for better systems of care. And that is, I think it is a significant effort that will change how our cities and our states operate. And then just thinking a little bit more to the future, I think that on a federal level, we can, in order to support some of this work, look beyond FEMA funding and other funding for the crisis, but how can our federal government invest in like our affordable housing systems, in our schools, in our public health systems because we are integrating so many new people. And that is another way to support this effort longer term.

[00:48:36.13] - Muzaffar Chishti

Abel, what do you see positive things happening at the local level?

[00:48:40.18] - Abel Nuñez

Well, I mean, I think if you just turn it around, how amazing would it be for newcomers to get a free bus ride to where they wanted to go? And for the welcoming city to have the infrastructure ready to receive them and help them integrate into our society. That would be amazing. I think we would, like, that's what we all want, right? I mean, things have happened for negative reasons, but some of the outcome has been okay. And although we're being overwhelmed at the local cities, the local municipalities, we also have to remember that, you know, immigration may be the realm of the federal government, but people live in cities. It's where it needs to be resolved. And so I think if people have come together and given their political, their economic context, are putting infrastructure to receive them. Can it be better? Of course it can. But we are beginning and we're getting stronger in what we're offering in terms of our response. And in the absence of the federal government, municipalities are stepping up. And I think both in policy but in real services, because at the end of the day, they are our neighbors.

They are— their kids go to the same schools. And so, you know, our life is entwined together with those newcomers, and it is best to do right by them because at the end of the day, they will do right by us. And so I think that there's a lot of positive things that we can get out of this, including in the negative ways it has started. If we just tweak it, I think we can do, and it has moved us, particularly those in cities that are outside of the border, to really think what it is to be a sanctuary city, to be a welcoming city, right? Because a lot of those things our political rhetoric that politicians use to sound good to a particular constituency. But really, this is about serving the vulnerable, the newcomer that in the end will come to strengthen our community.

[00:50:38.02] - Muzaffar Chishti

So Miriam, you've been looking at this nationally, the trends in the positive way. So give us a quick summary.

[00:50:45.21] - Miriam Jordan

Yeah, I have my cheat sheet here. At last count, 23 states and states that represent more than 80% of the country's foreign-born residents offered in-state tuition to students regardless of their immigration status in higher education, right? More than 20 states now provide driver's licenses to undocumented residents, up from 3 states a decade ago. And I credit the National Immigration Law Center for helping me to keep track of this, Tanya Broder in particular. Some things that happened recently, Arizona voters last year repealed restrictions on higher education for immigrants and adopted in-state tuition for all students who attend high school in the state. And the legislature is considering a proposal this year to offer financial aid. In addition to Illinois, California and Oregon have expanded public health coverage for most low-income residents regardless of immigration status. Colorado is subsidizing healthcare for low-income residents regardless of status. Several other states are moving in the same direction, like Washington. Utah's Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican who, you know, has been beating the drum in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, signed a law in March extending health coverage to low-income children regardless of their immigration status. And during the pandemic, Louisville, Kentucky, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and even some cities in Texas offered a combination of public and private funds to undocumented workers who were ineligible for unemployment or stimulus payments.

So there is good news out there.

[00:52:40.04] - Muzaffar Chishti

That's great. So this is important to celebrate, know that it's not everything bad happening. But I couldn't conclude this panel without having, um, the ultimate expert in federalism tell us where we are today. Uh, so this is a fight between federal government and states. At some point now, it has entered a new chapter of states versus states. So, and people are cognizant, we, about the DACA decision. These are all states taking federal government on its actions. So especially in the Roberts Court, where do you think the Supreme Court should today is on the issue of limits of state versus federal jurisdiction. And do you think, as I think Ron Brownstein was suggesting, is that states are trying to dig up some cases to take it back to Supreme Court to undo some of the good things that Supreme Court did a few years ago?

[00:53:39.09] - Michael J. Wishnie

Wow. Ultimate expert, crystal ball in the Supreme Court. You're really puffing this one up, Muz. Thanks for that. I don't know. I'll start with that, to be honest. Of course. So first of all, I want to say that I think this is going to keep happening because, as people have been saying, state and local governments, in my experience, are often quite practical. There is politics, there is ideology. We see governors running for president and so forth. But at the end of the day, the non-federal levels have to balance their budgets. They have to pick up the trash. They have to operate schools and police departments. And the Those practical realities will continue. And so people of goodwill trying to make sense of those systems are going to continue to try to do things that serve their communities, all of their communities. And so I think we're going to continue to see experimentation that tries to do a better job of the things that cities and states and counties do. I remember when Doris and I 20 years ago went around talking to police officials around the country, and I kept expecting to hear, you know, Republican this, Democrat that.

And I don't mean to say it's non-ideological, but a lot of them were just trying to like get their jobs done. And if a policy helped get their job done, then they would pursue it. And if it didn't, they wouldn't. So I think we're gonna continue to see a lot of activity. It's true that for some time, the main Supreme Court cases were about preemption, about the limits of state and local governments to act contrary to immigration laws. And again, in that fight, the feds always win, right? Federal law is supreme. So the question is, you know, where are the boundaries between what is truly immigration law and what is more state and local activity. And in general, some of the bad stuff at the local level was checked by the courts. I don't think this court is as likely to check the bad stuff, and I'm not sure it's prepared to embrace the more welcoming and inclusive measures. Not sure it's not. And some of these cases you see, I think at least Roberts and Kavanaugh, becoming impatient with states making up cases, and so putting limits on the doctrine of standing, which is about who can complain in court at all.

But the court, I think, is too often results-oriented. And so to the extent that the court just doesn't like the policy, I don't doubt they will find a way to write an opinion that shuts down policies they don't like. I'm hopeful that the recent decisions limiting the standing of states so that it makes it a little bit harder for a state attorney general to run into court and freeze an entire federal policy might chill that a little bit. But I'm not that optimistic that in the big fights, this court would stand with local communities trying to, um, uh, welcome all of their residents. But we'll see.

[00:56:40.00] - Muzaffar Chishti

Thank you. So we covered all 4 topics. So now time for questions. So those of you who want to line up at the mic, please do. We have promised people that we'll take questions online. And while people are lining up, let me, let me read the first of the online questions. It's a provocative one. Sort of what pathways do we have to address the root causes of this busing? For example, should we oppose the state policy themselves. I guess it may suggest that some cities and states are becoming welcoming, like New York State, in terms of providing housing. Would that address the issues of busing itself? Want to start with that?

[[FOR THE Q&A PORTION OF THE TRANSCRIPT, SPEAKERS ARE NOT IDENTIFIED BY NAME. PLEASE SEE THE RECORDING TO IDENTIFY SPEAKERS.]]

[00:57:26.22] - Speaker 2

I think the issue of the busing is Governor Abbott has decided to send people on buses, and the lack of a federal coordination of that is, you know, to me, that is a problem. It's a political problem. Immigration, integrating so many numbers of immigrants in such a short period of time has not been a city responsibility. And it could be, as Abel said, it could be a positive if it had federal coordination and welcoming cities were given the resources to really welcome people and integrate them in better ways. So I think it's squarely political. We saw the increase in numbers after the announcement of the DNC in Chicago, and we have heard and are expecting to see increases in buses as we get closer to that date. And so I think at one level, that is part of the problem.

[00:58:30.25] - Speaker 1

Not to mention, two flights were sent to Sacramento, and only to Sacramento, So, yes, I'll tell you something.

[00:58:38.18] - Speaker 3

What I would add is that busing is just, it was a political ploy used, but that didn't change the fact that immigrants are at the border and coming in. This also was from the previous policies of Remain in Mexico. So you had sort of an abundant of people waiting, wanted to get in. So when that was changed, people started coming in. And then yes, we need to stop in the US just looking at immigrants when they cross the border. We need to have a transnational view of things and understand that what's What's happening in Venezuela, what's happening in Nicaragua will have eventually impacts for us. And what's happening here with our internal labor market. I mean, yes, people are seeking freedom and protection, but we have a big help wanted sign out there. And so there is both a push and a pull. So buses are just but a symptom of that. And I think if we need to address it, we need to start talking about the multiple ways in people need to come in, those that need protection, those that are seeking employment, which we we need and those that want to do family reunification.

[00:59:40.07] - Speaker 3

I think it's not one thing that will resolve it. It'll be a multiple of things. And as much as I would love comprehensive immigration reform, we need to start looking at the smaller bites and see what we can do to move this forward.

[00:59:53.14] - Speaker 1

Great. In-person question here, mic one. Hi. Please introduce yourself.

[00:59:58.13] - Speaker 6

Yes. Sorry, I'm a little short. Terry Givens. I'm a professor at McGill University, but I'm an American. So I've lived in Seattle, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, all cities that are doing this work. And one of the things I— first of all, I wanted to thank Abel for the issue of racialization because I think we overlook that in the broader policy. And that's actually something I'm working on and will be working on with MPI. I'm also a non-resident fellow at MPI. But the question I want to ask Yay! Is there a potential for governors, you know, lower-level officials in states that are doing this work to come together and say, why can't we organize around this and, you know, share best practices? As somebody who studied European politics and immigration for many, many years, there's the EuroCities project that has been doing a lot to coordinate in the European Union. And I'm wondering, Is it possible or just the politics too difficult?

[01:01:05.02] - Speaker 2

I think it's possible and it is something that we have discussed at the state level as well as at the city level, but the politics do get in the way. So I appreciate the question, but I do see that as a path forward in many ways because as has been said repeatedly, especially I think in the earlier panel, Congress needs to act. Act in order to create legal pathways for people to come here in more orderly ways with more supports. But in lieu of that, it is the types of activities that Illinois is taking and other— there's potential for states to collaborate more.

[01:01:43.05] - Speaker 1

Thank you. Mic here on the left, please. And now introduce yourself.

[01:01:49.17] - Speaker 7

Hi, my name is Siobhan Steele. I'm with the Department on Homeland Security, but my questions are on my behalf and not on behalf of the department, just to be very clear because this is recorded. So I had a quick question regarding opportunities for the federal government, specifically the Department on Homeland Security, to respond to the current immigration system. I know that you had mentioned earlier the possibility of suspending economic sanctions, but that was in response to Katrina, which was a unique event. And there's nothing quite so unifying in this country as a disaster. And so I'm curious to know I would love to know, just given the fact that our immigration system is typically so reactive as opposed to proactive, what are some long-term solutions that we could potentially apply to the current immigration system that won't necessarily be impacted by the ongoing legal pushback that we're receiving from all of our legal pathways, such as CHNV, et cetera. And I'm actually surprised to see that the family reunification parole process that you had mentioned previously was not looped into the current lawsuit against CHNV, given there are argument, but yes, I would love to hear your thoughts.

[01:02:59.04] - Speaker 1

Thank you. Those of you who don't know, CHNV is Cuban, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. So anyone of you want to—

[01:03:10.08] - Speaker 1

No, let me allow panelists to respond, give you time.

[01:03:17.15] - Speaker 5

I'll say something. So part of your question was sort of what can we do that's longer term and that is not subject to the kinds of legal challenges that we're seeing constantly.? And I think the answer is nothing. There is nothing that will be immune from legal challenge. There will be legal challenges. So, you know, my hope is DHS will proceed, proceed not in the hope it can find the one thing that's okay enough that no one sues about it, but just assumes there'll be legal challenges and does the thing that seems the right course to follow anyhow. So I hope that it will not be intimidated by the prospect of legal challenge because they're coming whether you do something Narrow or broad. So that doesn't mean every legal challenge is equally likely to succeed, of course. So understand why one will take account of the prospects of success, but there's no clear path without lawsuits. And with every lawsuit, there's the possibility it's filed in the, you know, the one judge in Texas who sits in this particular courthouse and will just write an opinion. So if that's the threshold you have to get over to act, you'll never act.

[01:04:18.28] - Speaker 5

So I think you just have to set that aside. Choose the policies that are within your legal authority as you understand it that will serve the most people and let the lawyers sort out the lawsuits.

[01:04:30.15] - Speaker 1

Okay. So I think we didn't discuss FEMA. Yeah. This whole panel, which has some relevance.

[01:04:35.19] - Speaker 3

So, so, so FEMA provides the, the, the resources. So we can't do a lot of this infrastructure building without actual resources, right? So the federal government does have programs in place. We need to look at them, how they're funding. Most of the FEMA funding is for emergency humanitarian aid and it's kind of short tenure, but we need to think about— they have created a new program that extends to 45 days, but that's still not going to be enough. And they need that feedback of saying, okay, what is it— what did we actually do? And this will require funding, right? So beyond the policy change that they have in the wheelbarrow is the fact that we need money to do all this. Nonprofits, even the volunteer efforts are not necessarily in absence of funding. And so we need to make sure that the federal government understands and uses every lever possible to provide funding both to the municipalities, but also to nonprofits that are doing the work of integrating immigrants.

[01:05:28.11] - Speaker 2

I would add that we've learned that FEMA is funding, um, outmigration from San Antonio to Chicago, and people are being given a plane ticket to come to Chicago without a sponsor in Chicago. And then FEMA has given our city and state some funding for us to respond to the crisis. But I, I I think that if that is accurate, that is something we need to understand better and, you know, put— it doesn't make sense that FEMA would be paying for people to come to Chicago if they don't have a sponsor. And those numbers have been increasing and increasing. So I think taking a deeper look at what FEMA is funding, it feels almost counterproductive to then for us to have to find ways to serve the folks that are coming especially through O'Hare. And it just, you know, it doesn't make sense. We would like more increase and more flexible dollars from FEMA in order to be able to respond. And then I think longer term, if people are eligible for, if they've come through CBP, if they already have parole status, we are not, we don't have the capacity even though we fund legal services both at the city and state level to support folks, we haven't been able to help identify those people and move them more quickly to get work authorization.

[01:06:53.03] - Speaker 2

So having the federal government send either staff or fund organizations to do that on the ground, that would be significant and helpful. And then working on the backlog of asylum cases as well as work authorization cases would be something that could be useful as well.

[01:07:10.13] - Speaker 1

So you want to be—

[01:07:11.13] - Speaker 5

Yeah, just to observe that this discussion of FEMA is exactly why Katrina is potentially an appropriate response. Not every disaster is the same, but we're talking about declarations of emergency, federal and state. You know, Governor Healey in Massachusetts just made a declaration of emergency recently and called out 200 members of the National Guard. These are the kinds of time-limited urgent situations that lead FEMA to act, the National Guard to get called out, and in context to suspend the enforcement of laws, which is exactly what the Supreme Court says is the thing you are most immune from legal suit about.

[01:07:45.07] - Speaker 1

Question at the mic two here.

[01:07:47.28] - Speaker 8

Hi, thank you so much. My name is Katie Peeler. I'm a pediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital and live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, so also very welcoming city. And my question actually is more about the role or appropriateness of institutional civil disobedience. So in the medical world, we've talked a lot about professional civil disobedience with the abortion bans, but I'm wondering in states like Florida Florida, where you potentially have Medicaid funding being withdrawn if hospitals are not going to report things like how much they're spending on undocumented patients. What's the rule for hospitals to say no, at risk of potentially going out of business, or banding together as hospital groups? Do you have examples of that, or how would that work? We're in a business school building, so just curious.

[01:08:36.19] - Speaker 1

Mike, you talk to your students We are pushing down a lot, but—

[01:08:40.16] - Speaker 5

This is not legal advice. However, when hospitals band together, they should attend to antitrust considerations. I'll just say that. So talk to your lawyers about combinations and restraint of trade. But no, I certainly don't have the answer. I appreciate the comment. And I know that there are longstanding traditions in medicine under medical rules of ethics and professional responsibility which are different. Many professions have their codes, but each code is a little bit different that challenge physicians in these situations. And I, of course, can't sit here and say, well, this hospital should do this or that should do it. It's very contextual. But I do think that's the kind of very difficult choice that these policies are pushing people towards. And they go way beyond soundbites into real human lives. And I hope that there are ways to tell the stories, even just of the struggle about what to do. So I hope that physicians and other medical professionals will talk about the stresses they're experiencing. We're seeing that for abortion providers, but this was— the Medicaid rules are all providers, right? Goes far beyond that.

[01:09:50.11] - Speaker 1

Um, let me, uh, ask you one question which come online, which I think is easy to answer. So let's answer them quickly so that we could get to all questions. It seems that the As states become more aggressive in expanding their role, there'll be more discussion about sanctuary cities. Why has this language been muted or less prominent in the busing discussion?

[01:10:15.16] - Speaker 1

I don't think it has been.

[01:10:16.24] - Speaker 2

The language of sanctuary cities?

[01:10:18.24] - Speaker 1

I think it'll be called a sanctuary city.

[01:10:20.10] - Speaker 2

Yeah. No, I don't think it has been either. I think people call us sanctuary cities pretty clearly.

[01:10:25.19] - Speaker 1

So I don't think, I think that's the answer. I think it started by Governor Abbott saying, I'm going to send buses to sanctuary cities. They have called themselves sanctuary cities. I'm going to give them a taste of the medicine. That's my— so we have this one of these overarching questions, which I think we are lucky to have a global correspondent here. The question is, what can we do to help solve root causes of immigration? Any foreign policies we should pay attention to?

[01:11:04.12] - Speaker 4

Wow. I don't have any, any new prescriptions. I would like to make it very clear if it's not abundantly clear that COVID changed the world. It really, really battered the economies of the Western Hemisphere. Many, many people I meet crossing the border were doing very well. They were doing fine. The Haitians in Brazil, Venezuelans in Colombia, until COVID decimated those economies. I heard time and again from Haitians that, you know, the value of the money that I was sending my, you know, my family in Port-au-Prince is, you know, a fourth of what it was, you know, when the Brazilian currency was strong pre-COVID. And so I have no choice. I must come to the United States. I need to send the money. Of course, there is the American dream and we can't discard that completely. But in terms of, you know, poverty alleviation, I think that the US government has been trying to expand like this, the H-2A program, which is the agricultural seasonal worker program to other countries because it's heavily, you know, Mexican, and South African, interestingly enough, to do this as a sort of like alternative to coming to the border. But I honestly don't know that we're succeeding on any front, and I certainly don't know how we can address this.

[01:12:51.07] - Speaker 3

I was just I'd like to add that I think that our economic system to a large extent has failed working people and poor people, not just here, but whenever we export it somewhere else. And it's creating a lot of pain. I mean, at this moment, there is the largest movement of people in the world, and people are fleeing men with guns, poverty, all of these things, and they're shifting and they're trying to find their space in this global a globalized economy that has been hit by a huge pandemic. And I think the systems are not really ready to take. We have an asylum system that goes back to World War II, but the new realities of criminality are different. And the fact that immigrants or whenever a national leaves their territory, they lose all the rights and up to the whims and stuff, and they become a pariah to that. As bad as the Darien Passage is I've spoken to the mayors of those places and they're like, "We don't want immigrants. They've been crime," you know, like the same rhetoric that we hear here, we hear it there. And basically the immigrant is the invader, the other.

[01:14:06.13] - Speaker 3

And until we change that dynamic and we see that immigrants as a whole historically has made every place they're going better, we're not gonna change the dynamic.

[01:14:15.04] - Speaker 1

Thank you. So Mike, I would normally spare you a question, but this came directly at you, probably one of your fans. Uh, it says, on the issue of standing for states, during the Trump administration, blue states also sued over federal immigration policies. Could the caution of a state in standing at, at this court also affect the potential of blue states to use that route to oppose moves in a future Trump administration?

[01:14:39.27] - Speaker 5

Yes, certainly. Uh, I certainly think that it is possible that the Supreme Court is trying to send a message to all the state attorney generals to dial back this business of there's a Republican president, so the blue state AGs sue. There's a Democratic president so the red state AGs sue. We'll see.

[01:14:56.10] - Speaker 1

Great. On that back of bipartisan consensus, that we sending the same message, help me, uh, thank Abel Nuñez, Beatriz Ponce de León, Miriam Jordan, and Mike Wishnie. Thank you.

12:10 PM ET — Lunch

1:30 PM ET — KEYNOTE CONVERSATION: The United States & the World: Increasing Migration within the Western Hemisphere
Since 2010, no world region has experienced a greater relative increase in international migration than Latin America and the Caribbean. While much of that migration, driven in part by political and economic crises or natural disasters, has remained within the region, there has been significant movement northward. Governments, including the U.S. government, increasingly have come to realize that migration management and humanitarian protection require regional approaches, as articulated through the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, and have begun efforts to channel migration into lawful pathways and expand protection mechanisms. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) have played a vital role in helping structure these efforts across the hemisphere, working with governments and civil-society organizations to build a new but still quite incipient architecture for migration and protection. This armchair conversation with key international organization leaders offered a big-picture view of the approaches to today’s migration flows and humanitarian imperatives.

Diego Chaves-González, Senior Manager, Latin America and Caribbean Initiative, MPI
Jon Hoisaeter, Deputy Representative to USA & Caribbean, UNHCR – the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR)
Vincent Houver, Chief of Mission in Washington, DC, International Organization for Migration (IOM)

This transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies. If you notice an error, feel free to email [email protected].

[00:00:02.16] - Diego Chaves-González

Good afternoon. I'm Diego Chaves-González. I'm the senior manager for Latin America and the Caribbean initiative at the Migration Policy Institute. I would like to extend a warm welcome to all of you to today's afternoon panel discussion titled United States and the World: Increasing Migration Within the Western Hemisphere. Before I introduce today's panelists, let me begin by highlighting that the Western Hemisphere is currently undergoing a profound transformation in terms of human mobility. Some experts even argue that we are entering a new era of human mobility characterized by dynamic nature across the region. Nowhere else on the planet has seen a more significant relative increase in international migration in the Latin American and Caribbean region. Looking a little bit about numbers, we have between 16 and 18 million people that are migrants right now from different ranges of migration. We have Venezuelan migrants, 6 million Venezuelan migrants approximately in the region or a little bit over 6 million Venezuelan migrants in the region. We have over a million as well of Haitian migrants, Nicaraguan migrants, half a million Colombian migrants, especially the last couple of years have migrated almost half a million as well. And so some Ecuadorian migration that is happening right now currently.

And if we look at the numbers, 16 to 18 million people, this is roughly the same population of an entire country like Ecuador or like Guatemala. On top of that type of, of this huge numbers of migration, we have different types of migration. We have transit migration happening at the hemisphere. We have circular migration as well. And we, of course, have a lot of migrants who have the intention of settling in some of these countries. Allow me to introduce our esteemed panelists today who are at the forefront for supporting governments across the region. We have Vincent Houver, the Chief of Mission at IOM in DC, who has previously worked in many different places. Just to name a few: Geneva, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq. And joining him is Jon Hoisaeter, the Deputy Representative of UNHCR, who has worked extensively in Central Europe and closely collaborated with the Syrian emergency response. Both agencies, UNHCR and IOM, play pivotal roles not only in the Americas but also in other parts of the world, working with governments, building capacity, and developing systems managing migratio and protection. And indeed, for me, it's an honor to have Vincent and Jon to share the space with both of you.

So welcome. And let me start by maybe asking to both of you the first question. Before delving into the US or the United States' role, could you provide an insight into other countries in the hemisphere have responded to the surge in migration and displacement? Many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, which historically received relatively few migrants or refugees have had to swiftly establish protection systems and migration institutions while adapting their policies in recent years. How have they managed this so far? Vincent, let's start with you. Or do you want to start, Jon?

[00:03:26.24] - Vincent Houver

We're very used to tag-teaming in these discussions, so I'm sure Jon will complement whatever I may have missed out or mischaracterized. Thanks for this opportunity. To be here and to see so many of you here in person. We're just reflecting on the fact that we're almost not used to seeing real people anymore. We're so used to speaking on Teams and through screens. It's a little intimidating to see so many of you here, but it's great to see such keen interest on the topic of migration and refugees in this particular hemisphere. Perhaps, I mean, Diego, you've done this, you've put things in context, but I think it bears reiterating just how prevalent migration and human mobility have always been within the Western Hemisphere in a way, and that impacts the way in which I think many governments across the Western Hemisphere have addressed the more recent displacement crisis of the past 12 years, 13 years or so. I mean, usually when we speak of this, we backdate it to the Haiti earthquake in 2010. And of course, all of this was upended by the Venezuela situation, which we've been grappling with for a number of years now.

But Governments have long been used in this hemisphere to fashioning migration systems to facilitate human mobility, not necessarily in response to crises or sudden population movements or forced displacements for that matter, but as a way to work towards better integration amongst countries, of course, amongst which there is natural proximity, cultural proximity, which is long established. And so, you know, as we all know, within South America, within Central America, within in the Caribbean, longstanding frameworks exist to facilitate at least temporary migration. And those have largely been made use of by countries in the Western Hemisphere to try and adapt and adjust and respond to the displacement crises of the last few years. And so my point, I guess, would be, given the nature of this conference, is that migration within the Western Hemisphere, whether displacement, forced migration, or voluntary migration, is by no means one-dimensional. In terms of directions, not all movements are headed towards North America, towards the United States Southwest border. We see this as recently as last month. We've put out another displacement and migration outlook for the first half of 2023, which clearly indicates that there continues to be significant population directions towards South America.

Chile, Brazil remain destination countries and largely within America. And that applies as well to the Venezuela crisis, of course. Most of the brunt of the burden, so to speak, of the Venezuela crisis has been and continues to be absorbed by neighboring countries to Venezuela, whether it be Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, who have taken their share, resorting to, I think, and Jon will speak to this, protection mechanisms, of course, to account for the nature of forced displacements, but also using and adapting regular migration tools. To adopt largely regularization processes, temporary protection mechanisms in support of Venezuelans, humanitarian schemes for Haitians on the move, in particular in Brazil or in Chile. So the full toolbox, if you will, has been adapted, including in customizing regular migration tools which were enabled by free movement agreements within the region. And we see this playing out. So I think it's important that we understand the more recent surge in forced migration, the awful situations we see play out across the Darién Gap, as well through the historical lens, let's say, and of one of meaningful, useful integration within the region. Thank you.

[00:07:12.28] - Jon Hoisaeter

Thank you, Diego. And, you know, thanks also from myself to invite us to this event on the 20th annual anniversary, no less. As, as along the same lines as Vincent's comments, I would also thank you actually for setting the scene for this discussion in a regional context. I think it's a very important starting point. I did listen to some of the earlier discussions this afternoon going into a number of the challenges that, that the US is faced with and that many of us are involved with. But I think it is really important to recognize upfront that the refugee migration challenge is a regional one, is a global one. It is not a US discussion, it's not a Europe discussion. It's something that needs to be solved at the global level. In fact, you've given us the numbers. You took some of the things that I was going to try and say, and thank you for doing that in terms of the most of people staying in their regions of origin, staying even in their countries of origin after displacement. And obviously many of those countries are in the so-called developing world.

So it's an important starting point as we look at what's the way forward, how can we collaborate going forward. You mentioned the Americas and what have other countries had to deal with. Vincent laid it out. Maybe from the UNHCR perspective, just to point towards a couple of, looking backwards, a couple of key developments in the Americas that are still with us today and that we can build on. And I'm sure in this room there are many, much more, many of you who have much more expertise on the history of this region. But certainly I think it's important to acknowledge what happened after the '70s and the '80s in the Americas with the emergence of crisis in Central America, in South America. And based on that, the emergence of a regional framing of refugee protection through the Cartagena Declaration and the many following ongoing efforts that continue today to define who is a refugee in this continent and what are the ways to respond to them. I'm mentioning this because it has had regional significance, but it has also had global significance. It's something that has been noticed around the world as a valuable regional engagement by states to make sure that there is cooperation on the standards of providing protection, and how that collaboration can happen.

Picking then up on the more recent history, as you said in your introduction, we are now in a situation where the dynamics of displacement have changed since that time when the Cartagena Declaration was born. And yes, it has manifested itself not least through the Venezuela situation. Americas is now you know, every 20, every 5th person in the world displaced is in the Americas. But it is mixed. It is not just a refugee situation. It is people moving along the same routes for different reasons, with different needs, with different destinations. And yes, countries throughout the Americas have struggled with being overwhelmed. Their systems that have been developed since the '80s have been overwhelmed, the legislation has not been fit for purpose. The mechanisms to respond to individuals on the need have not been able to address those. So I think though that it's also worth recognizing achievements that have been made also in this context. And looking for instance at the way that countries like Colombia, you would know it well, Diego, have responded to receiving the, the lion's share of people having left Venezuela by welcoming populations through regularization, migration status, temporary status. These are megatrends as well globally that we need to reflect upon.

What is the place of the asylum regime in a world where states are increasingly turning to alternative statuses, temporary statuses? It's something from UNHCR that we have welcomed. But we're also keenly aware that we need to preserve asylum in that reality. And I think it's one of the points we perhaps can come back to. Maybe I'll end on this point. Even with that progress made, there is a lot to be done. Reading up a bit this weekend on efforts so far, it's a bit depressing to see that we organized with IOM and OAS in 2009 a regional meeting which could have been a description of today's discussion. Even the recommendations could have been an outcome that could have been from last month. So in a way, it tells me we've been aware of this issue for a while. We've been struggling with it for a while. We clearly haven't made enough progress. So, so I hope we'll touch on a few points in this discussion of what might that progress look like.

[00:12:47.19] - Diego Chaves-González

Thank you both. And we're also witnessing a significant increase in the number of people seeking refuge in the United States. The US government has emphasized the importance of expanding legal pathways and adjusting protection mechanisms to effectively manage these flows. Could you elaborate on why this approach matters? Vincent?

[00:13:13.03] - Vincent Houver

Yeah, thank you.

[00:13:14.23] - Diego Chaves-González

You complement each other, so you— Feel free to either you start or not.

[00:13:19.01] - Vincent Houver

Yeah, just, just a few thoughts on this. The volumes have increased, but I think, well, and that's the reason that, you know, I was joking that, you know, we're used to sitting together in these discussions. And I suspect that's why you invited us both as well, is, you know, the, the complexity of human mobility flows has considerably increased as well. And, and I think we see this play out in every part of the world, but certainly in the Americas as well over the past 10, 12 years. It is increasingly difficult to establish neat distinctions between those who may find themselves to be in need of, forgive me, Jon, but in need of traditional international protection, if you will, and those who move out of Other considerations, economic considerations, of course, but also display at times very significant vulnerabilities, which might not amount to a need to be recognized as a refugee or a person of concern to UNHCR, but nonetheless do require some form of protection. And therefore, I think it is important that governments, including the United States, along the lines of the arguments that you presented, Diego, come up with innovative dynamic tools and instruments to try and address the complexity of this and the dynamism of these population flows.

Because we see as well these, the dynamics of population movements change very fast. The nature of migration changes very fast. The makeup of nationalities changes very fast. The socioeconomic profile of migrants is very reactive. And governments, if not In the situation of introducing some of these mechanisms, additional lawful pathways, short-term measures, temporary protection, whatever it may be, what's the alternative? The alternative is smugglers and traffickers. And that is part of the rationale for our engagements with the United States and many other governments in the Western Hemisphere, is that the alternative— people will find a way to migrate, putting themselves in the process in harm's way. As we see, again, you don't have to look very far to see, to witness many examples of horrible circumstances migrants face as they seek to travel from South to North America irregularly with the help of those who abuse and exploit them. And so I think any steps that governments may make and initiate whilst respecting, of course, and abiding by their international obligations, which are important, and their commitments to extend protection when it needs to be extended, come up with solutions. I think that these are efforts that are always welcome as an effort not necessarily to regain, let's say, control over these movements because we need to be realistic as well, but at least to try and offer alternatives, better information, safer and more regular pathways for individuals to continue to migrate.

So I think it is essential to have that conversation. Whether the models that are being put forward are perfect, you know, we operate within, you know, the parameters of realistic regulatory frameworks, which are always quite constraining in any governments in this hemisphere and elsewhere in the world. But having that conversation, engaging multilaterally as well with, with all concerned governments, origin countries, transit countries, destination countries is essential, I think, to coming up with new ways to approach these challenges.

[00:17:07.18] - Jon Hoisaeter

So you're bringing the discussion, if I understand you, closer to the US perspective. And again, building on Vincent's points, I think it's important to recognize again from our side, the UN, of course, that the US also has a very proud history of providing refugee refuge or providing safe haven and has a lot to be proud of, has a lot to build on. And I I put it down to make sure I don't misquote it. The Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." I think there's been a lot of meaning in that. There's been a lot of manifestation of that through the US history. And it's, of course, something to build on as we look at what is the way that the US can deal with this very significant challenge of the mixed movements that we're talking about here. And I think before maybe delving into the pathway issue from our side, when it comes to the refugee-specific part of it, we of course want to recognize the two ways that the US has focused its contribution in that sense, or at least on the domestic side, the two ways that the US has focused its support.

And that is, of course, through the refugee resettlement the organized identification and transfer of individuals to United States where they will have been received and given a status that is long-term and predictable. The US has been the biggest global player in this, has driven development on this, and is still rebuilding and strengthening its refugee resettlement capacity. And UNHCR, of course, and IOM is very much involved with that. The other side of it, which especially if you read the media, is sometimes given less attention to and it's often more confused in the way it's presented, is of course, what about people who arrive at the US border? Also refugees, also in need of protection. What is their status? What is the US response to people who haven't been identified further afield, but who have made their own way to the US? And on that, I think It's very clear that the US has had, again, played a big role in providing entry to its country and letting people access asylum procedures through the years. But it's equally clear that those asylum procedures developed primarily through the '80s and the '90s. And with all the challenges that the US is facing in its reform efforts, That system is no longer, if I dare say, fit for purpose at the border in terms of how it can respond to the mixed flows that we're seeing.

And that issue has many elements to it that we could have a whole conference separately just on that. But just to say that we're working with the US to see how How can one, when there are people with different needs, different requirements, different backstories, different intentions coming through the same routes, how does the system respond to that? How is the capacity there to manage those claims? And how can the US manage that part in parallel with its resettlement, bringing people to this country? And here comes the other element. And how can the US also reach out to people before they reach that border? How can the US be part of a collaborative effort to engage with people on the move before they have had to depend on the services of smugglers, traffickers? How can we, as the UN and the international community, work with countries to make sure that that collaboration is there and that refugee response is not an issue border by border? It needs to have a regional setting. It needs to have a regional engagement. And unfortunately, I think we're just in our infancy of developing those models, of coming up with something that is predictable and sustainable in terms of collaboration.

So let me just end on the point to say that with all the proud history of refugee protection in this continent, with all the efforts that are going on, the status quo is not one we can live with. So we need to, we need to find together with the US, together with countries in the region, together with other stakeholders, importantly civil society, development agencies, private sector. We need to find a much better framing for that collaborative effort.

[00:22:07.24] - Diego Chaves-González

Thank you, Jon. And actually building on that, there is a vital element of the recently unveiled US strategy to enhance the management of arrivals, which is the establishment of the Safe Mobility Offices in countries like Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, initially with plans for expansion in other countries as well. The SMOs are, among other things, envisioned to play a crucial role in enabling individuals within the region to be considered for humanitarian protection, employment, or family reunification pathways to the United States, Canada, and Spain without the need for spontaneous travel to the U.S. border, which is a little bit about the, reaching to people before. And I think IOM and UNHCR are integral to the establishment of these SMOs. Could you discuss your organization's experiences in this regard and the potential of such initiatives as policy response, both in our hemisphere and beyond?

[00:23:09.29] - Vincent Houver

You want to get started?

[00:23:12.03] - Jon Hoisaeter

Okay, so let me pick this one up first, also because it builds on my last point. The status quo is not Okay. The status quo is one that does not deliver protection and solutions to people who are in dire need, people who are on the move, and who, as a result of our inability to deliver that protection and those solutions, as a result of that, we have in a way outsourced the delivery of protection solutions to smugglers, to traffickers. Who are filling the gap, who are stepping in and saying, I will provide you a solution. I can sell you a way to find protection. And we need to break that. We need to find a way to put that exploitative system out of business. Where does this fit with the SMOs, Safe Mobility Offices? It's subject of a lot of attention at the moment, as it should be. I think from our perspective, UNHCR, IOM, Vincent would speak to it, of course, as well. We are seeing this as a way to move a step forward towards trying to break that status quo. And we're doing it by looking at, here is a collaborative effort.

The US is reaching out to certain states. It's talking about how can we engage with people in those settings. In order to offer, at least for certain people, a shortcut to cut out the smuggler, a shortcut to cut out the Darién, to cut out dangerous movement through Mexico in order to find that solution at an earlier stage. It's a very complex undertaking. It's complex legally speaking. It's complex operationally speaking, it's complex politically speaking. But looking back 6 months when we first had our conceptual discussions on this, I think it's, it's, it's, it can be also labeled an achievement that we are now in an operational reality where this is being tested. It's being piloted. We have offices on the ground in 3, in 3 countries. And I'm saying we meaning the United States, UNHCR, IOM, and host country engagement, having a collaborative framework to coordinate how we engage with certain populations. I think it's still very much a forward-looking effort. It's a pilot that we're seeing how is this working? How do we identify people? How do we process and screen them? How do we refer them to the US government And how do we make this happen quickly?

Because that's the key. We need to break the idea that refugee resettlement and pathways takes years, months. We need to make it happen in weeks. So in that sense, it's an exciting prospect for us. It still has a long way to go. It's certainly not delivering now on all of this in terms of how do you reach the right people, to do this. How do you do that in a way that provides predictable outcomes for the people who go through it, the process? And here is an important point. How does it infect, how does it affect the setting where it's operating? These are countries that also have asylum systems. These are countries that have efforts to integrate and include displaced populations. We don't want to disturb that. We want to build on that. We want that to also be part part of a comprehensive solution because we do know this, that the, the, the SMOs will not provide solutions for the majority of the people in this situation. So it's essential that we don't get too blinkered here and look at what is this mechanisms and how do we build it. Let's open that discussion and see what other elements needs to be in place for this to be an overall success.

So a lot of elements in this that we can, we can come back to, but I'll turn it to Vincent.

[00:27:28.21] - Vincent Houver

Thanks. I fully subscribe to everything Jon has mentioned. I think it's really important to understand, irrespective of sort of some of the fairly grand announcements that were made around the Safe Mobility Initiative, it's one tiny piece of a much more complex, larger puzzle of both opportunities and challenges when it comes to people on the move. And so, as, as Jan mentioned, we're very much in the pilot phase. And so it's very difficult to be definitive about the effectiveness of the system and, and at this stage and whether more should have been done, whether a different conceptualization should have been introduced. We're learning very valuable lessons, I think, in partnership with, with all concerns. I think the important elements, of course, is that this has enabled a much more robust dialog between host countries. The United States, and other potential destination countries. And there's this tremendous value in having— I think really elicited a lot of interest on the part of other governments as well. There are many stakeholders who are watching very carefully how this initiative plays out and whether that might represent a new model to pilot elsewhere in the world. You know, Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africa were discussing the first lessons learned from the SMO very recently.

I think it's very interesting for us to see that there is, you know, a bit of a renewed interest, let's say, in thinking out of the box and coming up with solutions. Whether the targeting is ideal, whether, you know, the initiative to be more effective should be replicated elsewhere, whether the pathways that are being made available to applicants should be more diverse and more suited to their needs, I think these are all valid and open questions. And we're clearly, you know, struggling with operationalizing all of this because it's easier said than done. You can talk about nice concepts in Washington, D.C., it's something else to implement them. I can tell you in Guatemala and Colombia and in Costa Rica and potentially elsewhere in Latin America. But there is continued interest and support for the initiative 6 months into its initiation, which is important. So the political dynamic is there. And I think we are identifying meaningful solutions. Unfortunately, as Jon said, for a tiny sliver of the population of concern to both of our organizations, at least we're starting somewhere. And so I think we remain quite positive and optimistic as to the validity of the concept, let's say, as we move forward.

[00:30:07.01] - Diego Chaves-González

Thank you, Vincent. And maybe just a final question, one to Vincent and one for Jon. Vincent, one of the challenges in this process lies in the necessity to continually evolve and expand access to labor-based and sponsorship pathways to the United States and other major destination countries as well. could you highlight some of the challenges associated with this expansion? And then for Jon, how is humanitarian protection evolving on a global scale? How might the ongoing efforts in the Western Hemisphere to adapt protection systems contribute to improvements in similar endeavors elsewhere in the world? And what lessons can we draw from innovations occurring also in other regions as well?

[00:30:51.01] - Vincent Houver

So on other forms of of pathways. This speaks a little bit to the lessons we're learning from the implementation of the Safe Mobility Initiative, short as it may be as far as our real-life experience in piloting this. But, you know, obviously the sponsorship mechanism is very interesting because I think it's a, it's an initiative certainly in the United States that has generated a lot of enthusiasm to adopt new modalities to try and bring in family members or community members into the US in a regular manner. What we see, however, on the ground is a certain mismatch, let's say, between those who may avail themselves of these modalities and those who are more at risk of seeking irregular migration and putting their life in danger as they do so. And so in a sense, the general assumption, which I think has been validated by our own experience, is that if you have a passport, which is a requirement of these mechanisms, whether towards the US or other destination countries, If you have family or strong connections already in a regular situation or as US citizens in the United States, you are more likely to be relatively better off than the more destitute portion of a country's population that would be seeking to put their and their families' lives in harm's way crossing the Darién on foot and so on.

And so there is a bit of this. And of course, a lot of these Initiatives are also being drawn up in response to a perception that we have a crisis situation on our hands on the southwest border across the Darién Gap. And we see the Darién Gap numbers continue to increase irrespective of some of these mechanisms and initiatives. And so I think there is a clear lesson to be learned, or there's, there's room, let's say, for further adjustments when it comes to these specific requirements. If we are indeed to continue prioritizing the introduction of mechanisms that specifically target irregular migration that put people's protection in danger. And the documentation, private sponsorship requirement really is, I think, a series of significant obstacles to most. There are many initiatives that are being thought through in the US in particular to try and overcome the sponsorship requirement in particular, which we're seeking to both support. And I know the administration also supports supports the initiation of such innovative approaches to identify perhaps other forms of support that could generate sponsorship opportunities. Very briefly, labor pathways, circular labor migration, very important points. What we've seen as well, especially in Guatemala, for example, is that the majority of those who apply through the Safe Mobility Initiative, outside of the protection framework of course, are actually more interested in labor mobility schemes than they are in permanent settlements in the United States.

And so identifying ways in which we may be able to increase the volume, the pace of those who may be able to avail of these types of opportunities, I think would be very helpful to try and tap into the pool of migrants, including the potential eligibility of transit migrants for some of these schemes. I mean, you know, the United States in particular has visa schemes that are available for agricultural work, non-agricultural work, but those are primarily directed at the domestic population of given countries, not transit migrants. And so I think potentially the inclusion of transit migrants as eligible caseloads for these types of schemes would also go some ways towards increasing the universe of pathways that are being made available to the populations on the move.

[00:34:35.16] - Diego Chaves-González

Thanks, Vincent. Jon.

[00:34:40.01] - Jon Hoisaeter

Yes, you asked about the global perspective on humanity, on protection and the response. And it made me think of, I've been 25 years with UNHCR and it's a bit depressing that I think every one of those years we have given updates where we use the word unprecedented or record numbers or it's never been worse. So it sort of, it can be a depressing perspective that it seems that every year we talk about how bad things are. And it's true, the numbers are unprecedented. Populations on the move have never been, or displaced, have never been greater than now. And to me, it points to a few things. And don't worry, I'll come back to some more optimistic points. First of all, root causes. We're not able to address the root causes of displacement in an effective way. Way to turn that trend around. And I certainly don't have the answers to doing that. But obviously we're talking about a much bigger issue than the humanitarian response. We're talking about global politics. And as I think our High Commissioner said to the Security Council once, has the world become unable to broker peace? Because emergencies, displacement is increasing in frequency and size.

I think at the moment UNHCR has defined around 20 of our global operations as emergencies, and on average every second week there is a new one. So, yeah, quite a sobering and bleak global perspective in terms of the outlook for continued displacement. Maybe also staying on the negative track, reflecting on my own 25 years of, of the development when it comes specifically to the mixed movement is a couple of megatrends of because of the inability of states to often come up with what they consider an effective response, it's tempting to turn to the more straightforward ones, which is restrictions on movements. And, you know, limiting access. And I think it's a trend we've seen through the last couple of decades that this restriction on people on the move, and even in some cases criminalization of people on the move, has very much affected the way that responses are shaped around the world. And adding to that is, of course, the politics of this. The politicization and the polarization of the mixed movement issue in national settings has very much shaped how we are able to operate in many situations, how governments are able to operate.

And it has shown to be a tempting prospect for a lot of politicians to make use of this for short-term political gain. So it has created over the last couple of decades a bit of a stalemate in many settings where the politics takes over the ability of a collective response. But let me not end on that very negative note. I think there's a lot happening globally that shows some promise. And starting with the big picture, the two of us are sitting up here now, but there is of course also parallel global efforts to rally support around refugee response and migration response. The Global Compact on Refugees, the Global Compact on Migration are sort of tag-teaming every second year to keep the world community focused on this issue. How do we not only preserve the normative framework and develop the normative framework, but how do we create responses that can deliver on that promise? And we see potential in that. We see progress in that. Another buzzword maybe, but an important one, innovation. Technology. It's so important and so fast-moving. And, you know, the classic example of— I think we were all taken aback 10, 15 years ago that charging points was the first thing you needed to put up in an emergency response.

It was sort of a revelation, I think, to the whole humanitarian community that we didn't have that as a priority for a while. Now we do know this priority, but it is much more than just connectivity. It is access to services through technology. It is empowerment through technology, and it has many different sides to it. And we're seeing interesting developments, of course, around how to make use of that technology. And by the way, the SMOs are using technology in the way that people, for instance, are self-enrolling to be considered for the SMOs. So not lining up at the IOM or UNHCR office, but self-enrolling to be identified. So that has its own challenges, but it's an exciting process. Aspect. So maybe ending then on, again, on a bigger picture issue, but again, one we are positive about, then that is the relief-to-development gap, the nexus between global development efforts and the response to mixed movements. We've seen a lot of positive engagement in the recent years where those worlds are not yet quite there in looking at it in the same way, but are coming together in a way, at least that in my years with UNHCR has changed quite fundamentally.

Look at the World Bank's most recent global report. It has the theme of migration and refugee movements. That's something that I think if it happened 20 years ago, we would not have foreseen it. So, and that has a lot of elements to it as well. How do we come together as UN system actors, but also with other stakeholders in building on on all the global resources that are there and the goodwill that is there. So I wanted to end on a positive note.

[00:40:56.24] - Diego Chaves-González

Thanks so much. Let's have a little bit of a quick round of questions since we have both virtual and in-person audience. Let me start perhaps as you queue up the line, maybe just to respond to a couple of questions considering timing. But let me start with one question that was raised online. Spending per person on Afghan and Syrians and Ukraine is higher than Venezuelans. Can you explain why we pay more attention to European, Middle Eastern, African refugees crisis, but not those closer to the US geographically?

[[FOR THE Q&A PORTION OF THE TRANSCRIPT, SPEAKERS ARE NOT IDENTIFIED BY NAME. PLEASE SEE THE RECORDING TO IDENTIFY SPEAKERS.]]

[00:41:35.20] - Speaker 3

I was saying before this, I think the tough part will be the questions. No, I think it's a fair question. You know, how does one make sure that the response to people in need of protection is not guided by proximity or origin or any kind of distinctions that a certain population has. It needs to be based on a normative framework. It needs to be based on rights and obligation engagement when it comes to the core of refugee protection. And this is why I mentioned a few times in my interventions how important it is that the normative framework for us very much built around the asylum systems around the world, but based, of course, on the 1951 Refugee Convention, how important it is that as we innovate and as we elaborate new ways of doing things, that we don't lose the core of that normative framework. Framework because that normative framework is blind or should be blind to who has the right. It depends on your protection need. It doesn't depend on who you are. And it's a hard-fought normative framework. It is not a given that if we started it over today that it would look the same.

[00:42:59.13] - Speaker 3

It is a 70-year period of developing the implementation of the Refugee Convention. And I think it's a key part of the answer to that question. Now, I also think we shouldn't be too surprised that countries around the world would have higher priority to certain elements of a situation and lower priority to another. And I think the discretionary element there is something we have to live with. And I think something that we have to accept to some extent, certainly when it comes to response that goes beyond the core refugee rights. I think I don't have the answer to as to one particular group versus another. I think it's a good thing that the US has provided solutions for Ukrainians. I think it's a good thing that the US has offered Afghans to come to this country. I think it's a, you know, where we need to keep our eyes open is to see, does this come at the cost of people who have a right to find protection in this country? If it does, then we need to address that and we need to make sure that it's not one or the other. It is the court that needs to be in place.

[00:44:25.00] - Speaker 3

And then there is a discretionary element that I think we have to accept that states will pursue partially also on what they're seeing in their neighboring areas. So yeah, I'm afraid I don't have a sort of clearer answer than that off the top of my head.

[00:44:46.26] - Speaker 2

No, I mean, thanks, Jon, for taking this one. But I think we should also continue to bear in mind that in terms of resources, those who are hosting refugees bear a much larger share of the resources that are required to cater for the long-term integration and protection of those who need it. And certainly in the Venezuela situation, we've seen, as we mentioned at the outset, that countries such as Colombia, Peru, Ecuador have invested considerable resources. Colombia hosts close to 3 million Venezuelans, which is far more than any other country in response to the crisis such that generated, I think, almost 7 million Venezuelans being displaced and crossing their country's borders. And so at the end of the day, I think it continues to be very important for the US to be an example to the rest of the world in terms of its solidarity, its continued— There are very few countries in the world that provides almost systematic humanitarian assistance regardless of where a crisis originates. And all of those that were mentioned are crisis settings that the US, for which solutions are supported by the United States. But those who host refugees and migrants, I think those are the ones that need to be supported first and foremost.

[00:46:05.27] - Speaker 2

And as it is in South America, certainly those governments have done a lot. So that perhaps goes towards explaining as well why on a per capita basis, the requirements were also a bit lesser when it comes to Venezuela vis-à-vis other situations.

[00:46:21.24] - Speaker 1

All right. Why don't we go ahead and we, we ask both, I mean, I see two people lined up at the queue on both sides of the room. So if you could maybe ask your question and your question and we can wrap up the session that way with the responses, of course, from Jon and as well. Thank you.

[00:46:42.12] - Speaker 4

Sure. Thank you. Thank you so much for your insight. I'm Rachel Levitan. I work with HIAS. We work globally, but we are also in 11 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and serve serve around 750,000 people in the region per year. I'm wondering, with the climate change very much on the agenda of the Secretary-General, I wonder how well each of your agencies have integrated climate-related displacement both into your strategies and into your programs in the Thank you.

[00:47:21.08] - Speaker 5

Thank you. My name is Hannah Flamm. I work at the International Refugee Assistance Project, and I have two questions about the SMOs, or SMOs as I hear they're sometimes called. I just got back from Guatemala and visited one of the SMOs in this trip, and there were only Venezuelans at that location. Venezuelans are categorically ineligible for any of the lawful pathways that the SMOs in Guatemala offer. I realize this is a pilot stage, but my first question is, what opportunities do you your agencies see in expanding access for the people who are eligible for those pathways and also the opportunity to expand the pathways that the offices offer? Secondly, you spoke to the innovation of allowing people seeking protection to apply on their own without any intermediary. And my question is, what efforts will IOM and UNHCR undertake to ensure that there is more equitable access on those web platforms than otherwise, because I think in the absence of some, um, overture and accessibility, uh, for people who are fleeing persecution, they will face the biggest obstacles, um, if it's just an open platform to anyone. Thank you.

[00:48:39.17] - Speaker 1

All right, let's just skip like 5 minutes tops because we are really running super late on time. But please try.

[00:48:47.07] - Speaker 2

Uh, and these are very straightforward questions, right?

[00:48:52.02] - Speaker 1

Should be very easy.

[00:48:54.08] - Speaker 2

Please don't call them SMOs. It really makes my skin curl. You're not the only one, but the SMOs. I mean, all of what you said makes a lot of sense. Certainly, we're hopeful that as we continue implementing this initiative, we'll be able to expand the scope of those nationalities that may be eligible in certain countries. So as you know, since you were in Guatemala, depending on the nature of the operational and political agreement that's in place to operate in the host countries, different nationalities are being targeted. And so that is a result of ongoing robust and healthy conversations amongst concerned governments. And so I think it's important to iterate that, you know, neither UNHCR nor IOM are necessarily setting the parameters, but we very much hope that, you know, The principle is that those who are in need of these solutions should be eligible to these schemes. So we're very much hoping that we'll work towards that, including in allowing more user-friendly ways to apply and more human interface as well, which is not completely evacuated from the scheme. Climate-related strategies and displacements, I think we try and take into consideration these factors, particularly across across some sub-regions that are very vulnerable to climate change, the Caribbean being sort of the center of our attention.

[00:50:31.17] - Speaker 2

We're very hopeful that the LA Declaration process will soon include climate-related elements into its focus as well. To what extent that enters the perspective when it comes to legal pathways, I think that's an open question. And that is a global conversation which is politically loaded as well to an extent, but certainly in the Western Hemisphere, we see a need to be more cognizant of these dimensions, which do push people to cross borders, whether voluntarily or not. These are not very good answers, I'm afraid, but that's all I can come up with in the time.

[00:51:08.14] - Speaker 3

Let me try just to add a couple of points to it. Yeah, I fully agree with what Vincent says. On the SMOs, I think absolutely one of the successes of looking ahead, one of the looking ahead what would make it a success is the expansion of which populations it could reach. And I think the eligibility there in each of the locations where it's operational will be key. It's something that primarily would have to be worked out between the states. It's not something that UNHCR can come in and just say this is how it's going to be. So it needs to be a collaborative discussion, but we are fully in agreement that that I think that is a key point moving it forward. When it comes to the tool of using technology to give people access to services and to processes, I think there is very much opportunities there and there are risks. And you're pointing towards some of the risks. What about people who are not really able to access digital tools or who are not familiar with it? It might be a threshold for them. So that's something we're very aware of and that's why the onboarding through digital tools should not be the only way to access something.

[00:52:28.00] - Speaker 3

It should be an additional, it should be something that broadens the access. It shouldn't be something that limits the access. And there are many ways that that can be done, either by allowing for a certain interface direct or also by following up people who have approached the website in different ways. Maybe on the climate change on UNHCR, we do actually have a strategic framework for climate action. I even brought it with me because I am no expert on it. But just to say that it is obviously a very, very topical issue for us. And as it's UN General Assembly week, this is one of the topics that's very much present in discussions. And for us, of course, the entry point is it creates displacement. Climate change creates displacement and puts people on the move. And secondly, people who are displaced are affected by climate change and can affect climate change unless they're given opportunity not to affect it. So look at Bangladesh with its, the world's biggest refugee camp. If people cannot find other ways to find energy for cooking, then they will go to the local forest and again contribute to a potential climate, negative climate impact.

[00:53:56.03] - Speaker 3

So, so this is for us a very, very topical issue for in very short terms. For us, it's a law and policy engagement with states. It's an operational issue in our own operations. And thirdly, importantly, it's a footprint thing. What about the UN's footprint? What about how the UN operates? How about we travel? How we buy and how we procure and how we do logistics. So all of these elements are relevant to our strategy. Final point on this, UNHCR is not a fan of the term climate refugees. And that is maybe a discussion for another time, but it has something to do with what I mentioned earlier. The normative framework for refugees has been hard-fought. A lot through the years after the Refugee Convention was developed, through the regional efforts we've been talking about. And UNHCR is wary of the refugee concept being put in boxes that are where states have discretion, where it is an aspirational effort, because it could muddle the waters for us on what are the rights and obligations of states when it comes to refugees. And we don't want to open that discussion too wide. And one of the elements there could be those who say, let's put the Refugee Convention aside, let's make a new one, and let's include, for instance, climate.

[00:55:25.26] - Speaker 3

We see a lot of risk in that approach, but it's obviously possible to argue in both directions.

[00:55:32.29] - Speaker 1

Thank you. Just want to remind the audience that we're going to still remain seated for the next session. And with that, thank you so much, Jon, Vincent.

2:15 PM ET — Legal Representation as a Tool for Justice – Why Representation Matters
Full and fair access to immigration legal services is vital to ensure justice for asylum seekers and other migrants seeking protection in the immigration courts or immigration status before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Legal representation is also essential to the effective functioning of the immigration court system, improving outcomes and appearances at all levels—an essential element for a body that is facing more than 2 million pending cases. Resolution of affirmative applications before USCIS and immigration court cases takes years, and the waiting times continue to grow. For poor and low-income immigrants, in 2023, there was an average of only one legal representative for 1,413 unauthorized persons in the United States and this number varies greatly by state. Panelists discussed the current state of immigration legal services and the growing need for representation. They addressed the importance of investment in universal representation and the use of innovation and technology to ensure access to justice for those seeking status and protection in the United States. Legal services strengthen the integrity of the institutions which implement U.S. immigration laws and uphold due process and international law principles.

Anna Marie Gallagher, Executive Director, CLINIC
Rodrigo Camarena, Director, Justicia Lab
Annie Chen, Initiative Director, Advancing Universal Representation, Vera Institute
Emmett Soper, Counsel to the Director, Executive Office for Immigration Review, U.S. Department of Justice
Wendy Young, President, Kids in Need of Defense (KIND)

This transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies. If you notice an error, feel free to email [email protected].

[00:00:00.03] - Anna Marie Gallagher

Welcome to this panel. It is Legal Representation as a Tool for Justice: Why Legal Representation Matters. And I know each and every one of you knows why it matters, but we're going to talk with this group of expert panelists that have years and years of experience in thinking about providing, designing, talking about immigration legal services. So to start, I want to welcome our audience members virtually. Hello, welcome our audience members in person. I wanna thank the panelists this morning and this afternoon who set the stage for us to talk. I was moved in so many ways by so many things that they said. One of the things that came through powerfully and clearly is that we can do this, folks. We can do this through a lens of hope and creativity. And they set the stage for us to talk why immigration legal services is an integral part of any frontline solutions to ensure the dignity of migrants and an effective and able immigration system. So with that, I'm going to introduce you quickly to our panelists, ask them a couple questions, and they'll get them to talk a bit about their experience, and then we'll take questions.

And I'm mindful of time, and I'm gonna keep track of the time, and both Doris and Andy in the front, are ready to give me this. So thank you. So I'm the moderator. I'm the Executive Director of Catholic Legal Immigration Services. I talked with all of you this morning. I also have on my right Rodrigo Camarena, the Director of Justicia Lab and formerly, I think it's Pro Bono Immigrant Advocates Network. And you'll explain, Rodrigo. Annie Chen, the Initiative Director of Advancing Universal Representation with the Vera Institute. To my right, Emmett Soper, who is counsel to the director, Executive Office for Immigration Review, U.S. Department of Justice. So he is counsel to David Neal. I also want to add that he was an immigration judge. I appeared before him. It was a pleasure to appear before him. He got me in and out in 10 minutes during a master calendar. Thank you, Judge Soper. And also on my left, last and certainly not least, old friend and colleague Wendy Young, who is the president of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) Who we all know. So thank you all for being here. So run of show, we're going to start with Emmett.

After, we're going to talk to Rodrigo about IT and innovative solutions. Uh, Annie's then going to share all her experience and knowledge and richness about universal representation, um, and the work that Vera has been doing for years. And we're going to wrap up with Wendy, who's going to talk about how she's leveraged thousands and thousands of pro bono hours and attorneys to represent kids. So with that, we're going to start with Emmett. Emmett, if you could just tell us a wee bit about what you do for EOIR and for David Neal, and then share with us a little bit about EOIR, Executive Office for Immigration Review, folks, in case you don't know the acronym.

[00:03:17.01] - Emmett Soper

Sure. Well, thank you very much. My name is Emmett Soper, and I'm counsel to the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review. Thank you very much for the invitation. I'm very happy to be here today. My permanent position, as was mentioned, is as an immigration judge at the— what's now the Annandale, Virginia Immigration Court. Currently work for David Neal, the Director of EOIR, as his counsel. A few things that I want to cover in my presentation today, and here is generally where I plan to go. I want to talk a little bit about, in general terms, representation in EOIR proceedings and why it is so important. Having done that, I'll go on to talk a bit about some particular EOIR initiatives and programs that we have to encourage representation in the immigration courts. Well, with respect to representation in general, I'm sure most people here know the Executive Office for Immigration Review conducts removal proceedings involving noncitizens who are charged as subject to removal. We conduct certain other types of legal proceedings as well involving noncitizens. In removal proceedings before the immigration court, noncitizens can argue that they are not in fact subject to removal. They can also apply for various forms of immigration relief, the most obvious example of which would probably be asylum. Noncitizens in removal proceedings before the courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals are entitled to be represented, but at no expense to the government.

I want to go right now into a few statistics about representation before EOIR. These statistics are available on EOIR's website, the ones I'm going to highlight, as well as some others relating to this general topic. The overall representation rate in immigration court cases is 43%. The thing to remember about the statistic is that generally when noncitizens are put into immigration court proceedings, They are unrepresented at the beginning of their case. Those that acquire counsel do so at some point down the road after they have been put into proceedings. The 43% figure includes all cases before the immigration court, including those that have just started and in which no hearing has yet been held. If you look at cases that are further along in the process, for example, those for an application for immigration relief has actually been filed, the picture as far as representation does get a little bit better. For example, cases, cases that are pending before the immigration court where the noncitizen has filed an asylum application have a roughly 75% representation rate. Cases completed by the immigration court that involved an asylum application have a roughly 86% representation rate at the time of completion.

And cases completed by the Board of Immigration Appeals that involved an asylum application have a roughly 86% completion rate at the— I'm sorry, representation rate at the completion of the appeal. Generally speaking, EOIR would love to see all noncitizens in removal proceedings represented. And I can say that both as a matter of fairness and as a matter of efficiency as well. Where somebody in proceedings is represented, I think that the system benefits. And this applies not just where the person in proceedings has a strong claim to immigration relief, but also in other cases as well. So I just said that the system benefits when a person is represented, and I want to unpack that a little bit and explain what I mean. Having representation in general terms helps a noncitizen to navigate the immigration courts. Where somebody is in immigration court proceedings and they're represented, their attorney or representative can talk to them outside of court, determine what legal arguments they can plausibly make, as well as what immigration relief they may potentially be eligible for and should apply for. Once potential relief is identified, the attorney or representative can fill out an application, can let the noncitizen know what evidence should be presented, can sometimes assist the noncitizen in gathering such evidence, and they can also prepare the noncitizen to testify in court at their hearing.

When you get to the individual calendar hearing in a case, which is the evidentiary hearing, where the noncitizen is represented, their attorney or representative generally conducts a direct examination of the noncitizen. And in doing so, the attorney or representative being familiar with the case knows the relevant facts to elicit during testimony and also knows what is not particularly relevant, what does not need to be testified to in court. And so the bottom line is that where a noncitizen is represented, you know, speaking generally, they have a greater ability to speak meaningfully in court because the attorney or representative can sort of package their case, can present the important evidence to the immigration judge, can focus the noncitizen in their testimony on what's relevant, and can also draw out particular testimony that the immigration judge needs to consider. Generally speaking, where a noncitizen is represented, cases proceed more efficiently, the record is cleaner, and regardless of whether the immigration judge ultimately decides to grant or deny the application, they can likely do so with more confidence that they know all of the relevant facts and legal considerations. So those are some general thoughts about representation in general.

The question is, How do we encourage representation before EOIR and increase representation rates? As an agency, we administer a range of programs and initiatives that are designed to increase access to representation. Generally speaking, these programs are run within EOIR by our Office of Legal Access Programs, and I'm sure many people in this audience are familiar with that office. It performs a range of vital functions for EOIR, generally with the aim of ensuring that as many people as possible in EOIR proceedings have access to legal representation or other assistance. So I want to talk now about some of our main initiatives to increase representation, and I'll start by highlighting accredited representatives. EOIR has a program that, again, I'm sure many people here are familiar with, under which non-attorneys who meet certain requirements can be accredited to represent people in immigration court and before the Board of Immigration Appeals. This is known as the Recognition and Accreditation Program, and it's administered by EOIR's Office of Legal Access Programs. So there are two components to this program. The first relates to the recognition of nonprofit organizations, and the second to the accreditation of individuals who work for or volunteer at one of those organizations.

With respect to the first component, nonprofit organizations can apply with EOIR for recognition. The organization has to meet certain requirements that are set out by regulation, and one of those requirements is that the organization primarily serve low-income or indigent clients. With respect to the second component, an organization that is recognized by EOIR can apply for the accreditation of non-attorneys who work for or volunteer at the organization. There are two types of accreditation. The first is known as partial accreditation, which means that somebody can practice before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services or USCIS. The second known is known as full accreditation, which means that the person can practice before both USCIS and EOIR. Fully accredited representatives are required to have immigration training, which has to be documented in the application that their organization submits on their behalf. There are currently over 850 recognized organizations and over 2,300 accredited representatives. A significant majority of the accredited representatives, the current ones, are partially accredited as opposed to fully accredited, and so can practice before USCIS, but not before EOIR. In other words, the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals. I want to talk a little bit more at this point about fully accredited representatives.

From EOIR's perspective, the work that fully accredited representatives do is very valuable. Where you have a fully accredited representative who appears in immigration court on behalf of a noncitizen, from the point of view of the immigration judge and the noncitizen, there should be no difference between that accredited representative and an attorney. The idea is that a fully accredited representative will do everything that an attorney would do in terms of preparing a case, filing applications, and appearing in court on behalf of their client. And I want to point out one thing here, which is that immigration law is specialized, as people are aware. With respect to attorneys, you know, there's no requirement that an attorney appearing in front of EOIR have any particular training in immigration law. Most do, but there's no requirement to that effect. There is, however, such a requirement for fully accredited representatives. As I said, as a condition of accreditation, a person has to receive immigration training and it has to be documented in the application that their organization submits. So you can be sure that a fully accredited representative has immigration training, which is— which can be of real importance given the specialized nature of immigration law.

As I mentioned, most accredited representatives are partially as opposed to fully accredited. We need more fully accredited representatives, and as an agency, we would encourage those affiliated with recognized organizations to become fully accredited. I'll talk a little bit now, shifting gears, about pro bono representation. EOIR does a lot of things. We try to do a lot of things to encourage and facilitate pro bono representation. I want to highlight a couple of them. In November of 2021, the EOIR Director issued a public memo, which is available on our website, that's entitled Encouraging and Facilitating Pro Bono Representation. I don't have time right now to go into the details about that memo, but I'll say that it's a comprehensive agency statement on pro bono representation, and I would encourage people to take a look at that if interested. We also post on our website lists of pro bono legal service providers for each immigration court. These are distributed in court to noncitizens as well. And these are really the agency's— one of our primary ways of connecting unrepresented noncitizens with attorneys and representatives who might potentially help them for little or no money. The requirement to appear on the list is set out by regulation, and the idea behind the list is that the providers on the list should actively be providing pro bono representation.

Our pro bono lists are not intended as a way for other legal service providers to solicit for paying clients. We also post on our website specialized pro bono lists. We have a list of organizations that provide services for people on the dedicated docket, which is a specialized immigration court docket for certain families who are in proceedings. We have a list of organizations that provide remote services for people in immigration custody. And some courts also have specialized pro bono lists specifically for those courts' juvenile dockets. With respect to the specialized lists, we're trying to be as precise as possible in in terms of matching noncitizens with organizations that might be in a position to offer them assistance in proceedings. We recognize the reality of capacity restraints. We're doing our best to build capacity through cooperation with pro bono legal service providers, for example, through training of law students and pro bono attorneys, and by trying to cooperate to increase the number of fully accredited representatives. We— encourage legal service providers to contact EOIR with ideas for increasing capacity. We're always willing to listen and to discuss ideas that relate to ways to build pro bono capacity and to increase pro bono representation.

We recognize that law school clinics as well often play an important role in providing pro bono services, and I'll just highlight that next week EOIR is holding a national stakeholder meeting for faculty, staff, and students from law school clinics. 3 other EOIR initiatives relating to representation, and I'll just run— I'll run through them at this point, are our National Qualified Representation Program, which is a longstanding one pertaining to noncitizens who've been found to lack mental competency, EOIR's Council for Children initiative, which is a newer program that's aimed at children in proceedings, and the immigration court help desks, which function in 24 non-detained immigration courts, which a fairly dramatic expansion and are intended to help people understand what to expect when they come to immigration court. These are important initiatives, and I'm happy to discuss them more a little bit further on when we take questions. I'll just close at this point by saying that we at EOIR recognize the importance of representation in proceedings. There's always room for improvement, obviously, and to that end, we welcome ideas from stakeholders that pertain to representation. Those are my prepared remarks for right now. Again, a bit later on, happy to take questions.

[00:17:49.11] - Anna Marie Gallagher

Thank you so much, Emmett. And thank you also to the Office to EOIR and Director Neal for your openness in collaborating and working with the lawyers, accredited reps, and then the legal service field. I would just note that clinic supports and the backbone of our organization are accredited representatives, non-lawyers, which is pretty shocking for many lawyers. I fully and 100% advocate for them because there are not enough lawyers. And additionally, they are an important backbone for us, but also they live in the communities they serve and they stay in those communities. So they know the people in their communities. And as counsel, as Emmett said, they're trained, they're required to be trained before they go to court or before they go to USCIS. So they are an important, important and vital, vital element in providing legal representation. So thank you so much, Emmett. So now we're going to turn to technology. We talked about the government and we talked about the courts and the programs, and now we're gonna talk, we're gonna turn to technology. And Rodrigo, I would just share with the whole audience, one of the last speakers reminded us, and this actually made me sit up a little bit straight, it startled me, that this is the first time that real-time information is available to migrants on their journey, right?

Us old-timers remember when there weren't even, they couldn't even call you. Right? And you had to go to pay for phone booths in certain countries for them to call you. And this is real-time information. So pretty exciting and pretty challenging and full of opportunities. Your organization, Rodrigo, has been advocating for greater use of technology to support immigrants and provide them access to immigration legal services in the face of some skepticism by NGOs. I remember the days of those skepticisms. Of course, now you're way ahead of your time. So if you could tell us a little bit how you started this work, why, what benefits you see from these tools, and also the challenges. So thank you.

[00:19:47.25] - Rodrigo Camarena

Great. Thank you so much, Anne. Hi, everyone. I'm Rodrigo Camarena, the director of Justicia Lab. How many of you know who we are? All right. I see a handful. Well, if you don't know who we are, it's because we used to be known as the Immigration Advocates Network, which is still a platform that we manage. How many of you are IAN members or have been to our Immigration Legal Services Directory? Immigration Law Hub that are great. Well, how many of you use CitizenshipWorks, our digital tool to file? Okay, more hands. What about Immi.org? Okay, more hands. Awesome. Great. Thank you so much for the hands. So we built digital tools for immigrant justice. We are a nonprofit program of Pro Bono Net, which has been leading this work in bridging access to justice and technology for almost 25 years. And, you know, our work really comes from that assumption that that there's not enough lawyers and there's really never going to be enough lawyers unless we have some serious structural reforms in this country. And so our tools really try to bridge that gap for advocates. So both non-lawyer advocates like myself, accredited reps, paralegals, anyone working with immigrants.

Many of our tools provide guardrails for folks to be able to have conversations, structured conversations with migrants to file pro se, for instance, who are on their own. All of our tools use plain language because, you know, it's hard enough to get information in non-English languages, but then even when it's in English, it's really convoluted and, you know, includes Latin and all these things that we can't really decipher. So I think our work is solely focused on how do we take this convoluted system and simplify it for immigrants and their advocates by using technology. And so while we have been working very hard to connect the dots, we also understand that, you know, we're in this era right now where technology is changing very quickly. The availability of information has never been so accessible. And we're both living in sort of a really exciting time, but also a very scary time, right? With misinformation and AI now being able to generate thousands of tweets and, you know, millions of, uh, uh, bits of poor information. We need to really step up our game as technologists but also as advocates to make sure that we get the best information out there to, to the people that we're trying to help.

Um, so we've been working in this space for some time, over 15 years. We, we just rebranded as Justicia Lab, um, and I think for us it's really about, you know, leveling the playing field so As a migrant, you can understand your case, you can understand what you're eligible for and what you're not in real time and in your own language. And as an advocate, even if you're not a lawyer like me, you can advocate for someone, you can support them through a process with confidence and knowing that you're not going to fall in violation of an unauthorized practice of law. So it's really exciting to work with many partners here to connect the dots, but ultimately, we We function on the understanding that the system is unjust, it's built for injustice. And while we're fixing some of that injustice by making information and resources more accessible, we really need to uproot the system that we're living in and that we're putting people through because it's inherently unfair and inherently violent. So yeah, thank you so much. Those are my remarks.

[00:23:23.18] - Anna Marie Gallagher

And, Rodrigo, can you tell— you shared some talking points with me on specific projects you're working on and groups you're working on. Can you tell us a little bit more who you're assisting and how?

[00:23:34.09] - Rodrigo Camarena

Sure. So we have hundreds of nonprofit partners that use our tools. At the moment, we're working with a number of partners in the Houston area to develop a universal intake tool. I know it's been something that people have talked about for some time, but we think that there shouldn't be a world where as a migrant, you tell your story to someone repeatedly, right? You relive that trauma, you go office to office telling someone your story, and none of that gets captured, none of that gets honored or shared with the person that can help you. And so we're developing technology that is safe, can be accessible from a mobile phone, and lets someone, you know, be able to communicate with a machine in a way that doesn't expose their identity and identify if they're eligible for a form of relief. This is based on our immi interview, which some of you might might use and know. And the idea is that once you're put through that process, you can then say, hey, I want to get legal services and then connect with an authorized representative. But, you know, it doesn't make sense for us to connect people to legal assistance in areas that are saturated with demand, right?

We did a study with the Center for Migration Studies a few years ago where we found there are 1,400 migrants in need of help for every 1 legal representative. That's on average, right? But in Dallas-Fort Worth, that number goes up to 4,000 migrants for every 1 legal representative. And in New York where I am, that number's 800. So wouldn't it be great if we can connect someone in Dallas to a lawyer in Brooklyn, New York where I am to support their case and support access to justice in a more meaningful way? So those are some of the things we're working on. Along with trying to connect, trying to make AI really work for us, right? There's a lot of scary examples of how AI is changing this field and maybe making the world worse. But we think that done right, we can capture and harness this energy and do a lot of good.

[00:25:40.04] - Anna Marie Gallagher

Yeah. Thank you, Rodrigo. And then just, I was just thinking, you know, when you're identifying needs, I always think about, wouldn't it be great if we could have mobile trailers or RVs and us old timers when we were retire, take 3 months a year and go around to the immigration deserts and do know your rights and counsels and help fill out forms. So I'm just putting a plug for that, folks. If we want to organize it, let's, you know, let's talk. Um, so thank you, Rodrigo, and thank you for, um, during our preparations, making us all brave about IT and AI. And I think we have to leave the old law office model that we, uh, many of us in this room— not all, thankfully, we have a lot of great young energy— um, had where people came in between 9 to 5 to the offices and we filled in forms. This is a new day, a new age. And I would, you know, I really encourage and believe in using all the tools necessary in IT. Um, and so thank you so much, Rodrigo, for leading it in light of skepticism initially. And it was lovely to meet you 5 years ago and hear you talking about it.

So thank you.

[00:26:39.02] - Rodrigo Camarena

Thank you so much.

[00:26:40.14] - Anna Marie Gallagher

Um, so now we're going to move over to Annie Chen, who is, um, who works with Vera and has been leading the charge on universal representation. I remember when I first heard that, I thought that will never happen. Well, however, folks, I believe it will. And it was great to hear this morning, for example, you know, I walked away from this morning's panel actually thinking we can do this again, right? Think about the times when we were fighting for driver's licenses, in-state tuition. Everybody said it's impossible, it won't, it can't be done. And how many states now have those? So I just want to thank Annie for being here with us, and I want to thank Vera for taking the lead. So Annie, um, we're moving over to you. So please talk to us and tell us how you've been working to support immigration legal service providers and advance universal representation. Thank you.

[00:27:36.14] - Annie Chen

Oh, thank you so much, Anna. Yes. So yeah, I do. I lead Vera's Advancing Universal Representation initiative. I come to this work as an attorney who has represented immigrants. That's what I did before I went to Vera. For the last 10 years, I've been at Vera trying to advance legal representation, or one way. One way or the other. And I'll just say a little bit more about Vera. We started in New York in 1961. Now it's a national org with offices in 4 cities. And broadly at Vera, what we do is we pilot solutions and we use research to evaluate the impact. And then when we find that solutions work, we scale them through advocacy. We try to scale them nationally. And our goal is to transform the criminal, legal, and immigration systems so that they're more fair and accountable to all. So definitely really appreciated, Rodrigo, what you were talking about. We're fighting for legal representation. That is our goal, federally funded right to legal representation for all immigrants who are facing deportation, but recognizing that this is one critical step that needs to happen among a lot of other systemic reforms. And we've got detention as a major problem.

We've got the connection between the criminal legal system and the immigration system that criminalizes immigrants. And we are working in that broader context and really recognizing that universal representation is part of that solution. So I'll talk a little bit about some of the progress that we've made. This is definitely not like a Vera-only movement. This has grown so much. Partners at this table all around the country have grown this movement in the last 10 years. So let's see, you've heard about the need for representation. There are about 1.3 million people right now who don't have counsel in the immigration courts. And we know that representation makes a huge impact. Just a few stats that I think folks know that generally, if you are providing representation, you're 10 times more likely to obtain relief from deportation than if you don't have representation, and 3.5 more times likely to be granted bond. So we're talking about release from detention, somebody's liberty, as well as their ability to remain permanently in the United States. And also, So much beyond the individual's case, we're talking about impact in the community and broader impact on the entire immigration system. So, you know, one of the things that we do is we set up deportation defense programs in partnership with government legal services providers and community advocates.

So we launched the Safety and Fairness for Everyone Network. That's a national network in partnership with 25 jurisdictions around the country at the local and state level. It launched in 2017.

And all of those jurisdictions are part of this larger movement of now 60 jurisdictions at the local and state level who are funding deportation defense and setting up these projects. And so that is a really important, I think that progress at the local level, which is also working in partnership with advocates, with communities to meet urgent needs in communities as well as building this broader infrastructure is just so key to this goal of advancing universal representation. We've also partnered with EOIR and some of the access to counsel programs and currently with ORR and the Acacia Justice Center and orgs like KIND to, on providing counsel to unaccompanied children. And Vera, we do a lot of advocacy. We have a federal campaign where we introduced legislation earlier this year, a marker bill in the House and in the Senate called the Fairness to Freedom Act. We partner with the National Partnership for New Americans on this campaign. And the goal there is to really establish what we see as the North Star in the representation movement of establishing a federal defender system, federally funded right to counsel that would provide representation for everybody facing deportation.

That is a coalition of over 200 organizations that are part of this campaign, which we're really excited about. We also have key state campaigns that are advancing not only state-funded representation programs, but right to counsel at the state level as well. There's legislation that has been pending on that in Maryland and also New York, which made good progress on that in the past year. On the sort of the point about local and state progress, I definitely just want to shout out some of the really innovative work that's being done by legal services organizations, community organizations, local and state government all around the country. There have been really innovative programs in the state of Oregon, for example. New York has definitely been a leader in this issue. Chicago, there's the Midwest Immigrant Defenders Alliance that's setting up a program in the Chicago immigration court focused on everyone in detention. And a lot of these programs, they started off focusing on people in the jurisdiction, the limited geographic jurisdiction, but some of the innovations now are really about serving people once they're transferred. 'Cause we all know that immigration detention is a national system. People can be transferred from one part of the country to another part of the system at anytime. And so continuing that representation once it's been initiated so people aren't transferred away from legal counsel is something that is being addressed right now in practice and in coordination through the provision of legal services as well as through legislation that's happening at the state level and also through the Fairness to Freedom Act at the federal level. So I think that's— I could go on, but I maybe I'll just stop there for a second to— and happy to answer more questions.

Okay. And Annie, I think I have, you know, I have a couple questions and there's questions coming in, but what we'll do is we'll, we'll ask— we'll go to our colleague Wendy, um, and ask Wendy to talk to us a little bit about how the work that KIND has been doing and grew from a small office that I recall to a very large organization and how you're expanding immigration legal services. And then I have questions coming in virtually, and then we'll queue up and then we'll answer questions. How's that?

[00:34:33.00] - Wendy Young

Great. Thank you, Anna. And I have to say, I'll go glamping with you any time in my retirement to deliver immigration legal services. But emphasis on glamping, not camping. First, let me say thank you to CLINIC, to MPI, and to Georgetown for hosting this annual conference, which really has become terrific convening event every year. So KIND, Kids in Need of Defense, was founded through a partnership between Microsoft Corporation and Angelina Jolie in her capacity as then UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador to close a very critical, critical legal services gap in the immigration system, which is the representation of unaccompanied children in deportation proceedings before the immigration courts and before for USCIS. We heard a lot of discussion around the lack of representation in the system overall, and this was also true of children at the time. This was around 2008, where we would see children as, as young as babies and toddlers in immigration court expected to raise a defense against deportation, standing there without a lawyer by their side. So KIND was grounded in the, the idea that the private sector could be a critical resource to bring to the table, to deploy, to provide representation protection to these very vulnerable children.

And of course, the challenge now is even more complex than it was when we began our work in 2009, because the number of unaccompanied children, as I'm sure you're aware, has grown dramatically starting back in 2014. So at this point, we're regularly seeing more than 100,000 children arrive alone at our borders each year in search of protection in the United States and placed into deportation proceedings. And of course, the immigration system itself has become more complex over time and more restrictive. So, but bottom line, I'm going to start by saying the North Star remains for us that justice cannot be achieved and systems cannot be truly functional until legal representation is provided to individuals in deportation proceedings, including children. So why are we turning to the private sector for support? Well, certainly the private sector is not the only solution, but it can be an integral part of the problem-solving as we look at the issue of the lack of representation. And to quote one former head of the Legal Services Corporation, there is no way we can volunteer our way out of the legal services crisis in this country. But certainly, I continue to believe that the private sector is a critical factor in that problem-solving.

There is, in fact, a strong history of pro bono in the United States. And in fact, some— now some state bars, such as in New York State, require a minimum of 50 hours of pro bono. So it's a It's a tradition that we can tap into. You combine that with the fact that there are about 1.3 million lawyers in the United States according to the ABA, and I'm struck by, Annie, your number that there's 1.3 people without representation in the immigration system. If every lawyer took a case, maybe we could get there. But, and I also want to say that I see a really growing interest among you young and new attorneys in providing pro bono representation in the immigration space. I think this is viewed as very kind of key and, and central part of the social justice crisis in this country. And there's a lot of eagerness to volunteer, which is quite heartening. Kind itself is celebrating our 15th anniversary this year— hard to believe— and we did start with 7 staff, Anna. We're now up to about 520, so we've grown quite a bit. But during that time, we've generated 1.5— sorry, 1.75 million hours in private sector pro bono that's valued at over $750 million.

So this is huge. And for every federal dollar invested in pro bono facilitation through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, we generate $7 in legal services. So there's a multiplier effect there for federal dollars that I think is, is key. Uh, interestingly, 50% of our pro bono attorneys actually come back to take a second or more case. I think there's a fundamental reason for this. Part of it is KIND's model, and I'll get back to that in a second, but part of it is because this speaks to the heart of most lawyers. They're actually helping a child who's in tremendous need, and I think most of us who are lawyers probably went to law school to make a difference in the world of justice, um, and this is an opportunity to do so. The results are extraordinary. We win over 95% of our cases. This is over 15 years, including some administrations that I don't care to mention. And without representation, only 13% of unaccompanied children win their cases. So this is truly life-saving work for very vulnerable children. The private sector is also important for another reason. Lawyers are obviously influential on the development of law and policy in this country.

And by representing children, what we see is lawyers tuning into this, this stark lack of justice in the immigration system. And they become very motivated to help us in our advocacy. Agency to push forward new initiatives to close the representation gap. So how do we do what we do? Um, first of all, it's very simplistic, but we recognize that our pro bono attorneys are volunteers. They do have day jobs. So we've designed a model that meets our volunteer lawyers halfway. We invest considerably in training and mentoring each lawyer. As we say, no question is too stupid or too small coming from our volunteers. And we assigned each of our lawyers one of our expert staff attorneys who are expert in children's immigration law to train and mentor our volunteer attorneys every step of the way through the representation experience. This is important for two reasons from our perspective. One, it results in quality representation of unaccompanied children in the courts. And secondly, it does inspire lawyers to come back for a second case because they feel supported throughout the process. Next, it's really important to invest in dialoguing with the leadership in major law firms and corporate legal departments.

You need the buy-in at the top in order to generate the space for younger associates to take these cases on. Third, we've tried a lot of different and very innovative models along the way to make pro bono representation easier for our volunteers. This includes co-counseling with them at times. It includes encouraging them to create lawyer teams within their firms or companies. So it's not all falling on the shoulders of one volunteer, but they're teaming together, which many of the teams also appreciate from just a simple team-building exercise within their place of employment. And we also try to team experienced lawyers with more inexperienced lawyers so that there's kind of a ripple effect of expertise throughout the law firm or company. Next, I'll say, and this is somewhat controversial, I reject the sense that pro bono attorneys can only take the quote-unquote easy cases. Or that they should be used for kind of ancillary functions around the case, such as intake clinics. I think both of those are very useful recruitment tactics to bring more volunteer lawyers in. But I think we should challenge our pro bono attorneys. If we provide them with the training and mentoring, it doesn't matter if they're a corporate lawyer or a divorce lawyer or a real estate lawyer or any other kind of lawyer.

Similar to what was said about BIA-accredited reps earlier, if you provide them with the training, they can do the work. Secondly, I think, is again to draw our partners into the overall movement, if you will, to try advance universal representation for individuals who are facing removal proceedings. They can be a very credible and eloquent voice on our behalf. And basically what we're doing is challenging lawyers to be lawyers, to stand up for justice, and do what's right in this country. So I'll end on a slightly more negative note. I think the main challenge for generating pro bono representation in this country right now is the dysfunctionality of the immigration system. We are increasingly hearing from our partners, wait a minute, you're telling me this case in KIND's caseload will take an average of 4.5 years? It could be more than that? That is a very big obligation for a private sector law firm company to take on. So we need to work together to get that backlog straightened out so that we can get back on track and generate justice, which is what all of us in this room are about. Thanks.

[00:43:26.19] - Anna Marie Gallagher

Thank you so much, Wendy. And it's definitely glamping. I've camped once in my life.

[00:43:33.07] - Wendy Young

And we won't talk about our age and how close retirement is.

[00:43:36.26] - Anna Marie Gallagher

And I just want to thank you. I want to thank you. I was moved and grateful, and I see it all the time too with my young attorneys. To see how young attorneys are so excited and ready to volunteer and to get involved in pro bono matters. We need you and we are thankful. Also, I'd say KIND's model training is vital, and I agree with you 100%. Mentoring and training. We're lawyers. The folks that are lawyers, we're lawyers. We— 3 years in law school. Professor Andy Schoenholtz is here. He's gonna come talk to us about this after. But they train us to do this work. So we can do it even if we are corporate lawyers. So I'm moved and I completely 100% agree with that. So I have a couple questions. I have a question first for Emmett about representation and staffing. And I would just, before we have Emmett speak to the staffing issue and the system, the immigration court system and the backlogs, I would just urge people to go onto the Center for Migration Studies website, and they've published articles recently that talk about ways— I mean, they talk about ways to support and change procedures, processes, etc., in the immigration court system to make it— make processes smoother, easier, more effective. And they're very supportive of it because the immigration courts have become the dumping ground for many of the problems in the immigration system. So Emmett, can you tell us a little bit about staffing and what EOIR is doing to increase staffing and lower these backlogs?

[[FOR THE Q&A PORTION OF THE TRANSCRIPT, SPEAKERS ARE NOT IDENTIFIED BY NAME. PLEASE SEE THE RECORDING TO IDENTIFY SPEAKERS.]]

[00:45:15.04] - Speaker 2

Sure. Well, I mean, everybody's familiar with the backlog, and it's been going up, and there are no easy answers to what we do about the backlog. With respect to staffing, we have been hiring a lot of people. You know, that is one way to address the backlog issue, and we've certainly been trying. We have at this point, I believe it's almost 700 immigration judges, which is a dramatic expansion from what it has been in the past. And we've all— and it's not just a question of the number of judges. You need all kinds of court staff to work with the judges to make the whole system function. You need law clerks to assist the judges in making decisions. Judges are part of the equation, but they're not the whole picture. So we have almost 700 judges at that— at this point. To give a bit of context, I started as an immigration judge in early 2017. And I believe at that point there were like 300-something immigration judges. So, you know, say what you want about the backlog, it is what it is, but EOIR has been doing a lot to ramp up hiring immigration judges and otherwise.

[00:46:28.22] - Speaker 2

We absolutely recognize how critical that is.

[00:46:32.19] - Speaker 1

Thank you, Emmett. And then Annie, I have just a couple questions for you. Can you just, I mean, perhaps just simply define what universal representation means, the definition of universal representation, so our folks here can talk about it after they leave and talk to their colleagues, friends, and family about why it's important?

[00:46:50.06] - Speaker 4

Sure. And it's a good question because when people hear— So what I mean when we— Vera talks about universal representation, we're talking about a system where everybody facing deport— every immigrant facing deportation has access to an attorney. So it is where we want to go, what we want to achieve. And there a lot of steps before we're going to ultimately achieve, you know, that goal. But, you know, when we talk about a universal representation approach or universal representation programs, we're talking about sometimes pilot programs that initially launch, and you can't serve— maybe there's, you know, you can't serve everyone in a particular jurisdiction when you have— you're just starting a pilot project. Maybe you can serve a quarter of those folks. And so there's still an approach that you can take when you're implementing that initial program, that pilot where you don't, you know, you take the case based on a first-come, first-served basis, for example, or you don't screen based on like eligibility. You don't only take the cases that might feel most winnable or most sympathetic because what we've seen is when that happens, when it's not like a blind approach to taking the case, sometimes our own biases can show up in different ways.

[00:48:09.16] - Speaker 4

Certain types of cases are not picked, like the ones that involve intersection with the criminal legal system that are perceived to be harder for whatever reason. And so we just think that it's really important in an approach and also in terms of the overall system that we ultimately want to build. And so the closest, the broadest approximation of that north star right now for us is the Fairness to Freedom Act, which is the marker legislation that was introduced in both houses of Congress earlier this year. And it is beyond even everybody who is in immigration court. It would cover people who are in expedited removal proceedings, much broader than just the scope of immigration court and 240 proceedings.

[00:49:00.26] - Speaker 1

Thank you, Annie. Just one follow-up question. How are universal representation programs funded in states?

[00:49:09.18] - Speaker 4

They can be funded. So I mentioned that there are about 60 or so programs at the local and state level. All of those have at least some component that is publicly funded. So by the city council or by like a state budget item, you know, line item at city, state, county level. So there's like a, just however you would fund like a city or state budget, there's, um, that's, that's how it's funded. And then now what's happening, they can also oftentimes be started in collaboration with private investment as well. And so you see a lot of these kinds of programs that have a number of different funding sources that are pooled together. And then as I mentioned earlier, what is really exciting and innovative that's happening at the state and local level now is the move for the right to actually be established at the local and state level. And that is really important too, because it's an annual budget fight from the advocacy perspective. And so having the right there helps. And so that's the goal in a lot of places. And also another reason why we have the federal legislative effort that we're advocating for.

[00:50:19.14] - Speaker 4

And I just want to make the point too, I think that even with all of the amazing progress that's been happening at local and state level. We all know that immigration, ultimately, it's a federal system. And so federal action on this is absolutely critical. And also federal support, think of what's happening at the local and state level, is also really key.

[00:50:37.13] - Speaker 1

Thank you so much, Annie. And then we have 15 minutes, and we're going to reserve those for questions. First, I have a question from virtual. I'm going to take one or two questions from our virtual folks, and then I'm mindful that we We have a good number of folks in line. I'm very happy to see that. So the question is, what are some innovations that are coming from the philanthropic sector? Alternatively, what are some things that philanthropy needs to be doing differently to support migrants? So I'll share a little bit about a community college initiative, and then I'd ask folks to share information on they have. This is a state initiative, but we are— CLINIC is working with the state of California in what called the Career Pathways Initiative, and it's a way to build capacity in the field because, you know, you have your emergency mode. When we were at the border, we had to go down quickly, um, and bring together resources as fast as possible to, to serve communities. Um, you know, you plan short-term, medium, long-term. So the Career Pathways Initiative is funded by the state of California. It's a pilot project to support 5 community colleges in California to create an immigration legal training track, 2 years.

[00:52:00.22] - Speaker 1

And then the students that are in that track are placed and given stipends to be interns in affiliates and NGOs that provide immigration legal services during that period of time. And by the time they come out, they are ready to apply for accredited representation, for accredited, to become accredited reps if they are hired by a DOJ-recognized organization. They intern with DOJ organizations. So it starts from the very beginning. They go to community college, their, their tuition is paid, they are given a stipend, they become interns, and when they come out, they are ready to become accredited reps. So it's a career pathways and it expands immigration legal services. There are other states that have expressed interest in this, and what I understand— and I, I didn't think about it at the time— some of it might be a little bit political, meaning is it a Democratic state or a Republican state in terms of support, because the budget is a state budget. So I think that's innovative. It's not philanthropy. It's a state. But I'd share that with all of you who live in states where it might be an interesting possibility. So now I'll ask my folks.

[00:53:05.19] - Speaker 1

Rodrigo, do you have some innovative philanthropy secrets to share?

[00:53:10.24] - Speaker 3

I mean, I mentioned this earlier. But the Houston Endowment and Google.org are investing in our universal intake and case referral system that I talked about, again, thinking about the problems that exist structurally, the problems that exist between providers, right? They don't share information. It's hard to hand cases to one another or work with pro bono in many cases in a way that's safe. So we're trying to promote, you know, through this investment, we're trying to promote collaboration. We're trying to unify systems and make it so that we can all more effectively work together. So, yeah.

[00:53:45.28] - Speaker 1

Thanks, Rodrigo.

[00:53:47.17] - Speaker 4

Can I say something?

[00:53:48.14] - Speaker 1

Please.

[00:53:48.26] - Speaker 4

Okay. I'll just share one thing that I've seen that's worked, which is is, you know, dollars, private dollars being able to kind of catalyze an investment from the public sector, especially a local and state government. I mean, I've seen that it's the same thing with federal dollars that will, that could incentivize the investment on the local and state level. But essentially, like, you know, local and state governments, that initial investment, even if it's like a relatively small amount to what, where we ultimately want to go, it can make a huge difference for local and state officials to make the argument that we don't want to leave money on the table. There's matching funds, even if it's only a nominal amount of matching funds, to be able to persuade their stakeholders to also then make the public dollar investment.

[00:54:37.06] - Speaker 1

Thank you, Annie. And Wendy, do you have—

[00:54:40.03] - Speaker 5

Sure. I think, first of all, philanthropy is an incredible partner in all of this. And I would echo what Annie's saying in terms of philanthropy and governments working together. To advance innovative models to close the legal services gap. And then I will say areas where I think philanthropy could invest more. One is in supporting advocacy to bring about systemic change, and second is to provide those of us in the NGO community with more general operating support.

[00:55:10.17] - Speaker 1

So I'll just add this: there's one question, but I think we're going to go to the folks, uh, here. But there is one question that talks about, um, how do we pay our— how do we pay our staff more, right? And that's operating, that's unrestricted funds. So that's certainly what we encourage big donors to provide because that will significantly expand immigration legal services. When it's confined to programs, it restricts us somewhat. So I am going to start on this side with the first question. Could you tell us your name, where you're from, and give us question.

[00:55:45.28] - Speaker 6

Okay, my name is Andrea Larría. I'm a parent liaison in Prince William County Schools, Hinsdale High School. As a parent liaison, the parents usually come to you, come here and talk to you about what is going on, if they have recent arrivals, if they have a deportation order, if they're unaccompanied minors, and they're asking where we can go. We try to do trainings. KIND is working in our school doing— they're going to do trainings for Know Your Rights. Catholic Immigration is doing the the same. But the problem is in the moment when we need to call for, uh, get legal representation, I sit with the families or with the student and I start to make phone calls. But of course, nobody can take the case. And some of the cases are time sensitive. Like for example, a student who arrived to the United States when she was 16, um, tried to apply for the special juvenile visa. She was moving from house to house. Finally, CPS put her in one family member house. She's going to be 18 today. Someone needs to go to the juvenile court to present her case, right? Juvenile court say no because she's going to 18 and things like that, right?

[00:56:58.23] - Speaker 6

Finally, we were able to present everything in court and juvenile court, and at least she will have maybe a chance later to present it in immigration court. But all these cases have the same common denominator. They don't have legal representation. So my question is, what about the Department of Justice make an agreement with the school systems where they can do trainings for parent liaisons? So school staff, they want to become a fully accredited representative, right? And help the families. They feel comfortable with us, they talk to us about it. I don't mind to help them, but I don't work in a nonprofit organization, so I cannot access that. Is there any way that we can do that? That's one of the questions. The second question is, can we maybe talk more with the courts to understand, like for example, with the special juvenile visa, that they are allowed to present the case even if they become 18 today, you know, before they're 18, they need to present the case. I don't know if it makes sense, my question.

[00:58:13.00] - Speaker 1

I would just add something about the statute, and then Emmett would love your thoughts. So the statute, the 18-year age limit is statutory. So that's not a court decision. You can't extend that.

[00:58:28.17] - Speaker 2

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the question. Let me try to address the—

[00:58:33.22] - Speaker 6

About the court, it's something different. In Virginia, they changed the law and they say, as soon as you present the case before your 18th birthday, you get under the jurisdiction of the court. The problem is the courts in Virginia are not allowing if they know that the student is going to be 18 next month. But by law, by the new General Assembly, I think that was passed in July 2021, as soon as they present before they are 18, they are eligible to be under the jurisdiction of the court for factual findings.

[00:59:12.27] - Speaker 2

I can't speak to that particular issue because it's nothing that the Department of Justice, the immigration courts control. With respect though to the question of accredited representatives Yes, first of all, thank you for raising the issue and raising the question. I understood the question to pertain to can school staff or school— school staff or school employees potentially becoming fully accredited representatives to appear on behalf of children? It's a very interesting idea. The regulations that govern, the rules that govern the accreditation program requires that representatives be affiliated, not have to be employed by, but affiliated with, including volunteering at a pro bono organization. I'm not sure this is a fully satisfying answer, but there are a lot of— I would encourage anybody in that position to reach out to various organizations that— nonprofit organizations that have accredited representatives and see about working through them. The system, the way the system is set up, that is just how it functions. But so, and there's nothing that the agency is in a position to do right now to change that. But I also think that it's a very interesting idea and, you know, would encourage that, especially obviously people in schools, you know, speak a lot to students, are very much aware of what students are going through with respect to the immigration system. So I think it's a very interesting idea.

[01:00:48.15] - Speaker 1

Thank you, Emmett. And I think we'll turn to this gentleman here on my left.

[01:00:52.24] - Speaker 7

Sure. Thanks a lot. Good afternoon. My name is Michael Redzick. I'm a staff attorney in the Immigrant Children's Program at Church World Service in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I have a question specifically about a universal representation model. I'm also a former public defender. So a statistic I like to share with people right now in the state of Mississippi, there are only 36 full-time public defenders. You're not, you know, you're well aware. It's exciting to think about universal representation models, but I wonder if you could speak to the conversations that have happened or whether conversations are happening to make sure that there's a forward-looking formula for funding or for parity, perhaps with OPLA or some other office so that that can be something that continues to grow with population and with need.

[01:01:41.18] - Speaker 1

It's big work.

[01:01:43.10] - Speaker 4

Yeah. No, I hear you. I mean, Because what we're trying to do is basically do what Gideon did in the criminal legal system, and we want to do that in the immigration system. But we want to learn from the pitfalls, including funding, and particularly in places where there are trends, geographic trends in the country, like the one that you cited of where there's underfunded state systems and particularly lack of capacity and sustainability. That's a big part of the reason why we're actually looking at the federal defender model, which is a federal system. And it makes sense because immigration's also ultimately a federal system that can avoid some of those state-run kind of in the criminal legal system, public defender system concerns. And part of what the Fairness to Freedom Act would do is establish an independent nonprofit and office that administers like this new federal system, right? And including really learning from some of the key questions about cost and sustainability. So all I could say is that that's something that we're really thinking about and talking to people about. I would be happy to be in conversation with you and others on that on the policy side.

[01:02:59.01] - Speaker 4

And yeah, that's going to be a big question when this legislation passes and we're implementing this office and the field is implementing the office and a lot of good minds are thinking about it. So please, would love to be in touch on it.

[01:03:14.23] - Speaker 1

Thank you. Thank you. And Annie, could you just say what Gideon means?

[01:03:19.18] - Speaker 4

Just the Gideon v. Wainwright is a Supreme Court case, a decision that established essentially like the, that everybody facing accused of a crime would have access to a counsel in the criminal legal context. And so as a shorthand, we just say that, you know, Gideon, we want Gideon in the immigration context as well. And thank you for asking me to clarify that.

[01:03:44.01] - Speaker 1

Thank you, Annie. And now I'll go to, to this person.

[01:03:48.24] - Speaker 8

Good afternoon. My name is Asma Warsi. I am the program director and immigration attorney for Catholic Charities, one of the Catholic Charities affiliates in New Jersey. And one of the— and I was in private practice before I joined Catholic Charities. One of the barriers that I'm facing in terms of building my immigration program is we've decided not to do court representation. Representation because we don't have the capacity in terms of staff. But the other issue is also we'll frequently see that cases will be rescheduled spur of the moment after spending several hours of attorney time, of client time preparing for a hearing. And then the day before, the court will just announce that the hearing's canceled and will be rescheduled for another date in a year or 2 years. The other issue, of course, is that the trial attorneys, and I understand Judge Soper doesn't necessarily have any control over this, but that trial attorneys will terminate cases. And so clients who had viable-ish asylum claims now have the choice between moving forward and trying to at least argue their case or have some, have their claim terminated and then never really be able to resuscitate that.

[01:05:11.14] - Speaker 8

So what I've been seeing both obviously with my own program in the nonprofit sector as well as Private Bar is that there are plenty of experienced, dedicated, solo, small firms who still continue to do immigration but don't take court cases anymore. So universal representation is a great idea, but then we also still have people who are doing the work now who are moving away from it because it's not a viable economic model for the private sector and for the public sector or the not-for-profit sector, we're still running into the same barriers is that we're going to put all these hours into a case, really precious resources, and the clients will walk away with nothing and obviously feeling like we did something wrong. So I was wondering if the panel had any thoughts about— how to maintain access, really, not even like expand the representation, but just maintain the representation that's currently in place.

[01:06:12.07] - Speaker 1

So I have one comment, and then Wendy, I was gonna ask you what you think about it because it makes me think about, so there's been research done on this, what Rodrigo described. There's 1 in 1,400 representatives in it for, imagine this, a line of 1,400 people, low-income or poor people in front of you, you're the one legal representative. That's how I always think about it. Okay, so that's the average across the country. But then in areas where you do have, you know, uh, or organizations that can represent but they can't because of all these, how do we do a mapping of potential pro bono in the corporate level? Like, like, I feel like heat sensors or something. I mean, I don't know, Wendy, if, you know, if there's a possible mapping— here's all these firms, or here's these corporate, and this is a council, and what do we do?

[01:07:02.17] - Speaker 5

Well, I, short of putting a GPS on our volunteer lawyers, you know, I do think that that's a really critical point, Anna, is just pool what we do have. And then again, I think, you know, that some of the procedural challenges that you face are absolutely real. And that's why I think kind of the second half of this has to be focusing on working with EOIR, the administration, Congress, where necessary. Necessary to try and do the procedural reforms to make a system that makes it easy to be a representative of an individual in deportation proceedings, right? We're actually focusing right now on trying to rebuild specialized children's dockets in the immigration courts and have been in conversation with EOIR, DHS, White House about that so that there's actually, you know, a system that's designed to adjudicate children's cases with trained immigration judges, trained trial attorneys, NGOs on site to advise the child as they go into the courtroom. So, you know, kind of thinking creatively about those kind of procedural changes that can be made just to make the process easier for the respondent and for the lawyer.

[01:08:15.02] - Speaker 1

Thank you, Wendy. And I guess I just would say this, like when I dream, I dream that we could have a space, a very quiet confidential space to work with EOIR and attorneys and nonprofits and thinkers on all sides to come together and talk about potential solutions and have— what is it, the Chatham rules, Doris? Is that it? And we go in because we have a lot of ideas and suggestions, and then there's a lot of politics behind it and funding and challenges. But, but, you know, we have the minds to do it. And I'm so sorry for your situation. That's a big responsibility. And thank you for your work. So we'll take one more question, and then we have to stop, and we have to get the next panel going. So, sir?

[01:08:56.01] - Speaker 9

Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Milcy Polanco. I'm from Florida, and I'm super interested in the Accredited Representative Program. I have found challenges myself. I have a nonprofit in Florida in regards to obtaining recommendation letters from an attorney. I do understand the standpoint of the conflict of interest. Like, they are going to provide recommendation letters for someone to go and practice while they went to school for a certain amount of years. And they don't find it fair. That's pretty much the outcome. And it is sad because I'm an attorney in the Dominican Republic and I'm willing to become first a partial and then eventually a fully accredited. But those challenges are, is the office trying to work on to hear a little bit more of those in order to be able to open the path for people that are really interested in committed to assist immigration people in need of immigration services, taking into consideration that we've been there already and we know better our communities. So why not to open a little bit more for us flexibility, probably?

[01:10:11.02] - Speaker 2

I can just address that briefly. I can't speak to the specifics of the process, of the application process. I know that there are, you know, there is documentation that is required, but that is something that I can take back because I know that we're all in talk to people who are in charge of that because I know as I said, we don't have as many fully accredited representatives as we would like. It is a major issue that we would like to address, and we're always looking for ideas, and it is something that I can take back.

[01:10:45.04] - Speaker 1

Thank you, Emmett. And then I would just end by saying it's interesting because I feel like there has to be more education around accredited reps, much more, because I'm surprised, and I was this person as well many years ago, at how few people know about accredited reps, how few attorneys know about it or, or really understand it, and then are somewhat skeptical because they're not lawyers. And again, I was on that journey. Now, after leading this organization, I see the beauty and, and, and the strength of accredited reps, and they are our backbone. And if we are to meet the immigration legal needs of the millions of immigrant men, women, and children in this country, we must use everything we can— pro bono, IT, universal representation, and the accredited represent— the accredited rep system. So I'm going to go back to my office and talk more about how we educate and how we talk about it and how we must talk about it all the time. And then I was thinking, yeah, there's plenty of work to go around and we need a lot more hands. So I think on that, I think we're finishing on time.

[01:11:47.16] - Speaker 1

I want to thank Wendy, Emmett, Annie, and Rodrigo for a fantastic discussion, panel, work, wisdom. And I want to thank all of you for being here with us today, and please take this and share the wisdom in the news we shared. Thank you very much.

3:30 PM ET — Coffee Break

3:45 PM ET — Humanitarian Parole and the Biden Administration’s New Lawful Pathways
Building on its humanitarian parole programs for the admission of Afghan and Ukrainian nationals, the Biden administration established such a program for Venezuelans in October 2022 and expanded it to include Cuban, Haitian, and Nicaraguan nationals in January 2023. The “CHNV” humanitarian parole program requires a sponsor in the United States, such as a citizen or lawful permanent resident, and enables the United States to admit up to 30,000 nationals from those four countries every month. The White House announced that it is encouraging individuals “to seek orderly and lawful pathways to migration and reduce overcrowding along the southwest border and the strain on the immigration system.” Due to very high interest in the program, a significant backlog of CHNV applications developed by May 2023. According to one study, the CHNV program has already prevented the entry of hundreds of thousands of unauthorized immigrants along the southern border with Mexico. Among other important issues, the panelists discussed: What are the successes and challenges of these programs? What will happen to those admitted after the two years of humanitarian parole status expires? To what extent are such parolees applying for asylum or other legal immigration statuses? How are these new lawful pathways affecting the number of arrivals from these countries at the southern border with Mexico?

Andrew I. Schoenholtz, Professor from Practice, Georgetown Law; Co-Director, Center for Applied Legal Studies; Faculty Director, Human Rights Institute, Georgetown Law
David J. Bier, Associate Director, Immigration Studies, CATO Institute
Dara Lind, Senior Fellow, American Immigration Council
Royce Bernstein Murray, Senior Counselor, Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

This transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies. If you notice an error, feel free to email [email protected].

[00:00:03.12] - Andrew I. Schoenholtz

Thank you all for staying with us. Those who are still here physically, those who are online, thank you for joining us for this final panel on humanitarian parole and the Biden administration's new lawful pathways. You've heard talk about that earlier today at various, various panelists have talked about that. Well, we're going to now hear from three experts to really focus on this major development in the Biden administration, what may turn out to be a set of legacy policies. We'll see where this goes, but it's very possible that the use of parole, particularly humanitarian parole, will turn out to be one of the legacy features of the Biden administration. We do wanna have a robust discussion here. So we'll begin talking about both how the parole has worked historically, how it is working currently, what some of the challenges are, you know, how are things going with these programs at this point, and where that leaves those who are paroled into the country, et cetera. For the longer term. I mean, there's always open questions when you start a new program, and this one is no different than that. But there's also a lot to be said about the purpose of this.

And for that, we have 3 experts to lead us through the discussion. We're going to start first hearing from David Bier, who's the Associate Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute. Uh, you may know that David has, uh, written some about this, um, really, uh, organized what I think is a very helpful historical review of 126 parole orders over 7 decades. If you haven't seen that online, easily accessible, I'd encourage you to do that. And we'll ask David to walk us through that and some of the other insights he's had. In the parole process. We will then hear from, fortunately, the senior counsel of the Office of the Secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security, Royce Bernstein Murray, and she will talk to us about this major development and how the various programs of parole, particularly humanitarian parole, are going right now for the for DHS. And then we'll also hear from Dara Lind, the senior fellow now at the American Immigration Council. I'm sure you've read many of Dara's articles before she went over to AIC. And we know that her research has been invaluable in helping us understand what's actually going on in the operations of the policies that various administrations have implemented.

So we're gonna conduct this a little differently than my colleagues who had wonderful conversations with their panels. I'm a little more academic about this, so I like to ask my panelists to actually make some opening remarks. I usually give them 10 to 15 minutes to talk a little bit about this. I may have a follow-up question for any of them, but then we will open this up to everybody here, and I'll ask you at a certain point to line up and to ask some questions. And then of course, I already have questions coming in, interestingly, and we haven't even gotten started. But thank you. Yes, please, those who are on virtually, keep them coming. Thank you very much. Okay, David, so let's start with you. Give us some of the insights you learned from the study you did and both the historical insights and where that leaves us currently with the Biden administration.

[00:04:02.19] - David J. Bier

Appreciate it. Thank you for hosting this panel. It's an incredibly important topic. I consider what is happening on parole one of the most important and consequential actions on immigration of any administration, not just this one. You know, we talked about the 126 parole orders over 7 decades. I will not go into detail on all 126 of these orders that I have identified. But it's a very interesting list. I think it's a very informative list in terms of sort of bursting the bubble of, you know, this is something new that the administration just created this out of nothing. This came out of nowhere. And I feel like it does seem that way for many people who are not familiar with immigration law or immigration history. It's all of a sudden the administration has done this thing And they don't know what the basis of it is. So just to, to back up, what is parole? Parole is discretionary authority granted to the currently Secretary of Homeland Security to waive the normal restrictions on entry and allow someone temporary residence in the United States. And just to break that down, what that means, parole is discretionary. So even if you qualify for parole, it doesn't matter.

The administration is ultimately the one who decides whether you merit parole or not. It's temporary, but historically what that has meant for many people is that it can continue for as long as the need for it remains. And that could be indefinite. In the 1980s, many issuances of parole just actually said the word indefinite on them. They didn't even have an expiration date. Attached. The other thing that's important to understand is that parole is a temporary status that has no direct path to US citizenship, legal permanent residence, a green card. The only requirement or the main requirement in the statute is that you have either an urgent humanitarian reason to come to the United States or you're a significant public benefit to the country would be created through your admission. These terms are defined by the Secretary of Homeland Security. And so given how ambiguous they are, we've seen them defined in a lot of different ways. And I think that's where this list that I put together is really interesting. In theory, anyone in the world can apply for parole. You can submit a parole application, But in general, the Secretary of Homeland Security and before him, the Attorney General when it was under the Department of Justice, had always defined urgent humanitarian reasons and significant public benefit to be rather narrow situations, medical emergencies, legal proceedings, and the like.

But obviously there are many exceptions to that, 126 by my count. I have put them together in this list and, and what's interesting is that there's so many different bases. So we've had economic reasons. For example, we had a guest worker program going for Guam for more than 15 years. And the basis of that program was the parole authority. We've seen it for employment-based immigrants in backlogs in the 1960s. An entrepreneurship program more recently. So economic reasons can be the basis for parole. We've seen it repeatedly for family reunification purposes all the way up and including this administration. We've seen it as a response to challenges to detaining people at the border. In fact, shortly after the parole authority was created in the INA, Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, Most detention in the United States at ports of entry was eliminated and parole became the de facto basis for most people who were deemed inadmissible at a port of entry. They parole in temporarily until their immigration case was resolved. Obviously, that's a big part of parole even today. We've seen it as a humanitarian response. The Hungarian Revolution in the 1950s resulted in more than 30,000 people coming.

The communist takeover of Cuba resulted in hundreds of thousands of Cubans coming to the United States. And probably the longest period of parole for any single country from the early 1960s all the way up until the present day. There had been a lot of different forms that this has taken. Sometimes parole is government-led. We saw the Cuban Freedom flights, really government-organized flights. The Afghan airlift may be a more recent example of this. Other times, we've seen more private-led efforts. The Hungarians were primarily resettled by nonprofits in the United States. They covered the full cost of bringing the person over to the country and finding places for them to stay and organizing that. In the 1970s with the Vietnamese and others who, hundreds of thousands of which were resettled under parole, it was a public-private partnership. And that public-private partnership really lives on today in the refugee program, less so in the parole context. The clearest precedent for what the administration has done on this individualized parole sponsorship that I could find was for refugees fleeing the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Sponsors in those cases submitted affidavits of support saying that they would support the person who was coming over and the applicants would apply for travel authorization to come to the United States.

We've also seen it under both Democrats and Republican administrations. We've seen parole programs created by the Bush administration, the Reagan administration. Uh, so it's, it's not just a Democrat, uh, idea either. And included in my list, if you go through it, I, I've also provided citations to all of the instances in which Congress, after the parole has happened, and in some cases even before the parole has happened, either ratified, acknowledged, uh, passed some, uh, legislation saying, and we're gonna create a, a green card category for this group, or we're gonna create an open, an opportunity for them to apply for green cards. Or we're gonna provide them refugee benefits, uh, as has happened most recently for the Ukrainians who've been paroled into the country. So Congress has worked in partnership in most cases, uh, that I found with the administration as they are creating these parole programs, expanding them to new populations. Uh, so this administration has a a big history to draw on when implementing its current parole programs. Where is parole being used right now? So we have 3 main buckets. We have CBP One at ports of entry. This is a phone app that people can apply for an appointment at a port of entry so they can apply to enter legally from Mexico into the United States.

These appointments are capped at about 1,500 per day. That's 43,500 per month and about 500,000 a year. It— the demand is much larger than that, as can be evidenced by the number of people crossing illegally. Um, and so the way it works is CBP basically runs a lottery, uh, for people who are, uh, trying to use, uh, the CBP One app at ports of entry. Uh, the, the second bucket is loosely family reunification, uh, programs. We have, uh, family reunification for people who are being sponsored by a legal permanent resident or a US citizen for a green card in the United States. These are available for the Northern Triangle countries of Central America, as well as Colombia and Cuba and Haiti had preexisting programs along these lines. For the recent expansion, it's invite only. The State Department essentially sends someone a notification saying you're eligible to apply for this parole. Not everyone, really, you're talking hundreds of thousands of people in this backlog. For green cards, only a select few get the invite to apply. They're a little cagey on how that's decided. I'm not sure who chooses the invites, but it seems to be based on how long you've been waiting, at least in part.

And then the third bucket is USCIS and CBP parole sponsorship programs. For Ukraine, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. And these are the ones that are, I would consider, the most innovative and new. Ukraine uncapped. You can— any person with a lawful status in the United States can sponsor a Ukrainian and they can come over without a numerical limit. We've seen over 130,000 of those Ukrainians come in that way. And then we have 30,000 a month capped for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. And the way this works is a US sponsor submits an affidavit of support saying, I'm going to support this person, here's how. And they submit that to USCIS. If they're approved and if there's a cap spot available, then we move on to the next stage of applying for travel authorization for the person abroad. They come to the airport. They fly to the airport and CBP grants them legal status in the country for up to 2 years. Then they apply for an Employment Authorization Document from USCIS, which would either prove their authorization to work in the case of Ukrainians who can work without an EAD, or in the case of the other groups, they, they have to apply in order to be eligible to work.

Sponsorship takes a lot of different forms. What's interesting is the great flexibility in this program. It's not highly prescriptive in terms of the things that you have to do. Every person's needs are different. Maybe they need money for a flight. Maybe they need money for a place to stay when they get here. Maybe they don't need anything other than a financial sponsor to fulfill the legal requirements. They already have a place to stay. They already have a job lined up. They just need someone to act as the go-between. The sponsor has to prove an income of at least 100% of the poverty line, including the, the individual and whoever else they're sponsoring. So for, just for example, if I'm a family of 4 and I'm sponsoring a family of 4, that's something like $56,000 a year annual income that I would have to show in order to participate., in this program. So what is the benefit? What, what's the purpose? Why are they doing this program? Uh, it's really about migration to the US-Mexico border. Um, if we did not see tens of thousands of Ukrainians showing up at the border, if it's possible at least that we wouldn't see these, uh, sponsorship programs.

And after the, the, uh, Ukrainians began showing up at the border after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, We saw the creation of the first sponsorship program, and the result of that is a 99.9% reduction in the number of Ukrainians coming to the US-Mexico border to seek entry. For the other countries, the, the interest was more narrow. It was less them coming to the border per se, and it was more specifically targeted. We don't want people to enter illegally. From these countries. And so looking at illegal entries, um, or arrests by Border Patrol, 66% decline for Venezuelans from the month before it was enacted to, uh, July 2023, 77% for Haiti, 98% for Cuba, 99%, uh, for Nicaragua. So huge reductions in the number of people, uh, being arrested by Border Patrol. From these 4 countries. Haiti, you see 77%, but Haiti had largely already stopped, Haitians had already largely stopped entering illegally because of a process at the ports of entry where they were entering largely at the time they created the sponsorship program through legal channels. I just want to close on 2 points that I think are important. Challenges going forward. There's this cap of 30,000.

We've seen the number, the backlog increase dramatically over time. In May, it was about 1.1 million. Now I'm hearing it's about 1.7 million people. And if you think about this with the 30,000 cap, it's worked very effectively so far because we've had the rapid approvals, we've had this streamlined process for admitting people. But going forward for a new applicant, you're looking at, odds are, an average about 4.5-year wait from this point forward for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. That might not be tenable. People in these situations might not be able to wait that long. So how can we increase this cap, I think, is the most important conversation. Going forward. Of course, the conversation about the cap and the numbers plays into the question of resources. How are we going to fund this program that right now has no congressional appropriations for it? The applicants do not pay a fee. I think that's a mistake. I think we should be charging a fee to make sure that this is on good financial footing going forward. And we should not charge a fee for employment authorization on the back end. And so right now we're not charging a fee to cover the cost of adjudicating the applications, but then once they get in, they have to apply for a second employment authorization document.

We get rid of the requirements to apply for an employment authorization document, allow people to work with the parole document in and of itself. That would save the money, streamline the process, reduce the adjudication costs, and allow for an expansion of this highly successful program. Thank you.

[00:19:35.25] - Andrew I. Schoenholtz

Thank you very much, David, both for the historical perspective that you've shared. And as a researcher, I just want to say it's really important that we have people really trying to understand this and study it carefully. So that I think that's a contribution in itself. And for the other insights that you brought to the table to begin with today, I'm now going to turn to Royce to talk about the government perspective on this, the goals, and where things are now. So Royce, thank you so much, first of all, for being here. I know it's a— since there's litigation going on in this area, that this is a difficult situation for the government. So we're really delighted that you're here.

[00:20:21.11] - Royce Bernstein Murray

Thank you so much. And thanks everyone for having me here today. David covered a fair bit, so I will do my best not to duplicate and just fill in or offer some additional details. I realize, I think it's important to step back for a second to reiterate what I imagine has been said a number of times today and is well known, but our border does not exist in a vacuum and these pathways don't exist in a vacuum. We're in the midst of an unprecedented global and hemispheric migration flow and with the highest levels of irregular migration since World War II. And the Department of Homeland Security, the US government, has been trying to meet this moment with a combination of new lawful pathways, many of which David outlined, you know, as well as trying and creating those pathways to incentivize safe, lawful, orderly migration while pairing it with disincentives and enforcement measures as the counter. David talked a fair bit about the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, Venezuelan parole processes, commonly referred to as CHNV. So I'll refer it to that way here. You know, I do wanna note specifically on those numbers, what we were seeing before we created CHNV was in fiscal year 2021, we had a total of 1.7 million encounters.

Which rose then even further to 2.4 million in fiscal year 2022. And two-thirds of that increase was due to Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan nationals arriving. So there was a very discrete need at the southwest border. By early October of 2022, DHS was encountering more than 1,100 Venezuelan migrants a day between ports of entry. And Panama was encountering roughly 4,000 a day exiting the Darién. So we knew what was coming north and needed to respond. So in close coordination with the government of Mexico, we chose to provide Venezuelans with a pathway to come to the US and impose new consequences on those who cross unlawfully. Venezuelans who didn't use this new process and were encountered at the land border would for the first time be returned to Mexico. As part of this process, the lawful pathways process to incentivize that lawful pathway, as David outlined, US-based supporters could offer to provide financial support to essentially petition for a Venezuelan beneficiary after clearing national security and public safety checks. They're eligible for a discretionary grant of parole for up to 2 years, which then makes them eligible to apply for work authorization. As David also noted, the Venezuelan process, as did the Ukrainian process, significantly reduced irregular migration to the southwest border and throughout the entire hemisphere.

Two weeks after the announcement, encounters of Venezuelan nationals between the ports of entry had declined to under 200 per day. But flows are nimble, as are smugglers. And on January 5th of this year, after seeing a surge in migration from nationals of Cuba and Nicaragua at the end of last year, DHS announced the expansion of the Venezuela parole process to Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. And that is as well when we announced that there would be a cap of up to 30,000 advance travel authorization, which is essentially the permission to travel to an interior port of entry to seek parole. Bless you. Encounters of CHNV nationals following that announcement immediately declined from a 7-day average of 1,231 on the day of the announcement to a 7-day average of 205 2 weeks later. The reduction occurred even as encounters of other noncitizens began to rebound from their typical seasonal drop around the holidays. The decrease really showed us that many— what we knew to be true, but we needed to prove— that many migrants will wait to use a safe, lawful, and orderly pathway to the United States if one is available, rather than putting their lives and livelihoods in the hands of ruthless smugglers.

I want to offer some numbers here in terms of the progress we've made with these pathways. To date, The CHNV processes have allowed more than 200,000 individuals. And remember, again, Venezuela was announced in October, the other 3 countries just in January of this year, have allowed more than 200,000 individuals to come directly to the United States. And I'd like to break that down. For more than 41,000 Cubans have been vetted and approved for travel with more than 39,000 having arrived. More than 72,000 Haitians have been approved for travel, with more than 60,000 having arrived. More than 34,000 Nicaraguans have been approved for travel, with nearly 27,000 having arrived. And more than 63,000 Venezuelans have been approved— again, of course, they started several months earlier— with more than 55,000 having arrived. As David noted, this process, the whole CHNV process, was modeled after Uniting for Ukraine back in April 2022. And David's, you know, offered the details, of course, on how effective that process has been. In terms of numbers, the US has welcomed over 150,000 Ukrainian parolees to date. One thing I do want to note to clarify from what David said, because you were noting, David, about not knowing the How, let me see here, just in terms of the long wait and the wait that would be expected for new people.

I can't provide the number of pending applications, but suffice it to say for CHNV, there has been a high level of interest, including in the earliest days after announcement. We had been doing a first-in, first-out process, and in May of this year, Pivoted to basically allocating half of those slots for a lottery. So random selection and the other half continue to be first in, first out. And we did this because we wanted to make sure that people weren't necessarily gonna be at the back of the line. We need this pathway to offer a viable option to individuals. And so that lottery makes that possible. So 15,000 slots a month. Are essentially still available to new applicants. David also mentioned the CBP One mobile app. And I just, you know, it's, it, we hesitate to call it a pathway because it's not independently a pathway. I mean, it gets caught up in this conversation and rightfully so, but it's a scheduling app, full stop. However, it's become a means by which people can orderly present themselves at one of the 8 southern border ports of entry that process CBP One appointments. We have steadily increased the number and we are now at very specifically 1,450 appointments every day, and that's been since July 1st.

The top nationalities who have scheduled appointments are Haitian, Mexican, and Venezuelan, and the app's available in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole. And our goal here, of course, is to try to decrease migrant exploitation, decrease the use and the reliance and the exploitation of smugglers, and improve safety and security as we build this more efficient process. Like the CHNV process, there is a lottery. Essentially, there's a random selection for CBP One appointments. But there is— since early August, we have made sure that those with the earliest registered CBP One profiles have some priority because we recognize that we need to account for those who have been waiting the longest as well. I want to mention the family reunification processes that David mentioned as well, the 6 countries that he outlined, 2 of which the Cuban and Haitian processes have long been in place. What has been challenging for those processes have been, particularly in Haiti, the ability to have in-person appointments at the embassy given conditions on the ground. So we were very pleased to update that process so that it doesn't require any in-person appointment at the embassy and the process is virtual, just like the CHNV process.

That is true for Cuba as well, but the challenges are, are, are obviously unique in Haiti, and, and I think that improvement there was very important. We're here to talk about lawful pathways generally, even though I know there's a huge focus on parole. So I do want to note, of course, that the administration has significantly expanded the number of temporary work visas that are available for migrants in the region, especially in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Haiti through the H-2A and H-2B programs. Um, as of August 24th of this year, over 22,000 H-2B visas were issued to nationals of these 4 countries, which is an increase of over 60% compared to this time last year. Um, of these visas, 16,500 were issued under the special allocation for these 4 countries out of the 20,000 visas that were made available under the H-2B supplemental. Folks may have also noticed this morning that we posted for public inspection notice of proposed rulemaking to modernize the H-2A and H-2B programs. If you were in the conference all day, you may have missed it, but breaking news. Lastly, I want to note our commitment around refugee resettlement. Certainly, the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection back from June of 2022 acknowledged our collective responsibility with countries in the region to address irregular migration as a hemispheric challenge.

A key pillar of that is setting up Safe Mobility Offices in South and Central America, starting with Guatemala, Colombia, and Costa Rica. At those offices, eligible individuals can be screened and referred for a variety of pathways, including, of course, refugee resettlement. It's already registered thousands of people and is facilitating expedited refugee processing. But even more specifically, our commitment within the Western Hemisphere for the Refugee Resettlement Program has significantly increased. In FY22, we resettled nearly 2,500 individuals, which was over a 500% increase over FY21 and an 8-year high for the region. We've exceeded that number in FY2023. Final numbers will obviously be out soon as we wrap up the fiscal year. And we've doubled our commitment made under the LA Declaration, which is now to commit to resettling 40,000 refugees from the hemisphere over fiscal year 2023 and '24. And we hope that with the launch and growth of the Safe Mobility Offices, we can see a significant increase in our refugee resettlement numbers from the region. So with that, I'm happy to turn it over to Dara and, you know, take questions. Maybe we can talk even more about, you know, some of the ideas that David mentioned at the end about, you know, some of the challenges regarding the cap and the fees, et cetera. But I want to yield my time.

[00:32:32.22] - Andrew I. Schoenholtz

Thank you. Great. Thanks, Royce. And thanks also for reminding us what many speakers today have reminded us of, that is the unprecedented number of people on the move in this hemisphere, in other parts of the world too. This is a global phenomenon. This isn't just the United States. And the Venezuelans in particular, we were reminded today, If you don't know this, most of them are near Venezuela, 3 million in Colombia, right? And then other South American countries really receiving most of the Venezuelans. So the movements to the United States are not insignificant, but relative to the number of displaced Venezuelans, just, they're, they're being displaced and they're going to other countries, not the United States in general. Okay. Thank you. Dara, it's your turn. Thanks for joining us.

[00:33:28.04] - Dara Lind

Thank you guys so much for having me on. Thanks to everybody for putting this on. This is second best day of the year, second only to the Indy 500. I actually, I want to start by talking about the challenges and the fees. And in particular, I want to talk about the Form I-134A. That's the form that has been split off from the existing Form I-134 and is being used for both Ukrainian and CHNV applications. It's the form that the would-be sponsor has to fill out demonstrating that they are financially able to support the would-be parolee and the closest thing to a CHNV application or a, you know, United for Ukraine application that exists. The I-134A was created by a kind of emergency, please OMB, please, please, please approve this earlier this year as something to codify, you know, this as separate from the 134, which could be used for a bunch of other purposes. And as such was not, well, let's put it this way. Last week, 2 weeks ago, there was a Federal Register notice. As you may or may not know, when the federal government is looking to change a form, it has to do a lot of, you know, notices to alter a previously approved records collection.

And it published one of those for the I-134A seeking public comment on a couple of things, including how many people they anticipate are going to file that form in the next 12 months. And what they wrote was that their estimate is that they anticipate 1.2 million applications or Form I-134As over the 12-month average. You might notice that that's significantly lower than the number of applications just filed for CHNV so far. So there is a certain question about what the, you know, what the basis for that estimate is. Although they also noted that anecdotally, they're hearing that a lot of people are filing duplicate applications and they kind of were curious about that. Those 1.2 million estimated applications, as David mentioned, do not have a fee associated with them. Furthermore, at the beginning of this year, USCIS published a proposed change to its schedule of fees as it is supposed to do every few years. The Trump administration attempted to do it like everything else the Trump administration attempted to do more or less. It was blocked in federal court because for violating the Administrative Procedure Act. And so USCIS has been operating on circa 2016 fees for the last several years.

In the proposed fee rule, not only did they propose to codify not charging anything for the I-134, which as I said is what the I-134A comes from, but they didn't include the estimated time it takes for them to evaluate that form in their modeling of the relationship between fees and workload, at least not in the public-facing version of the fee rule that they published. The reason that I'm going through all of this is to say that there, as David mentioned in passing, there's a lot of workload associated with this that is not necessarily being, that may or may not have the resources there to back it up. USCIS is currently in the midst of an effort to reduce its backlogs. But at the same time, in a macro trend, is seeing a real shift in the number of applications it's getting for humanitarian purposes. The number that gets thrown around is that the percentage of USCIS's workload in the humanitarian bucket has gone from 5% to 40%. Much of the strategic reason for creating these new lawful pathways, including the parole programs, of course, is to reduce the number of people who are coming to the US-Mexico border and seeking asylum, which is to say the humanitarian workload posed for credible fear and reasonable fear interviews by asylum officers at the US-Mexico border.

However, if this is happening by, you know, encouraging people to get I-134As filed instead, it is quite possible that USCIS, whose resources are both fungible to a certain extent, and finite to a great extent and fully, nearly fully fee-supported rather than appropriated by Congress, may well have its response to one humanitarian workload crisis be another humanitarian workload crisis. This is, I'm hoping, something that we will see solutions to from the executive branch, Congress, or both. But it's something to really keep in mind when we talk about the prospects for the program going forward. Also because this is going to change the wait times not only for people who are applying for CHNV who are obviously subject to the numerical cap, but other parole applicants and certainly people applying for work permits as well. If you go to the USCIS website for general humanitarian parole applications, which are for one thing, the only, one of the ways for Afghans who were not included in the airlift, but who need to get out of Afghanistan stand to get to the United States, it notes that there has been a substantial increase in parole applications since 2021, and that people should currently expect to wait much more than 90 days, which has been the historical average for their parole requests to be approved.

For work permits meanwhile, the lawsuit that was recently conducted, that recently had a bench trial in Texas over CHNV, which is actually a really useful source for how This stuff is gone, by the way. Thanks very much to everybody who brought that to trial. Not that I'm saying it was great that there was a lawsuit, but given that there was a lawsuit, it's always good to actually have an administrative record that's available. But what came out in that lawsuit is that the government claims that work permits for CHNV applicants are usually processed in a matter of weeks. But the thing, an interesting thing about that lawsuit is it wasn't just states suing the federal government. There were intervener defendants. Which were people who were actually trying to or had sponsored CHNV parolees and gave a lot of texture as to how the program is actually working. And in those cases, the declarations filed by sponsors who had successfully had people arrive in the United States indicated that their sponsors were waiting 3 months, 4 months at the time the declaration was written and still had not gotten their work permits yet, which each substantially, obviously, into the 2 years that CHNV parole is valid for.

And while the point of the parole sponsorship is to make sure that people can be supported by their sponsors even if they aren't working legally, the idea that this is not just a 2-year grant of permission to be in the United States, but a 2-year grant of permission to work legally in the United States, comes under a certain amount of challenge. Of course, this also, the more applications there are for all of these things, the longer waits will be. Otherwise, generally work permit applications are at 4.5-month approval averages, and that varies tremendously by category. There is a requirement that initial applications for asylum seeker work permits be adjudicated within 30 days, and we are expecting a large number of asylum seeker work permit applications to be filed as more people file their applications for asylum and hit that 6-month mark. So every, so other categories of EADs may very well be affected. In addition to the workload concerns, I think another question that like remains to be determined about the effectiveness and future of these programs is the extent to which they are actually substitutes. The short-term indication is indeed that people see them as substitutes or at least are willing to not come to the US-Mexico border because they have a hope of, you know, successfully applying for one of these programs.

That said, every change in border policy or migration policy often results in a reduction initially at the border as people take a wait-and-see approach. And it's not always, it's not always clear how long that lasts. It's worth pointing out that because of the sponsorship requirements, there is a certain need to both have a network available in the U.S. and have that network have a certain, you know, level of socioeconomic status. That's not always the case. Some of the CHNV intervening declarations are from people who, through their church or through their volunteer work, found the ability to sponsor people through the welcome.us portal or through other means. And so have agreed to sponsor people they didn't know. But it does, it certainly means that having a certain amount of human capital in the US is important. This may not be true of people who are coming from Venezuela in recent years, which is a lot of, you know, as we were hearing this morning, one of the drivers of the kind of city crunch being people who don't necessarily have connections in the US. It has certainly, it was initially at least a bit of a disconnect for Haitians as well in the weeks after CHNV was announced, I talked to an immigration lawyer who represents a bunch of people from the Haitian diaspora and had to tell a lot of people who were like 10 miles from the US-Mexico border that they were really close but did not qualify for this new program because they didn't have anyone who was able to sponsor them in the United States.

At the same time, there is some indication that in the case of the family reunification parole programs, some of the people who are being invited to apply are already in the United States. And the government knows they are already in the United States because they have asked the government for what is called a provisional unlawful presence waiver, which without going into too much detail here, this is if you're a relative and you have a pending visa application, but you're already in the United States as an unauthorized immigrant, you would be subject if you left the country to being barred from return for 3 or 10 years. So you apply in advance and get the government to provisionally say, you will be cool to come back, we'll let you so that you can have your visa interview. So these are people people who the government literally has forms on file saying, we would like to be able to leave the country to come back and is now sending invitations to saying, you should come to the United States. Fun fact, as long as we're talking about wait times, the current wait time for adjudication of a provisional unlawful presence waiver is 4 to 4.5 months.

And when I say average, I mean what USCIS reports is 80% of cases are completed within. So that's not even including the long, you know, whatever the long tail is. The final kind of question that I think has to be discussed in terms of the future of these programs is the idea of what MPI, and like big shout out to MPI and in particular Kathleen Bush-Joseph for quantifying this, calls twilight status or what would also be called liminal status. This includes in a broad sense, not just parolees, but TPS holders, DACA recipients, people who are in the asylum backlog, both affirmative and defensive. The total MPI estimate of that is 1.8 million people of whom about, and I updated my numbers when Royce gave us updated numbers. So hold on, let me pull up my phone for that. About 566,000 would be included in the various kind of parole programs we're talking about. Those people do not, you know, as David said, have any established route to permanent residency in the United States. In some cases, they may be eligible for, say, affirmative asylum or in the case of— and the exception is family reunification parole who obviously, like by definition, already have a path to green cards.

But in these other cases, they may be able to apply for asylum. They may ultimately be able to qualify for family-based immigrant visas, but in many cases they will not. And there's nothing in the application process favors people who are ultimately going to be able to stay, which raises the question of what happens when that parole expires. The administration has already had to, uh, re-up parole for Afghans. It will likely have to do the same for Ukrainians. And meanwhile, CHNV is supposed to be a finite 2-year period. We don't know how many of those people will leave when their parole is up. There is reason to believe Some of them will not. Is it— this is the— and it's not at all clear what the enforcement stance of this administration or a future administration would be. These are people who they will— the government will know where they are. They will have done everything, you know, they will have been in contact. They will have had a current address. The US doesn't have a great record with like enforcing visa overstays. So it's not exactly like there is a like complete dragnet in place already, but it's a very big open question.

As the US continues to put people in these temporary discretionary statuses, um, which allow for the ability up to indefinitely to live and work in the US, but do not have any on-ramp to full citizenship, it is really worth asking questions about the long-term prospects and the long-term effects of such a system, not to mention the fragility if a future administration or a future federal judge decides to cut this off entirely.

[00:47:38.16] - Andrew I. Schoenholtz

Great. Thank you very much, Dara, for raising those major issues. I'm really glad you've talked about resources and also this, you know, what's the long-term solution here, right? And it reminds me of one of the other themes of today's conference, which is Congress. Hmm.

Oh yes. God knows when, but Congress. I mean, Congress has that authority. That's the branch of government that's supposed to be doing this. So the resources that, that's something that they do do regularly, except that they seem to have treated USCIS in certain ways for a very long time. In terms of resources. So let's see how that plays out. Before we start with any questions from the audience, I just wanted to give the opportunity to any of the panelists if they had any remarks they wanted to make just in response to what they've heard. If you do, great. If not, we'll go directly to some questions.

[00:48:41.12] - David J. Bier

I just, I just want to put some numbers to the shortfall. I mean, if you look at the normal amount that someone would pay for a form, like the I-134A in the neighborhood of $500, you're talking about $220 million shortfall based on the, the number who've already been admitted. You got 1.7 million in the backlog. That's $850 million or so, just running my numbers in my head here. So this is a huge issue for an agency when you're talking about a billion dollars perhaps. So The question is, going forward, how is this going to work with the rest of the agency funding? Fortunately, we have someone here who is an expert on the agency who could help us out with that. And, you know, the second issue I think is the issue of work authorization. This is critical and it's adding to the workload. So we're not just having one application, we're having a second application. So we're multiplying the backlog and creating even more work for the agency. Again, it's the work authorization, so they at least pay a fee, but it is dramatically increasing the amount of resources that will be needed to run these programs.

So I think that for me is by far the most important question going forward.

[00:50:10.22] - Andrew I. Schoenholtz

Okay. Any comments anybody wants to make?

[00:50:14.10] - Royce Bernstein Murray

I'll only agree that we have funding challenges. And I, you know, the challenge of doing humanitarian work is knowing that they're often the people who can least afford the fee. And as the portfolio grows, we need the money to process those very applications. So, you know, the asks of the department right now are often to waive more fees. But in light of the challenges, you know, that have been pointed out, it's extremely difficult. We have fee waiver guidance. We have fee waivers available. But that's right. I couldn't agree more that it is very difficult to do an ever-growing bucket of humanitarian work at no fee.

[00:50:57.01] - Andrew I. Schoenholtz

And resourcing a legal immigration system or a lawful admission system, you know, you've got to figure out who's going to pay for that, right? It's not— we've had one way of doing it to date. I don't know that that's the best way. Anyway. We're going to start with questions. So those who want to line up and ask some questions, please come to each of the mics. I'm going to start with our virtual audience who's been waiting patiently, and we have many questions for them, but I'll start with one. And anybody can take this. What is the media— and Dara, maybe you want this one.

[[FOR THE Q&A PORTION OF THE TRANSCRIPT, SPEAKERS ARE NOT IDENTIFIED BY NAME. PLEASE SEE THE RECORDING TO IDENTIFY SPEAKERS.]]

[00:51:29.11] - Speaker 4

No, I don't.

[00:51:30.01] - Speaker 1

Yes, sure you do. What is the media missing? Come on. Or getting wrong in their coverage of humanitarian parole? What kind of stories or issues would you like to see more of?

[00:51:42.19] - Speaker 4

Caveat, caveat, caveat regarding any singular treatment of the media. But I think in general, there hasn't been a whole lot of coverage of this. Like, it's been really interesting to be here today and see how much this stuff has percolated through panels that even, you know, even though ostensibly this one is about it, because it indicates that in this room at least, there's an indication, there's an understanding that this is a really big strategic shift that has really, really big lasting implications potentially. But I'm not, I'm not sure how well that's percolated to like mass culture. And I think that that's a matter of, to a certain extent, what the— I mean, I'm not going to speak for the administration, but it seems to me that there's a bit of a tension here because there's a desire to make it clear to immigration doves and certainly to potential beneficiaries that these lawful pathways exist. To raise the salience of them risks making them politically polarized and becoming a punch— you know, creating punching bags. There's been an— it's been interesting to hear efforts by some congressional Republicans to paint the CBP One app as a concierge service for illegal aliens.

[00:52:58.15] - Speaker 4

That hasn't gotten a ton of traction, but the numbers often do. And as the numbers of CHNV admitties increase, that's a possibility. But I do think it's— I think that it's generally really important to acknowledge that a lot of people are coming in through expanded lawful pathways. We don't necessarily know what happens to you, what's going to happen to them. A lot of these processes can feel very arbitrary if you're in them. I saw a really— there was a really, really good article from a local outlet on the West Coast about a Ukrainian family where the the wife had come in initially, like before Uniting for Ukraine was officially announced and was given 1-year parole. And the husband came in 6 months later and was given 2-year parole. So the wife was about to see hers expire when Biden and the Biden administration announced re-parole. And it's like, yeah, there's, there's a lot of people who are caught up in these very individualized situations and it's a little bit hard to generalize, but I would, I would love to see more coverage of that. I'd love to see more coverage of the, of the civil society aspect of the sponsorship programs.

[00:54:05.01] - Speaker 4

It's been really You know, on the theme of like, we can do this. It's been very interesting to see some people who fundamentally believe that it's important to welcome immigrants put their money where their mouth is.

[00:54:16.01] - Speaker 1

Thanks, Dara. So we're going to start on this side with questions. Please introduce yourself, tell us who you are, and as concise as you can be with your questions, we'll get more questions asked and answered.

[00:54:29.26] - Speaker 5

Camilo Montoya Galvez, CBS News. I have two questions for Royce. The first one is on CHNV. So obviously you have seen, you know, an extraordinary number of people apply for the program. Is there any consideration to raising the 30,000 cap? And if not, why not? And the other question is USCIS has created processes for Afghans and Ukrainians who are processed at the border to apply for parole, to have their parole extended. Are you considering doing the same for CHNV applicants?

[00:55:04.01] - Speaker 3

Thanks, Camilo. So on your first question, it's a fair question about the 30,000 cap. You know, we're often considering all possible options to me. I mean, we want these lawful pathways to work. As was noted earlier by Andy, we have litigation over the CHNV processes which make changes to that those processes tricky. So nothing to announce today, but it's certainly always in view to see what tweaks are viable to make them function well. In terms of your second question about re-parole or extending parole, I mean, it's a bit too soon for us to say what will happen at the end of the 2 years given the newness of a lot of these processes. I think our hope is that people will avail themselves of anything for which they may be eligible, whether that's asylum or adjustment or if they're eligible for TPS, I mean, other ways. So nothing to preview yet on repatriation. The ask is often made to us because everyone wants to know what happens next, but nothing to preview just yet.

[00:56:19.04] - Speaker 5

Thanks.

[00:56:19.16] - Speaker 3

Thanks.

[00:56:19.26] - Speaker 4

Shout out to Camilo, who, without whom we would know so much less about this stuff and a lot of other things.

[00:56:26.28] - Speaker 1

So you have some fans here. This is pretty good. Thank you very much. Please go right ahead with your question and tell us who you are.

[00:56:34.11] - Speaker 6

Hi, my name is Brianna Perez. I work with RAICES in Texas. My small team represents solely individuals in expedited removal in both ICE and CBP custody. I had a couple questions for Royce regarding the administration's commitment to explaining these new pathways to potential applicants, both pre- and post-crossing. So for example, I encounter a lot of CHNV individuals in expedited removal and CBP who are offered a form of for lack of a better term, voluntary departure to leave to Mexico and potentially apply for the parole program before their credible fear interview starts. It is a concern of mine and my teams of who is explaining what that parole program means and its limitations so an individual in that situation can make an informed decision. Obviously those we encounter, we're able to provide that information. But of course, there are many, many, many people who never reach an attorney prior to the start of their CFI. Secondly, we also encounter and almost entirely individuals who either did not know CBP One existed or encountered many obstacles to using the CBP One app. Including language access issues and technological barriers. I can say almost no one is aware that failing to use CBP One means that they may be subject to the new Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule, meaning that there's a presumption against their case.

[00:58:26.16] - Speaker 6

So again, my question is, what is the administration doing to inform people of both the realities of these new situations and their limitations, like the 30,000 people cap, sponsorship requirements, et cetera?

[00:58:43.25] - Speaker 3

Thanks, Brianna, for those questions, and nice to see you in person. We've asked for some emails over time. So in general, we are committed to explaining these processes and the consequences that have been instituted. We work in close partnership with the State Department who has, and USAID, you know, who have tried to help amplify messages in a variety of ways. I think we also know we have limited reach and really rely on non-governmental partners to help get that information to individuals, partners in Mexico, partners in the diaspora who, can reach folks who are on the move and are trusted messengers to the community. I think we know we have to have sources of information that can be pointed to, but we alone will not successfully get the information out adequately. So certainly welcome the help of any and all third parties to get good information to migrants on the move. To your specific question about the offer of voluntary return to individuals who are going through the credible fear process. They're offered that 3 separate times, once by Border Patrol, twice by an asylum officer in an effort to make sure that somebody understands that opportunity, but that we don't overwhelm them and we don't want it to seem coercive that we're offering voluntary return.

[01:00:21.26] - Speaker 3

But you're right, these are complex systems and regulations in place, and we certainly do our best and through, you know, both Border Patrol and trained asylum officers to clearly but succinctly explain those options. So we need help on that front as well, making sure that people who are in touch with individuals who are intending to cross, that the circumvention of lawful pathways rule exists and you will have opportunities to return to Mexico to apply. But, you know, it's a collective hurdle that we all have to address for sure. And then on your point about CBP One, we know that there's a lot of knowledge about CBP One. We also know that not everyone knows about it. And you're right about certainly language barriers, you know, and other hurdles. You know, welcome any and all help and suggestions about what more we can do to to make sure that people are aware of it. We want to see it succeed.

[01:01:25.14] - Speaker 6

Thank you. It was nice to meet you in person.

[01:01:27.03] - Speaker 3

Likewise.

[01:01:29.12] - Speaker 1

Back to this side.

[01:01:31.04] - Speaker 7

Hi, Irene Gibson, Department of Homeland Security. I'm going to repeat what my colleague had said earlier, that the opinions I express are my own opinions, not the opinions of my department. I work as a statistician for the Office of Immigration Statistics. So nice to hear each of you actually cite the statistics that we produced.

[01:01:48.22] - Speaker 1

We need more of them. I just want to send a message back to your office. We need more. Okay.

[01:01:53.28] - Speaker 7

I was just about to say to those of you that we provide statistics, you're welcome. To those of you who have asked us for statistics and we haven't, I'm sorry. As a statistician, you know, you get to see all the numbers up close and you don't get a lot of opportunity to think of the policy. So thank you all for like sort of giving a broader overview of the policy. Something that came to mind though is that For EADs and DARA, you hit the nail on the head. If you go on USCIS's very helpful wait time website today and you look up how long does it take if I'm a parolee to get an EAD, 80% of people are processed within 4 months, which for those of you who don't like math means 1 in 5 people take longer than 4 months to get an EAD. Similarly, we have enormous backlogs, you know, over a million people in the green card backlog alone, a lot more people backlogged in other visa processes. And simultaneously, one of our other panelists mentioned that a lot of these cities are very keen to get people employment authorization.

[01:02:54.22] - Speaker 7

Especially parolees who already have a status in the country. So my question is this. Is it possible for people who have parole status to automatically just by merit of having that status be granted an EAD without having to go through an additional process? We already have this process for green cards. If you have a green card, you don't have to apply. To subsequently get employment authorization. Would it be possible for somebody who has parole status to just automatically, by merit of having that status, be allowed to be authorized for employment? I think David hinted at this as well. That seems like an easy solution that would not only help people not have to wait months to actually work, but also would help USCIS to not have to deal with a duplication, effectively, of a backlog and not 100% of people that apply for parole status actually apply for EADs. So it also would enable probably more people to actually gain employment authorization instead of having to like not know about this process and then subsequently realize that they have to apply and then go through this waiting process.

[01:04:00.13] - Speaker 3

I assume that one's for me.

[01:04:02.09] - Speaker 1

Feel free, Royce.

[01:04:04.07] - Speaker 4

I mean, David and I aren't lawyers, I don't think.

[01:04:06.21] - Speaker 3

So I mean, I can't advise anyone. Feel free to chime in. So for Ukrainians and Afghans, Congress gave special authority to be able to provide employment authorization incident to status. We don't have that for parolees more generally. I mean, if USCIS could avoid processing all the 765s, I think it would be a big, you know, it would be a bit of a win-win. But at this point, you know, we don't have that authority and our regulations go further and specify that they have to apply. So at this point, we're limited, but we are trying to look at, are there different ways for people to express that intention to apply? But these are sort of bigger picture, longer term, I think, ideas that take time and aren't a quick fix.

[01:04:57.07] - Speaker 7

Thank you.

[01:04:58.26] - Speaker 4

If I could just throw out related to this, there keep being questions about what employers are comfortable accepting. This came up a bunch when the renewal work permit backlog became a massive issue in early 2022 to the point where the administration had to put out an emergency rule saying instead of 180-day automatic extension, once you apply for a renewal, you have a 540-day automatic extension. But, you know, anecdotally, there kept being reports that employers were not accepting the letter saying, hey, seriously, this work permit is valid for another 180 days because they really didn't want to be in a position where they were liable for hiring somebody without work authorization. And this, it, I would love for someone to do real research on this or like really, really, really rigorous reporting because if that's a problem, it should be a fixable one. But it does hang over a lot of these efforts to kind of create quick band-aid fixes.

[01:06:02.29] - Speaker 1

Excellent. Thank you. And our last question from the audience, and I'll probably have time for one more from our virtual audience. Please go ahead.

[01:06:11.03] - Speaker 8

Hi, I'm Jill Marie Bussey. I'm with the Lutheran Immigration Refugee Service. Royce, in your comments, you said that CHNV and some of the parole programs were— a goal was to decrease migrant exploitation. I'm wondering if the department is looking at ways— and I assume you meant coyote and those who would exploit migrants on their journey. But I'm wondering if the department is looking at ways of strengthening these— strengthening these programs to also ensure that those who have arrived are not being exploited by their sponsors and their employers. You mentioned the H-2 programs that, of course, have the labor certification process and the Department of Labor is involved. And I'm just wondering whether if there's any programs or thought of strengthening the program to ensure that worker exploitation is not— or that workers are not being exploited through the parole programs. Also wanted to just offer that we obviously work very closely with the Afghan population at LIRS and very grateful for the extension and re-parole programs for Afghans. You noted that you hadn't yet come to a decision on extensions for CHNV. And just want to say that the, the implementation of extension and parole for Afghans has been a welcome but very bumpy ride.

[01:07:35.13] - Speaker 8

And so I really hope that the department is looking at ways to, you know, take some lessons learned from that so that the timing as well as the implementation is, is improved. Finally, you did mention permanent, that you would hope that people are looking for for not just permanent but other temporary protections. So I would offer that the Department of Homeland Security could increase protections for Venezuelans if they were to redesignate TPS.

[01:08:08.20] - Speaker 3

Thanks, Jill Marie. So starting from the top, your question about worker exploitation. Folks may be aware that we have— that Secretary Mayorkas had issued worker— worksite enforcement guidance that focuses on unscrupulous employers in lieu of undocumented workers and provides a path for deferred action for exploited workers while there's a pending labor agency investigation and possible prosecution. It's still pretty new and, you know, would certainly invite service providers in the community to help us get the word out that no one should have to endure exploitation and that there is a process for coming forward and, you know, seeking deferred action and without having to worry about employer retaliation. You know, certainly welcome suggestions about what we can do as a department to help ensure that parolees or others who are here are not being exploited by their employers. On your second point about the Afghan parole extension, I know there have been some bumps in the road and appreciate you flagging that we do need to take lessons learned from that as if and when we go forward with other such extensions. And duly noted on the Venezuelan TPS front. We'll take that back.

[01:09:45.13] - Speaker 1

Thanks, Royce. So we have one question from our virtual audience that I'd like us to discuss. It is two questions really, but it's number 7. What role can nonprofits play in sponsorship? Is sponsorship open to organizations or only citizens? So I think it's opening up. I mean, currently, what is the situation? But if it's not including nonprofits and other organizations, what role could they play?

[01:10:18.26] - Speaker 2

To give you a break, only an individual can submit an I-134A affidavit of support. But you can use the resources of any corporation or nonprofit or any other entity that is willing to sign up for that as the basis for the financial arrangement. So you are submitting it on your behalf, you are the sponsor, but you can use the resources of your, you know, business or nonprofit entity to act as the financial backing for the application. So you're not using your personal income and assets.

[01:11:04.26] - Speaker 4

I would really recommend that people who are interested in this look through the declarations filed by the intervenor defendants in the CHNV lawsuit, which go through a lot of detail about their personal sponsorship journeys and include a lot of like options for making this work, including one case where the parole or where they, where the form had been pending for so long that the original sponsor family moved out of the US because one of them got a job abroad and had to, the other, a bunch of other families file held an affidavit as an attachment to the application saying, we will agree to step in and sponsor this family instead. So it's a useful model both of kind of how organizations and individuals are interacting to make this program work and a kind of depiction of some of the obstacles that people are going through in pulling that together and ultimately hearing back about whether or not the application has succeeded.

[01:12:04.04] - Speaker 1

Excellent. First, I want to thank the audience, both virtual and here, for great questions. I also just want to say that you've heard from 3 experts this afternoon. There's a reason we were batting 4th today, okay? You all know, I mean, this is America, this is baseball, right? Clean up. All right? Did they hit home runs or not? Please join me to thank them. And to close us out, we'll hear from Anna.

[01:12:40.19] - Speaker 9

And just a very, very quick thank you. We're sorry we went behind schedule, but it was a very rich discussion. I think it was worth it. I wanna thank Georgetown University for making sure we had this space. Katherine Donato of Georgetown for working closely with us to do it. Andy, for all the work you did. Doris and Muz, MPI, CLINIC, Georgetown Law, and of course all our speakers who attended. This was a rich, rewarding discussion. Thank you so much. We look forward to seeing you next year at the 21st, uh, Annual Immigration Law and Policy Conference.

5:00 PM — Conference Concludes

About the U.S. Immigration Policy Program

The U.S. Immigration Policy Program provides analysis of U.S. immigration pathways, the impacts of enforcement and other policies, and the characteristics of immigrant populations.

Go to U.S. Immigration Policy Program