Immigration and Integration Policymaking in a Shifting World: A Blue-Sky Conference to Mark MPI’s 25th Year

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[00:00:00.10] - Andrew Selee

Hi everybody, thank you for coming. It's wonderful to see everybody in the room. We're going to go ahead and get started because we also have an audience that is joining us online. Welcome to everybody online as well. We're very pleased to have you joining us today, and, and welcome to those of you that are in the room, and welcome to MPI's 25th anniversary celebration. This is, you know, 25 years is something, right? This is a 25th anniversary conference. We wanted to— we do lots of events on very specific issues all the time, and, you know, we're weighty people, so we, we like to really drill down. We wanted to step back in this conference and think a little bit more broadly about migration policy in a changing world. And so thank you to a wonderful group of panelists who are here. We're going to get the conversation started. Thank you to all of you that are here today and all of those that are joining us online. Let me just say that migration and human mobility are as old as human history itself. They've been central to human adaptation, survival, and innovation. But how we navigate decisions on migration is something that changes as societies evolve. And there's no question that we're living at an inflection point right now. On one hand, the possibilities for mobility have increased a great deal. And I know it's hard to see that in the United States because right now we're at a stoppage of a lot of mobility. It's actually slowed down people coming in. But globally, in the last few years, we actually are at a high point in recent history. And things like the price of transportation, communications, changing labor markets, lots of reasons that have made that happen. We've seen an actual doubling of the foreign-born population in upper-income countries and high-income countries since 1990. It's actually a fairly significant change. The U.S. is slightly less, 8 to 15%. And most of this has happened through legal channels, contrary to what you people perceive, but unauthorized immigration has also been much more visible in the past few years, right? And, you know, we are seeing legitimate questions from publics and destination societies about the priorities for immigration, as well as the desire to make sure that people come in legally. These are things we need to wrestle with. Publics often feel that immigration just happens to them rather than being a deliberate decision tied to other national priorities. And they may not disagree with it, but they often see it as something that's happening rather than a specific choice. And people sometimes worry about the pace of change, especially since 1990, we've gone through a few other changes like the internet, like these little things here, technology, the economy has changed drastically, values have changed. Lots of things have changed in the way we live at the same time, and people often evaluate all of those things in terms of whether they feel they're getting— that they're better off or less well off, right, or compared to others in this. So people look at all of these things, sometimes individually and sometimes together. And we should assume that in every society there are groups more comfortable with change than others anyway. That's human nature. So how we reconcile concerns about immigration with the realities of a mobile world is a challenge that defies easy solutions. In the U.S., we've gone through wild pendulum swings in the last few years. In case anyone missed that, we've gone through some fairly wild pendulum swings from large-scale arrivals in one administration to efforts under a current one to do mass deportation, as well as to limit most forms of legal immigration, right?

I mean, we're seeing it across the categories, limitations coming down. These are wild swings harm the economy, local communities, and families, and neither turns out to be terribly popular with the public. The public seems to be somewhere in between these two. So the key question I want to throw out to everyone today, and I know Trevor will have much better questions than me, but the key— and then Cecilia in the second panel is here— but the key question is what sort of immigration integration policies do the vast majority of Americans and people in other countries that are major destinations societies, so we'll talk a little bit about other countries as well. What kind of policies do they want? This matters because only if we find policies the vast majority of the public agrees with will these policies be sustainable and avoid the sudden swings between different policy environments. We may have our own preferences and beliefs. I think this is probably a room full of people, and those of you online as well, who have strong opinions. On normatively what should be, but ultimately it matters a lot what societies are able— can come to agreement on and where there is public trust in migration policy to move forward. So let me just throw out a few key questions that we might be thinking about. One is, what sort of immigration do we want to prioritize? You know, immigration systems make choices. So thinking in clear-eyed ways about priorities actually matter. How do we build flexibility into policy design? Something that Doris Meissner talks about a lot. You know, we're living through a world that's going through massive changes again with AI. We go through business cycles in addition to that. It's hard to predict the workforce of the future, even population size. So we want flexibility built in as circumstances change. How do we support integration? Well, what pace of change are people comfortable with? You know, in every society, there's some people who love and embrace change and some people who don't, and most people are somewhere in the middle. So finding that sort of— Andrea, I see you over there. We've talked about this a little bit, sort of finding that middle ground where people feel comfortable with the pace of change, and you can get most people feeling comfortable actually matters as well. How do we support integration strategically? Question 4. It's not just about who is admitted, but whether immigrants find opportunities in the labor market, the education system, and a place in the social fabric. And this requires systems, as my colleague Margie McHugh points out, who's right down here. This requires creating systems that actually support integration and social cohesion. How do we fix humanitarian protection systems? I have a feeling most of us would agree that the existing architecture is not working well. One way or another. We might have different analyses of why it's not working well and what should work better, but it really matters because we should assume that conflict is a fixture of the world we live in. You know, it's not a bug, it's an actual feature of the world we live in. And so figuring out how people can be protected, but also in ways that do not undermine public support for refugees and displaced people, really matters. It's an issue we've spent a lot of time on. And finally, how do we maintain control of borders and the integrity of the immigration system? Because nothing undermines public trust in immigration quite as much as the sense that things are out of control. And for those of us that believe that immigration is an essential part of the future, we need to embrace this. We need to figure out what is the form of sort of fair, consistent, predictable control that actually makes people comfortable trusting in the immigration system. So these are all tough questions. I probably— I saw some faces out there, so I'm sure I said a few things that not everyone completely agrees with, which is fine. But hopefully we're going to get into a discussion here where many of these topics will come up. We have 2 really great panels today. I'll come back and introduce the second one after this one. But let me say that our first panel, which is focused on immigration policy in an age of disruption, is moderated by Trevor Phillips, who is the senior global correspondent for CBS and 60 Minutes. He is an old friend of MPI. It's great to have you here. I don't know, have you been at this office? Have you been at this office at MPI? Oh my, okay. So Trevor is one of the founding members of our Transatlantic Council, which is a group of government leaders and experts that meet periodically, actually. And you're really from the beginning. I don't know from the first meeting, but certainly from the early days there. So we've had many chances to interact through the years. He is a journalist. He is a Times opinion writer, the UK Times, and a prolific author, and he has most recently served as the anchor of Sky News Sunday, the Sunday morning program. He's also a successful entrepreneur. He can tell you about that. He has a couple successful businesses out there, and he served as chair of the UK's Equality and Human Rights Commission. Trevor, it's great to have you here, and let me turn this over to you.

[00:08:26.24] - Trevor Phillips

Thank you. Thank you very much, Andrew. I've got a microphone on. Thank you so much, and It's— it is a great privilege to be here. I feel slightly— what's the right word? Intimidated, I think, is probably the right word, partly. And I'll come to our panel in a second. But my family— I come from a family, I'm the 10th of 10 children, and so everybody in my family regards me as a person who doesn't know anything. And, and, and should be given advice at every single possible opportunity— breakfast, dinner, and tea. And one of my sisters gave me the advice when I told them I was taking up a role at CBS News. Huh. So they're going to put you in 60 Minutes, which of course is an American institution, and you know what Tucker Carlson is going to say, I had no idea who that was, by the way. These immigrants get everywhere in America, and I am about to destroy yet another American institution. Anyways, before I achieve that, let's get through this session. It is probably a celebration. I'm delighted to be part of it. My association with MPI goes back, 2 decades actually, both under the leadership first of Demetrios Papademetriou and now of Andrew Selee, as a member, as Andrew said, of the Transatlantic Council. In those 2 decades, migration and integration have been at the center of public affairs right across the West, and in one way or another, whether it's security, whether it's the economy, whether there's a provision or reform of public services, looming at the back of my journalism has been the question of how we manage these huge movements of people, greater than at any time in human history. I think it is unquestionable. I think the number now is 300 million people or thereabouts living outside the country of their birth. But I think the simplest way to put this, there are more people meeting people who are unlike themselves or their families than at any time since humanity emerged. And we haven't necessarily found ways of dealing with that. And that's why I'm very pleased at the theme this afternoon, is not just migration, but migration and integration, because these 2 issues relate to each other. The one thing most people share, of course, is the belief that when you think about migration and integration, almost everybody agrees there's too much of one and not enough of the other. The question, though, that divides us perhaps is which one we've got more— too much of, and which we haven't got enough of, but it's changed our thinking about demographics, economics, culture, politics, probably in that order, and it is going to become, if it is possible, an even more contentious, significant, motivating issue in the years to come. And the one thing I want to say before we begin our discussion, and I want to say for Andrew, for all of the people, the team who work at MPI. I can say just absolutely from a practical point of view, somebody whose living depends on trying to explain the world to audiences, sometimes millions, sometimes dozens, through all the twists and turns, MPI has been there, and it is now probably the best in the world at trying to make sense of the swirling realities that immigration and integration present. It's a resource for people like me, a leader for policymakers, and certainly from the Transatlantic Council, a really special space for the people who have to make decisions to consider the factors that should influence their decisions. So I think I just want to start the afternoon by saying thank you to everybody who's worked at MPI and is still working there, because you guys are the best, and I think we'll hear that this afternoon. We have a distinguished panel, and I'm just going to say a line about each one of them, because frankly, you can Google all of them, and they've all got massive Wikipedia entries, which I haven't got time to summarize. Meghan Benton, the director of MPI's Global Program, who I do quite a lot with and drag on the television from time to time to try to explain to the British why they aren't about to be sunk under a flood of migrants. Emily Haber, who is the former ambassador of Germany to the United States, former State Secretary to the Chancery overseeing security and migration, and she was telling me during the fateful period— I think that's the right word— of 2014 to 2018. So at some point this afternoon, we might find out whose fault it all was. And Doris Meissner, Senior Fellow and Director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program, former Commissioner— it says here— U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. But actually, we met really as Doris, one of the moving spirits of MPI and who sustained it with Demetrios for so many years. And Catherine Rampell, the economics editor of The Bulwark and anchor, and I guess I should say a former colleague at MSNOW because in the network I used to work for, MSNOW is a sister broadcaster. So let's get on with it. I'd like to approach this session in a straightforward way in which somebody as simple as I can understand. There are 3 big things. First of all, what is the problem we're trying to address? Secondly, what's the process and what are the tools that we have with us? And the third, I think we can get wrapped up in the politics, but I think myself, I tend to think of want to think of politics as a consequence of the actual issue rather than the driver. So let's just start. What is the problem that we think we're trying to address here, Meghan?

[00:15:17.24] - Meghan Benton

Well, you've put a lot of big questions on the table, so I thought I'd start with the problem that I'm trying to address right now this week, which is we are recruiting in the Global Program. Don't apply, we shut applications. And we've had maybe 1,500 applications come through. And while we have a preference for someone to be in the DC office, we opened it up globally in case someone with, you know, really specific expertise would want to apply. And there's some amazing people in this pool, but every single application looks the same. They're all like a 7 out of 10. They've all been AI polished, and it's incredibly hard for me to discern the differences between these applications without reading them in incredible detail. And I really think that's a microcosm for the challenges we're facing in immigration policy, opportunities from a global labor market, but at the same time, we don't know what skills we're gonna need in future labor markets. The types of skills that are likely to be AI resilient are the hardest to evaluate on paper. They're extremely hard to evaluate. So I think there's 3 things that are kind of colliding at the same time. We've got uncertainty about what the world of work will look like. We've got population aging opening up massive labor shortages and holes in budgets. And then we've got this huge crisis in public trust in the way that immigration is managed, mainstream politicians that are really struggling with public confidence. You know, Pedro Sánchez just called a snap election in Spain, in part because of migration challenges. The UK— you talked about the UK sinking. The small boats challenge was probably one of the factors behind Keir Starmer resigning. Immigration is toppling governments and political leaders, and the challenge is that with this loss of confidence. Mainstream parties, mainstream actors, they don't really know how to respond. They're responding by kind of flexing their muscles, by showing they're in control, but it's very much control theater. It's not thinking about the future challenges and the long-term stuff that we need. What's the development and investments? What are the skills and training systems we need to cultivate in the areas of the world that do have youthful populations? I've been working on demographic change over the summer. I published a piece that was called "Immigration is Half an Answer to Population Aging".

But for a long time, we've had this idea in people's minds that you have countries in the Global North that are aging, countries in the Global South that are youthful, that have workers to spare. And it seemed like a really simple problem, but it's not. It's changing very quickly. Many traditional countries of immigration are aging too, some before they've even got got rich, which is raising kind of different questions about brain drain, about how they retain the workers they need. But there's another thing about aging that we often miss, which is that you can have an aging society without shrinking populations, with pressures on cities, with growing city populations. And that's some of the crisis that we've had in housing, even in Canada and a lot of the countries that have seen pressures on public services. on infrastructure. So it's not really a megatrend in the future, it's already creating pressures now. And I think the problem for me is we're in this moment where there's all this temptation for kind of control signaling, capturing public trust without that long-term thinking about some of the more seismic trends that we're facing.

[00:18:56.13] - Trevor Phillips

The point about housing in Spain, of course, is relevant here. The story is meant to be about housing, but of course you can say there are not enough houses, but you can also say there are too many people. And of course, that's what many people in Spain probably think. Emily, what, how do you see, what do you think our big issue is here? I know that you think that it goes beyond labor market questions.

[00:19:23.11] - Emily Haber

Well, there's not just one big issue. There are competing realities that we actually have to reconcile. I could echo much of what Meghan said, but I'll focus on the specific angle that comes with me, and that is what are the lessons of practitioners? I witnessed indeed the migration crisis of 2015 and 2016, and the lessons that stayed with me assessing the feedback loop we've seen in the growing public skepticism of migration. And the question that remained with me is, what can actually practitioners, politicians, administrations, bureaucracies do in order to prevent that feedback loop? So the competing realities I mentioned is first the reality of aging demographies and aging societies, and of course we do need We need in Europe, everyone knows that, net immigration. I'm not talking about numerical targets or something. I'm just talking about the fact, and we may go into that later, but that is completely distinct or should be completely distinct with another form of migration, and that is asylum and humanitarian admissions. They are subject to completely different legal and political frameworks. You can plan legal migration into the labor markets, and you can define conditions for it, and you can make predictions, and you can alter predictions, etc. But you cannot do that in the context of asylum and humanitarian admissions, or humanitarian admissions, of course, to some extent, yes, but not on asylum because that's not about migration policy. It's about protection. That's a different epistemic universe, if you will. And the third reality you have to navigate is the capacities of processes and institutions to actually provide the services, not only for the incoming migrants, but for the society at large. Because if a society sees, looks at the housing markets or schools or traffic or the provision of administrative services, and they feel that bureaucracies are overwhelmed, and they see it as a sort of shortage phenomenon, then that— and I've seen that— then you'll see it will trigger a growing skepticism. And that's a bad thing if it's not only growing skepticism but also distrust. And a lack of confidence in the capacity of a state and its institutions to deliver. And if that again is colored or is becoming a sort of proxy for general concerns linked to globalization and societal cohesion, then you really, you are entering a toxic environment. So focusing on the capacity of the state to deliver the services. That's key. And I felt during the migration crisis, if you— you'll have to tackle all 3 areas. And it's absolutely crucial to make a distinction between what you can actually control, which is labor market immigration, and the area that must at no cost or under no conditions become linked to the labor market integration. Because once that happens, once you feel you can offer less protection because the labor market is weak or vice versa, the labor market is strong, why not accepting more irregular migration into the labor market? Then I think you're really undermining the principle of acceptance and tolerance. Because last point, there will always be irregular migration. People in an age of mobility come for 3 reasons. The first one is because it's possible, or it has become possible. Second, because they have good reasons to leave their country. And third, because there are incentives to be mobile. And it is of crucial importance that you make a distinction here between those who actually deserve, are entitled to protection, And then you need to act swiftly to ensure it, and those who are not. And the capacity of a state to take, to make decisions and to be consistent about it, to be quick about it, and to be transparent about it, I found that to be key to retain acceptance of migration, of protection, and of change.

[00:24:28.01] - Trevor Phillips

Very good. Number one fan. I want to come back to this issue of state capacity in a moment, but let's stick with— let's see if we can set a boundary around the problem. What do you think, Catherine? What should we be most concerned about?

[00:24:44.21] - Catherine Rampell

So I mostly focus on domestic policy issues, so I'm going to come at this from a very American-centric point of view. For which I apologize, but you have the rest of this panel to talk about the the international perspectives. So, in the United States, I would argue that we have two very big at least incentives for why we should be thinking about making a more generous and more orderly immigration system. One is the moral argument, right? That that we have some duty to be the moral beacon around the world. This improves us with our soft power if we are, among other things, among, you know, the feel-good reasons for following our values, if we are providing safe haven for people around the world who are persecuted, who are looking for the city on the hill to come to and contribute to. The other argument is frankly economic. And it's not always the case that the things that are moral are also lucrative, but in this case, it turns out to be fortuitously so. And there are a lot of reasons why we might want to think about reforming our immigration system because of the major economic benefits that immigration has historically provided, and I think will continue to provide in this era of disruption that we're talking about. And so some of that are the things that you all probably know, things like immigrants are much more likely to start new businesses. They contribute a lot of innovation and dynamism to the US economy. There's been a bunch of research looking at how immigrants, like in the sciences, for example, not only are productive in how much they invent and innovate and research and patent, But also they make U.S.-born scientists much more productive. There's been a bunch of cool historical research looking at the Quota Acts and how that affected the productivity of U.S.-born scientists, just as an example. So there are a lot of reasons there. You can look at the Fortune 500 and what share of companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. I'm sure people in this audience know those statistics better than I do. But I do also want to focus specifically on the fiscal question. Which was raised before about the demographics. So, as this audience may know, Social Security, just as an example, is going to go broke in a few years. And it's going to go broke largely because of our demographics. It's also partly about the structure of the plan itself, the program itself. But it's that we have a lot of people who are aging, who are aging into retirement. And we just don't have that many young people who are paying taxes into the pot of money that then ultimately gets paid out to current retirees. And the Social Security— the trustees of Social Security put out a report every year looking at the finances of the Social Security Trust Fund and when it's going to go broke, et cetera, et cetera. And if you look at their underlying assumptions, They assume that fertility rates in the United States are going to rebound. Last year we had total fertility rates in the United States, so that's like how many children a woman is likely to have over the course of her childbearing years, at a record low, 1.57 or something based on the preliminary data. The Social Security Trust Fund assumes that we're going to rebound basically to where we were historically. That we're, despite all evidence, despite what we've seen in other countries, despite the fact that fertility rates are coming down even among the population of people who historically had had more babies, and those are immigrants, the Hispanic population in particular, despite the fact that they are also sort of assimilating, integrating, and having fewer kids just like the rest of the American-born population, despite that, despite the fact that we have fewer immigrants coming into this country, We're going to have this sudden rebound where there's going to be a baby boom that's going to happen soon. So I don't think there are political reasons for this. I think it's just like they're kind of out of date. They've, they've ratcheted down some of their numbers to be a little bit more realistic. They thought that we were going to be back to like 1.92 babies per kid— excuse me, per woman. Now they're at 1.75. But again, last year we had a historic low of around 1.5, 1.6. So that's part of the issue. The numbers also assume that the number of new legal permanent residents that we're going to get in this country every year is gonna be about what it's been historically, a little over a million a year, I believe. Again, I will leave it to other people in this room to tell me if that is realistic given current policy and the, the processing queue and everything else that's going on. But so there are a lot of assumptions that are unrealistic about how our fiscal picture is going to look that are overly optimistic. And already the outcome of those overly optimistic inputs is not great. So all of these are reasons why it might be beneficial for the United States to consider finding some way to allow in more immigrants, again, in a way that is hopefully politically palatable to the country. But one way you might think about that is by showing the public some of these numbers, like you're gonna retire soon, this program's gonna go bust. And by the way, we could bring in some working age immigrants who wanna be here, who wanna contribute, who wanna start their own companies and contribute their skills and et cetera, et cetera. That they would help you continue in your retirement. There's been a bunch of other studies recently looking at the consequences of the recent rise in deportations and ICE activity, which suggests also that not only is that taking out the number of immigrants who are employed, but it's also having a depressing effect on the number of native-born Americans who you're employed. I can talk more about that research if it's of interest. But in any event, there are a lot of reasons, a lot of economic and in addition to moral reasons why we should be thinking about reforming our immigration system again to redound to the benefit of Native Americans.

[00:31:24.17] - Trevor Phillips

Thank you. Well, when we talk about politics, I think we should reflect on some of the excellent work that's been done actually by MPI trying to answer the question, do facts make a difference? I think, if I may say so, I think I'd love to say the jury is out, but I'm not sure that I can stand it. Well, I was gonna say, I'm not sure I can stand that one up. I want to believe it. Doris, you've seen the kind of wash of this over the last 20 years, and one thing I think we can probably agree, it matters more actually than I think when we first met in all sorts of ways I don't think any of us could imagine. Though I read that there is at least one person in the United States who thinks that the immigration problem has been solved because the southern border is sorted. Is he right?

[00:32:34.28] - Doris Meissner

You really decided to throw me one, right? So I too am going to join Catherine in being US-focused here, and I will try to be very immediate and you're setting it up that way allows for that to be the case. Yes, the southern border is fixed. We should concede that. We should recognize all of us know that it began in the prior administration, but President Trump should get credit for the fact that at this point, depending on what you think the border is fixed really means, We are not having inordinate flows of people coming into the country illegally, whether to claim asylum or whether to work. It is no longer the front burner issue. Now, that fixing has brought with it all kinds of elements that are against the law, are against many of the values that we hold as a nation, et cetera. But if we're just talking straight about the issues and what is on the public mind and where we go from here, the border at the present time is a controlled border. What do we do with that going forward is a whole another question because of what I've just said. There are— many of the things are against the law. Many of the things are against our values. Etc. But what I'd like to do with this issue of the problem is to just establish as a premise that the border right now is not the issue in public opinion. What is happening presently to me that is the problem is that the border has receded from public attention. The administration that we now have has argued that its efforts have been an effort at mass deportations in order to remove criminals from the country, and that the effort is one of dealing with, we would say, unauthorized or illegal immigration. But that's what we hear, and that's what we're seeing. And there is an enormous amount, as we all know, of cruelty and of very unprofessional enforcement activity taking place, etc., etc. What is much more under the radar is what is happening with our legal immigration system, because this is a president who all along said. That his efforts were illegal immigration. But when we really look at what's happening, and when we start to look at some of the numbers, it is alarming what's taking place with legal immigration, which leads to the kinds of things I think that Katherine is talking about and a couple of things that I'd like to point out that I think have to really be of concern to us as a country. So with legal immigration, it's death by a thousand cuts. It's all kinds of tiny little measures that don't get the attention of something like a Minneapolis or a surge, you know, in Los Angeles. It is all kinds of technical changes, and there are so many people in this room that understand exactly what that is like. I'm looking at all of their faces. But that is what's happening, and what is happening is that we are really choking our legal immigration system through USCIS, the agency in DHS that was responsible statutorily for facilitating legal immigration, having renamed and seen its mission as one of fighting fraud and fighting what is believed and seen to be misuse of the immigration system, to the point that we now have pending caseload of people legally applying, people that are applying through the legal measures for which they are eligible, not able to get an adjudication on their cases. More than half of the cases that are pending now in the U.S. immigration system are way over the timelines of when it is that they are supposed to be decided. Where the visa system is concerned, it's similar on the consular side with visas being issued. We are issuing 32%, one-third less immigration visas to come to this country than we typically do through our legal system. We have reduced the numbers of non-immigrant consular visa issuances by more than 20%. And of incredible importance that I wanna come back to is the reduction in the issuance of visas to foreign students, which is at about a 20% level. That is adding up to, along with the mass deportations and along with lots of other banned countries, all kinds of other measures. That is adding up to the fact that this year we probably will end the year at about 45% less legal immigration than we typically have. We typically have legal immigration of about 1 million people a year. It will probably come in— we're now— well, we're at the end of the fiscal year. We don't have the numbers yet, but it will probably come in at just a little more than half of that. What that means— that has lots and lots of implications, but 2 of them that I want to mention are coming back to foreign students. Our international education, our higher education enterprise in this country is one of our crown jewels as a country in the world. But those foreign students that are part of the ability to take advantage of that resource that we have as a country is our lifeline, not the only one, but is an incredibly important lifeline for us in science and in innovation and in the ability to be technologically a leader. Go ahead. Going forward. And so the starving of that system, the starving of the ability of our institutions of higher education to be including foreign students in their student bodies will have a very negative long-term impact on our ability as a country to maintain technology leadership and innovation leadership around the world. Now, this is not to say that we don't have American-born kids that we're graduating that are well equipped, et cetera, but typically not in science and engineering and in the fields that we need in order to be globally competitive. The other thing that is the result, of course, of what's going on with legal immigration does have to do with the reductions in legal immigration and the effects of mass deportations on our economy and economic growth overall. And we are now seeing that. We are now seeing what the effects are of less workers in our labor market at a time that we're aging and at a time, as you pointed out, with fertility. And so for the first time I mean, within the last year or so, I don't ever remember the chairman of the Fed, Wall Street Journal editorials, people like you who talk about the macroeconomy talking about human capital. And because it hasn't been shrinking, but it is now shrinking. And if it shrinks, if these trends persist, I mean, we can get over a couple of years of this, But if these trends persist, they are building in now a smaller economy and a really reduced ability to compete globally in terms of science and technology. And I think those longer-term implications of what's going on in legal immigration will last far longer than the enforcement issues that we're dealing with.

[00:41:33.24] - Trevor Phillips

Okay, we've ranged a pretty widely from what Doris has just been talking about, essentially marginal reductions adding up to something bigger, the issues of whether we should separate our thinking about labor market from protection, the question and some of the questions about which you probably can't expect governments to fix, but they need to respond to, which are demographics, perhaps even labor market, the kind of labor market uncertainty that Meghan referred to. But underlying, I think, something that you've all been talking about is what can government do? Now, we've seen, as you were saying, this administration has demonstrated that it can do certain things. And be by its own light successful. And you can have an argument about whether you like what they've done and all that, but governments can have an impact. But I still think there's a basic underlying public question about state capacity. You know, we can talk about all of these things, but can you actually get anything done? And Let me just throw something on the table because I hadn't intended to raise this, but listening to you all, I'm thinking about the fact that you could argue that one of the reasons for loss of public trust has been what seemed to be, looking back over the 25 years, some blunders of one kind or another. We could talk about the most recent one, which I aspect here would be regarded the management of the ICE process, which I think most people, whatever your stance on immigration, would regard as having been badly handled. We could think about, certainly in the UK case, the idea under Boris Johnson that, you know, we were going to regularize everything and so on and so on, and we regularized things in such a way that we had suddenly nearly a million net migration, which is 3 times the long-run average. And of course, spectacularly— I'm going to come to you, Emily— 2015, which felt good at the time, but perhaps, as we're seeing now, has ended us with at least a political situation which most people would say is undesirable. What do you think?

[00:44:11.16] - Emily Haber

I talked about state capacity. I wasn't even beginning to think about what both of you have described, and that is a multilayered state pushback against immigration. So it's a— my argument is a completely different one. You see, in 2015, you said it felt good at the time. I very well remember how public thinking changed early in 2015. It's true that there was probably a majority in the German society that said, what the heck, we need migration and we need to accept these people for moral reasons. And it was the major argument in the public debate at the time, and it changed over the year. And what made it change was a public sense that the government wasn't in control anymore. You see, you made the very good argument on the benefits of migration. I totally agree. But you see, public debates don't happen in the space of statistics and economics. They happen in the context of personal experiences in municipalities, what happens at schools, what happens with traffic, what happens with government services, how's housing, etc. And if people then have the sense that the government is actually overwhelmed, it cannot provide the services, it is not in control, then it's toxic. It's toxic because it eats away at public confidence. And that was at the beginning of the changing mood, not only in Germany but also in Europe. So I continue to make the argument In the face of— it was irregular migration, right? In the face of a huge surge in irregular migration, the necessary answer is what people need to see. They will always debate on migration and the merits of migration. But if they see institutions and processes that are efficient, fairly quick, or at least happening in acceptable timeframes, and are then being implemented consistently, which means that you offer protection to those who are entitled, and those who are not entitled need actually to return, and that needs to be implemented. And if there is a lack of implementation, it's seen as a lack of consistency, and that too is a fuel for declining confidence.

[00:46:53.19] - Trevor Phillips

Catherine, Demetrios Papademetriou, I can't tell you the number of times I heard him say at meetings, That nobody will ever come round unless they believe that the government is in control, the government is capable. The thing that strikes me about what Emily's just said, and I'll add this, not only was the political leadership, you know, pretty much at one on this in 2015, but the Germans spent enormous amounts of money on integration. I mean, a lot of money. Yeah. We're talking, you know, billions. I know the words billions don't come out of a British mouth very easily these days. You know, we scrape together pennies these days, but it still didn't work, wasn't convincing. Do you think you're making the case that governments, political leadership should make the case, but it didn't work?

[00:47:53.11] - Catherine Rampell

Well, I can say, again, I can speak to the US experience more so than the European one. But in the United States, if you look at polling, even Trump supporters say they support legal immigration. And this is not a question necessarily of integration. This is a question of law and order, right? To your point, that if people feel like the government is out of control, if they feel like There is a lack of order. That's, that's really what they say they object to. And so even among Republicans and among Trump supporters, there is support for legal immigration, whether that means selecting based on particular skill sets or whatever measure you might use to determine who could integrate or assimilate more easily, I don't know. I'm sure different people, but I think most people probably haven't thought that deeply about the question because they haven't had need to. The question is, I think, how do you reconcile those attitudes and even sometimes some of the rhetoric from this administration saying— Donald Trump says that he wants to build a wall with a big beautiful door, right, that there is a way for people to come in— with what we heard from Doris about the attacks on the legal immigration system, given that the people, to the extent that there is a right way to come in here, the people who came in the right way are also having their visas withdrawn, having their status taken away, being summarily deported, and sometimes, you know, sort of kidnapped off of the streets, whether they're international students or otherwise. And, and so I, I don't know how you reconcile those things, given that, again, if the main thing that voters, at least in the United States, seem to care about when we talk about integration is really more about integration into a lawful society, and the administration's actions seem to contradict those stated preferences of the public and to some extent the stated preferences of our president. And I don't know how to explain that exactly, except that, to Doris's point, a lot of the attacks on the legal immigration system, on the kinds of programs that might help with assimilation and integration for the refugee community, for example, lots of resources withdrawn there as well. I think those are just less visible. And the kind of gothic horrors that you see exhibited by ICE are much more visible and people are horrified by them, but maybe there is some sense of relief that, like, if the government was out of control before, at least there's some order coming to the system now.

[00:50:43.13] - Trevor Phillips

In the session that Cecilia will chair, we'll talk a little bit more about some of the specifics about integration, but we haven't talked about that at all in this session yet. And I just want to raise with you, Meghan, and you, Doris, if you like, The politics question. One of the things that has rather— I don't want to use the word alarm because, you know, we don't— we report these things rather than have feelings about them, but it's really rather striking that in Germany and also here, the word remigration has emerged. And I've got to say, it's not one that I think I ever heard in the first 10, 15 years of my time involved with TCM. But we hear the AfD as a central part of its program in recent regional elections, and Mr. Stephen Miller, I think he's called, who thinks this is really a jolly good idea here. I'm interested to know what you both think. First of all, what do you think is meant by this word remigration? And secondly, how did we get here? I mean, how did we get to a place where this seems like a thing that's worth talking about? Either of you.

[00:52:11.29] - Doris Meissner

I have to say, I have not really heard the term. What does it mean?

[00:52:17.17] - Trevor Phillips

Well, I think in plain old English we would say send them home.

[00:52:21.10] - Doris Meissner

Okay, all right, because when I heard you say it, I thought it meant people that were coming again after having been removed from the country, which does—

[00:52:30.09] - Trevor Phillips

I think very much the opposite of that.

[00:52:31.18] - Doris Meissner

All right, well, but I mean, that happens too. What, in other words, what does one think about, what do we think about removal?

[00:52:40.05] - Trevor Phillips

Well, what do we think? I suppose I'm really asking this as a kind of the notion this is a political discussion that you might be thinking about essentially removal of legal migrants actually.

[00:52:52.01] - Doris Meissner

Oh, of legal migrants. Well, from a United States point of view, that is a heresy. I mean, as it has been said, I mean, with legal migration is legal migration. I mean, we are a migration country. We have laws. You should be able to come, you know, if you're eligible. Now, we can certainly argue about what our legal immigration system encompasses, and any of us would argue if we had time what, how our immigration laws should change to be more responsive to labor market needs, to, you know, our laws are completely out of date. They are not modern. To me, that is the biggest problem that we have is a legal system that does not in any way align or does not sufficiently align with where we are as a country and where we are going as a country. We should have a legal system that does make it possible for people to come here for purposes in greater numbers beyond family members and beyond, well, But even now for work purposes, it's hardly functioning in that way. So we deeply need to change our law, but we are totally committed to being a nation of laws as well as a nation of immigration. And the notion that you would somehow— I mean, that's denaturalization. We would call that— I mean, people would not be required to leave from this country if they Anyway, I almost can't talk about it because it just doesn't— it doesn't calculate. It just doesn't calculate.

[00:54:39.10] - Meghan Benton

It's such a good encapsulation of the way the conversation has gone in Europe, which is really about slogans, mottos, and trying to out-cool each other. And it's very much, you know, you mentioned it was an AfD phrase, but you see these mainstream politicians trying to emulate it, trying to copy it, as if control is a volume switch that they can sort of turn up and up and up and get louder and louder. That's not what publics want. You know, as we've discussed, they want orderly systems, they want fairness. They do want to see people returned if their asylum systems are rejected at the end of the process on a timely basis. They don't want to see longstanding members stripped of status and the harms that that causes.

[00:55:23.26] - Trevor Phillips

Just quickly on this, Meghan, because I know you spent a lot of time thinking and working on this. As you say, publics want to see the system work. They want to see people being processed faster. They want to think, now we've got all the tools, we've got AI, we've got this, we've got all the intent. Everybody, every government that comes in, in virtually every Western country, says we're going to do this faster. They don't. Why?

[00:55:49.14] - Meghan Benton

Asylum processing is now incredibly fast in the UK, but all of the backlog is in the appeals system, as I'm sure you well know. Yeah, so that, that is the main challenge. So even if you have incredible AI tools, it doesn't solve that, that fundamental challenge. Meanwhile, many of you may have seen that the UK tried to do something interesting, which was have a deal with the French to have a safe pathway from France, and in return they would send back people who arrived on a small boat. That is the seeds of a sensible system. There is a safe route, and you will be sent back if you arrive on a small boat. But they couldn't do a deal with the French to get that continued.

[00:56:29.04] - Emily Haber

It was possible with Turkey, by the way, in 2015.

[00:56:37.02] - Trevor Phillips

Okay, you're tempting me to to have a very British response to any idea of a deal with the French. They can't even keep their children in school now. Anyway, let's see if we've got any questions anybody wants to raise. We've got a few minutes here that if anybody wants to— I can see a hand right there, the lady's hand in purple-pink.

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

[00:57:02.29] - Speaker 7

Yes. Hi, what a great panel. I'm Olivia Golden, and I've been introducing myself lately by saying I'm a birthright citizen. I'm the first American-born in my family. And I actually want to build on something Katherine said, also Doris. So let me ask the question, then give a little context. I guess you've been talking a lot about how to deal with a public that wants less immigration or is anxious about immigration. I think there's a good case to make that right now in the United States, the hatefulness, the out-of-controlness, the violence of ICE, the attacks on people with legal status, The attacks on children— I actually, I could obviously, as Katherine knows, talk about this for an hour, but an enormous amount of the administration's energy has been concentrated on harming US-born children of immigrant parents of all statuses. The polling suggests that people are very upset with that. That's not the America they wanted. And so I guess I want to ask the question of How should we seize this opportunity? I have my own answers of what's most important to seize it for in terms of redressing some of the harms and holding people accountable. But in this panel, if that is an opportunity that people really feel strongly that the attacks on the rule of law in the context of immigration and on immigrants and on citizens who look like immigrants— this has also clearly been about race in the United States— How should we seize that opportunity? What would be your top priorities?

[00:58:36.14] - Speaker 2

Okay, let's take a couple more, then I'm going to just let the panel respond to anyone that they like. So that's one, ICE as a political opportunity, not something I've heard proposed very often. Yeah, the gentleman.

[00:58:49.23] - Speaker 8

I'd like to talk about the unions a little bit. I'm not surprised, and I'll remain nameless since this is being taped, but... So, so Katherine and Doris, we all know that— we all know the Social Security statistics. You can't rebut them. They're true. There's a lot of studies, of course, that support the benefits of immigration. It's going to expand the economic pie. Why is it so hard to get the unions behind immigration reform? They should support it even without asylum or amnesty, just because it's going to support the economic pie. But even if you include asylum or legalization, they're tough to get on board. And I think the answer, unfortunately, is because most Americans, or at least the vocal ones, still don't believe that immigration is good for this country. And what— and I think that's true for legal immigration, because you can look at the H-1B program right now is under attack. I mean, we raised it to 198,000 under Spence Abraham. Look, look at where we are now. We're defending the basic program. So we're going backwards. But the real question is, is why aren't the unions there? And we need them because they are at the forefront of representing— well, arguably representing the American worker, and you got to have them as part of this equation. But they're not there. Why aren't they if the facts are that compelling in support of immigration reform?

[01:00:07.24] - Speaker 2

Thank you. I thought I saw one more hand. Gentleman over there towards the back. Thank you.

[01:00:16.11] - Speaker 9

Randy Capps, former MPI. Great reunion. Thanks for the panel. Ambassador Haber raised a really important question about competence of government and capacity of government. And building off the comment about unions, there's a lot of difference of socioeconomic circumstances within the US and within Germany. And I think a lot of native-born citizens in both countries who don't feel the government is working for them. And that may be a legitimate thing that needs to be traded off against how well the government works for immigrants. You drive 2 hours from here into rural and deindustrialized areas, and people do not have the same opportunities that we have here or that immigrants have here. So I wanted to comment on that. Thanks.

[01:01:05.22] - Speaker 2

Okay. Let's start. If we've got a few minutes, so you've each got about a minute and a bit to speak. Katherine, you want to start with this point about the unions, and then the rest of you, perhaps you might want to talk about the ICE opportunity. And I think the generalized point— this is not true about the United States— that the difference between, if you like, in the Beltway and outside of the Beltway, it's true in the United States, it's Spectacularly true actually in France, the difference in sentiment between those connected and those who benefited from globalization and those who have not. So, Catherine.

[01:01:47.11] - Speaker 3

You know, I'm not sure that I would agree that the unions have been like so against immigration. I think historically that was the case. I think that's less so now. There's also a question of like, what do you mean when you say the unions? Are we talking about the leaders? Are we talking about the rank and file? Because we saw in the 2024 election, just as an example, who the unions endorsed, the leadership endorsed, and who their rank and file voted for were kind of different things. But I think this comes back to this question that was raised at the end of people in America, whether they're in unions or otherwise, if they feel like they're They're experiencing some sort of economic stagnation. They're falling behind. It's very easy for demagogues to say the problem is the people with the brown skin. This is not a new strategy, but it's much easier to say, here's your scapegoat. And again, I don't hear the union leadership saying that, but I think that that might explain why People in Rust Belt cities who may have been union members or not, but feel like their their local area was hollowed out because of globalization, probably largely because of automation as well.

[01:03:07.20] - Speaker 3

It's easy for demagogues to take a hold of that very real frustration that people have and blame a very convenient villain. And and I think that's. Part of the issue here. So I see it more as being about like economic stagnation and frustration, and less so about like the actual institutions of the unions. I think it's about people falling prey to narratives that are convenient.

[01:03:35.29] - Speaker 2

Meghan, then Doris, respond to any of those questions if you want. I mean, you don't have to. Be interesting to hear what you think coming out of this discussion. MPI will still be here in another 25 years. I'll still be coming to get my 100th— 100 years thing. What do you think the big challenge for the organization, or what should we be thinking about? So, Emily.

[01:04:04.27] - Speaker 4

It, once again, it might be a European point of view. First, you see, I stick to the point. That publics will assess migrations in the context of their personal experience, how the state copes with it. But it's also a fact that the early lack of control has produced a situation where the migration issue was sucked into completely different topics of alienation, of the differences between Eastern and Western German states, anti-globalism and anti-elitism, and that's very difficult to undo now. The second point, and here I take up what you said, what can MPI do? We've heard a lot of pleas for the benefits of immigration, and I totally agree, we need migration for for many reasons. But if you have this discussion on migration and the benefits of migration without having a discussion on the social costs or other costs of migration, which also are a fact, then you will not convince publics, which at present tend to be, at least in European states, tend to be skeptical. So it's a combination of actually Giving them the entire picture and being frank about it, and making their concerns being heard, and being efficient in doing what you do. I think the combination is essential for regaining public confidence in in the merits and benefits and actually urgency.

[01:05:57.08] - Speaker 5

Thank you. Great question, Trevor. Very provocative. I also hope that MPI will still be here in 25 years. So I really hope that we continue to play that honest broker role and really bring to light some of the issues that don't get enough traction. I mean, we were talking just before this session started about crime being a major concern in Europe. The top immigration concern. It's very difficult for governments to talk about security issues. I hope that MPI can continue to surface and discuss those things in its sort of neutral and supportive way. I think one challenge is that migration is no longer a standalone issue, and increasingly, home departments, interior departments, they can't alone discuss immigration either. It's so mainstreamed Across everything, and increasingly the most useful tools for migration issues come from other portfolios. Trade, for instance. Some of the most interesting thinking about labor migration is coming from health and social care. So, so that's one challenge.

[01:07:05.17] - Speaker 6

Well, I don't know that I want to take up what MPI can do in the next 25 years. I mean, because, you know, we have talked about it. Because we do believe in facts and we do believe in evidence and information, and that is more and more difficult in terms of penetrating. But I do think that this point that Meghan makes and that we talk about a lot now is that there— immigration is no longer a niche silo issue. When so many of us began with this, it was on the margins. It was not— Right. It was just its own space and people didn't want to mess with it because it is messy. But it now is mainstream. It completely permeates so many, many other sectors. And so I think that the degree to which we can be helpful in that lateral permeating, you know, in terms of you can get at these issues through healthcare, you can get at these issues through education, you can get at these issues through economic growth and innovation, etc. I, I think that that's what we would see ourselves wanting to do. But, you know, in the near term, to Olivia's issues about ICE, etc., I mean, that is the next big challenge, is that we have seen in this administration a whole-of-government approach. All of us that had been in the government in the past would have wished for more of a whole-of-government approach in terms of things that we might have wanted to do. How can a whole-of-government approach actually be organized and mobilized to do immigration the way it ought to be done, as compared to having it be done in a way that is characterized as a threat to the country? In fact, it is an advantage for the country. So that centrality going forward. Hopefully is one of the things that can continue based on what it is that we've seen, but in a different form.

[01:09:13.19] - Speaker 2

Thank you. I didn't ask— partly I did ask about the next 25 years, partly as a tease, but actually picking up particularly something that Meghan said, it occurred to me that when the Transatlantic Council first met, oddly enough, We didn't talk very much in terms of the foreign policy departments of governments. But in the latter years, actually, the approach to third countries and relationship to development policy and so on has become integral to the way that we think about it. And I just wanted to say that because actually it's worth looking back over the time because you can see how things have shifted. And I particularly wanted to draw attention to that because I would say that actually this organization has actually led the way in making that part of the conversation of governments pretty much right around the world. It is possible to make at least the conversation change, even if maybe you Can't make all the things change. But anyway, Meghan, Emily, Catherine, Doris, fantastic panel. Thank you so much. Thank you.