21st Annual Immigration Law & Policy Conference

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[00:00:00.11] - Katharine Donato

My name is Katharine Donato. I am part of the Institute for the Study of International Migration in the School of Foreign Service here at Georgetown. And I want to welcome everyone to our conference today. It will be quite a full day, so we're quite excited. I don't really want to say anything more except to welcome all of you, to say all of your comments and your Q&A when we line up for Q&A are welcome. And I do want to thank Clinic, MPI, and Georgetown Law Center for once again holding the conference here in Lohrfink on main campus. So with that, I will turn the mic over.

[00:00:43.16] - Anna Gallagher

Thank you, Katharine. Thank you, Katharine, and good morning. Thank you for being here. And before I start, I want to thank MPI for doing such an excellent job in leading the preparation for the conference this year. And I thank Georgetown Law School, my colleagues from Georgetown Law School, and we are excited about this presentation. My name is Anna Gallagher. I am the executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. We're an organization of 450 affiliates across the country that provide immigration legal services to poor and low-income immigrants. I thought I'd start with just very short remarks on our values, the organization's values, to ground us as we listen, participate, and receive and share during this conference. MPI is guided by the belief that countries need to have a sensible, well-thought-out immigration and integration policy and policies to ensure the best outcomes for both immigrants and receiving communities. As a Catholic and Jesuit student-centered university, Georgetown was founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding. CLINIC, as a Catholic organization, our task is to welcome immigrants, refugees, and displaced persons into full participation in the church and in our communities with equal rights and equal duties.

We represent newcomers from all countries, religions, social groups, creeds, and ethnic backgrounds because of our Catholic identity, and that is who we are. And with those words, I'll pass it to my colleague, Professor Andy Schoenholtz from Georgetown Law. Again, thank you for being here.

[00:02:39.29] - Andrew Schoenholtz

Thank you so much. Uh, welcome everybody, people who are joining us virtually, everyone who came early and is here for our first extraordinary keynote speaker. Thank you for being here. This is our 21st year. It's an extraordinary program. I love working with my colleagues at MPI and clinic. We are very lucky at Georgetown Law to do that. I'm here simply to welcome you on behalf of the Dean of the Law School, Bill Treanor. My name is Andy Schoenholtz. You'll be seeing me later. I'm a professor who directs the Asylum Clinic at Georgetown. I teach immigration classes. We have a whole array of courses and activities that students engage in, including going to the border during breaks to assist those who are being detained at the border. So we have a full program. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here. We look forward to your questions and discussions during the day. And I'll turn this over now to Andrew.

[00:03:42.10] - Andrew Selee

Thank you, Andy. Welcome again. I think you've been welcomed a lot, but we really do appreciate you being here, both those that are here at Georgetown University and those that are online. We have about 800 people signed up online in addition to those in the room, so we really appreciate you spending some time with us, and we hope this is an insightful and provocative day. We are very thankful to CLINIC and to Georgetown Law, our partners. For the 21st time, the Law and Policy Conference. This has really become an institution, but it's grown over time, and we really appreciate working with them. We're very thankful to Katharine Donato and her colleagues at Georgetown University on the main campus, at SFS, and at ISIM. And let me just commend Katharine also for starting a master's program along with Beth Ferris in migration and refugee studies. I highly recommend that to you, and I've had the pleasure of actually teaching with Katharine on and off for 5 years now, so I can highly recommend that class to anyone out there that is interested. And let me also thank the staff of all three institutions that put this together.

And particularly on our side, I want to recognize Doris Meissner and Muz Chishti and Michelle Mittelstadt and Lisa Dixon, who are really the driving force in putting this together. Thank you. And with that, we're going to turn to our first discussion. We're going to turn to substance here. We are really delighted to have Amy Pope here. We know you have an incredible schedule. I follow you, so I know, you know, I follow your travels. It's quite exhausting, actually. But Amy is the Director-General of the International Organization for Migration since October 1st, 2023. If anyone's counting, tomorrow will be her 1-year anniversary. She is the first woman— yes, that deserves applause. She is the first woman to lead IOM. But I should also say she's just a dynamic and visionary person. And someone who has injected energy and new directions into the work of IOM. Before this, she was a senior immigration advisor to President Biden. She was the deputy Homeland Security advisor to President Obama. Somewhere out there— this is not in my notes— but somewhere out there, if you look her name in MPI, you will see she also published a really good piece on the US immigration system through MPI.

So years ago, between administrations, and she's had many other— you can see her bio in the program— but has had many other senior positions throughout her career. We are— before we launch into the discussion here, let me say for those of you that are online, there is a Q&A function where you can ask questions and answers. Once we're done with the discussion here, we will go to questions and answers. Those in the room can do it, you know, the old analog way by standing up. We'll explain that. But those of you online, you have to use the Q&A function, not the chat function, but the Q&A function. And we'll do that throughout the day here. So without further ado, we're going to dive in, Amy. And since it's been a year, and actually I remember a year ago, I remember we had that meeting on Asia, Migration in Asia, was the day before, the Friday before you were about to take over. So I saw you literally on your last working day before you became Director-General. You were already, you were Deputy Director-General, but you were de facto already sort of in functions there. But it's great to see you a year later.

And so let me start off by asking you, what has changed over the past year? What has surprised you? What is new? I mean, you've worked on these issues your entire career, but when you're in a different position, you start to see things differently and you have new perspectives. What have you learned over the past year and what surprised you out of that?

[00:07:15.13] - Amy Pope

So first of all, I have to start by saying hello to all of you. It's fantastic to be here. I've been working with MPI since my very, very first days of working on migration. And in fact, when I was a young staffer working on Judiciary Committee, it was MPI who advised me on how we could create a more balanced, responsive migration system. So this for me is an important part of the place where new ideas get hatched and vetted. And so it's great to be here and to be here with the staff and the students of Georgetown. So, okay, what has surprised me? I mean, there are a couple of things. One, I think at this moment in time, we are living in a moment where there are more people on the move than ever before, right? And they're moving for a whole variety of reasons. Of course, people are moving because of conflict. Right now, there are over 10 million displaced as a result of the war in Sudan. There are people who are moving because of poverty, because they just don't have options at home. And there are people who are moving because of climate change.

And I came to this job because I believed that we as a global community, as an international community, had we have failed to create solutions and responses to the people who are moving who do not qualify as refugees. And that's not to say we don't need to very, very fiercely guard refugee protections, because we do. We see what's playing out in the world today. But what it does mean is that the vast majority of people who are on the move today, many of whom are leaving in extremely vulnerable circumstances, just don't have the mechanisms by which they can seek safety, by which they can seek protection, by which communities can come together to build out ways to capture the tremendous talent and human potential that exists. So that concept that we need to do better in responding to the movements of people globally is what has really animated my work this year. And what has surprised me— there are a couple of things. One is that we have been in the last year is a world of elections, right? Not just here in the United States, but globally, half the world's population is voting. But we're seeing across the world a very anti-migrant narrative.

Not just, by the way, in the United States. We've seen it play out across Europe. I've seen it at places in Asia and Africa. And that narrative, I think, has been fueled by the fact that migrants are not voting. So migrants are very easy to vilify, and migrants are very easy to pinpoint as the source of problems. But what has really surprised me, and what has become more and more clear the more we've gathered evidence, is that migration is actually going to be a key part of the solution to some of the issues that governments are facing around the world. So we're at this moment where the political rhetoric is so at odds with the reality on the ground and the very urgent, and which will be increasingly urgent, need for better migration policies so we can get better distribution, frankly, of people and resources to lead to more sustainable and inclusive development.

[00:10:42.02] - Andrew Selee

So let me ask you about that. I'm going to actually switch up the questions a little bit here because I think you've hit on something that's really central. We— a lot of countries need workers, right? There's a real need in countries like the United States and Europe and East Asia, but also in a lot of upper middle income countries, right? I mean, for workers. At the same time, there are few parts of the world where people want to leave, either because they have better opportunities or there's not enough jobs as they get to the age of maturity, the working age. And then you have people leaving for conflict. How do we start to match people better? And how do we do it in a way that doesn't create the backlash you're talking about?

[00:11:19.25] - Amy Pope

So this is one of, I think, the most exciting places to work right now, right? This issue of how do we create and match people to opportunities. And I'm actually really heartened by what's happening in the Western Hemisphere because the Western Hemisphere is seeing historical, unprecedented movements of people, in large part because of the situation in Venezuela, but not only. But if you actually start to engage with many of the governments around the Western Hemisphere, you'll recognize that they have labor shortages. So for example, the Prime Minister of Barbados said to me one of the reasons they decided to become a member state of IOM just this past year is because they realize they do not have the, the native-born population to meet their own economic and development objectives. So they need to come up with better migration policies. I've heard the same thing in places like Uruguay, in Brazil, and in Mexico, where last year they had over 1 million jobs go unfilled. So that means there is an opportunity to be engaging with partner governments around the world to start to build out better ways for people to move. Now, you'll notice I didn't speak about the United States there.

And that's deliberate because I think we have, especially in this country, it's natural, but we have kind of overfocused on what is the role of the United States. And if there is not the opportunity to move forward on better migration legislation in the United States, which is basically what's needed, then it's looking to the other partners in the hemisphere and building out systems that will work for more people who are moving. So that is really where I think there's an opportunity, especially— and to your point about what is surprising me, I've worked my entire government career here in the United States, right? And we are so focused on what are the tools that we could be using in the United States to respond to migration. I think the better focus is what are the tools we can use globally Who are the partners? What are the demographic trends? What are the needs? And then how do we fill the gap between connecting persons who live in communities that may not be fully developed so that they have access to safe, legal, dignified migration?

[00:13:50.20] - Andrew Selee

So what does this— what does this look like in the Western Hemisphere? I mean, how do you create these legal pathways? How do you do the matching? And what is IOM's role? In putting this together?

[00:13:59.24] - Amy Pope

So we're working with governments all across the hemisphere. And there are a couple of things. Some of it is really bureaucratic and technical. Some of it is what are the— and this is work that MPI has done with us, which is really exciting, which is to look at what is the current migration law and policy in various governments around the hemisphere? Who has existing pathways that are not being fully utilized? And who needs better development of their existing bureaucratic procedures. Now, that is not work for the faint of heart. It really requires an understanding of detail and policy and bureaucratic channels. But that's the starting point. We look to see what's available. The second piece is then improving on policies where they're needed. But the third piece, and this is where we at IOM play a key role, is actually matching communities with the job opportunities that might exist and connecting people between what the private sector might be looking for, what governments might be looking for, what communities in need might need in order to reach those opportunities. Now, sometimes people will need skills training. Sometimes people will just need to understand how to get a job opportunity.

Sometimes it's just building a bridge between people and opportunities. There are a variety of ways where we move beyond what happens now frequently in labor markets is that the very high-skilled will be recruited out or will have access to things like LinkedIn. The very low-skilled do not have many options, they end up migrating irregularly. They're more likely to be exploited. They're more likely to be paid low wages. They're more likely to distort labor markets. And frankly, they're more likely to fuel the sort of criminal networks that exist to profit off the backs of very, very poor and vulnerable people. So we see this building these connections as, not only good migration policy, but it could lead to better development policy. It could lead to better enforcement policy. It could lead to better outcomes for more people globally.

[00:16:18.07] - Andrew Selee

That's great. Good. And it obviously brings down the heat also in some of the debates about migration to the extent people are moving through legal channels as well, and a lot of the pushback.

[00:16:28.29] - Amy Pope

Absolutely. And what you see here in the United States is that there are still key sectors of work where there aren't sufficient people who want to do the work. And that is playing out globally. Everywhere I go, I meet with private sector actors. It's the same thing. I hear the same thing everywhere. People do not have a sustainable workforce. And what really— this again surprised me. I've now spoken to companies who say that they will make a decision about whether to invest in a country based on whether there is a labor market that can be— the needs will be filled. So one company invested in Canada because Canada had better migration policies. And they made a decision which ultimately created more jobs for the Canadian economy, created more opportunities for Canadian nationals, but also created opportunities for workers. So that's the kind of— lens that we are trying to bring in partnership with you, in partnership with other actors, and frankly, in partnership with many of the governments who see this.

[00:17:36.13] - Andrew Selee

That's great. One of the other areas that you've been working on, I mean, we've seen in the Western Hemisphere some of the largest migration flows, especially between 2010 and 2020, right? The huge— it was always the region that had the least immigration, but it was the region that had the most increase in immigration. And now you have countries hosting large migrant and refugee populations. Pretty much every country in Latin America and the Caribbean today is an immigrant country. In some countries, it's a large percentage of the populations. Some countries, it was very rapid, in the case of Colombia and Peru. This is something IOM has been deeply involved in, and you've worked closely with UNHCR and with NGOs and with governments in these countries. What do you see? I mean, you've been very effective at getting countries working, partnering with countries as they've developed their own legal pathways for people to stay. But there's a question on the temporariness of legal status. And there are second-generation questions on access to higher education. Most countries were pretty good on access to basic education, primary and secondary, but access to tertiary education, financial access, recognizing credentials. What does IOM— how does IOM partner with countries to move this agenda along that don't have a lot of experience with migration?

[00:18:46.10] - Amy Pope

So I think the first lesson we've seen— and by the way, this is not just for countries without a lot experience, this is a lesson for countries with experience in migration, is that you cannot treat migration just as an area of work for the Department of Homeland Security or the Interior Ministry. And frankly, if you're going to do it well, it cannot be just the responsibility of the national government. The best migration policies are those that are being played out at a micro level. So we— when I was in New York last week for the UN General Assembly High-Level Week, and we did quite a lot of events with the mayor's migration council, and it's at the level of the mayor that you actually start to create better ways of integrating new communities, addressing what are serious and valid concerns. So I think part of the— mistake that many who care about migration policy and work in this issue sometimes make is that we sort of gloss over what are real challenges in terms of integrating, especially when you see a large influx of migrants. If we're going to do this well, you want to have convenings that have the, you know, urban planners, healthcare access, access to education, access to social services.

That needs to be part of the conversation as well. In a couple places right now we're seeing, for example, in Australia and in Canada, the anti-migration rhetoric has actually centered around access to housing. Is there sufficient housing for the influx of migrants in order to do the work, right? And the irony is that that has led to a decrease in migration or conversations about decreasing migration, numbers. At the same time, as the construction industry will say, we actually need hundreds of thousands of more construction workers to come into the country because we do not have enough to build the housing stock to meet the need, right? So in order to get that right, it means that you need to have the various players around the table as you put together your policies around migration. And it also means that We need to be looking out over a series of years to understand what the migration needs will be in various countries and then how we meet them. Now, I don't want to boil this down just to labor migration. I'm talking about labor migration because I see that as an underdeveloped area of work where I think we can see a lot of wins.

But we also need to recognize that there is a very important and valid need to bring the same mindset, this sort of whole-of-society mindset, when we're talking about humanitarian migration or family reunification, right? It's a mistake to leave that conversation just in the hands of one part of the government. If we're gonna do this well, we want to have community actors and a community response.

[00:21:51.25] - Andrew Selee

That's great, and I mean, increasingly, it's hard to tell sometimes who is moving for work and who's moving for humanitarian reasons, right? I mean, this is— these intersect. And so sometimes figuring out how people who might have humanitarian needs can fit into some of these migration pathways is really significant. I know you've talked a lot about that. That's sort of people in these sort of limit, you know, who are sort of in between. They might be able to qualify for being a refugee, they might not, but they won't— you know, how would they have access to some of these migration tools also?

[00:22:20.06] - Amy Pope

And it's really— I mean, that's what we hear from so many of the communities we serve, people do not want to be boiled down to the most vulnerable moment of their life, to the worst moment of their life. People, many, many of the people we speak to, and assuming that from a mental health and psychosocial point of view that they are prepared to do it, many of them find dignity in work, in bringing their skills and capacity into the new communities, in which they settle. And even in places, you know, I was recently in Egypt, and you'll know that there have been millions of Sudanese who've been displaced into Egypt. And I sat down with a group of women, some who were highly educated, an economist, a doctor, a professor at one of the universities, and they were working on handicrafts, right? It was, IOM's program to work with the Sudanese refugees was to enable them to at least have some community where they can come work. And you know, and they, every single one of those women said to me, look, we're very happy to be at least being able to work on handicrafts and sell something, but they were desperate to bring their very deep skills and expertise into the communities in which they now lived, even though they had fled because of the violence and war.

[00:23:42.19] - Andrew Selee

And I think there is a movement that direction, and we saw this in the Western Hemisphere, you know, Part of what has worked is that people have been treated as— have been allowed to stay with various forms of legal status, access education, and start their lives over. And yes, it's hard if you don't get a lot of support up front, but the reality is, and sometimes that's actually a better situation for people to be in, right, is to be able to have the dignity of starting, being able to work again, put their kids in school, and start a new life.

[00:24:10.28] - Amy Pope

And I think it's really important to especially those who work in development policy, to understand the power of giving people the tools and the opportunity to work and to contribute and to be part of their own development. So when we look at an issue like climate change, so to give you perspective, last year there were more new displacements as a result of climate impact than as a result of conflict. That's startling. And then you think, well, there are over 200 million people who currently live in communities that are highly vulnerable to climate change. And you know, we're watching right now the situation play out across the southeastern United States where people are displaced internally as a result of the hurricane that's come up. When that kind of storm comes through a less resilient community, you can see how they quickly lose their homes, they lose their livelihoods, they lose their future. So what we'd like to do is to start to forecast which communities are most at risk of displacement as a result of climate change. And then rather than wait until millions of people have been displaced and we're coming up with some humanitarian visa, can we instead rethink the problem set and identify communities that are at risk?

And what are the interventions that we could use now either to enable them to stay or to get skills they need to adapt or to migrate safely and with dignity? So again, it's a complete mind shift on how we think about the impact of climate change, how we think about development, And then what is the role of migration as we respond to some of the most pressing challenges of the moment?

[00:26:06.05] - Andrew Selee

So this has been another major issue that you've embraced, right? I mean, climate change and migration was another of the things, in addition to legal pathways, that was central to, to your proposals when you started in this role. I mean, this, this takes you into new territory for IOM, right? Because this is not just about moving.

[00:26:22.25] - Amy Pope

Yeah.

[00:26:23.01] - Andrew Selee

And it's just not about dealing with the people who've already moved as a result of a climate event. You're talking also about adaptation, you're talking about skills, you're talking about prevention, as well as mobility and options for mobility. You get— you start crossing into some of the debates that's happening in the development world here, some of the debates going on in the humanitarian world. Where does IOM fit into this?

[00:26:45.11] - Amy Pope

So, first of all, IOM is not the only organization working in this space, and it's really important that We are— I mean, we don't have the capacity to address all of this. But what I want to do is to use our knowledge and understanding about how and why people move and inject it into the debate and the development conversations about how we build resilience and how we enable communities to adapt. And we are— as an organization, we are uniquely positioned to do that, first because we are one of the one of the few that actually work across the peace, development, and humanitarian response space. So we see it play out all the time. But more importantly, there's nobody else working on the issue of climate mobility, even though hundreds of millions of people are at risk of displacement. And what I see, I think many of us who work in the humanitarian space see, is there are a range of incentives to respond to the disaster. You make— you get lots of money in, you can scale up really fast, and you meet a very urgent, very visible need. But the amount of money that we are now spending to respond to the humanitarian disaster, and then the long-term projections for that displaced communities' future are just not fit for purpose.

And frankly, at a moment in time where governments are cutting humanitarian spending, will fail to meet the vast need that exists. So from my perspective, it is the responsible, cost-efficient, human life-focused response to start to develop a range of interventions that can come in on the front And whether it's we who respond to it, whether it's another agency, whether it's, you know, getting the World Bank or the African Development Bank into the conversation, that's how we start to change what we're doing. So one example, in Somalia, over 3 million people displaced by drought. People who are living in already conflict-affected areas who have very, very, very low resilience to climate change. So the traditional response, and this is the response we and others have been engaged in, is just provide some shelter, some hygiene kits, some basic life-saving support to those who've already moved. Rather than waiting for people to move, we are now starting to use our data to identify communities at risk of displacement, partner with the World Bank and the African Development Bank to give those communities access to funds funding to build infrastructure to enable them to stay and to develop the skills they need to adjust to their Changing Climate.

[00:29:37.29] - Andrew Selee

That's great. Let's go actually to Q&A. And for those who are online, you can use the Q&A function. For those of you that are in the room, please line up at one of the microphones here, and you can ask your question in the microphone when you're called on. The ones who ask online, I will get— you're going to see me checking my phone, not because I'm bored, but because I'm actually looking for your questions. And while people are lining up, let me ask you one more question, which is IOM has a great reputation. It's always been seen as a very effective organization around the world, but it was not always seen as an organization that was leading conversations. It was often seen more as an implementer organization, right? Now, This has been a long-term trend. It has, you know, joined the UN system. It has, you know, been embracing a different role. But how do you actually put IOM at the front and center of these conversations together with other organizations like the World Bank and UNHCR and governments and NGOs and, you know, everyone who is part of this broader conversation?

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

[00:30:40.05] - Speaker 5

So really, this is at the heart of what I'm trying to do within the organization is to, at this moment in time where migration Migration is dominating the political and policy conversation. To put IOM in a place, given our 72 years of experience and data and on-the-ground assessment, to enable us to leverage all that information to inform the policy and political conversation. And then take advantage of the fact that we're operating in 180 countries. And have relationships at the both national government and community levels in order to implement. So it is a sea change, right? It started this year. We released our strategy focused on 3 objectives: saving lives and protecting people on the move, driving solutions to displacement, and facilitating migration pathways. So we start there. We have made clear what our key objectives are. We have you know, just as any organization would traditionally do, but IOM had not done. We've now created metrics so that we can measure our progress. We've put out a global appeal. So, we've said to our funders, this is what we think it will cost to achieve what we've laid out as our core objectives. And we're just aggressively out there engaging with governments, engaging with community members.

[00:32:04.20] - Speaker 5

If you will see at UNGA last week, we were on the ground really, really leveraging the opportunity of those member states being present at UNGA. And I'm really happy to say we're seeing it pay off. Within the Pact for the Future is a section on using migration and better migration pathways in order to achieve sustainable development. This week I'm going to Italy where the G7 ministers are meeting. I mean, incredibly, within the G7 communiqué is a section on leveraging migration pathways, right? So we are working as part of the G77. This is a conversation, part of COP 2029, using the impact of climate on human mobility as a conversation. So we are, really beefing up our capacity to engage with stakeholders on what we see as emerging problems and potential solutions.

[00:33:05.16] - Speaker 4

That's great. That will dovetail nicely with the first online question that came in, actually. And please feel free to line up, those that want to ask questions from the room. But I have two questions for you. The first one is, how can development-focused organizations make an impact in this space and contribute to policy conversations? And let me reinterpret that. I mean, I think this is the intention here. This is probably broadly, but what's the role of the World Bank? What's the role of the IMF? What's the role of the Inter-American Development Bank and the African Development Bank? I mean, often development banks, international financial institutions, have been reluctant to get into migration because they see it as a political issue. And so where— you've talked a little bit about how IOM works with development institutions, but how do they begin to think about this as part of their mandate? And secondly, where do— there has been some use of bussing migrants into the interior of the US, or Belarus using refugees in Eastern Europe to try and create a reaction. How does IOM respond to such dynamics? And is there something that scholars can do to help?

[00:34:05.25] - Speaker 4

Those two.

[00:34:06.22] - Speaker 5

So on the development question, I think what communities have failed to realize, and development actors have failed to realize, and governments have often failed to realize, is the power of migration in order to fuel development. So last year, there was over $8.3 billion— wait, that number's wrong. Somebody's going to look it up. Anyway, huge amounts. I'm just having a brain fog right at the moment. But the amount of resources— $830 billion, I think, is the number— of remittances that went back into economies. $830 billion. Phew. I only had one coffee this morning.

[00:34:45.11] - Speaker 4

That's OK.

[00:34:47.00] - Speaker 4

It was still a big number. It was still a big number. It was $8 billion. But it is actually 100 times that.

[00:34:52.12] - Speaker 5

It is actually so much more than that. Exactly.

[00:34:54.04] - Speaker 4

So more than foreign direct investment, more than development aid by far.

[00:34:57.29] - Speaker 5

But we don't actually talk about the power of that money to fuel the development of communities. I mean, there are fantastic examples all over the world where you see a large emigration and that leading into a correlation to development of that community. So that's the first issue, is to look at where this is kind of naturally happening and figuring out how do we connect the dots. The second is to think about what are the emerging needs, both of that country, but also regionally, the economic and development needs and even globally. So, one example is looking at the issue of healthcare. We all saw huge healthcare worker shortages around economies in the wake of COVID right? And the response of many governments, including in the UK and Germany and the US, is to recruit healthcare workers from smaller economies. So, healthcare workers are right now being recruited from Sierra Leone, from Kenya, from Bangladesh, from the Philippines. Now, one of the criticisms from a development angle is that's actually stripping out people who have been trained and who have capacity to drive those economies into the future. What we'd like to see, instead of having this big economy strips out educated workers, leaving them without resources, is to start to look at this whole ecosystem of the need for healthcare workers, where healthcare workers being trained, and then connect the development policies into training more healthcare workers who can meet the demands of the local economy, meet the demands of the regional economy, and in some cases meet the demands of the global economy.

[00:36:47.01] - Speaker 5

So again, it's, it's bringing what the development banks do really well, the economic analysis, And the— what they also do really well is very close partnership with the host governments in order to develop policies that will ultimately lead to greater development for that economy.

[00:37:08.23] - Speaker 4

And the first thing you're talking about is putting migrants at the center of development, right? I mean, this is one of the biggest resources for development that no one is really tapping, right? Other than they are, right? They and their families. Are, but people haven't quite figured out how you make sure that a lot of these resources go into financial institutions, financial institutions that then might be able to lend to the same communities that people leave. How do you create that virtuous cycle? Not expecting migrants necessarily to fund projects, but through their interaction with the financial system, be able to do this in a strategic way. And then also thinking about how do you make what could be brain drain into a win-win, right? Because countries begin to produce— okay, so nurses are leaving, that makes it attractive to be a nurse, but it also allows you then to invest in nursing as a career within the country, right?

[00:37:59.04] - Speaker 5

Right. And we have some great examples, small, but I think they're scalable, where we have worked with a community to design, to identify what is their most key project at the community level, and then asking them and working with them to set up platforms for their diaspora to engage and invest in that idea. And then we bring in additional funding to match that investment or double or triple that investment. So these very, what I think are promising examples of getting the buy-in of the community itself, leveraging the diaspora and the remittances, and then using that to spur traditional donor investment.

[00:38:42.09] - Speaker 4

That's great. Let's go to the audience here. I see two people lined up, and if you could give your name and affiliation, that's great. And even if I know you, I apologize. I'm staring at lights here, so please give your name and affiliation.

[00:38:55.24] - Speaker 6

Yes, my name is Wes Magruder. I work for Church World Service at a resettlement office. Thank you for your presence this morning. Quick question. The current UNHCR definition of refugee does not make room for climate refugees. So I'm curious if you think that a change in that definition would be, would make much of a difference, either real or symbolic.

[00:39:21.21] - Speaker 4

And maybe we could take a second question as well from here in the room.

[00:39:27.03] - Speaker 7

My name is Bob Mocny, retired, former DHS. Hello, Amy.

[00:39:30.15] - Speaker 7

Thank you very much for what you have done what you continue to do. My question is, what can IOM do, or maybe what we can do collectively to turn the heat down on the political rhetoric? It's what you say makes a lot of sense to all of us, I think, here. It's not translating in parts of Germany with AfD on the rise. It's not translating in Austria. Yesterday we saw the FPO resurge in part because of immigration. What can we do collectively to basically make immigration sexy again?

[00:40:10.01] - Speaker 4

And let me say this dovetails with one of the questions that came in online as well about vilifying migrants and narratives based on fear and how you turn that around.

[00:40:19.10] - Speaker 5

So over to you. That's funny. I actually was at a dinner during UNGA week where someone said, "We don't want to make immigration sexy. We want to make immigration really boring." You know, let's take the political heat out of it. So, I mean, on that question, this is why I'm emphasizing the importance of engaging stakeholders who are not traditionally around the table. And by the way, that also very much includes the faith community because we see very strong examples of the faith community in the United States and in Canada being an important part of welcoming migrants and refugees, and doing so in a, in a model that looks to fulfilling the basic needs of the people that they are either sponsoring or serving, and in a way that brings a human focus to the work. And so it's important to me that as we have these conversations, we bring everyone, even if they may not be voting in a way that you're voting. It also is the importance of bringing the private sector into the conversation, because it is the private sector who is saying behind closed doors, we desperately need a sustainable workforce, and without migration, we will not have a sustainable workforce.

[00:41:40.14] - Speaker 5

And the private sector does have credibility to make that case in a way that an NGO or a UN organization may not be able to make it. Now, that's not to say that we want to be advocating for lower wages or substandard working conditions. So we need to have the unions involved and we need to have civil society involved. We need to have all the players to make sure that the system works well and we're not leaving people behind. But the private sector is a critical actor because their needs are quite apparent, and they know because of their own projections the real dangers they'll face without better migration policies. And then finally—

[00:42:25.28] - Speaker 4

Yeah, you're saying with the private sector, I mean, one of the challenges too is, you know, if it's Amazon— Amazon faces its own challenges for recruiting a global workforce, but it's not they don't, but they have some tools. But a lot of the the employment opportunities in the same way that migrants don't always know where the work opportunities are. Employers also, especially small and medium employers, have no way of knowing where the workers are.

[00:42:47.09] - Speaker 5

Exactly. And that's work that you need different partners to develop. So we just agreed, formed an agreement with the Tent Foundation. Many of you probably know the CEO of Chobani Yogurt has led an effort to get private sector companies to make a commitment to hire refugees and vulnerable migrants. And then he helps them break down the bureaucratics of identifying and finding the people who need those job opportunities. The other thing, on the question of the definition of refugee, I mean, this is a question for our member states or the, you know, the governments of the United Nations. Our observation is that opening up a conversation on redefining refugee is a big, big lift. And, you know, I think it's not the low-hanging fruit, to say the least. In the meantime, there are urgent needs that must be addressed and are not being addressed. It's why we at IOM are taking such an engaged role in the issue of climate migration and climate mobility, because there is no protection now for people who are fleeing a storm that's come through and destroyed their house. But it doesn't mean that the needs of those communities are not as acute as someone who is fleeing persecution or conflict at home.

[00:44:10.19] - Speaker 4

We have time for probably one more question from the room. So, and by the way, those of you online have probably noticed that Amy Pope has done a great job. Director General Pope has done a great job answering most of your questions without me even asking them. So this is, I think, I think you've actually gotten it covered. I may ask you about Afghans in a second and your work with the P-1 program, but other than that, you have the last question.

[00:44:32.03] - Speaker 8

Hi, Jacob Mendel, Georgetown University. Here at Georgetown, we have DACA recipients, Afghan refugees, all the major war zones, as well as undocumented students. You also talked a little bit about upskilling. What can we at Georgetown do to kind of work on migration issues, assisting students, especially where there's gaps in government policy? Thank you.

[00:44:57.24] - Speaker 4

And if you want to say anything about— if you want to say anything about Afghan refugees particularly, feel free, where I know you and UNHCR work together in some ways on this.

[00:45:06.16] - Speaker 5

So I think this goes both to the question about Georgetown, but it also goes to communities, right? So it is— there is often an initial gulf when newcomers come into communities. And so whether it's at Georgetown or whether it's Afghans who are being resettled here or the number of refugees who are being resettled as part of the US Refugee Resettlement Program, which I know some of you in the room are involved in, it is that helping communities to understand and operate within the culture in which they've now settled. And then enabling them to maximize their potential. I mean, we all know the stories of Afghan refugees who were high-skilled at home and now are driving Ubers, right? So that is often because of problems in terms of licensing, in terms of recognition of skills, in terms of access to job markets, in terms of access to opportunities frankly, and so that is a space where, as students at the school here, to help people bridge the gap from one to the other. I'll leave you with one story. I have had the tremendous opportunity and privilege of meeting a Congolese refugee who fled Congo 30 years ago, found himself in Rwanda, was one of the last people to be evacuated from the Hotel Rwanda, was on an airplane that wasn't at first allowed to land in Kenya 'cause they were worried about the political repercussions, but ultimately he landed in Kenya and was one of the, living in Kakuma.

[00:46:47.10] - Speaker 5

He was resettled by IOM 30 years ago. And I've since met him, he's now at Bellevue College in Washington State, and he is a real advocate for bringing Congolese young women to come and study science, technology, and math at Bellevue College. And many of them, since he started this program, have gone on to really become contributors either at home in the DRC or in companies here in the United States. And what I found so remarkable about his story, we were catching up last week and he said, you know, when I first got here, I still had this Congolese notion of time. So my host father would say, we're gonna leave for work at 6:00, 7, and I'd rock in, you know, hours later thinking, well, it's about 7, right? And he said, you know, what he found so helpful in that experience wasn't that there was another young woman who had advocated for him to be sponsored and be brought over. He said, she didn't engage to give me, to provide excuses for why I wasn't doing it. Instead, I was set the expectation, this is what this culture demands, this is what this workforce demands, and it was a rough few months, but ultimately I figured it out.

[00:48:04.06] - Speaker 5

And because I figured it out, because I had people who were helping me to figure out how to show up and where to show up and how to do the job, he's then been successful and now he's able to be a mechanism for providing a safe and legal and dignified pathway for students to come here to the United States to learn. So I found, I mean, there are so many pieces of that, the private sponsorship, the cultural orientation, the advocacy and support of a community here, and then his ability to be part of a pathway for others in the future.

[00:48:38.13] - Speaker 4

And universities really are— universities really do have options for engaging in this in the way you're talking about, right? I mean, that is one of the places where you can be really creative in how you both create pathways but also create opportunities for people in the community. So that's—

[00:48:53.23] - Speaker 5

And support. And support them as they adjust.

[00:48:56.24] - Speaker 4

Wonderful. Amy Pope, thank you so much for leading off this conference and for your willingness to engage with everyone here.

[00:49:04.12] - Speaker 5

Great to be here. Thanks.

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] - Andrew Selee

As we've all seen recently, immigration has become a hugely salient issue for U.S. cities, not just those on the border, but those far away from the border as well. And we are really delighted that Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has agreed to be with us today to talk about this topic. Denver has received more border arrivals per capita than any other city in the United States, which makes the mayor's observations all the more, more relevant for our discussions today. The mayor has led Denver's innovative responses. I think you've all seen it on the news. Many of you have probably worked closely with the Denver city government as well. The innovative responses to the arrival of migrants by involving the community and working to integrate migrants. I mean, we're very eager to hear more about the city's experiences. But first, let me introduce Mayor Mike Johnston. He is the 46th mayor for the city and county of Denver. He began his career in public service as a teacher and was in a number of educational roles, including as a principal in the school system in Denver. He wrote a book about his time teaching in the Mississippi Delta, an actually bestseller book, which I recommend to you.

And he eventually ran for the Colorado Senate, where he racked up a series of bipartisan legislative successes, including the ASSET Bill, which is Colorado's version of the DREAM Act. Mayor Johnston, we are delighted to welcome you here today, and the floor is yours.

[00:01:29.04] - Mike Johnston

Thank you all so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here, and thank you for the incredible work that you all are doing around the country, around the world, on this topic. Imagine you are a police officer, and you wake up in the morning to go to work, and sometime during that day at work, you get asked by a senior commanding officer to tear gas a room full of women and children. And you say no to that request, and you walk off the job and go home. And soon after you get home, you see the military police showing up at your house, coming to look for you. And so you sneak out the back door with your husband and your child, and you decide this is finally the time to go. And you begin a 3,000-mile walk from Venezuela to Denver. Or imagine you run a small grocery store and you've had it for years, and now inflation has gone up so dramatically, now up 34,000% over the last 2 years, that the Coca-Cola you used to buy for 50 cents now comes to you for $150. And yet your monthly wage is not changing and you know you can't survive.

So you decide to walk away from the family business you've built and take your husband and 3 kids twin 5-year-olds and a 13-year-old girl, and start a 3,000-mile walk to the U.S. also. But you stop along the way because you've heard stories about just how heinous the sexual assault has been across this journey, and you wonder, "Can you bring your 13-year-old daughter with you? What risks would you put her through?" And so, after a long conversation with your husband, you make the decision that you will leave your 13-year-old daughter behind with a relative in Colombia, and start that long walk without her. Or imagine you're a teacher in Caracas, and your husband is an athletic director, and he's been imprisoned multiple times for speaking out, and this time, when he gets out, you decide you will finally leave and make the journey, and you start with you and your kids and another family that's there with you, Uh, they have a daughter and a dog, um, and when you're passing the Darién Gap, it gets particularly dangerous in one stretch, and the girl is holding the dog, and the dog slips and falls off the edge.

And the daughter suddenly reaches to grab the dog and loses her footing, and the daughter goes over, too. At which case, the mom, now terrified about the daughter, reaches for the daughter, and trying to get ahold of the daughter, she also falls. And that husband stands there, having lost everything he had in his world, and goes to sleep, and gets up the next morning, and keeps walking another 2,000 miles to get to Denver. Those are the stories of the folks that arrive in my city every day, and there are 30,000 more like them. And I want to be here to share with you what it has actually been like to be the city on the front line of America's migrant crisis, because I think there was a belief that somehow these folks were sent to us as if they were a plague, as if they were some crisis that the governor of Texas wanted to send our way, and that them arriving in Denver would somehow destroy us or divide us or break us. And I think what we found is a very different story. And so I want to tell you a little bit about what we've seen, what we've done, where our city is now, and how I think it's an example of how what the world saw as a crisis for us really became an opportunity.

[00:05:15.13] - Mike Johnston

So let me tell you maybe in 4 short chapters what this story was like. The first one was, I've only been mayor for about a year and 2 months, and so I was about 30 days into the job, and it was the summer of 2023, and we were just starting to see increased number of arrivals. And Secretary Mayorkas came to Denver. And so I had a meeting with him and with our governor, and we had one clear ask, which was, could you please, please, please extend temporary protective status for the folks who've arrived from Venezuela? And I never met him before. He showed up and said, call me Ali, and gave me his cell phone. And I called him. Whenever I did, he answered. And about a month later, he came out and approved temporary protective status for our Venezuelan migrants. About 95% of our newcomers in Denver are Venezuelan. And so that was a game changer. So we stood up shelter system, we opened hotels, we created an intake, we took our Department of Human Services employees off of their day jobs, instead they became an entire intake apparatus to welcome all those folks, get them into housing, or into hotels.

With 30 days of potential work authorization, we could do, we established a 42-day length of stay. Folks arrive, we could get them processed, they could get access to work authorization, get a job, and be out in 42 days. And for months that worked incredibly well. And that was our very successful first phase. We set up a school facility for newcomers that arrived so that kids that arrived could spend a couple of weeks getting oriented and settled before they got into a permanent apartment unit so they didn't have to transfer schools multiple times. And that was moving smoothly. Then you go into fall, chapter 2, kind of fall 2023. As you know, TPS runs out after July 31st. So all of our arrivals that started to come in August or September or October were more and more without a clear path. Then we started to get more folks who came in with Customs and Border Protection. They'd come through the CBP One app, had had an appointment at the border, came to us, and also had a path towards work authorization. So knowing that, we dramatically ramped up legal clinics and work authorization. Some of the— we had hundreds and hundreds of volunteer pro bono lawyers who came to help us.

We did thousands and thousands of CBP One applications. Those folks also could get access to work, uh, and successfully found their way to our system and through our system. Then you start to enter winter of 2023, uh, December, January of 2024, um, our arrivals start increasing and our percentage of folks with CBP One start decreasing. Uh, in a new crime of cruelty and creativity, the governor of Texas now realizes that CBP One applicants are easier to process, so he intentionally calls those folks out to send them to other states and send us more and more asylum seekers alone without a clear path to work authorization. Our numbers get bigger. We go from 1,000 and 2,000 in shelter to 3,000 and 4,000 and then 5,000 in shelter. We have 8 hotels all brimming to the max, and we are running short on federal dollars. And that is when we start to look forward at what would be 2024, a potentially $180 million budget allocation for this crisis in the current version. So that was when I came to D.C. with a number of other mayors to start to push the federal government on policy changes we thought could make sense.

We were heartened by the fact that two of the most conservative senators in the U.S. Senate had signed on to a bipartisan proposal that included all the things we had asked for. There were any of three things we thought, if provided, could make a huge difference for us. First and most important was expedited work authorization. If folks came with work authorization, we could support them. The most often call I got in Denver were two. I speak Spanish. I was a high school principal for a long time. I got into politics the first time because we had a class of students that became the first class of seniors in Colorado history where 100% of our students all graduated from high school and got admitted to a 4-year college. It turns out about 50% of those kids were undocumented. And in our state at that time, if you were undocumented, you could not go to college without paying out-of-state tuition. So I would have valedictorians and salutatorians in my high school class with a college admission they could never use, because they couldn't pay $40,000 a year of out-of-state tuition. So I had been engaged, and I ran for the state Senate to solve that problem.

After 2 failures, we finally did pass it. So I'd been working on these issues for a long time before I found myself in this moment. And so we knew if we— the only problem I had was I would have every day newcomers who would say to me, "Mr. Johnston," or, "Alcalde," like, "Thank you so much. I don't need any help. I don't want any charity. All I need is a job." And then I'd get a phone call an hour later from a CEO who would say, "Mike, what's the deal? I have 50 open jobs in my company. Why can I not hire the folks that just arrived?" And we had a federal government who stood in the middle and said, "You cannot hire these folks who want to work." for these employers who want to hire them. And so what we had asked was, can you please expedite work authorization and we can solve the rest? Or can you help provide additional federal resources for us to support people that can't work to support themselves? But when you have people arriving in Denver with an asylum hearing scheduled for the year 2031, that is a long, long wait without any access to work.

And the third was we asked for, can you at least create a coordinated entry system? Which is, we know that America knows how to solve a problem like this. We've done it with Ukrainian refugees. We've done it with Afghanistan refugees. There is a way to create a coordinated entry plan to make sure folks arrive in cities that have capacity, and they'll be successful. My friend, the other Mayor Johnson, Brandon Johnson in Chicago, will often share with me the story that over the last year, Chicago had more Ukrainian refugees that arrived in the city of Chicago than they had folks from south of the border. And he said, "You could not find a single Ukrainian in Chicago if you went looking for them, because they all are in houses and in jobs and communities and in churches, because they came through a coordinated structure to make sure they succeeded." We knew that was what was required to help deliver a solution here. And we thought there was a moment where that would be successful. And then when the bill was proposed, I guess, in all the things I've seen in politics, I hadn't seen this, which is radical mobilization to kill a bill not because you think it won't solve the problem, but because you're afraid it will solve the problem.

And when that happened, we knew there was gonna be no one coming to save us in that way. And so how do you respond? And so for us, that was the next chapter, which is we woke up the next morning and said, "Okay, now Denver has to figure this out on our own." And so we looked at how we could face $180 million budget gap, how we could face 5,000 people in shelter, and how we could face what we knew now were more and more asylum seekers with a 7-year wait and no path to work authorization. And so we went about trying to build a solution that would serve them. And what we built was the Denver Asylum Seeker Program, which is we realized a 42-day length of stay was not gonna be helpful anymore. We knew what we could do is we could apply proactively for asylum for every single person that was in our custody, even though it might take 20 to 30 hours of legal work per person. But if we did that proactive application, they could be eligible for work authorization in 180 days. Might still have to wait 7 years for the resolution of that case, but you could get work authorization in 180 days.

Most cities didn't do that, because it was too labor-intensive. We remobilized that cohort of attorneys. We committed to do that. We said, OK, if we get this done, and you have 6 months' wait, how do we use that? Well, what we can do is actually use that as a high-quality workforce training opportunity to work with our private sector partners, figure out all the jobs we had that were in very high demand in the city, and we built 4 different career verticals. You could enter hospitality, you could enter early childhood education, healthcare, construction and landscape. Folks could pick among those. We would give them English language training, digital literacy, financial literacy, any certifications you need. If you wanna be a preschool teacher, you need to have a CPR certification. We get them advanced certifications. Then at the end of the experience, we would do an on-site workforce training experience, unpaid. And in the process, rather than paying nightly hotel rates or paying for 3 meals a day, we move folks into apartments where they could build their own lives, they could cook and take care of themselves, get through the workforce training. And that turned out to be far better quality service at a much lower cost with an actual path to get folks to work.

[00:13:31.07] - Mike Johnston

So now we have 1,000 people, and that is our inaugural cohort of people in our workforce apprentice program, and we have 3 times more employer positions open to hire them than we have folks in the program right now. And as part of that, we knew we also— we closed our hotel system, we moved away from a non-congregate shelter structure, and we did this asylum-seeking program as our immediate structure. We had a congregate facility to take people for short lengths of stay. We went down to the border to communicate with folks that were new arrivals to say We only have— we don't have now a 40-day length of stay. We have either an asylum seeker program if we have roles and openings in it, or we have the ability to connect you to Congregate Shelter. And the folks that arrived knew the program was available. They entered it. We've now found great success along the way. And as a result, we just announced last week our budget. A year ago, we were making 10% cuts across the board to all the rest of the city agencies. To try to support our newcomers who were arriving, even though the federal government had come through, thanks to Secretary Mayorkas and others, with about $40 million of support.

We were making cuts across the city that were really dramatic. Now, 9 months later, we just proposed the budget for 2025. As we see softening sales tax revenue, we have built a far better quality system to serve our newcomers, and we've cut our budget by $50 million. It was actually our newcomers program this year that financed the expansion of our police force for next year. Newcomers bailed out shortages in our workforce training program. They bailed out shortages in our fire department and in our parks and recreations programs. Uh, and so, uh, for me, it was a fitting metaphor of what we thought would be a real challenge for the city has been a net benefit. We now have a workforce pipeline into our hardest-to-staff positions. And as of tonight, we do not have a single migrant encampment in the city. We do not have folks living unhoused on the streets. They are in housing and in work and proactively contributing to the city. And we looked at the history of cities that have bet against newcomers and those who have bet on them. I think history is quite clear. The names of cities who've always been welcoming to migrants are the biggest and best and most economically thriving cities in the world right now.

Those folks that bet against them are places you'll never remember. And so we count ourselves in that proud tradition of people who say there is a path to both serve our migrants well and serve our city well. And that's what we've done. And I think what we saw was people show up in incredible ways as Denverites. And when we had, at one point in January, the largest encampment in Denver history of about 300 migrants in an encampment in West Denver. We had groups of, literally, there's a coalition called the Highland Moms. We had groups of moms who mobilized to run entire food operations to feed hundreds of people a day. My proudest moment is when you walk into an encampment, or I would go and talk to a newcomer, and they'd be wearing an East High School shirt, you know, or a Denver Nuggets jersey, or— I knew that someone found them, mobilized clothing and resources, and got them to them. And symbolic, they were already Denverites in that way. And a member of the Denver Broncos brought a family into his home to live out of their first-floor open unit. I think you just saw the city in dramatic ways say, we believe we can both honor our values and be an inclusive place and still find a way to provide the rest of the core city services that we need.

I was very proud of the fact we did a poll in the middle of this to say, how do people feel? We now have a budget crisis, how will people respond? Do you want to either continue to provide great quality services to migrants, or do you want to cut the budget, and cut the budget to do that, Or do you want to cut services to migrants and be able to stabilize the budget? And 55% of people said they were not willing to cut services to migrants to balance the budget. And 55% of people said they were not willing to cut the budget to fund services for migrants. And at first I thought, wait a second, that's crazy. And I was like, actually, no, it's quite defiant, which is Denver believes we don't have to choose and they refuse to take a false choice. They're not going to say it's one or the other. They're going to say it's possible for us to both live out our values, provide high-quality services, and support a city that can deliver all the things that we need. And that's where we ended. I want to show you a short video, which is just a clip of some of the experiences that we saw our way through, and then I'll close with one quick story.

But if you can, roll the video. See if this works.

[00:19:01.13] - Mike Johnston speaking in a rolling video

But we knew that serving our newcomers well could also mean serving the city well. We refused to accept the term terms of that challenge. Because in Denver, we believe the way to solve these problems is not by turning our back on our American values, but by turning to our American values.

[00:19:45.10] - Mike Johnston

That is our— that's our school-based program, which was whenever I needed joy in my life, I would stop by to visit there because things like that happen. I'll just close with this story. So in the middle of this crisis, we opened a new direct flight to Dublin. And so whenever we open new direct flights at the airport, the mayor generally goes and launches that opening. And so I went. Dublin, and I'd give a speech that night. And when I was there, we go downtown in Dublin, it's right along the river. And when I went there, there was a historic display of what they called the coffin ships, which were the ships that brought families over during the potato famine in the 1840s. I'm Irish on both sides, both of my families had immigrated in the 1840s. And I walk up to this speech, I stopped to look at the ship.

And the ship is literally called the Johnston. Because it was named after some members of my family, others that had done it. But I thought about, like, that passage that my family took 180 years ago, and what they've gone through to be able to come to a country that welcomed them. And I thought about, of course, the Emma Lazarus poem, which says on the base of the Statue of Liberty, "Send us your huddled masses." yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed, to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door. When I came back, that story I told you of the family that was facing 34,000% inflation on their grocery store and had to leave their 13-year-old in Colombia, My wife, like many folks in Denver, had gone online and met this woman, Simari, in a Facebook group, who was the mother of these 3 kids, and had arrived and was trying to find help. And so my wife said, "We're meeting these folks for lunch, you have to come." I go and sit down, and we spend an hour talking to them about their story, and they do not know that I'm the mayor, until the end of this lunch, where someone comes up and recognizes me and says hello.

And so Courtney's communicating with another mom who is helping this family, and she calls to say, "You know, I was disappointed. I was working so hard with this family. They seemed so trustworthy, but I just don't know, 'cause they just told me they had lunch with the mayor. And so I think they're probably lying." But the story becomes, we become very close to them and their kids, and help them find an apartment, help get them, moved in to that apartment. They have twin boys who are 5. And so my kids decide that we should host a garage sale to try to help pay for their second month's rent after the first month's rent has been paid. And so we set up the garage sale, and kids take all their stuff, and Samuel and Samari and their kids both make arepas. And so they come, and in front of our house, they're selling arepas, and we're selling stuff from the basement. And We had spent the longest time where my daughter couldn't decide whether or not to sell her dollhouse, which I— she had gotten from Santa when she was 5, and I know because Santa spent 8 hours building it.

Because I spent 4 hours building it, then realized I had put the back of the house on the front of the house, and I had to rebuild the whole thing. And so she decided she wanted to sell it, she took it out, and she put it there, and 2 or 3 people came up to buy it, and each time she said no. And then after she spent the day with Santi, who was the 5-year-old girl selling arepas together, the next day she said, "Okay, Dad, I'm ready." And they sold it. It was the biggest item we sold that day. The arepas were actually by far the best sellers of the day. We made more money on food than on— and that meant they paid their second month's rent. My wife and her friend got all the kids registered in our school. So now Ava's in 7th grade there. She's on the student council, and she gets to see them each morning, 'cause she goes class by class to check in and gets to see them. She gave them all of the school uniforms, so they're set for the next 8 years of school uniforms. But I think about, you know, those 2 little girls, tempest-tossed from different places, different generations, different continents.

But I believe, you know, 5 years from now, Santi will be on the same student council Dave is on. She'll play for the same school soccer team that she does. 20 years from now, she'll be a city councilman in our city. And 30 years from now, she'll be back here at this podium as the mayor of our city. And I imagine when She tells the story of what her family went through to get here. She will probably weep at this podium to say, like, they fundamentally gave everything they had for a belief in a dream of America they thought was worth chasing, and that they walked and struggled and fought, and they came to a place that found them a place to live, that found them a job, that found them school, that found them opportunity, uh, and that that was the dream of the America they were looking for. And I know my daughter and all of our Denverites will be proud to say that is a promise that Denver kept. Thank you so much for having me. I was only staying to take questions, so you do not have to keep clapping. So kind of you.

But I am more than happy to take questions. I think Andrew, you'd like to—

[00:25:35.09] - Andrew Selee

Okay, Mayor Johnston, if this were a concert, you'd have to sing another number here. But in this case, you have to take questions. So if you're in the room, feel free to come up to one of the— yes, as you have already done, you're setting the example— one of the microphones. We'll take questions at the microphones, and then I've got a few questions online. So why don't we start with 2 questions in the room, and then we'll go to some online questions. And if you could identify yourself.

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

[00:26:01.14] - Speaker 3

My name is Ilana Wallach, and I'm the founder of a group called Shalom Friends Immigration Visitation Group. And my mother lived in Denver, and at the end of her life and during the COVID I lived there for 3 months, and I feel very close to your city. Oh, thank you. I'm, you know, so touched by your story, I can hardly get it together to ask a question. But my question is this. From this morning, there was some discussion about the fact that a lot of Hispanic populations, Latino populations, are not very supportive of the influx of immigrants, especially at the border. I know you're not at the border. I remember where you are. So I guess I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts about this. I'm sorry to introduce this slight tone of negativity.

[00:27:03.04] - Speaker 2

No, no, it's totally fine.

[00:27:03.24] - Speaker 3

Do you have any statistics or even any ideas about whether the support for what you've done is different among your Latino population, which is huge? Anyway, thank you so much.

[00:27:19.01] - Speaker 2

No, of course. Thank you so much. It's a great question, and I imagine for many of us in the room, like me, who've been at this for several decades, it's a both/and, right? Like, I think we both believe we want to support newcomers who've just arrived, and I still have students of mine from 15 years ago who can't get status adjustment either and can't find access to legal work in this country, and they're saying, "I've been waiting for 20 years. What about me?" And the answer is, you're right. We have to do both. And so I think that We've stayed in that place of we want permanent protections for DACA. We want the ability for people to have an access to be able to get citizenship and to be able to stay in the country. We want easier for spouses to be able to stay. We are proud of the fact that we still are a city that is not going to arrest one of my students when he's driving from school to work for a busted taillight and deport them. Like, that is what sanctuary city means to us. And we think it is good for the city and good for our— good for the economy and good for the people that live in our city.

[00:28:16.01] - Speaker 2

And so we won't change that. But I think it was a both/and. I appreciate that the conversation in D.C. when I was here was that people were not losing sight of folks who've been in the shadows for decades when we're trying to help the folks that have just arrived, because we think it is both. We did see— you're right— when we were at our high point of arrivals, we did start to see more and more pushback from communities of color who were worried again. You know, they've always been at the bottom of the totem pole on access to services in the city, even without other crises. Their worry is, are you going to bump us down one more time, where our neighborhoods won't get the resources that they need? And so for us, it's been really important to make sure that we're maintaining— for instance, when we had to make adjustments to things like reducing hours at rec centers to balance the budget, we insisted on not doing that in our highest-impact neighborhoods, in our neighborhoods of color, because we felt like that was one place where it was important to make sure we weren't cutting services for those folks who have been most at risk in the past.

[00:29:13.16] - Speaker 2

But we very much would love to see this as part of a comprehensive approach to do both. I will tell you, in our other side gig, you know, we're working on some creative responses to what happens, you know, if DACA were to be repealed again or to expire again, or if there were a different president who wants to prosecute those folks in a different way. We are prepared to protect those people as aggressively as need be. And so, we have a separate set of strategies we're working on around how to support our Dreamers. Yeah, thanks for the question.

[00:29:42.04] - Speaker 1

Thank you. Randy, I think it's you up there.

[00:29:44.07] - Speaker 4

Randy Johnson, Cornell Law School, but working on immigration reform for 20 years. Still the $64 question, Mayor, is are you just an oasis in a huge country? Because we're backsliding on the immigration message as compared to where we were 20 years ago when we were doing H-1B reform, lifting the caps. We're talking about DACA. We're talking about legalization. You know, we're not even close to that now. And is it because your experience is that unique, or it's because there are people like you across the country of which there's not a megaphone to provide to tell these kind of stories? Or what's going on here? And because you've been on where the rubber meets the road, and there's sort of a logical disconnect here between your kind of story and what we're seeing in the general population as a whole.

[00:30:28.07] - Speaker 2

I'm really grateful for that question, because what we find is when you get to the city level, it gets far more pragmatic. So I was at a prayer breakfast with a bunch of faith leaders that I went to, and the pastor introduced me said, "You are all free to have your own beliefs about what you think border policy should be, and you can be open and loud about that. That does not change your moral obligation to how you respond to a person standing on our street corner in Denver who is in sandals and a t-shirt in thundery weather with her daughter on a street corner in the middle of January." That is a moral and a practical question, not an ideological one. And what we found is people get much more pragmatic when it's a question of what do you do with those folks. And what I love about this is I would get yelled at by two different sides of the political spectrum. Republicans would come to me and say, "Mike, this is ridiculous. Those folks should have to work." And then progressives would say, "This is completely unfair. These folks should get access to work authorization." And I would say, "You are both right." And so what if we had a solution that says, shouldn't folks be able to work to support themselves and support others?

[00:31:31.19] - Speaker 2

And I think that's where we found the practical common ground is how do you create a path to say there are many different ways to manage what the process of folks arriving. What we knew was we had more jobs open than we had people that had arrived. The challenge was just making that connection. And so I think people are more inclined to be practical if you have practical solutions. I think the— this debate has become ideological instead of practical. We brought it back to practical. Then there is some limitation on what cities can see, but we started working with other mayors around the country, and I would say to them, "If I have folks that are work authorized, would you be happy to receive them?" And they said, "We would take as many as you could send us." And so we informally started a network of, you know, could we stand up our own coordinated entry system as a city and go to other cities and say, How many folks could you take? Do you have nonprofits or partners that could receive them? And almost always, if we could manage the work authorization up front, they would take as many folks as we had available.

[00:32:27.21] - Speaker 2

And so we saw that as a symbol for the rest of the country. If someone centrally can handle work authorization, red cities, blue cities in red states, many Rust Belt cities that are seeing declining and dropping populations, they would love to participate in that coordinated entry system if you can do it. I think it's a matter of moving it from the ideological to the practical.

[00:32:48.13] - Speaker 1

Mr. Mayor, before we go to the two gentlemen here, you'll be the last two because we have to move on. Let me ask you a couple of the online questions, and thank you for those that are watching online. One is about public health challenges, if you face any public health challenges, especially, I imagine, you know, healthcare for people that are just arriving, the housing situation, if that became a flashpoint at all, if it was an issue, and also employment. Were people able, were most people in fact able to transition to employment once they had authorization to do so?

[00:33:18.23] - Speaker 2

So on health, it has been an impact on our system. We have our safety net hospital is Denver Health, and they have about 10,000 new visits a year, and so that does come at some cost. We have a ballot measure to add funding for them this year to help them stabilize that, so we think that too is manageable. On housing, we were able to find units. It's interesting, we in the midst of this, by the way, we're also managing a crisis on homelessness, so on the first day in office, we declared an emergency on homelessness, because we had one of the 3 or 4 most struggling cities in the country on that problem. And we were working hard to get them access to housing. We brought on 1,200 units of housing in 6 months, and in the midst of this newcomer crisis, we were able to successfully bring now 2,000 people that are chronically homeless off the streets and into housing. We've closed every major encampment in the city. We've dropped family homelessness by 83% in one year, and tent and encampment homelessness by 52%. We'll be the largest American city to end street homelessness for veterans by this December, in the midst of 30,000 other folks arriving.

[00:34:22.29] - Speaker 2

So this was a clear message for us, like, you can do both. You can both respond to folks that are coming and still lead other major city initiatives, even in the same space. What we found was something that was actually much easier for us to find housing for newcomers, because they have no rental history. And so it is— some of our folks that are chronically homeless, you might have had a couple evictions or a couple criminal charges. We put together applications for these and landlords said, "Fantastic, we'll take as many as you have." So housing was easier. Workforce, it just depends on the wave in which you arrived. If you're an asylum seeker and in our asylum program, great. If you are CBP One, great. If you're TPS, great. If you're in none of those categories, that's where we find the most challenge. That's where we saw more and more folks ending up on street corners trying to squeegee or to work in Home Depot parking lots. So people will try to work however it's possible, whether you give them status or not. So the more status we could offer, the more successful folks were. But the actual market is very responsive to people that are work authorized.

[00:35:21.16] - Speaker 2

We found some employers that were even open to— you know, we said, what if we couldn't get to work authorization? Is there a way that we could take some sort of risk to help people get access to temporary work. I think we had employers and we would have potentially taken the risk on allowing people that were undocumented to work. The reason we wouldn't take the risk is because there's a 3-year statute of limitation on that charge. And if the administration were to change, our newcomers themselves would be at risk for negative consequences. We didn't want to put them in that situation. I was willing to risk going to jail. I was not willing to put other people in the risk of that that were newcomers. And so I find the business community itself was very, very supportive and willing to hire since before work authorized. That's great.

[00:36:00.13] - Speaker 5

Hi, Mayor. Hello. My name is John Castro. I'm actually an undergraduate student at the University of Notre Dame.

[00:36:07.21] - Speaker 2

Oh, great.

[00:36:08.10] - Speaker 5

I'm proud to say that I am blessed to be a first-generation student coming from immigrant parents who came from Mexico. And I believe to say that the American dream for all immigrant parents is that they want their children to succeed. They want their children to have an education and to have a better life than if they were born in their country of origin. So I'm blessed to be here.

[00:36:31.09] - Speaker 2

Congratulations.

[00:36:31.13] - Speaker 5

Thank you.

[00:36:32.02] - Speaker 2

Felicidades, bien hecho.

[00:36:33.17] - Speaker 5

Yeah, I know. But on the topic of education, coming from Chicago, I've seen personally the buses from Texas sent to Chicago with the Ecuadorian immigrants personally because my mom used to be a— substitute teacher for a semester at my primary school, my grade school, which is a Catholic primary school. And these children have struggled a lot, not because of academics, 'cause they're really smart kids, but rather based on assimilating to the English language and having to assimilate that quickly. And it's been a struggle for them because I've seen in the secretary's office, they've asked questions like, "What does this say and how do I answer this?" And they've personally been bullied by some people because they've been classified as the other, they're not American, they don't know how to speak English. So I guess in order to further their chances of success in education, how or what have been solutions to have these children assimilate better to the English language that way they can succeed in this great American country?

[00:37:39.14] - Speaker 2

Great question. And congratulations on your story. Thanks for being a shining example of what we're inspired to try to do. Thank you. So what we did, which was a little cute video you saw, is we found that the transition into American school was very difficult for kids, particularly some of them because, again, almost all of our newcomers are from Venezuela. The education system was in such disrepair there that many kids would have been out of school for multiple years before they came to us. So it's not just an American school to acclimate to. If you're a 7-year-old, it might be a first school to acclimate to at all. We just happen to have an amazing Venezuelan immigrant who's been in Denver for 20 years. Her name is Yoli Casas, and she runs this program called Vive Wellness. And she had the idea to say, what if we created a transition school where when folks first arrived, some of our former newcomers who are Venezuelans who were teachers in their home country have gotten work authorization, are now teachers at this site. And so they would help acquaint kids with, here are the core schedules to use, the practices to be prepared for, here's how school runs, and start the early English language skills.

[00:38:39.13] - Speaker 2

We've also worked with our school district to do the opposite of what kind of the governor of Texas did, which is to say if we have 10,000 kids who've arrived in 120 schools, we probably won't send all 10,000 to one school. We'll probably actually partner with those schools to have families be served in multiple different communities so that it's easier to assimilate where they have wraparound services. We also use some of the federal dollars to do a summer school program to help kids develop language access. And this is why our asylum seeker program is focused on language skills for the parents too, because we'd love to be able to— it's going to open up so many more career options for them if they have language skills. And so I think that is the path for us. But we found just the general exposure to schools with a lot of kids who are English speaking, as someone who learned Spanish in a country where I was not a native speaker, is the best way to grow. And so that's actually working quite well for us. Thank you.

[00:39:32.15] - Speaker 1

We have time for one very quick question here, and then—

[00:39:35.10] - Speaker 6

Great, thanks. Mayor, Jeff Gilman with the International Institute of New England. We serve immigrants and refugees in New England and a little bit in New York. My question for you is, in Massachusetts right now, we have a shelter crisis. We have about 3,700 immigrant families, asylum seekers in shelter, plus there's other residents of the state for long periods of time who are shelter residents. And I'm curious to know specifically or logistically how you were so successful in exiting families from from shelter in your city to permanent housing or more permanent housing, number one, like logistically, how did that work? And secondly, it takes a while in state government to set up systems and processes, and you were a state senator at one point in time and now a mayor. Can you contrast what you were able to do at the local level and the municipal level compared to what it would take at the state level to set systems up to exit people?

[00:40:22.22] - Speaker 2

Yes, that's a great question. I am really optimistic about city's capacity to solve this, because I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I started schools, I started nonprofits, I was the CEO of a venture philanthropy company for a while, so I kind of try to build things and grow things. We view this as what is the problem you're trying to solve and what do you have to build to make it work? And so we started piloting this rapid rehousing strategy. We literally had a frontline employee named Dania who had said, "I'm finding I can get people really quickly into housing if they have first month's rent and a down payment." So if we could cover that $2,000, $2,500 of cost. They can get housed quickly. We can put 4 or 5 people into an apartment. As long as 2 or more of them are working, they have the capacity. So we would group people into groups. I literally would sit there with our other staff members and say, organize yourself in groups of 4 or 5. Make sure at least 1 or 2 of you has a current income. So if there is someone that's work authorized, they can know they can be making regular payments.

[00:41:16.14] - Speaker 2

And then we started working with a partner called Housing Connector, which would help source open apartments for us on the open market so we could find them in large numbers and then place people into them. And again, as I was saying, it was quite easy with people because they have such strong work ethic and they already didn't have any negative rental history. That was what worked for us so aggressively. And we found it was actually cheaper for us, right? We were spending about $5,000 per individual per month. Family of 4, that's maybe $15,000, $20,000 in a hotel system. You could get 3 or 4 months of rent. Or more out of that for a group of people, sometimes 6 months. And our asylum program, which offered 6 months of rent in an apartment, was much cheaper per person than 42 days in a hotel. And so we found— I'm happy to share those services— we found once we had a system to identify people, house them, move them in, and then support them, it was cheaper and far more successful for them. I'll just say in closing, I think one of the things we love about this.

[00:42:14.02] - Speaker 2

I think if you come to Denver, if you come back to Denver now, you will find that people felt a year ago like you had thrown a very hard crisis at us. We had a homeless crisis and this at the same time. And I think the great danger of hard problems when you can't solve them is people get used to turning on each other rather than turning to each other. The opposite is also true, which is when you show that you can actually come together and solve a hard problem, people rebuild the trust that actually government can work again, that people can come together and solve hard problems, and they're more inclined to do the next round of it all over again. And so now I think Denver has a certain sense of pride. You know, we people will talk about, we're waiting for the little Venezuela to grow up in Denver, because we want there to be a great section which will celebrate the history of all the folks that have come and have arrived. And I think this is why this is such a powerful question for the country, is, This has been wielded as a weapon to try to mobilize Americans to turn on each other.

[00:43:11.20] - Speaker 2

And I think what we've shown in Denver is that doesn't need to be the solution, and it actually won't be the solution if you give what it takes to actually build something that works. People want to see it successful. They want to see neighbors succeed. They want to see folks achieve the American dream. Everyone has a story like mine. It's just a matter of how many generations back you have to go to find it. And when they see someone in front of them just looking for the chance to build a life that they can be proud of, they want to help. If you can build a system where that help actually leads to results, they're going to want to help more and more and more often, and we all become less and less susceptible to a story of division and more open to a story of opportunity. And that's what I think Denver has tried to build, and we hope we can change the narrative of what the country thinks is possible from here forward. Thank you all so much for having me, and thank you so much for your work.

[00:43:58.03] - Speaker 1

Thank you.

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

[00:00:01.06] - Doris Meissner

Mr. Secretary, but Ale, if I may.

[00:00:03.19] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

Please.

[00:00:04.05] - Doris Meissner

By welcoming you. Thank you, Doris. And telling you what a great pleasure it is to have you here with us today.

[00:00:09.24] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

For me as well.

[00:00:11.28] - Doris Meissner

Obviously, on behalf of MPI and Georgetown and CLINIC, it's wonderful to be able to close our conference this year with you because as we've said, this is a bookend. You were with us the first year of being the Secretary of DHS at this conference. And so now here it is, the final year. Time flies. And this is a real opportunity to look at a period that has had enormous challenges and enormous changes. And so the opportunity to reflect on it is a real important moment for this audience and for all of us who have been involved in this. And it's not only that you were, of course, the Secretary of DHS, that was preceded by having been the Deputy Secretary and by having been the Director of USCIS. I think everybody has agreed that nobody was more qualified, more capable of taking on this job, which so many people have called the most difficult job in the Cabinet, than you. So, um, It's really wonderful that I can say that throughout that time of now 15 years, you and I have come to know each other well.

[00:01:36.11] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

We have, and I'm very proud of that.

[00:01:38.19] - Doris Meissner

Well, likewise. And this audience is an audience that has followed what you do very closely. And so I would like to use our time together as fully as we can to really step back and do some big picture exchanges. And really talk about your and the administration's legacy and where things should go from here. So I'll try to ask you some questions about things that you have done, but with an eye toward where does it take us. And let me start by saying that, as you probably know, MPI is relentless about tracking the actions that administrations take on immigration issues. I don't know if you know it, but in terms of that tracking, we now have this administration at the number 600. So that's a lot of particular activities, and it's particularly, and those are all executive actions of one sort or another.

[00:02:48.25] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

That we have taken 600 executive actions.

[00:02:52.14] - Doris Meissner

Yes, I mean, that goes from a regulation to a policy guidance to a, I mean, it's the whole range of things that would qualify as things that affect the immigration system. Now it's remarkable because the Trump administration was always considered to have been the most active on immigration actions. And yet the Trump administration comes in at 472. So there's a big, big amount of work that you all have done. And that work, of course, includes things that have to do with the border and with the asylum system, which we will get to. But it also includes lots and lots of things that have had to do with the legal immigration system and the effective functioning of our overall immigration policies. So I thought that I would start by trying to give you— by giving you an opportunity. Could you talk to us a little bit about some of the things that you're most proud of, that you think are the most meaningful in what it is that you've done to advance the goals of the legal immigration system.

[00:04:02.03] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

Doris, when you speak of the number of actions we've taken, does the rescission of someone else's action count? Yes. So when we speak of the legal immigration system, does that also include managing migration generally?

[00:04:28.02] - Doris Meissner

Yes, yes.

[00:04:28.22] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

So, so, in the service of taking a step back, I would say that the building of lawful pathways, I think, is a very important foundation of managing migration in the future. And by building lawful pathways, I mean not only the reunification programs, the parole processes. I think the expansion of refugee processing in our hemisphere is very significant. I have always felt that our hemisphere has been the subject of insufficient focus from a refugee processing perspective, but I think the Safe Mobility Offices are a very, very significant development in managing migration, not just in our hemisphere but more broadly, because other countries are taking a look at them. The idea of reaching individuals where they are rather than having them have to migrate to receive relief, I think is a very significant paradigm shift.

[00:05:54.21] - Doris Meissner

Well, those things are certainly true, and they do have to do with the border, and I want to turn to the border next, but I do want to congratulate you also on not only refugee admissions in this hemisphere, but refugee admissions in general, which had been very, very deeply cut in you've been able to bring them back. I think it'll be to about 100,000 this year, which is really an extraordinary rebuilding job. And I think you're probably at the highest number of naturalizations that have taken place in, in period. And so with all of the pressures and the difficulties that USCIS faces as a part of the Immigration infrastructure at DHS. It's been— there have been a lot of advances in the legal immigration system that tend not to be talked about as much as they get talked about, and as much as what we'll now talk about.

[00:06:53.17] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

And I think, you know, when we take a look at an advance, to me a rescission is an advance to normalcy. It's true. And I think the rescission of the public charge rule is also a very significant accomplishment.

[00:07:09.00] - Doris Meissner

And now we think the reinstatement of it. Yeah. So, okay, well, let's turn to the border because that's of course always at the top of people's minds and at the top of the headlines, and certainly we know of your concerns, etc. So both in ending Title 42 and in the various new rules that have followed '42. It turns out now that you've had a very dramatic success in turning around the numbers of crossings across the southwest border in 2024. They've gone from this all-time high in 2023 of more than 2.5 million to now what's going to end this fiscal year with being the lowest number since before Biden came into office in September 2020. That is an amazing, an amazing turnaround. But of course, it has required increasingly restrictive measures on access to the asylum system. What I want to ask you is this. You were born in Cuba. You came to the United States as part of a refugee, as a refugee with a family of Holocaust survivors. You're an accomplished lawyer. People have said that those are competing forces, your own personal background vis-à-vis the actions that have been put into place that have put restrictions on territorial asylum.

Can you talk to us about how you have reconciled those in your mind, and can you talk to us about what you see to be the future of territorial asylum for the United States and other refugee-welcoming countries?

[00:08:57.28] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

So, um, yes. And I don't view it in terms of reconciling my personal life and the policies that we have promulgated. I think that we need to take a we really need to take a look at what is the goal of asylum. It is to provide relief for individuals fleeing persecution by reason of their membership in a particular social group. It is not intended for economic migration. Or individuals fleeing generalized violence or other conditions gripping a country. It is for a discrete purpose. And we also— I think that the landscape of flight has changed dramatically. I used to be of the view, and I used to advocate that individuals do not necessarily have the prerogative of choosing where along the border they arrive, nor the means by which they do arrive. If one is in flight and one is fleeing the pursuit of another, one gets to safety however, wherever, whenever one can. And it used to be the case, certainly in the '90s, and you know this better than I, so you'll correct me if you disagree, but you know, the single coyote or the small affiliation of individuals facilitating people's movement, that is a thing of past.

 

The sophisticated, ruthless smuggling organizations control the terrain. People do not reach the border without them. There may be exceptions, but those exceptions are rare. And therefore, I find the analysis of humanitarian relief to have to factor in forces that were not at play 20 years ago. And the question then becomes, is it acceptable for us to allow the smuggling organizations to in fact control the avenues of humanitarian relief? And I would respectfully submit that is not the case. And so I think we have to ask ourselves, Is the asylum system and the migration that it involves— is the status— go back a year, 5,000 people coming per day. Number one, I would respectfully submit that that is not a workable asylum system. Number two, The percentage of individuals actually qualifying for asylum is a relatively small percentage of those 5,000 to 7,000. Number 3, those are 5,000 to 7,000 people that do not represent all of the individuals who attempted to achieve relief, because many didn't make it. Um, can we allow that to continue when those are 5,000 to 7,000 people? Moving in the hands of ruthless organizations, or do we have to really take a step back and ask ourselves, how do we deliver relief outside the hands of those?

 

And that is what gave birth to the notion of reaching people where they are. That is what gave birth to the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan Venezuelan process of allowing people to be— to access relief, to be vetted in advance, and to be flown safely to the United States at their own expense. I just think we may need to undertake further paradigm reviews and considerations because the status quo of one-year ante is unworkable from many different perspectives. And by the way, the number of refugees that we have committed to accepting in from this hemisphere is 35,000 to 50,000. 125,000 globally. If you ask me from the perspective of my personal story, those numbers should be far greater. Far greater. And we have to deliver refugee relief far more rapidly. And we're working towards that, but I have to tell you, what we experienced over the past 3 years is not a workable asylum system. From a— from a borders should matter perspective, from the safety and security of the people seeking relief from a humanitarian perspective?

[00:14:34.16] - Doris Meissner

Well, I think it's quite clear that you and this administration have worked enormously hard to try to find how to attain border control and how to attain some overall orderliness in this process and remain a country of protection. So I wanted to give you the opportunity to really explore that point because it is an essential aspect, again, of the legacy that you're leaving and of the effort to try to create transformation under extremely difficult circumstances, not only operationally but just politically from the standpoint of the tools that you have and had at your disposal. And we've been exploring these issues during the conference today. We've had a session this morning on anti-smuggling, on prosecutions from the Justice Department, on the ways in which the cartels organize the territorial control that you're talking about. We've talked about the LA Declaration. We've talked about— I'd like to talk a little more more about Safe Mobility Offices, but that's an incredibly important innovation that the administration has put into place that could make a very important difference in the future as well. So we know that there is a lot that has been going on. Let me take you to the cities.

[00:16:08.19] - Doris Meissner

We just had an address from the Mayor Mike Johns— Mayor Johnston in Denver. You and he know each other. Yeah. And it was an extraordinarily inspiring description that he gave to us of what's going on in Denver. But cities, of course, have struggled, as you know, and some of that was brought about by actions that Governor Abbott took to move people directly to places without coordination. But even so, So the kinds of numbers that were coming in prior to this year and the destinations that they were going to did create enormous pressures. And I know you were on the front line of those pressures because you've told me about the phone calls that you were getting often from day to day, et cetera. Do you think, again, looking forward and based on the experience, do you think Do you think that the federal government could or should be playing more of a role with people's destinations when they're coming in as migrants across the southwest border? In other words, does the refugee resettlement program that we have, where in fact when we resettle refugees, we do work with destinations and make sure that there are sufficient resources and sufficient readiness for newcomers to come.

 

Can you imagine something like that taking place at the southwest border when we permit people to come into the country as asylum seekers?

[00:17:49.10] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

In coordination with the people themselves, the refugee The asylum process is far, far different. We're talking about very often people who have— people who arrive at the border who might have family, who might have individuals with whom they have relationships here in the United States. So coordinating. Yes. Remember, what does that mean and how are we funded for it? We can speak about optimal policies, but those policies have to be— the implementation of them have to be resourced. I think it would be ideal if we could have a system where we are coordinating with the individuals themselves as well as the receiving communities to ensure a seamless and supportive process for the individuals and the communities. I think what Governor Abbott did, and I've spoken about this repeatedly, is unconscionable. Now, the pressures that we felt were a function not only of the volume, but also of the fact that these individuals were used as pawns in a political game. And there was a deliberate a deliberate intent to not communicate, not coordinate, and not collaborate.

[00:19:21.00] - Doris Meissner

Exactly. Exactly. And what I'm looking for is whether there is the antithesis to that. In other words, whether there— because of the changed circumstances, the changed ways in which people are coming across the southwest border, the assumption that numbers are going down. And so it is more manageable, but there still is the issue of destination and pressures on other destination areas.

[00:19:46.19] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

Those pressures are no longer.

[00:19:48.06] - Doris Meissner

And if they can be coordinated, because there are lots of parts of the country that would love to have newcomers.

[00:19:54.28] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

100%. And as a matter of fact, one city that has been the subject of tremendous trauma by reason of pernicious rhetoric, is actually a city that has blossomed by reason of the infusion of individuals from another country. Right. And so where there is a need for individuals to contribute to a community, it'd be wonderful to coordinate that need with the desires of others to have a better life. Canada does a very good job of that.

[00:20:37.12] - Doris Meissner

That's true, they certainly do. All right, I want to turn to public opinion because public opinion has moved significantly toward border control in recent years. And we're seeing that in the current campaign. I mean, what we're hearing from the Democratic candidate in this this 2024 election campaign is something that we never would have heard in 2020. And it mirrors the change that public opinion is intensely interested in border control and in orderliness in immigration processes, which does not mean that they're anti-immigrant, but it does mean that orderliness is really at the top of people's minds. And that was part of what the effort of the Senate bill was all about, was to be able to address some of those issues of a more orderly system. But, you know, as we know, most of the advocacy of the organized immigrant advocacy community strenuously opposed that bill and have been very clear in saying that they would oppose oppose it again if those issues come up in legislation again. You've worked very, very hard to engage with advocates. Could you talk about what your experience in engaging with advocates has been when it comes to border control issues?

 

And could you talk about how you think that the advocacy community and there are many people in this room that are actively engaged in advocacy. How do you see them in the future with this change in public opinion really being able to be influential? What needs to happen for immigrant advocates to be able to be meaningfully engaged and influential in immigration policy? Policymaking?

[00:22:40.10] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

I think they are engaged and influential. I don't think the community is monolithic. I think there are different views, and we take great pride in hearing those views and considering them in the development of policy. I said something intemperate during a meeting with a number of different advocacy groups. And what I said was, I don't, we don't govern in a John Lennon song. And it was intemperate, but you know, pragmatism is an extraordinarily important element of advocacy and policymaking. And we have to understand the fact that the American public does want, does expect, and does demand the delivery of order. You used that term, and it is the correct term. And I would respectfully submit that at least at particular times over the past 3 years, we haven't had order. I do not consider the situation in Del Rio to have been at times orderly in terms of what the border means. To have hundreds and hundreds of migrants at risk on the street in El Paso. If people look at that and they do not see, in their minds, order— and there has to be order at the border, and the border does mean something.

 

And it means something not just in the south or in the north of the United States. Means something for every country with which I deal. You know, the challenge of migration is something at the top of many different countries' leaders' minds in my engagements. And if we do not deliver that order, then some of the dreams that we want to achieve in the arenas of family reunification, humanitarian relief, economic prosperity will not be realized. There will not be any oxygen for them. And I have— I have certain ambitions that have not been realized in terms of reform, and that is because there hasn't been very much oxygen in the room to achieve them.

[00:25:40.21] - Doris Meissner

Okay, I'm going to ask you a final question and then we're going to go to Q&A because it does have to do with exactly that. We've all said, you say, all of us say, it's almost a throwaway at this point, except that it's so important, and that is that Congress is what's missing in action. And we know that Congress is not, Congress is likely to be just as divided after the election as it is now from what we can tell, but still, if there were to be an opportunity for legislation, and recognizing that it likely would be piecemeal because of the difficulties of coming to some agreement, what's the most important thing legislatively that you would want to see fixed at this point? Is it the asylum system? Would it— what What would you want from legislation in a functioning asylum system?

[00:26:38.19] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

I think the bipartisan Senate bill was an important step. It is very— I think that is where I would start. It is certainly not where I would end. I'd like to see paths to citizenship legislated. It would be a number of different things. But, you know, for those who take issue with the rule that we have promulgated in the asylum context, I would ask if that is not the solution that in which they believe, then what is the alternative proposal? What is the alternative proposal? Because the status quo is unworkable. I just— and if somebody argues to me, no, no, no, that is our asylum system. We will have 7,000 people a day arriving at our border, which we are not resourced to address. 7,000 people a day, and their hearings will be concluded in 7 years. And I visit border towns, or I visit advocacy groups that represent undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens who tell me, "You know what? Should I advise"—prior to our keeping families together rule. "Should I advise those undocumented spouses to leave, pay a smuggler, and travel to the border because the work authorization that has eluded them for 20 years, they will get in 180 days after filing their asylum application. So maybe I should have them all leave—"

[00:28:40.05] - Doris Meissner

And come back.

[00:28:41.07] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

And arrive to the— is— so I do not find what we experienced prior to our actions as workable. And if— and I know our rule is contested both in the court and outside the court— but if that rule is contested, I would ask, what is the alternative?

[00:29:06.13] - Doris Meissner

All right, we're going to leave—

[00:29:08.28] - Alejandro N. Mayorkas

How— What is the proposal to have it work?

[00:29:12.15] - Doris Meissner

We'll leave that question hanging because it's a critically important question. We're going to go to the audience now, and I'm going to go one on each side, start over here and then go over here.

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

[00:29:24.19] - Speaker 3

Hello, Secretary. It's Camilo from CBS.

[00:29:26.17] - Speaker 2

Oh, hi. Camilo, good.

[00:29:29.01] - Speaker 3

For everyone else, for everyone else.

[00:29:32.02] - Speaker 2

I hoped Doris would go left, but I saw you looking at me.

[00:29:38.00] - Speaker 1

No, I'm sorry. I would have gone.

[00:29:39.11] - Speaker 2

No, but I respectfully submit she has gone left.

[00:29:43.21] - Speaker 1

Oh

[00:29:44.01] - Speaker 3

Good point.

[00:29:44.24] - Speaker 2

Oh, no, no.

[00:29:46.22] - Speaker 2

Let me just say something people should understand. First of all, Camilo is a phenomenal journalist. Now, drawing upon my personal history and not, not my family history, but my personal history of conviction, I see eye to eye with this journalist in terms of aspirations. Governing takes into account a lot more than what one would like to see.

[00:30:29.21] - Speaker 1

Camilo, you're on.

[00:30:30.22] - Speaker 3

All righty, I'm going to ask my question still. I know, Secretary, you believe in the notion of asylum and the idea behind it, but have your views on asylum changed since the time you took office because of the situation at the border and the challenges that you have faced there? And then what would you say to the argument that through the executive orders that you issued in June, which have dramatically reduced the number of people coming to the border, you have been proving that the administration's— the Trump administration's belief that you needed to sharply restrict asylum to solve the challenges at the border was the right approach?

[00:31:04.24] - Speaker 1

No, we'll take another question and let you wrap them together so we can be quicker about it. A question over here.

[00:31:10.20] - Speaker 2

Okay, so how have my views changed and what do I say about sharpening restrictions.

[00:31:18.01] - Speaker 4

Hello everyone, and hello, Secretary. Thank you so much. My name is Sahar Mehrion, and I'm also an immigrant from Afghanistan who came during Kabul evacuation. I'm sorry, my question might be a little bit off, but I would like to ask— I mean, today in our meeting, we heard about policies and discussions related to Mexican borders, Ukrainian, and also border controls. But I was wondering, like, if there are any policy changes related to Afghan immigrants, especially any policies related to family petition, because I also have my family back there. So in general view, I wanted to see if there are I mean, like, if the new policies are going to affect, like, Afghan immigrants and how it's going to affect them.

[00:32:15.19] - Speaker 2

Thank you. Well, with respect to Afghans in particular, we're in a very, very difficult place because the reality is that we cannot reach into Afghanistan, and so individuals have to find another country and there we can access them. So it's a very, very difficult situation, especially I think most acutely for Afghan women, but I don't foresee any policy change right now. I don't know if I— I hope I've I've answered your question there. Have my views of asylum changed? I think that what we have experienced has caused me to question what changes to the asylum system are necessary legislatively and administratively to address the realities of migration that exist in the world now. And I, I do not I think, and look, before I took on this role, I knew that there were certain aspects of the system that were broken. The years of, the years during which a case was pending, the delay in the delivery of justice, whether that be a grant or a denial of a case. That is what, you know, I was focused on. My view, my scrutiny is far more fundamental than just that now. I am willing to ask broader questions than I ever was before.

[00:34:41.27] - Speaker 2

Because what is— how effectively we manage the border impacts what opportunities we have in other aspects of the immigration system to make change. That's the reality.

[00:35:04.06] - Speaker 1

Right.

[00:35:04.24] - Speaker 2

That's the reality. And And so it's not just— and this, this is something I, I didn't necessarily ask myself when I was at USCIS. It's not just that it's 7 to 10 years. I do have to ask, and I have asked, the question of the standard for credible fear and the disparity between that standard and between the screening and the ultimate merits adjudication, and is that disparity calibrated correctly? I do believe in the notion that the standard should be lower, but then the question arises, how much lower, and have we calibrated it correctly? We have— the number I heard during the refugee consultations was 112 million displaced people in the world. Today. And our systems are not equipped, and not just ours. When I say ours, many nations' systems are not equipped. And we have to ask ourselves fundamental questions about the phenomenon of migration and how we can manage it.

[00:36:23.24] - Speaker 1

I would love to be able to have all these other questions be asked, but we've run out of the time that you have with us. So I'm going to—

[00:36:34.22] - Speaker 2

go ahead. Can I just say one more thing on this? Because Camilo's question is really a very important one, and it's one that I've asked of myself.

[00:36:44.04] - Speaker 1

Right.

[00:36:44.25] - Speaker 2

And I will tell you, the pressures are intense, and I do find myself asking myself, um, is where I'm standing, is where my two feet are, where I believe them to, um, they should be. Uh, the pressures are intense and one must, um, uh, continue to abide by one's beliefs and values, and if people— and you asked about the community— if the community challenges what we do, which is its responsibility, then I have to ask, is the landscape without any action okay? And if not, then what is the proposal?

[00:37:55.15] - Speaker 1

Well, I think we will perhaps end this session by saying, with respect to that question, that we are now facing an election that may very well have an outcome that turns on this issue. So that's a lot of evidence that in fact we have to be paying attention to it as carefully as possible because it is dividing our society and it is making it more difficult for us as a country to be the welcoming country and to be tapping immigration as the incredible net asset and comparative advantage that it has been for us throughout our history. So the fact that you have been at the helm and the fact that you have been dealing with these absolutely unprecedented pressures and doing it as conscientiously as you have been, whatever the agreements or disagreements may be on any particular issue, we thank you for being there.

[00:39:00.18] - Speaker 2

Thank you, Doris.

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

[00:00:00.07] - Doris Meissner

We're going to start off this morning now with our first panel. For those of you who are veterans of this conference, you will know, and for those of you who are newcomers, we will tell you that it's traditional for us to have the first panel of the conference be what we call the State of Play. And so the State of Play is a discussion that tries to pick up on what is a really key theme that is defining immigration in our national life at any particular year that we're doing these conferences. Well, this year it certainly wasn't very hard to pick out a theme, given the fact that we're in an election year. And what we're seeing in this election year, of course, is immigration playing a very central role. I'm Doris Meissner. I will moderate this session. I'm a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. We have an— audience in the room and we also have an audience online, so I am welcoming the online audience as well and telling you to be thinking about your questions and please putting them into the Q&A, not into the chat, and we will then be able to get to them once we get to the Q&A part of this session.

We are going to talk among us for about the first 50 minutes of, right, 25 minutes, excuse me, of the time that we have. And then we'll go into a Q&A period. The basic premise here, the basic scene setter for what we wanna be talking about is that immigration has become one of the 2 or 3 critical issues in this election on which the election is likely to turn. Moreover, it's an issue around which there's depolarization and starkly different policy outcomes depending on who is ultimately elected. That is totally new. That has not happened for us as a country, at least in our recent history. So what we want to try to do this morning is get a deeper understanding of how it is that we got here, what lies underneath this incredible division around an issue like this, as well as the division in general that is taking place in our society. Look at public attitudes, particularly among key voting groups, and have some basic takeaways on, what to be watching for in the public debate and ultimately in voter attitudes as we see them play out when the election actually has been completed.

So to do that, we have a totally stellar panel. I'm very, very pleased about the people who have been able to be here and who have agreed to be here. You have the full bios in your materials, so I'm not gonna go through the impressive backgrounds other than to say that we're gonna begin with Tim Dixon, who is the co-founder of More in Common. We'll then move to Tara Watson, who's the director of the Center for Economic Security and Opportunity at Brookings. On my immediate left is Mike Madrid, who's a Republican political consultant and an author of the new book, The Latino Century. And then on my right is Lanae Erickson, the senior vice president for social policy, education, and politics at Third Way. We really try to make this conversation— this session be a little bit conversational. I mean, I'm going to ask everybody an opening question, and I'm going give them time to really talk about the topic that we'll be asking them about. But at the same time, I hope we'll then have a little bit of time for some crosstalk among you all. You— some of you know each other and your work is related, and so there may very well be additional comments you'd like to make.

Totally encourage that. And then we will give you time for audience Q&A in the same way as you saw before, microphones here on in each aisle, so be prepared to move to them, as well as we'll make an effort to include our online audience. So Tim, we're starting with you. More in Common has done extensive research that does help us to understand polarization, social division. Tell us some of the key takeaways from that research that might help us to understand these incredibly competing narratives, at least in the United States right now, about immigration. On the one hand, the narrative that immigration is a net plus for us as a society and an important part of our values and history, vis-à-vis a newer narrative, at least in the current period, of immigration as a threat, a threat to our national security and a threat to the well-being of Americans. How have these narratives formed? How have they taken hold? What does your research tell us that helps us to understand that?

[00:05:25.23] - Tim Dixon

Thanks, Doris. It's a very salient issue, and we saw it in the questions as well in Amy's session, how much the public attitudes are driving immigration policies and the politics of immigration around the world. I'm going to focus mostly on the recent research we've done in the US. But More in Common is also in France and Germany and the United Kingdom, Poland, Brazil, and Spain. So we do work just on any issues that are driving division and where we think understanding the dynamics of polarization are really key to unlocking how societies make their way through these issues. There's no issue is more weaponized than immigration, of course. I think the hard thing is that we're used to, particularly in a social media environment, of thinking, that people have fixed positions that are either for or against specific issues. And so, on immigration, you can hear legitimate and correct voices who say, on the one hand, the public is annoyed and angry about blah, blah, blah, blah, and on the other hand, you can hear groups saying, well, there's a strong public support for undocumented blah, blah, blah, blah. Both things are true, and I think that's the hard thing is wrestling with the way in which people, see themselves as balancers on this issue.

We actually, in the, uh, some of the work we've done recently, we asked people to put themselves on a spectrum from very restrictive on immigration to very welcoming. We asked them also to put Donald Trump and to put Joe Biden originally, now Kamala Harris. Um, and the interesting thing is that, um, most Americans put themselves quite in the center. They put the political candidates fairly out towards extreme. They also put themselves slightly more welcoming than the average American, than what they perceive the average American as being. And what that translates into is this unusual combination where, on the one hand, very strong majorities think that immigration right now is out of control, that it's being badly managed, that it's too easy for people to come to the United States, that many of the people, majority of the people, don't have a legitimate claim for being here, and that America, a smaller plurality feel that the kind of America that we live in today is at risk from this migration, people with different values than ourselves. So that's on the negative side, but at the same time, you've got very strong majorities saying we're a nation of immigrants.

It's kind of 7 to 1 proposition that we, that protection from persecution is a human right that should be respected, that we need more safe pathways into the United States, that undocumented people who are well integrated and at work and paying their taxes, contributing to the community, should be allowed to stay, and that separating families on the basis of immigration status is wrong. And I think Lisa's going to upload on the, our, Zoom platform, some of those findings just give you the numbers on all this. But what's striking is just those two things. They seem to be opposites, but they're actually— there is a coherent story behind it. And I think the coherent story is really shown up when we ask the question, what's most important to you? Is it if you had to choose between increasing immigration, reducing immigration, or having greater control over who's coming into the country or not coming into the country, what's most 'What's most important to you?' And two-thirds of Americans say it's control that's most important. 29% say less immigration is what's important. 12% say more immigration is what's important. So, it's the control issue above all else.

And I think it's a threshold issue. And if you understand that in moments of high salience, people feel there's a loss of control, they're basically not willing— the majority is not willing to see more more people coming in if they feel the system's not being managed right now. So, I think it's that issue of control more than anything else. I was just on a panel last week in New York with a senior Norwegian government official. I like the way that she expressed it. She's the Minister for Labor, and she was saying, you know, my experience is that the experts on migration, the advocates on migration, tend to think of it as a moral issue and frame it in moral terms, but the public sees it more as a practical political issue. That's why they're not just for or just against. The one other thing that I'd add to that sort of picture that we can, you know, dig into a little further is that I think shifting people or persuading voters is hard on this issue. That's for 3 reasons. One is that it is about people's values. You need to understand people's starting points.

And More in Common's work, we do a lot of work on social psychology. We do segmentations of people, populations according to their values. One of the things that we use, that's moral foundations, Jonathan Haidt's work on moral foundations. And that's very potent around immigration issues. You can make exactly the same policy proposition to the public and frame it through a compassion framework versus framing it through an authority like we're in control. We can get the right balance framework, and you'll get 20 to 25% more public support if you start with the reassurance around control. And we've found that the tipping point there is people with strong moral foundations around authority, people who think it's really important that rules are followed and fairly applied. So starting with your value set to persuade someone else is not effective. You got to start with their value set. And I think the Policy propositions can often be made, same policy propositions, but so long as they're speaking to people's values. But the immigration debate, particularly for the lower information voters who shift around most, and swing voters, is very visually driven. I think on immigration, I think it's true on more and more issues, but especially immigration.

So if you think the Alan Kurdi, picture of Alan Kurdi, the little Syrian boy the toddler who died washing up on the beach in Turkey in 2015. That image really shifted public opinion and galvanized attention. The kids in cages pictures in 2019 with Trump's policy of family separation, but also the images of chaos at the border, really affected public perceptions. And the images of lots of migrants homeless in major cities of the US has really shifted. And so it's It's imagery of chaos or images that evoke compassion are very important in how the public, both in terms of salience, but also how people feel and sort of shift on this issue within their values frame. The amount of information you can get across is more limited, especially in the US. I mean, this is the lowest information environment for political campaigning, I think, of really any Western country. It's just hard to to actually get a proposition that is all that nuanced. So having come out of being a Prime Minister's speechwriter and you're, and really experiencing the losing fights on immigration issues, I'd say I'm acutely conscious of the limited aperture. I think there is an aperture for public persuasion, but it is limited and we have to be modest about what you can do and how you can do it, particularly in the middle of a campaign like now.

[00:12:43.23] - Doris Meissner

Okay, well, let's move to another area here of narrative and of information on immigration. Tara is an economist. Tara, you look at labor economics, you look at demographic impacts, you look at overall macroeconomics. What's the immigration the narrative that your work tells? What story does that tell? And why is it a story that is less heard and seemingly less compelling?

[00:13:21.24] - Tara Watson

Thanks, Doris. Thanks for including me in this panel. I've already learned a lot. So, um, economists in general don't agree on a lot, but one thing they do tend to agree on is that, broadly speaking, immigration is good for the U.S. Economy, and it is a little bit of a puzzle why that message isn't more broadly shared. I usually point to several issues about where the economic benefits are, and I'll go through them very quickly because I could spend an hour talking about them here. They are impacts on wages, including on wages of U.S.-born people. That's one of the key talking points that you hear that is a concern for people, that immigration is driving down wages of the U.S.-born. Economists generally do not find that. They usually find no or even positive impacts on the average U.S.-born worker. There is more dissent and subtlety around workers with less education in the U.S., as well as previous waves of immigrants who who may be more adversely affected, but in general, immigration is really good for U.S.-born workers. They create demand as well as providing labor supply, and there are a variety of other reasons we could get into.

So that's one area that I think there's a lot of confusion about in the general population. A second area is growth. Immigrants contribute to growth in a lot of different ways. We see overrepresentation in innovation, STEM, patents. We see overrepresentation in leadership of Fortune 500 companies. We see overrepresentation of entrepreneurs on a small scale. Virtually all of the growth in what are termed Main Street businesses, so retail outlets that you might think of as being in your hometown, is that the growth in that is almost exclusively from new immigrant development. A third area is the fiscal impact. So this is another area where you see a lot of misinformation out there. Immigrants provide revenue as well as increasing costs of governments at all levels. And the National Academies has done a very careful report trying to add that all up and see what, what what happens on net, and we do see very positive fiscal impacts of immigration, especially over the long run, over, say, a 75-year horizon. And there is some subtlety there too. So the immigration tends to be very good for the federal government coffers and especially when immigrants first arrive, a negative in the state and local level.

And going back to what Amy Pope was saying, I think sometimes advocates or people who support immigration don't fully acknowledge the challenges that new immigration can put on those state and local governments. And I have a proposal about redirecting some of those gains the federal government is getting to states and some localities that are absorbing new migrants. And then finally, we have a real demographic crisis. Looming in the U.S. We have an aging population. We have low fertility rates. And virtually all of our population as a country in the coming decades is going to come from immigrants and their children. And that's going to be really important for the fiscal picture, for sustaining things like Social Security, and for growing our workforce. So those are the reasons that— in very broad strokes of why immigration is really good for the economy. The question of why that message doesn't always get out is a trickier one. I do think that the concerns about the lack of control over the system and who's coming in, the information that's coming out of borders and the border and And the sense that we don't really know who's coming through and we don't have a plan for dealing with the large numbers of people presenting at the border makes people very nervous.

And I don't— even though my own belief is that the recent wave of migration is also good for the economy and will be more so over time, that is a tough message to send when people don't feel secure. I think it is also unfortunately been used as a wedge issue. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are really politically incentivized right now to come to the center where many Americans are and try to pass legislation to solve some of these issues.

[00:18:20.29] - Doris Meissner

Okay. So let's make a turn now from narrative to how it's playing out in certain areas of our politics. And for that, I'm gonna go first to Mike Madrid, who is going to be able to talk about a key growing population, Latinos. But I have to begin by congratulating him, 'cause this is a big time and a big week for him. And that is the publication of a new book called The Latino Century: How America's Largest Majority— Minority— is Transforming Democracy. And that book is just out, got a very nice review yesterday in the Washington Post. It's always nice to have that be the case when you're opening your newspaper and then on a book tour. He's gonna be at Politics and Prose this evening. So the timing is terrific. Mike, Latinos have been a very reliable voting bloc for Democrats. And that's been the case for a long time. What does your work show us about how and why that might be changing? And then given this particular campaign and the particular candidacy, that we have in Donald Trump and his rhetoric that is so anti-immigrant, will that affect Latino voting one way or another in light of the broader trends that you're seeing?

[00:19:52.24] - Mike Madrid

First, thank you so much, and not just for inviting me back to Georgetown. I was an undergraduate at the School of Foreign Service. But for all of your work in this space for so, so many years, and thank you for the leadership that you've taken. Taken on helping us understand and define immigration policy over the— over a little while. A little. 30 years ago, a couple of things were happening. I'm going to begin there because that's really, I think, where the story begins and brings us to the current time, the current moment. Two big things were happening. The first, as I mentioned, I was an undergraduate worried about how I was going to pass my Spanish proficiency test, so that always makes you very nervous. The second was a very significant voter qualified measure in California was passed, Proposition 187, my home state. I grew up a Mexican-American kid in Southern California and was very keenly aware that we were on the verge of something very extraordinary, not just in the moment in 1994, but what would be the arc, the trajectory of my life and my career, which is this unprecedented democratic demographic change, which puts us right now at this moment about 15 years away from the United States becoming a non-white majority country for the first time essentially in our history, at least for a very, very long time dating back to our founding.

Now that demographic change challenges a lot of our basic assumptions, not just as Americans, but as human beings. And I think, as Tim mentioned, public opinion, even as a young undergraduate, I was keenly aware that this was was a visceral, emotional, immediate issue that was going to be definitive. A state like California passed the measure overwhelmingly, 60-40, passed with Democrats, passed with whites, passed with African Americans, Asian Pacific Islanders support. The only group that it did not pass with were Latinos. And that became a really significant moment in the politicization of Latino voters, defined an entire generation. My good friend Alex Padilla, who now sits in the United States Senate, same age as I was at the time, came back from here on the East Coast at school to get involved politically to kind of fight some of these efforts and some of these measures and to define a new era of politics. But a curious thing has happened on the way, and often does with generations, and one of the reasons why we have seen such a very different reaction in the current political climate, especially amongst Latino voters, is Latino voters themselves Latinos themselves have changed.

And where we saw multigenerational bloc created in response to the community being under threat in 1994, we're seeing a lot of polling data right now that is showing a much different perception of and receipt of how these issues are being played out. We've seen a decade-long, in fact, progression of Latino voters towards the Republican Republican Party, or as I like to say, away from the Democratic Party, although the net effect is the same. And there's no question that immigration and the control issue that Tim mentioned up, border security, has emerged as a defining issue, not just for all Americans, but indeed for Latino voters. Some of the largest rightward shifts that we saw amongst Latino voters happened along border communities. And it can't just be easily explained by saying, well, there's a lot of Latino law enforcement officers, although there are some. They also happen to be some of the areas and communities with the longest, most established multigenerational Latino families and communities as well. And that ran not just along the Rio Grande Valley, but in southern New Mexico, New Mexico 2's congressional district, southern Arizona, Ruben Gallego's district, into the Imperial County area, the most Latino-concentrated area in California.

We're seeing these shifts. And there's also no question from public opinion that border security is— has not only emerged but has become a defining issue for this community. And so in many ways what we're sitting upon is the precipice of a generational transformation that is redefining the way America's largest ethnic minority views what we have come to believe, I would argue somewhat erroneously, that this is a defining racial or ethnic litmus test issue for the electorate. It is not, and never really has been, even when I was an undergraduate here 30 years ago. But it's becoming less so all of the time. And that begs a whole lot of questions about how we are going to frame this issue politically, why some of the actors that are getting some of the support from this community are getting it, despite some of the rhetoric, which is just defies conventional wisdom. And it sets the stage, I think, for a very extraordinary transformation in the way we view minority voters and the issues which motivate them. Because one of, I think, the greatest ironies, perhaps, is that the Republican Party— incidentally, I'm a co-founder of the Lincoln Project.

I have to say that oftentimes so you understand what kind of a Republican I am. It's a very unique brand, so let's just say that. I'll just set that out there. But I forgot exactly where I was going with that now. The reaction can usually be one of two things when you mention that. But the way that Latino voters define or coming to understand this issue and define this issue and the way the two parties react to that I think are going to be quantitatively different than what we have seen and witnessed over the course of the last 30 years. As Amy Pope just mentioned, I think very astutely, there is a very strong prominent role for those in the private sector, those in the business community, those in the hospitality industry, the agriculture industries, all of the blue-collar workforce that we need to kind of keep our economy going. There's a national security argument, there's a faith-based argument. A lot of these organizations and coalitions that I've been involved with personally in been trying to help organize over the better part of the past 3 decades to finally get something done on immigration and immigration reform.

But what we have found is the coupling, the coupling of border security with immigration reform has always been untenable. It has always— and this is, I know, really strikes at the heart of what a lot of people believe, I think, is the way we get to immigration reform. But I I, after 30 years of banging my head against the wall with others in the coalition, I think it's evident that that is not going to happen. And this decoupling, which feels really awkward and uncomfortable for advocates, feeling that they're leaving all of their leverage at the table, I think is actually not correct. I think that once we are able to get a border security policy passed, it allows the full engagement of those coalition members that excuse me, can actually move the right without the specter of border security on them limiting their engagement to actually push for something meaningful in terms of a pathway to citizenship, DACA protections, protections for those who are here, the spouses of those who are here, and the many myriad ways in which we need to get a more comprehensive immigration reform proposal accomplished. In closing, what I want to say is we also have to understand how significantly the Overton Window has moved.

We are watching the Democratic nominee for president, her very first ad as the presumptive nominee before she even secured the Democratic nomination formally, first ad was called Tougher. It was an ad with border wall images, promising to hire thousands of new law enforcement officers, extolling her virtues as prosecuting transnational gangs and drug dealers, and perhaps, I suppose, some very fine people. And I say that because we need to be very clear-eyed at how different the discussion is. I know that when I was working with George W. Bush on his campaign in 2000, that kind of language, that kind of policy was completely unacceptable. Something I think he himself would have defined as un-American at the moment. This is in 2000, the Republican nominee. And of course the world has changed, but our language has changed, our politics have changed, and it's undeniable that I believe that the locus, the focus of that change has moved in large part because Latino voters have changed. That center of gravity has moved towards a position where that is not only an acceptable position, but the moment demands it and it requires it. And we're having, again, a border security issue largely in isolation in order, I think, I hope, my hope is to allow us to get to the immigration reform discussion.

So with that, I'll end.

[00:28:34.15] - Doris Meissner

Well, that's a very good ending because it's not an ending. It is the perfect— transfer to Lanae Erickson and the work that she does and has been doing with Third Way, focused on lots of different issues that have to do with voter attitudes. But definitely on this particular one, Lanae and her organization have done some very eye-opening polling. And I, you know, we would have to say, just as you've pointed out, Mike, that Trump had as much as a 30% advantage on the immigration issue over Democrats when Biden was the candidate. With Harris now in the race, there is obviously a new face, and more recent polling polling. So, Lanae, tell us about that polling. Is the gap narrowing? And can Harris overcome losing voters on immigration because she's charged with having been the border czar, even though that was never her portfolio or her task?

[00:29:48.11] - Lanae Erickson

You know, I think that immigration is higher salience in our political conversation right now than it has been perhaps in my two decades in Democratic politics. People care about it a lot. And part of that is obviously driven by the far right and Donald Trump, who have really focused on it, obviously, in a negative way. But part of that is also substantive. We have a real problem that we're dealing with with global migration. We have people coming to declare themselves to try to avail themselves of asylum in numbers that are far, far, far beyond what our system was built to take. And people can see that. So I think a lot of times we start with a view that this is just a Fox News issue, this is people hyping something on the right. And I just don't think that's the entirety of the case at this point. I think people can see that we have a problem, we have a broken system, and we have people who are trying to come here in a way that US law allows, and a system that just frankly is broken and not able to deliver the results of their case in a timely fashion.

So, with that going on in the background, you know, I think we have a giant political conversation on immigration, and one party has been really the only one that's been willing to talk about it for many years at this point. And Republicans have had a natural advantage on the issue of immigration, in part because they're the only ones who will talk about the problem. And what we have seen in our polling is that, yes, Republicans start with an advantage. Trump starts with an advantage, including with Latino voters, as Mike has talked about, which always surprises people. But that advantage mirrors exactly the question of, who do you think cares about this issue? Because if someone isn't talking about the issue, if Democrats refuse to engage on it because they're scared of being yelled at on Twitter, how do you think someone's going to solve a problem they won't acknowledge exists? And that's really the problem that we've been dealing with with the Democratic politics on this issue for the last few years. So I think that Harris has taken a very different approach. And in part, that's because of the Overton window move that Mike alluded to.

But what we've seen in our public opinion research is that when Democrats do engage on this issue and acknowledge that there's a problem and talk about that we need to be both a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants, and we cannot be either of those things unless we are both, then people come over to the Democrats on this issue. That gap closes almost completely just by Democrats engaging on it. And I think some of the problem has been there's a kind of consultant class in DC, campaign folks who say, don't engage on an issue that's your opponent's turf, right? And I'm sure you've all seen this in the news. In fact, there were a bunch of consultants saying this right before the big Tom Suozzi race that got a lot of attention. There were consultants the day before that election saying, Tom Suozzi is doing the wrong thing. He's engaging on Republicans' turf. He should change the subject and talk about prescription drug pricing. Well, that doesn't work. If people If people care about immigration, you can't just change the topic to something else that you'd rather talk about. You have to engage on it.

And what we saw when Tom Suozzi did engage is that, in fact, people came along with him. And they trusted him to take a both-and approach to the issue and to actually offer solutions. And, you know, I'll just— if this panel was a text chain, I would have been doing a lot of thumbs-upping of a lot of what my co-panelists were saying. I love the word control. I think that's really, really important to what we see in the public opinion research. My word for it is order. This is all about order versus chaos. So if people think that we have chaos at the border, and if people think that Democrats don't care about that or refuse to actually offer solutions that would create order at the border, then they're not going to trust Democrats to address that issue. And I think what Harris is what she's done is really step into that breach, stop being afraid of people yelling at her on Twitter, and say, we do have a problem. And you know what? I'm a border state prosecutor. I know how to go after the bad guys. I know how to go after the traffickers.

I know how to go after people who are bringing drugs into our country. And I'm going to be the one to offer order and solutions. And suddenly, people are like, oh, great. OK. That's good. Now I can hear what you have to say on lots of other issues. Democrats aren't going to win on immigration, but they at least have to come to the table and make sure that folks can trust them as a threshold question to control our border, to create order, to make sure that we know who's coming into our country and we're making that decision, not traffickers and smugglers. And if they can do that, then they can go and talk about prescription drug pricing all they want, and we will win on that issue too. So I really think the only The only thing that I disagree with that has been said so far today, I just want to raise it up because it'll be more fun if we have some disagreement, which is what Tara said about neither party being incented to take care of this problem. I don't think that's true. In general, when you look at the party's coalitions, there is an asymmetry in our politics.

80% of people who vote for Republicans are self-described conservatives. Only 40% of people who vote for Democrats are self-described liberals. The liberal base is not as big as the conservative base. So Democrats don't actually need to be afraid of turning away their base. Folks will be with us on this issue, and in particular, Latino voters will be with us on this issue. There's a stereotype that acknowledging the problem and making sure that we want order and we are the party of solutions is going to somehow turn off Latino voters. The exact opposite is true. And what we've seen in our polling is that those Latino voters who started by trusting Trump on the issue, once they heard Harris talk about her credentials, talk about her solutions to restore order at the border, and yes, talk about how we're going to let people come to this country legally because we want them here, Latino voters liked that. That's what they wanted to hear from Harris. And that really is where she has had that on offer. And I think what we oftentimes talk about polarization, but what Tim articulated so beautifully is that it's actually a tension of values.

We want immigrants and we want laws. We want both of those things. But there's about 70% of us that aren't polarized. We just think it's complicated. And this is a nuanced issue. So if Democrats can be the ones that acknowledge that nuance and offer solutions to actually address that nuance, then they can absolutely erase the Republican advantage. And then, again, we can talk about all the other things that Republicans don't have good solutions for that Democrats have better ones.

[00:36:36.04] - Tara Watson

I would—

[00:36:37.13] - Doris Meissner

OK.

[00:36:40.04] - Tara Watson

I would love it if there was a way to find that political incentive. Just to clarify, I do think what Mike said is important. The decoupling versus trying to do it all at once is a really big and thorny issue. I think you see the Democrats do not want to give in and lose their bargaining chip on the issues they care about. The same is true for Republicans. And you can't get things done that seem even really small-ball things that you basically think everyone should agree on. Aren't getting done. So maybe there's a hope if we— if Democrats start thinking about this in a new way, or maybe Republicans do.

[00:37:23.16] - Doris Meissner

Any other comments from among you? I'm going to ask you, Mike, on the notion of Congress and acting. I mean, we all know It's the simple fallback answer now on everything. We need Congress. Congress needs to act. We've done as much as we can do. But we all know that not only has it not happened, it's not likely to happen in a new administration because the outcome of the election is almost entirely going to be a hair's razor edge. Yeah. Whether the leadership changes in one body or the other notwithstanding. So you talked in particular— let me take up this issue a little further about decoupling. Yeah. Because of course, we know that we do need to have some kind of legislative movement of some kind. You're a Washington person. Spell that out. What would that look like? Just think about a Congress that—

[00:38:32.20] - Mike Madrid

Was that a compliment, by the way?

[00:38:37.06] - Doris Meissner

It was a challenge to be provided.

[00:38:40.14] - Mike Madrid

I'm listening very astutely to both Lanae and to Tara because I think— big fans of both of them. And I think that they're both coming at the challenge before us, regardless of who the next president of the United States will be. From maybe slightly different perspectives, but let me offer, I think, my perspective. Since really, since the Obama administration, the idea that immigration was a touchstone litmus test racial and ethnic issue for Latinos has sort of become orthodoxy within the Democratic Party. And as the more that Democrats have leaned into that, the more they have lost Latino support. Now I'm not saying that's the only reason, but I'm I'm also not saying it's not a significant factor, for the reasons that Lanae just argued. I think she's exactly right. And their research on this is top notch. What I will say, though, is the idea that the leverage point for Democrats to get the immigration reform piece was to not put any ideas forward on border policy has always been a flawed strategy.

It has never made sense. It's left them open and vulnerable politically to charges of being open border, even though I don't know anybody who is open border. But how do you refute that when you don't have a policy position to stand on? The great irony is now they have very specific border policy, and it's Lankford's bill, one of the most conservative Republican members of the Senate. And, and it, to me, it's a sign that the Democrats have recognized that they have lost the battle under that current construct. I think that both sides, at different iterations since the '86 Reform Act was passed, that both parties have not had the incentive to do anything. Democrats erroneously believing that they could just use Republicans' tendency, strong tendency, to overplay their hand on this issue to galvanize and drive Latino voter support up. It was a turnout mechanism. Republicans, for their part, wanted to keep continuing that, especially rural, non-college-educated white voter that has overperformed for them since at least 2016, or even the way I saw it in California back in 1994. Because as Tim mentioned, this issue speaks to the centrality of human identity in a way that I have never seen before, or since.

And it continues to play out that way. So when you have the Republicans, who were never operating in good faith, finally, you know, the Democrats cry uncle and say, "Fine, we'll give you whatever you want. We'll call it bipartisan, but it's basically giving you essentially 90% of what you want." They walk away from the bill. They were never— they need the issue. And Trump says it specifically. We need the— we can't take away win here. That's not a win. A win is to continue the battle. And the only thing that did change for Democrats, the realization that they had lost this war of attrition, was that Latino voters changed. You're not seeing Latino voters taking to the streets and marching and saying, our nominee is racist and let's burn this all down, even though her positions are Lankford's positions now. Why? Well, the answer is simple. The answer is because that's not what the sentiment of the community is. And so the dynamics that I believe this coupling, this unholy alliance of bringing these two issues together, has proven what a lot of us have been saying for decades, which is these should not be brought together.

Handle the border security piece, and then let's have a clean discussion on the immigration reform piece. Because you will bring a lot more allies to the table with a lot more passion, a lot more commitment in a lot— in a much different way. We can have an economic discussion. We can have a national security discussion. We can have a faith-based discussion. All of those are not possible when we have this overall frame of border security as a specter looking over our shoulders and the shoulders of those coalition members. Border security has always been the first piece to get done in order to get to immigration reform. It's just been a very scary proposition for Democrats to give up what they erroneously believed was their biggest bargaining chip. And now that it seems to be taken off the table, I think we hopefully get to that point of the discussion. One quick qualifier. I've been extremely optimistic about getting an immigration reform deal done at least 5 times over the last 30 years. So take everything I'm saying with a slight grain of salt.

[00:43:11.01] - Doris Meissner

Okay. I'm going to just— I'm going to turn to you in a second, but what I want to tell the audience is that we're about to go to the Q&A. So for those of you who would like to ask a question, feel free to start lining up on either side of the mics. And then let's go to Lanae here.

[00:43:26.18] - Lanae Erickson

On that optimism point, I actually am pretty optimistic that because of how far this conversation has moved, we might be able to get something done in the next Congress. I think the question is, where do we start? And what should advocates do to prepare for that conversation so that they can actually impact the bill. And that is going to require understanding where we are right now. Not only has the Democratic Party fully embraced this Lankford, Sinema, Chris Murphy bill, but they've also— they've put those planks in their own platform, in the Democratic platform, not just the bipartisan bill that they negotiated. They are no longer doing it just because Republicans told them they have to. They're doing it because the politics have moved and the substance has moved. And so I would just urge all of us who care about getting something done on these issues to start from there and think about where we're going to go, because it is likely that the Republicans are going to take over the Senate. I am hopeful that the Democrats are going to take over the House. And if Harris is in the White House, that's actually a really good recipe to get something done here.

Because it means that Mike Johnson and the Freedom Caucus aren't part of the conversation. It means that we're talking about Senate Republicans who, yes, have pulled the rug out from under us several times, but have also worked together to get a bipartisan bill in the past that then was scuttled by the Republicans in the House. So if you want to get something done, this might be our opportunity. And we just need to start from the location where we are and not a 2013 version that we might have loved but is now dead.

[00:45:02.13] - Doris Meissner

Okay. I'm going to quickly ask Tim a question from the online audience, which we promised, and then we'll go to the floor. So, Tim, are there— is there any example of a country that you know that is perceived by its population to be exercising effective controls?

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

[00:45:23.04] - Speaker 2

Yes. Country where I come from—

[00:45:24.08] - Speaker 1

And not just shutting it down

[00:45:25.02] - Speaker 2

Australia. I mean, Australia has— yeah, yeah. I mean, Australia is interesting as a country, but it's complicated because I think there's a certain amount of cruelty to the policy, and it's a little bit specific to a country, an island continent. But Australia had a huge blow-up about immigration issues in 2001 around refugees. When I served prime ministers 2007 to 2013, they liberalized the policy. They didn't want to acknowledge the fact that There were pull factors with boats coming into the country across a long, a very long way often. And now essentially they have a pretty neutralized policy. There's not a lot of gap between the Labor government now in power, recently came to power, and the Conservatives because they just have very tough external border policy which includes pushing back boats. But that has has also allowed, you know, the highest immigration level. I mean, you know, Australia is the highest immigration country in the world. It's 31% are overseas born. I think it's 21% here and— sorry, Canada and 14, 15% here. The public is not— I mean, the pace of change in the demographics of Australia I found astounding.

[00:46:38.01] - Speaker 2

It's 15 years ago since I left Australia, but I find it amazing. And the, you know, I don't think the public is ever highly supportive of very high immigration policies, but the issue is the salience is low and there's a sense of control. The sense of control is because the borders are secure. And I think that that dynamic is different in every country. It's tougher when you've got a land border, obviously, but it is possible to change the dynamics of the debate when people perceive rightly or wrongly, that when people perceive that there is control, yeah.

[00:47:11.25] - Speaker 1

Sense of control, that's clearly the word today. All right, let's go to the audience. I'm gonna ask each side to ask a question so that we have at least two at a time, and we'll try to go through them as crisply as we can because a lot of you want to say things. Please, on the right.

[00:47:28.19] - Speaker 6

Okay, hello, thank you very much for, this is very uncomfortable.

[00:47:32.16] - Speaker 6

Okay, like this.

[00:47:33.27] - Speaker 6

Thank you very much for all of your presentations.

[00:47:36.22] - Speaker 6

My name is Mara Tissera Luna.

[00:47:38.17] - Speaker 6

I am a fellow here at Georgetown, but I live in Silicon Valley.

[00:47:43.08] - Speaker 6

I am a migrant also who doesn't even have a green card, so of course my question comes to my interest too of not being massively deported together with millions of other migrants. And I think it is mainly for Tim and Tara, so if I understood well, the argumentations that work the best are economic, right, showing our economic contributions to the U.S., not moral, and also connected to compassion, right, because you also talked about images that convey compassion and that can incite solidarity from U.S. Citizens.

[00:48:24.17] - Speaker 6

So I wanted to confirm this, and if you could develop this a little bit further. So what are the argumentations that work?

[00:48:31.14] - Speaker 6

Yeah, thank you.

[00:48:34.08] - Speaker 7

Over here. Okay, good morning. Rachel Partridge with Welcoming America. Thank you for this great panel. Tim, I was really struck by your comment about imagery, and I've been thinking about that. I think similar question. If we know that the Great Replacement narrative is really underpinning so many of the conversations around immigration. I'm wondering about the imagery that can really stand up to that. And for those of us who might work more in a policy arena and less in a pop culture arena, who are some of the partners and allies that we might need to bring that to life? Thank you.

[00:49:13.21] - Speaker 1

Okay, I think, let's see. You want to take a stab?

[00:49:18.13] - Speaker 5

Sure.

[00:49:19.17] - Speaker 5

I'll address the second question first on the partnerships. You know, there was a— in the year of our Lord 2013, when we were in a very different situation, there was a fantastic coalition called Bibles, Badges, and Businesses that was on the Hill every day. The National Association of Evangelicals was testifying in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. Were coming and saying, we need you to do something, Congress. And I think that those 3 buckets of interests can be very, very effective in making the case, especially to the Republicans who might need to be persuaded. So I would say that that's a big piece for all of us. One thing that is hard about that is the US Chamber of Commerce has kind of shifted its priorities in this new MAGA world and has been less willing to be out there in favor of immigration reform and other things that we used to work with them on. And they have actually just kind of emptied out a bunch of their policy shop. We work with them on higher education, and there's no one over there anymore who does higher education, because they have shifted in response to the changes in the Republican Party.

[00:50:25.11] - Speaker 5

So we're going to have to find other ways to bring business into the conversation. And to the young woman's question over here, I think you're totally right about the economic argument. But you said a word that is even more important, which is contribution. People in this country love to think of themselves as being hardworking, and anyone can have the opportunity to succeed in this country. My favorite poll question that I always talk about is Pew does this poll across lots of countries in the world, and they say, how important is hard work to getting ahead on a scale of 0 to 10? In France, 40% of people say it's a 9 or a 10. In the United States, 91% of people say it's a 9 or a 10. We love the idea that we can work hard and get ahead, and that is exactly what immigrants do in this country. And so that idea that we're contributing, you're contributing to your community, is even more important than a bunch of statistics about the macroeconomic benefit. It's really about that contribution, and that can really land with people, I think, across the political spectrum.

[00:51:31.01] - Speaker 1

Tim, did you want to add a comment here?

[00:51:32.22] - Speaker 2

Yeah, I think the value of fairness is a really important dynamic in the way that the public perceives this as well. And it maps to— so the argument for people have worked hard, been in the country for a long time, followed the rules, paid their taxes. There's a kind of fairness thing that kicks in with how the public perceives why undocumented people with a long duration in the country should be able to stay, whereas people who are coming in a disorderly way who haven't— I mean, there is a strong public perception that there is somewhere a line somewhere outside of the country, and people are waiting in that line. And if other people come across the border, then that means people in the line line have to wait longer. And, you know, we asked a question around, just to tap into that sense of consequences for others who are following the rules, and it's very strong. It's about 67% to 13% people saying it's unfair for people outside following the rules in how to come into the country that other people can kind of jump the line. So, that fairness works both in a kind of more compassionate and welcoming way and also in a more restrictive way.

[00:52:45.19] - Speaker 2

But it's very genuinely felt. And when you do— you know, we do a lot of focus groups. We just did one with Latino voters in Arizona last week. And that sense of, like, the fairness of people— one group follows the rules, others don't— while you might know from a policy perspective that the world is more complicated than that, but the perception is that that's how it works. Works. That's one thing. On Rachel's question on imagery, I think the powerful imagery— I think it's hard to create images or find images that are more powerful than those really visceral ones, which can be tragic or, you know, brutal. I mean, that's just the virality of social media. But what— if you look at the American Immigration Council's blog 'Belonging Begins With Us' campaign, which is really well-informed by a lot of research behind it. You know, they are doing a good job on immigration. It's representing integration. The mistake that has often been the case on immigration campaigns is showing pictures of migrants. That doesn't under— that doesn't change the us versus them, the sense of in-group, out-group, that is the fundamental psychological division that you're trying to overcome.

[00:53:58.26] - Speaker 2

If you show pictures of successful integration of people who are, you know, visibly kind of longstanding Americans along with outsiders functioning together, then that really works. It really breaks down the underlying psychology. And just one last thing to say on that, what's really surprising to me is, and the work I've done, is just realizing how maybe 35, 40% of the public who are characterized by disengagement, distrust, a sense of alienation, lack of belonging, how quickly they imagine that people different from themselves are hostile to them. So they have— they just haven't seen images that Muslims integrate successfully in America, for example. They're actually not necessarily all that opposed or resistant when they see or hear or meet a Muslim, but It's unfamiliar to them. We haven't— we've had the last couple of decades in the United States, we have not been telling the story of migration, of us as a nation of immigrants, in the same way as we did, say, go back to the Reagan era or before. And I think that's— the cost is that people tend to believe these very negative images of difference, negative stories of difference, and we have to just, like, constantly be telling that more positive story.

[00:55:18.10] - Speaker 2

And yes, the creatives, Hollywood, so forth, are a really important part of that. I mean, it's kind of— it's a thing that we need. You can't underestimate the extent to which a significant proportion of our country believes very dark, dysfunctional things about our world because they're just— they are interacting less with other humans in day-to-day life. The digital world has taken us offline, out of our out of the streets. And so, you have to— we have to find a way to, social contact theory, get people reconnecting. But we have to also just, in small ways, always be telling that story of how, you know, our humanity is the fundamental thing that defines us and, you know, why my organization's called More in Common. We have more in common than divides us. People believe the proposition, but they need to see it in a day-to-day kind of way. Kind of way.

[00:56:09.00] - Speaker 1

Okay, over here and then we'll go back here.

[00:56:11.23] - Speaker 8

Thank you. Adam Bates with the International Refugee Assistance Project. All of you, all of you mentioned this concept of control and how important it is, but doesn't it seem like that must be speaking to something deeper and more fundamental than control? I mean, I snuck over here uncontrolled across the border from Virginia this morning and nobody cares. So it's not just the idea of we don't know what hillbilly weirdos are sneaking into our communities. There must be something deeper than that. I— do you agree with that? And if so, why frame it in terms of control if you're actually talking about whatever this deeper thing is that makes people so desperate to feel like the border is being controlled? Thank you.

[00:56:57.12] - Speaker 1

Okay, are Over here.

[00:56:59.27] - Speaker 9

Thank you.

[00:57:00.11] - Speaker 9

Theresa Brown with the Bipartisan Policy Center. I want to dig a little deeper into this idea of decoupling as a legislative strategy based on the politics. You know, when comprehensive immigration reform was first conceived in the 1990s by Demetrios Papademetriou and others, it was three pieces. It was border legalization and legal immigration reform. And the legal immigration reform piece is the big piece that got most businesses engaged. And yet, in the dynamic and dialog, when CIR is mentioned, to the extent it's mentioned at all, it is mostly border versus legalization, that that's the thing that matters. We did some polling a few years ago where we asked Republicans and Democrats what their number one priorities were. No surprise, Republicans, border. Democrats, legalization. Then we asked, which of your priorities would you be most willing to compromise on and least willing to compromise on to get your priority? No surprise, Republicans and Democrats were least willing to compromise on border security and legalization. So merging those two things doesn't— like, didn't add up the math. But legal immigration was the thing that most people were willing to come to the table and work on. So what's your— What's your theory of where legal immigration fits to that dynamic today?

[00:58:21.05] - Speaker 1

Okay. On this issue of control is really the continuous word. You've used the word order. You want to talk a little bit about why you use order versus control?

[00:58:33.01] - Speaker 5

Sure. I think that there's some kind of similarity there in terms of the value, but I mean, obviously, there is a lot going on that's about race here. We— I didn't say that out loud because I think we all know that, but we could say it out loud too, that there's a reason that there's so much focus on the southern border. There's a reason that there's so much focus on certain kinds of migrants and not others. And so that is absolutely at play in the background of all of this. The reason that it's not in the forefront of my remarks is I don't know how to solve that. And I think that we can actually get to some of the policy solutions that we seek before we can solve racism in America. And so I think that requires trying to meet people where they are and trying to persuade them that we can create sustainable progress together while also addressing the deep structural issues of racism in America. I just don't want to think that I have to solve that giant problem before we can make any progress on this one. Um, And the other thing that is underlying there, I think most people think most immigrants are good people.

[00:59:38.22] - Speaker 5

They don't think that what Trump says is correct. But they do think that bad people are exploiting a broken system. And if there's chaos, bad people are going to use it. And they're right. So that doesn't require them to think that every immigrant is bad, but it does show— it does mean that they're They're aware that there are traffickers, that there are drugs, that there are guns going the other way across the border. There's a lot of bad things can happen if you don't have a nice line where you're lining up. You know, I was just at a concert last night, and there was a bathroom line that was really more of a mob. And I was like losing my mind because there wasn't a clear order for who got here first, who gets to go to the ladies' room. And it made me feel, like, anxious, because I'm like, who knows? Where's this line? That's what people are looking for. They don't want chaos. They want to make sure that we know who's coming in and that that line is based on who showed up first and not based on, you know, who's able to kind of break the system.

[01:00:42.29] - Speaker 3

If I can just add on there, I want to, again, acknowledge that racism is a big part of this. Worry that if we sort of solve the border first, we are not— we won't be solving racism, obviously. And we also, I am not convinced, will therefore be able to dispel the narrative that we have this out-of-control system. We— people have been saying the border is out of control and chaotic well before this current surge was happening. So mid, say, 2017, there wasn't that much going on at the border compared to today. And there was still the same narrative. We need to secure the border before we can talk about any of these other issues. So I worry that if we were to somehow secure the border to some degree, it's never going to be 100%, that we would actually still be having that same conversation. We would have put up all of these barriers, we would have implemented policies that are in some cases cruel, and then we still don't get to the rest of the conversation. So that's where my concern is.

[01:01:51.18] - Speaker 1

Yeah, I mean, it is true that what is control, what constitutes control, and there is somehow a view, and it's actually in statute in the Secure Fence Act, that control at the southwest border is zero crossings. There is not one other realm of law enforcement anywhere that expects zero percent. It's a question of managing it. It's a question of being able to respond. It's a question of being able to recognize when there are hotspots, particular changes. So it is true that the whole question of expectations of what is control is critically important. I mean, you look now, the numbers are 70% less in the last 6 months coming across the border than they were a year ago. This fiscal year will end with less numbers coming across the southwest border than before Biden was elected. And yet there is certainly not a perception of control. So it's a very profound and fundamental question. All right, we're going to go into a lightning finish. I have 2 here, 2 here. State your questions very quickly, and we'll do one-question answers till we're at 11 o'clock.

[01:03:03.23] - Speaker 10

I don't know if I can— oh, sorry.

[01:03:06.23] - Speaker 11

So, Abel Núñez, Executive Director of the Central American Resource Center. I appreciate particularly the last comments on race, because that was my question. You know, and remember, in the 1980s, when we had Clinton, right, he was a tough on crime, and we get the '94 crime bill. And we had his wife saying super predators, right, because they were tough on crime. But what that led to was the largest incarceration of brown and black people. And so as we're talking Democrats going more to the right, are we going to go 30 years later a decimated economy because we went to the right and we're going to apologize? So I think that there's intersection of race but also demographics, which you mentioned. It is the fact that the dominant culture, it's losing its numbers. And I think that that fear is real. And I think that every, you know, so, you know, to your comments, would be like, how do you change the narrative when the dominant culture is just scared?

[01:04:07.02] - Speaker 1

Okay, over here.

[01:04:08.17] - Speaker 12

My name is Liza Perkins Cohen. I work for Casa Cornelia Law Center, which is a direct service provider to to asylum seekers at the border in San Diego. So, I was— my place in the queue was great because I wanted to just talk about a couple things. I keep hearing the word— I'll try to be brief, but I take issue with a couple of words that are constantly used in immigration. One is chaos. I am in San Diego. There is no chaos at our border, partly because we have a lot of faith-based groups and other groups, nonprofits especially, stepping in to assist so we don't have migrants homeless on our streets. Another word I take issue with is illegal. I meet with asylum seekers all day long, and I ask them, why did you come to the border crossing in an irregular fashion? Why didn't you use the CBP One app, or why didn't you come to an official port of entry? And usually they say either there was a 7 or 8 month wait in Mexico for a CBP-1 appointment to come with an appointment, which is an unacceptable period of time to wait in a dangerous place.

[01:05:20.13] - Speaker 12

Or they didn't know where the official ports of entry were. And sometimes it's because smugglers took them to the weakest points along the border and just drop them off there. So I'm seeing people who want to come the so-called right way, and I think there's no information out there to say, you know what, it's not chaotic all along our border, and most of these people do want to come in the right way. And finally, just to Lanae's point, I'm one of those Democrats who would like very much to to see funding for border security. It would make my life a lot easier defending people who are real victims of persecution. Like, if I'm representing a Venezuelan who's a real victim of persecution, I don't want to be before an immigration judge who's just heard 9 cases of Venezuelans who are members of international crime organizations. If those people aren't in our country seeking with frivolous cases of asylum, it will make my job representing real asylum seekers a lot easier.

[01:06:35.05] - Speaker 1

Okay. Thank you. Final question.

[01:06:38.20] - Speaker 13

Yes. Tom Warrick from the Atlantic Council. This is for Mike, but for anyone. You've commented a lot on the Harris position of the bipartisan Senate compromise going forward. Could someone comment on the alternative proposal, the mass deportation idea?

[01:06:59.08] - Speaker 1

Okay. We have 1 minute for those very small topics. You want to say something about mass deportation?

[01:07:09.23] - Speaker 4

Let me just, yeah, let me very briefly just mention, I think this goes very in line with the arc of the imagery that a question asked earlier. I want everybody to be very mindful of the fact that not only has the Overton window moved to the right considerably in this country, but the imagery that began essentially in 2016 with the build the wall chants disappeared by 2020. It was replaced with law and order. Now we are talking about eating pets. Okay? That's conscious. That is not coincidental. It is a move to have a conversation. This gets to the mass deportations question. It is designed to show as much contrast as possible when Black Americans have never, never moved up above 12% of our population as a country since the 1920s. There's no numerical demographic threat coming from Black people. The Latinization of America has created this threatened space, and we don't have the vernacular to talk about it as a country because of our original sin of slavery. That's just where— that's where this all comes from. And so as Joe's Hardware Store in Des Moines becomes La Fiesta Taquería, we start to say, what, you know, what is happening?

[01:08:29.03] - Speaker 4

That's where the control piece comes in. There's no question that It's about race. But as Lanae said, I think very astutely, we're not gonna be able to solve the race problem by the next Congress. We're not gonna be able to eradicate racism no matter what law we pass. And I argue, and again, it may be a little bit macabre, but I argue in my book, this demographic transition is essentially a demographic footrace between two Americas. One decidedly older, which has very negative views of this country, The most privileged, wealthy generation this country has ever produced has some of the most negative perspectives of this country ever in the history of modern polling. And behind it is this younger, poorer, browner, more recently migrated demographic, which has some of the most optimistic, trusting, confident views of America and the American idea. And every day, every 30 seconds, one of them turns 18. And I won't mention the other side and how that ends, but it ends with people leaving the planet. And that demographic transition is precisely the moment the country finds itself in.

[01:09:33.26] - Speaker 1

All right, I hope that we've given you enough to think about. I hope we've given you enough to talk with each other about.

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

[00:00:03.05] - Muzaffar Chishti

Today's discussion, I really think we have three of the best people in the country to delve into. I won't read their bios. They are all incredibly impressive, and they're in your program to read. To my left here is Lucas Guttentag, probably knows not much introduction to this audience. He now teaches both at Yale and Stanford Law School. But has been an advisor to the Department of Justice and to the Department of Homeland Security in two successive Democratic administrations, did give birth to the ACLU's Immigration Rights Project— there was for 25 years ago or so— in many cases, the father of the modern litigation on immigration. To his left is Camilo Montoya-Galvez, who is the immigration reporter for CBS News, and I'm sure many of you have been nabbed by him in various stages of your career. And no one covers immigration's diversity as Camilo does from where I sit. And to my right is my colleague Nancy Morawetz, who is a clinical professor of law at NYU Law School, also directs one of the country's most effective clinics on immigration law and has given, generated, you know, by now generations of very important immigrant leaders in our country.

And I think has been one of the first people in our fold who started stressing the connection between criminal and immigration law, and that has now resonated more than ever. So Three ideal panelists, so let's delve into it. So Lucas, let me just start with you. I mean, no one has looked at this issue that we are about to address in this panel in so many lenses as you have. I mean, you advise the Attorney General, you advise the DHS Secretary, you litigated it from ACLU, you have now produced hundreds if not thousands of best law students in the country. So you are in the best sort of position to ask the following question. How did we land up here? And is it something peculiar to immigration, or is it something peculiar to our moment?

[00:02:36.27] - Lucas Guttenberg

So Muz, thank you very much. It's really a pleasure to be here. Following that introduction and the mayor's speech is not the easiest place to be. So let me try. But that was a very moving talk that I think set a stage that's really powerful for all of this. I mean, my view on where we are— there's multiple reasons, of course. And I would say that to some extent, immigration is unique. And in other respects, it's very similar to the issues we confront with regard to other highly politically salient issues, whether it's the environment, labor law, financial regulation, consumer protection, and so on. So I think that— so I have a couple of things, I guess, or a few things in terms of framing it in my view. One is obviously, you know, the inability to enact legislation has put us in a situation where the system, as we've been talking about all day, I think, is no longer responsive to today's needs, to national or global dynamics, to the reforms that are essential, and so on. So that's obviously the case. That's because of the dysfunction in Congress, the divisions within the Republican Party, the faux filibuster where you can filibuster without really filibustering, and so on.

But again, it's not unique to immigration, but it certainly manifests itself there. And in some respects, maybe immigration is particularly vulnerable because now of the political intensity of the feelings about it. And so that puts— that's sort of step one. As a result, executive action has tried to fill a gap to try to bring elements of the immigration system more into kind of contemporary— what the contemporary needs are. But I guess I want to say one other thing about legislation. And this goes back a little bit to the conversation of this morning. And I don't want to express a view on the best way to enact legislation or the sequencing any of that, but, you know, legislation in and of itself is not a good. It depends on what the legislation is. And we talk about not having had any significant immigration legislation for more than a quarter of a century. The last major bill was the 1996 Immigration Act, and that's not something that helped the system at all. If anything, you know, it's the source of many of the problems that we have now by eliminating much of the discretion that existed in the system, by imposing mandatory detention, limiting opportunities for people, individuals to get legalization, get legalized, stripping judicial review, denying due process.

So legislation can be helpful or it can make things worse. And we have to ask, like, what are the criteria for good legislation, which I'll leave for another time. But so as a result, we've had this, a lot of executive action. But in part, I also just want to say that that's also part of the normal operation of this incredibly complicated, vast administrative scheme that adjudicates literally millions of cases a year, that deals with millions and millions of people a year. And when we say executive action in kind of a general sense, it covers everything from executive orders of the president, to decisions of the secretary or the attorney general, decisions by agency heads, formal rules, regulations, directives, guidance, policy memos. I mean, it covers a vast array of action, much of which is typical and necessary. And no matter what legislation gets enacted, that will continue to be a necessary part of the immigration system. So again, I think we have to ask, What are good executive actions? Some address problems, some exacerbate problems, some generate greater equality or opportunity, some less. So it really matters what we're talking about. And immigration, again, going back to your question, and that's, again, I don't think that's unique to immigration, but because the president and the executive branch has is especially powerful in the realm of immigration, and because traditionally immigration, the immigration statute has conferred a great deal of discretion, it's a place where there is a lot of discretion exercised all the time.

And that, I think, will continue to be the case. So, all of that to me is just kind of by way of background. The thing that I want to say that I do think has made it somewhat different recently in this kind of, you know, what the prompt calls the brittleness of the system— excuse me— or what I think many experience as kind of a whiplash of going from this to that, or the uncertainty, I think, kind of from Obama to Trump to Biden is, in my view, a function of kind of two things. One is the Trump administration's really extreme and and unprecedented policies that reversed what had been a long tradition. And then that the Biden administration rightly, in my view, tried to reverse again, at least in part. And as we know, it has by no means reversed everything. And one of the criticisms is that the Biden administration hasn't done enough, which I understand and appreciate. But we went from kind of from it. So I think that we can't lose sight of what the last Trump administration did, and what that in turn triggered. And then the second thing is I think there has been a real change in the ability of states, especially, to litigate, to challenge federal immigration policies.

And what are essentially policy differences have become legal challenges brought principally by red states with a capacity to sue over those disagreements and then to get court injunctions to stop programs and cause a kind of stop-start in some cases, in many cases, to these programs. And there's things that are, in my view, unique and different about the state litigation because litigation, as you said, I mean, I spent, I spent the first 25 years of my career litigating cases against the government about immigration policy. So litigation has always been a part of what informs how the immigration system operates. But what's— the irony of what's happened now, in my view, is that it's much, much more difficult for individual immigrants who are affected by the law to challenge the impact on them because of the court stripping measures that were enacted by Congress, because of interpretations adopted by the Supreme Court, so that the immigrants who are directly affected have a much more difficult time challenging the grounds of deportation or interpretations of the law. And I know we're gonna talk about Loper Bright and the demise of Chevron and so on. So that's become more difficult.

And on the other hand, We have this unprecedented ability of states to sue, claim on the basis of really purely theoretical injuries based entirely on their assertion that they are suffering from the indirect effects of having more immigrants or more legalized immigrants in their communities. And that's a, a basis for legal standing that's really unique. It's what, as one scholar called it, the immigrants as injury theory of standing. The states have a legal claim because there are immigrants in their states, or that more— that individuals get legal status, and as a result of that, cause injury to the states. And all of that, in my view, really started with the explosion of that, started with the challenge to the Obama administration's DAPA program, the Deferred Actions for Parents of U.S. Citizens, where the state of Texas sued, arguing that by having more individuals with Deferred Action and Work Authorization, that they would be entitled to driver's licenses, because Texas law allowed them to have driver's licenses, not compelled by federal law by any means, and the issuing driver's licenses allegedly cost the state of Texas money, again, an unproven but nonetheless asserted allegation. And the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, when it agreed with the injunction against the program, upheld that theory of state standing.

That has— and we can talk about, you know, why that is mistaken in my view. But more significantly, the Supreme Court then didn't address the question. As many of you know, the Supreme Court did— divided 4-4 because Justice Scalia had died. And so the Supreme Court let the Fifth Circuit decision stand. And ever since, the state of Texas and other states have been able to sue in the Fifth Circuit against any program on this claim of injury. And that's a claim of standing that I think, you know, 10 years ago, or by the conservatives when they objected to Massachusetts having standing about climate change, would have been laughed out of court. But now, it's become, at least in the Court of Appeals, the standard basis for legal standing by the states. And it's combined with two other elements. And I know we want to have a conversation, so I'll wrap up. But it's combined with two other really critical things, which is, one, the state's ability to engage in what's generally referred to as forum shopping, which is to file in districts where there's either only a single judge and they know exactly who they're going to get, uh, or a couple of Trump-appointed judges.

So they know they're gonna get one of those two, but they can essentially select their judge. And so they have standing based on these hypothetical injuries. They can identify the judge who they're going to get. They're in the Fifth Circuit that's approved of this. And then the district courts issue what are generally referred to as these nationwide injunctions, or universal injunctions. And what that means, essentially, is that the court issues an order enjoining the operation of the program, the rule, um, whatever it is, the practice, not only on behalf of the particular plaintiff who's before the court, and based to prevent the alleged injury that that plaintiff is experiencing, but to enjoin the program across the board, nationwide, in all of its applications, as to anyone, anywhere. Uh, and so, the combination of the states having this easy route, selecting judges, and then seeking universal injunctions is, and getting them, is what has led to the ability of litigation to play play a role against these operations that it's never had in the past. And I know, you know, each one of those pieces is like an interesting legal question about how exactly to dissect standing, the forum shopping, venue shopping, and the appropriateness or not of nationwide injunctions.

There's lots of interesting, you know, scholarship on that, but it's the combination of those three that has led to this. And just to acknowledge, obviously, there's a lot of blue-state litigation against Trump policies. And is that the same thing? And I would say maybe, not necessarily, because they don't rely on the same theory of standing. They allege actual direct injury. And they also, I think, sometimes try to stand in for the immigrants. Who can't sue themselves oftentimes because of the restrictions that I mentioned earlier. Um, but it may be the case that this overly broad acceptance of standing has also benefited the blue states. Um, and the question will be whether, if and when the Supreme Court returns to or addresses this question, whether it'll ultimately apply it equally across the board or will find reasons to distinguish based on whether or not it wants to address, uh, the underlying, uh, merits of the case. And I, at least, have become skeptical of the Court's willingness to address honestly and squarely these issues, and it seemingly— not always, not always, but seemingly— is more willing to find standing in cases where it wants to rule for the plaintiffs and less willing to find standing in cases where it's not inclined to rule for the plaintiffs.

So that's the situation we're in. I think all of those lead to part of where we find ourselves.

[00:16:06.25] - Muzaffar Chishti

Yeah, and I'm glad you clarified about the blue states so that we're clear that this has become an increasingly equal opportunity sport on part of the two parties. That during the Trump administration, a number of blue states challenged many of the Trump actions. But whether they had a different idea of standing or no, we can get back to in a second.

[00:16:31.07] - Lucas Guttenberg

But— Yeah, I just want to add one thing to that, is that in those cases, there were also always non-citizen plaintiffs who were challenging it as well. It wasn't dependent solely on states challenging, even though oftentimes those became the lead case for whatever reason. But they weren't the only plaintiffs. And what's particular about— these suits against the Biden and earlier Obama policies is the states are the only plaintiffs and there are just as many, if not more states on the other side who want the policy implemented.

[00:17:02.23] - Muzaffar Chishti

Yeah. Anyway, so to muddy the waters more, the Supreme Court this year ruled in a case called Loper Bright, which essentially reversed the longstanding precedent of the Supreme Court in a case called Chevron. So, law students, lawyers, for a long time had depended on something called the Chevron deference. So, Nancy, you're country's best expert on Chevron and immigration, so we couldn't ask someone better. Just tell us first, for those who don't exactly know what Chevron was, what was Chevron deference, and how did, uh, Loper Bright change that?

[00:17:43.07] - Nancy Morawetz

Yeah, so, So thank you, Muz, and also thank you for inviting me to be here today. This has been, uh, a great program. Um, so, so Chevron, uh, for those of you who are not recently in law school, was just a, a, a very simple two-step test. Was the statute clear? Um, and if Congress wasn't really clear, then the courts would defer to any reasonable agency interpretation. And I think over time, Chevron deference led courts to require statutes to be really, really clear, and if not, they would move on to deferring to the agency. So, so Chevron, in a sense, put more power in the agencies, less power in the courts. And so what Loper Bright does is it says, "No, that's wrong. Courts are supposed to decide legal questions." Um, and so courts should decide, uh, what, what, what the law is unless, uh, unless there's something in a statute that very expressly delegates, uh, to the agency, such as, you know, when a statute says something should be done as appropriate or something like that, where there's some delegation of as to what maybe means appropriate. So that, that's what it does. Um, uh, there are questions.

There are lots and lots of questions coming, uh, coming out of Loper Bright. Um, the first is, h-has Congress in a sense delegated immigration questions? Uh, the, uh, the government was for a long time arguing that there was an express delegation to the Attorney General by statute. Frankly, I think it's a very bad argument. Anybody who wants to If you want to know why, you can read my article about it, or I could answer questions about that. But they've stopped making that argument. Now they're arguing more, well, courts have always deferred in immigration areas. So, that I think remains a little bit unclear, the degree to which courts will think there's some kind of special rule for immigration cases. There's also other forms of deference. Something called Skidmore deference, which is if the agency's, uh, view is c— a contemporaneous view of a statute, if it's a longstanding view, if it reflects expertise, and if it has the power to persuade the court. So what exactly that means in light of Loper Bright isn't clear, because the language of Loper Bright is very much about courts deciding questions and not agencies. So, there's tension there, but one can expect a measure of deference.

And some courts are using that kind of deference now. There also are questions about, like, how should courts read statutes? So, you know, that first question, you know, should courts be using, you know, all these doctrines about how to read statutes in ways that benefit immigrants or that respect international obligations. I think those will be back in the fore, though it will all depend on what panel you are in front of. And then there also are questions, you know, the end of Loper Bright, Justice Roberts tried to say, I mean, honestly, I think this is something he does in a lot of his opinions, he says, well, it's not really gonna change things a lot, because we're— and there's a paragraph that says that any case in the past is going to stand as a remaining— as a good case. And I don't know that that's actually going to happen, because circuit courts are going to approach the precedential effect of their prior precedents, I think, differently from the way the Supreme Court does when it reads statutes. So I think— I think— Loper Bright is definitely a big change. It is a shift towards the judiciary, but exactly what it means, how far it will extend, I think is a little bit—

[00:21:48.10] - Muzaffar Chishti

Yeah, so that's the question I'm gonna ask. So having said all this, is this good or bad for non-citizens?

[00:21:54.04] - Nancy Morawetz

Yeah, well, so I think it might depend a little bit on which administration you're talking about and which kind of cases. Lucas was talking about the cases that are broad cases challenging agency action brought by states, you know, that stop programs before they get started. That's one kind of litigation, and it tends to be in the benefits area. And I think that if you like the administration that is advancing policies, Loper Bright is not a good thing for what would what would happen when, when states challenge those policies. But there's a huge other area of immigration law that happens through removal cases that go from immigration judges to the Board of Immigration Appeals, and then sometimes through the Attorney General, and then to the Courts of Appeals. There are thousands and thousands of these cases that happen every year. A fair number of issues through those cases wind up at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is resolving a couple of conflicts in the circuits every year about removal issues. And so, I would say in that context, uh, Loper Bright is mostly good news for noncitizens. It's noncitizens who are pursuing petitions for review.

Uh, they are challenging agency broad readings of deportation grounds or broad readings of grounds for denying eligibility for asylum or relief under the Convention Against Torture or cancelation of removal or all these other things. And in that context, Loper Bright, I think, has the possibility of leading to stronger court review of things. So, I mean, I think that in general, it It is better for immigrants in the removal context, not as good in the benefits context. I don't think it always comes down that way because sometimes there are rules that affect both and where, um, where a better rule coming out of the removal context could benefit somebody who's applying for naturalization and now no longer has an aggravated felony, for example, because their conviction is seen as not fitting that category.

[00:24:17.25] - Muzaffar Chishti

Great. So can I ask you a subset of the, of the deference issue? So there's a lot of role for the Attorney General in our decision-making, and you advise the Attorney General, so I'm going to turn to you in a second, about especially about Attorney General certifications to the BIA. Yeah. How does Loper Bright affect one way or the other, the Attorney General certification process?

[00:24:43.10] - Nancy Morawetz

Okay, so first of all, this is an extremely unusual process that I don't think exists in most contexts, where the Attorney General can just decide to review a case of the Board of Immigration Appeals, or can be asked to do so. Um, it is a power that has been used extensively in Republican administrations, or the last two Republican administrations, and has been used much less in the last two Democratic administrations. The count is that there were 11 decisions in the Bush administration, 17 in the Trump administration. Meanwhile, 4 in the Obama administration, 7 in the Biden administration. So, so what you have is you have rules that make things harder for noncitizens in terms of being subject to removal or not being eligible for relief. Those are the kinds of issues that will come up through the attorney general process. And the Republican administrations, their attorney generals are tightening up those rules. They are sometimes reversing longstanding policy. When the Democrats come in, they fix a third to a half of what's been done, but the rest remains there. And for people like me who represent noncitizens in these proceedings, it's extremely frustrating that this works in one direction.

I think Loper Bright could be a curb against some of the, uh, Attorney General certifications that, um, you know, for example, that you saw, uh, from Attorney General Barr, where, you know, to take one example, uh, when a state state, uh, sys— state criminal legal system modifies or changes somebody's criminal sentence, which has enormous implications for deportation, um, for a very, very long time, the immigration system respected that change. And then Attorney General Barr said, well, I'm just going to change that. And so, if his reading of the statute is agreed to by the courts, then it won't be, it won't be any better under Loper Bright. But if it's a question of deference, and some courts have deferred to this most recent decision, then the fact that it came decades after the change in the law and reversed lots and lots of agency precedent would be the kind of factor that would make it a less persuasive agency position. But, you know, at the end of the day, what really matters is who's on the bench. And who's on the bench, you know, varies a lot. And for the cases that get to the Supreme Court right now, who's on the bench is not so great for noncitizens.

But in the circuit courts, it's more of a mixed bag. And so in those— that situation, I think local right could be helpful.

[00:27:39.25] - Muzaffar Chishti

Great. So before I turn to Camilo, Let's just conclude the discussion on Loper Bright, so we don't come back to this. So you want to add something, especially in your advice to the Attorney General?

[00:27:52.08] - Lucas Guttenberg

That, unfortunately, I can't talk about in any detail, but I will say a couple of things. One is I do agree, I agree with Nancy, I mean, this has been my view for a long time, long before I went into the Justice Department, that the Democratic administrations have underutilized the Attorney General's authority to provide definitive interpretations of the immigration laws. Um, I think that's a power that exists. It's an authority that can be exercised, and it's been a, an asymmetrical tool for the reason, uh, that Nancy articulated. Um, so I, I agree with that. Um, I think that, um, I, I just, I think that in terms of what Loper Bright, the impact of Loper Bright, one is going to be in the cases that to the courts of the kind that Nancy was talking about and others, uh, and also the potential for challenging longstanding policies because of the Supreme Court's companion decision in Corner Post that allows new challenges to old regulations. Um, so all of that's about the framework that exists. The other thing that I wanna just note is I think it's going to have an impact on the ability and the content of new regulations.

I think that it's— the regulatory process is already very, very sclerotic, burdensome, difficult, slow, um, and I think and I worry that what's going to happen as a result of Loper Bright is going to shift the decision-making within an administration from the policy lawmakers, who under Chevron had discretion to interpret the law within the permissible bounds of the statute, and so policy preferences were significant in deciding how a particular statute, uh, would be interpreted, uh, it's going to shift the power from that to the lawyers. And I would sugge— because now the question is not what's permissible, but what's the best interpretation of the statute, and that's going gonna be a lawyerly assessment, and I think it's going to put the power, if you will, into the hands of the most conservative lawyers within a particular agency or within the government at the Justice Department, because it's going to be always the cautionary note, well, we have to adopt the best interpretation of this statute, looking over their shoulder at a conservative Supreme court. So I, I worry not only about what we're going to see as a result of Loper Bright— but what we're not going to see and what it's going to do to the internal decision-making process within the administration and the kinds of regulations that an administration will be prepared and willing, uh, to issue.

[00:30:36.07] - Muzaffar Chishti

Well, thank you. So, I, if you ever had any doubts about, you didn't know what, uh, what the end of the Chevron deference conferences, this is the best you can get. So Camilo, let me turn to you, having heard our two best legal scholars of the country. So you may not know this, but you have the reputation of having the best scoop of any immigration reporter in the country. So with that reputation, just tell us, what do you hear from the country on this brutal sort of place we are in?

[00:31:09.07] - Camilo Montoya-Galvez

Well, thank you, Muz and MPI, for this invitation. I just wanted to say right off the bat that I feel really underqualified to be in a panel with some of the best legal minds on immigration and Muz, who I really admire as an immigration scholar. I don't even want to tell you how old I was when Congress last updated the US immigration system. You can find that online, as Michelle knows. When I started covering immigration I did not anticipate being on PACER for so many hours looking at court documents and following litigation so closely as I do now. In many ways, immigration litigation is now as important as executive actions on the issue and definitely congressional proposals that seem to go nowhere in today's age. And I think nowadays, you can virtually guarantee that any major Biden administration action on border or immigration policy will be challenged in federal court, mostly by Republican-led states, but in some cases by the ACLU in regards to the more restrictive policies. And as Muz alluded to, this can also happen in the other direction. You saw most Trump administration policies challenged in federal court by states like New York, California, Hawaii, and the ACLU too.

And, you know, my job is to look at this issue in an objective way that is nonpartisan so people with different views on a highly polarizing issue can trust my reporting and our reporting at CBS. And I think I can objectively say that all of this litigation can lead to chaos, inconsistent policies, and confusion on the ground. And as the non-lawyer here, I wanted to give you some real-life examples of that. In December of 2022, I was in El Paso, Texas, covering the supposed end of Title 42. You may know that policy. That was the now-expired public health authority that allowed US border officials to rapidly expel people on public health grounds during the pandemic. And Title 42 was supposed to end because the ACLU had convinced a judge that it violated US asylum law. But Republican-led states stepped in and said that the administration had not followed proper procedures to actually end Title 42 once the CDC determined that it was no longer a sound or a needed public health policy. And over a week, we received multiple court decisions that Title 42 was ending, then it wasn't ending, then it was ending, and then that was delayed for a couple months.

But during that time, we did see— at the time was a record spike in people crossing the border because the perception was that the policy was going to change. And so you needed to get into the US as quickly as possible. And yes, we all know that migration is influenced by multiple factors, including conditions in home countries. But it is also fueled mainly by perceptions of US policy. and the smugglers know that, and so that led to a lot of chaos in El Paso. We saw children, single moms sleeping on the streets of El Paso during that time. It was really a sad state of affairs, and, you know, that was, I think, one of the prime illustrations of what litigation can do to the immigration space. Another example, which is really, I think, paradoxical, is that that when Title 42 was being implemented by the Biden administration, it was mostly targeting single adults from Mexico and Central America, deporting them back to Mexico or to their home countries. At some point, Texas started arresting some migrants on criminal trespassing charges when they were crossing in private property along the border. And some of the migrants who would have been expelled back to Mexico under Title 42 by the federal government were now being incarcerated, prosecuted, and jailed by the state of Texas on trespassing charges.

Again, this is a low-level offense, so they were serving maybe a couple days or weeks in jail, and then they were released because at that point ICE and CBP, after they were incarcerated and jailed, did not want to arrest and deport them. And so they essentially got a free pass into the country. Yes, they had a criminal record now, but they were at least allowed to request a asylum here, while others who may have more meritorious claims were being rejected under Title 42. So, it could really lead to inconsistent policies, chaos, and confusion. And obviously, as an immigration reporter, it also makes my job even harder, because not only do I have to worry about the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department and any other federal agency working on this issue announcing something new on immigration,, but I also have to worry about what a district court judge in the middle of nowhere in Texas is gonna say about parole in place or CHNV or any other immigration policy. And so, yeah, hopefully that, you know, helps explain why I think this is not good for anyone, not just for the people affected by the system, but for the country in general because we don't have any consistent policy anymore because of the competing litigation.

[00:36:19.27] - Muzaffar Chishti

But, Just, you cover Texas quite a bit. Yes. And just, I mean, we can't overstate the oversized role of Texas in this debate. So could you just tell us what is it about Texas, Abbott, and—

[00:36:35.07] - Camilo Montoya-Galvez

Well, I only lived in Texas officially for 2 months, so I'm not a Texas expert. But I will say that obviously Texas right now is arguably the chief legal adversary to the Biden administration. And in my opinion, has taken the most aggressive approach to immigration policy at the state level in modern US history. Not only has it challenged virtually every single Biden administration action on immigration, except actually, and this is really interesting, the executive orders at the border in June. They're actually supportive of that policy. But they're also implementing or trying to implement state measures and laws that in some ways conflict with the understanding that immigration at a basic level is a federal responsibility. The state of Texas, as you know, Muz, has tried to implement SB 4, which would give the state the power to arrest, jail, and prosecute migrants on state criminal charges of crossing the border illegally. That is held up in court because the Justice Department sued Texas and has sued Iowa and other states that have tried to enact similar measures, but it has also also taking other unilateral actions like placing razor wire along the Rio Grande, bussing migrants to Democratic-led cities like Denver.

We just heard from the mayor. But also trying to arrest people on trespassing charges and taking other actions that really seek to challenge the federal government's authority over immigration. And I don't know if California would do that in a second Trump administration, but I'm pretty sure that we can expect similar policies to be implemented in blue states were a second Trump administration take power in 2025?

[00:38:13.29] - Muzaffar Chishti

Yeah. I mean, just in terms of completeness, the 5 active litigations that I could think about— one, the circumvention of the lawful pathways, DACA's final rule, the CHNV, the border asylum officer rule, and keeping families together which is sometimes called parole in place. I mean, Texas is involved in almost all of them. Yes.

[00:38:38.04] - Camilo Montoya-Galvez

And it affects hundreds of thousands of people. The executive orders at the border affect tens of thousands of people per month. The Keeping Families Together program affects roughly half a million eligible immigrants. And so DACA, another half a million immigrants. So we're talking about significant implications here.

[00:38:54.00] - Muzaffar Chishti

Yeah. So but just for a second, talk about Eagle Pass. Particularly, because it was, to me, one of the rare cases where state litigation was directly interfering federal action of its own, what its job is to do. And how did that evolve?

[00:39:10.13] - Camilo Montoya-Galvez

Well, a prime example of that is Eagle Pass, Texas. Earlier this year, the state National Guard commandeered a public park that Border Patrol had been using to process migrants who were crossing the Rio Grande into Texas. And now, the state is actively preventing Border Patrol from entering that park and from processing migrants. And, you know, if you look at US law, it is the responsibility of the federal government to process people who are crossing the border unlawfully. And so now, in many ways, the state, at least in that area, is preventing the federal government from enforcing federal laws. The state of Texas would argue that the federal government is not properly enforcing those laws, obviously, but it does create tension at a time when you would think that the states and the federal government would be working together to address what are real vexing challenges at the border and serious problems that most Americans agree should be dealt with in a meaningful, comprehensive way. But now you have Texas and the federal government moving in the opposite direction at a time when Collaboration, I think, in my opinion, is desperately needed.

[00:40:18.28] - Muzaffar Chishti

Nancy, can I just follow up a couple of things? We talked about litigation as done by major players like Texas and other states. What is the role of individual litigation in this whole brittle system that we are in? And does the lack of deference to Chevron take that in one direction or the other?

[00:40:46.01] - Nancy Morawetz

So, sorry, I'd like to first refer back to a point Lucas made when he said that people who are, you know, that the states can bring these broad actions but individuals can't, you know, that it's been made much, much harder for people to do that. So what individual people can do is that they can challenge through the the immigration system, but that is an incredibly slow process. So, you know, the cases that are being heard now are years after they were in front of the agency. So, I think that, you know, Loper Bright and all of these efforts to challenge a particular broad agency rules on deportation, you know, that is effective. Active in the courts, but it's a very, very slow process. And it is happening long after, you know, these kinds of actions that go in and try to stop things right away. So I think, you know, I think what I said before, you know, that, you know, I think it can be helpful for people challenging their removal, challenging bars to asylum, challenging bars to other forms of relief, but it is a slow and painstaking process.

[00:42:04.14] - Lucas Guttenberg

Can I just, can I add a couple of things to that?

[00:42:06.11] - Muzaffar Chishti

Sure.

[00:42:06.23] - Lucas Guttenberg

Please, if I may. I think that's right, and at the same time, even on individual cases, you know, the Supreme Court's cut back on what constitutes a reviewable question of law. If it's not a legal question, the Supreme Court has said, well,, then it may not be reviewable. In the Patel case, it said factual questions aren't reviewable at all. So, it's, it's trying to impede even the ability of individuals to get effective review of their removal orders, although in, if it's a legal question, then whether it's Chevron or Loper Bright, but the barriers are multiple. And then, then the other thing, I just, on the SB 4, um, uh, is that, I mean, I, I think what's really going on here is that when the Arizona case was decided by the Supreme Court on the SB 1070, Justice Scalia dissented. And he said, no, states should— are their own sovereigns, and they should be allowed to exercise immigration authority and immigration enforcement. And so, these state laws are not preempted. Um, but he was in the minority, uh, in that case. And I think it's pretty clear that what Texas and others are trying to do is to revisit that outcome and to see whether the Supreme Court today will adopt the Scalia view of state authority to enforce immigration laws.

And we don't know, but the court has changed significantly since then, so we'll have to see.

[00:43:32.28] - Muzaffar Chishti

Anyway, can I stay with you for a second? Just my rare opportunity to get things clear. So the thing which is as clear as mud today is, where are we on standing issues? And where are we on national injunctions? I know you hinted that in your— but could you just quickly tell us what we know about the law today?

[00:43:56.16] - Lucas Guttenberg

We know the Supreme Court has not definitively spoken on any of these issues. And on state standing, and so it's spoken about it in other contexts, in the environmental context, where it saw broader standing for the state of Massachusetts to challenge the failure to regulate clean air. And so— but it hasn't spoken about this new theory of state injury that Texas and others are putting forward in these cases, except very indirectly through the so-called shadow docket, when they do or they don't issue stays, unwritten, unexplained orders, either letting something go into effect or not letting it go into effect. So we don't know where the court's going to come out. You know, in the 1990s, all these state claims were thrown out at the circuit court level, the same kinds of claims that we see today. None of them were accepted. There used to be a much more restrictive view of standing among the conservatives. So if they hew to that, then they would not find state standing. But I don't want to make that a prediction. I'm just describing what used to be the case. On national injunctions, I think we're seeing— it's sort of morphed a little bit into a question under the Administrative Procedure Act whether the court's power to, quote, set aside a rule or a regulation or policy, a so-called vacator, whether that's authorized by law and allows a single judge to set aside a rule in its entirety as applied to everyone.

On that, I think we're seeing a kind of a— we're seeing a divide among the courts, but it's not along the traditional ideological lines. Justice Gorsuch has expressed deep skepticism about this set-aside authority in a concurring opinion. Justice Kavanaugh has endorsed it pretty strongly recently in another concurrent opinion, um, and so we don't know how that's gonna shake out. Um, so we're waiting to see. Uh, I would say, I think that there's also a kind of a divide between judges who have sat on the D.C. Circuit, uh, and who are used to issuing vacator orders, and those who haven't. Uh, and the D.C. Circuit judges all think it's normal course, uh, and other judges, uh, do not. And I think that's also understandable. Understandable because of the particular role of the D.C. Circuit, um, but, um, but we don't know yet, except I think that there's a growing concern and understanding across the judicial spectrum about the combination of the forum shopping single judge issuing a nationwide injunction, uh, at an initial stage, uh, based on, uh, you know, claims of, questionable claims standing. The only other thing I'll add is that it's very different than a case where there are indivi— where there's a class of individuals who are seeking to enjoin an order on a nationwide basis.

In the past, that was the way to get a nationwide injunction. Have a nationwide class, have a court approve a nationwide class, and then on behalf of all those class members, they get protection. That's different. Than what we're seeing now.

[00:47:08.14] - Muzaffar Chishti

Thank you, so it's clarified as much as I've ever heard anyone clarify both these issues, so. So we have time for people to come to the mics and ask the questions while you're doing that, and I'll read some, but Camilo, let me ask you the final question before we go to questions. I mean, in one way, there are actually two questions I'd like to, one is that we used to think, and everyone, most people think, that immigration is finally a federal policy. So isn't this whole development giving states more and more power and role in shaping our immigration policies? Is that how you see it from the field? Second is that we started this panel by saying we are here because Congress would not act. So having covered this beat for a long time, What do you see the appetite for Congress acting after the presidential election?

[00:48:03.00] - Camilo Montoya-Galvez

Whoa. OK. Well, I think those prospects are very slim, unfortunately. I think Congress will continue to be, unfortunately, gridlocked on this issue. And unfortunately, I think it's also going to incentivize even further administrations to continue using their unilateral authorities to do whatever they prefer to do on this issue. I think if Vice President Harris wins the election, I think you're going to see more executive actions, not just to bolster the restrictions that are currently at the border, but to expand legal migration programs for people to come here legally and not cross the border unlawfully. And similarly, I think if former President Donald Trump wins the election, I think you're also going to see unprecedented steps taken by the administration to not only dramatically increase removals from the interior of the country, but even more restrictions on asylum at the border and other measures to try to externalize the immigration enforcement system with the help of other countries like Mexico and, and others along the transit route to the US. I think to address your first question about the states, I don't think, and I can say this, I think objectively, that it is sound policy to have the states and the federal government always at each other's throats on this issue.

I think there's always going to be tension because different states are going to have different social political priorities, and that's just the way our country functions, and that's okay. It has always been like that, but I think it has never gotten to a point where we are now, where Texas is actively seeking to undermine what the federal government is doing on immigration in most respects, and where the Justice Department now finds itself suing individual states over most of its controversial immigration policies. And in addition to the political tensions there, It again makes for very inconsistent policy on the ground. And it really creates a lot of confusion, not just again for the migrants, but for the people who are implementing these policies at the federal level, at USCIS, ICE, CBP, HHS, the Department of Labor, the Department of State, but also Texas Department of Public Safety, at the Texas National Guard level. And so, yeah, that's what I would say on that.

[00:50:31.20] - Muzaffar Chishti

Great.

[00:50:33.27] - Nancy Morawetz

I would just add that I just think this kind of confusion has lots and lots of effects on the credibility of the agency. If people sort of are told there's a program and they start putting things together or they maybe pay a fee and then everything changes, you know, then the information isn't reliable. And I think it just is part of a sort of broader attack on truth truth that we have going on in our society that just, you know, people don't feel that things are reliable. It's very hard to lawyer, you know, representing individuals because you do not know what you can tell your clients about what policies will actually be in effect. And so, I think there are just enormous consequences to this broader phenomenon. And I don't know that there's an answer for what you can do about it, But we should take note of that.

[00:51:28.20] - Muzaffar Chishti

Great. So let me go to the first. I know there are two people lined up, but let me go first to— because this person has been patient since we started the panel. You may have left the ACLU, Lucas, but people don't think you actually left the ACLU. First question to you is, why has the ACLU been unsuccessful in blocking the Biden administration's interim final rule, now the final rule, on restricting on restricting eligibility for asylum seekers. What's the difference between this lawsuit and the ACLU's successful lawsuit in 2018?

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

[00:51:59.15] - Speaker 2

I can't—

[00:51:59.26] - Speaker 1

You couldn't get more technical than this one.

[00:52:01.25] - Speaker 2

I can't speak for the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, or the ACLU. So, I don't think there's a— the litigation's ongoing, both against the original circumvention of lawful pathways. Pending in the Court of Appeals. There was an injunction issued that was stayed by the Court of Appeals, and they've now said the appeal is being held in abeyance for settlement discussions. And the other case to the new rule is currently pending in the District of Columbia District Court here, and it's on summary judgment. It will be argued, and then there will be a decision. I think because of— and as I said, I'm not speaking for the ACLU, nor do I know. It's gonna be not a preliminary injunction, but a final judgment. I think in part because there's a recognition that these preliminary injunctions are difficult to enforce if there's not a final judgment in the case. So, they're actively being litigated, but there's no orders preventing them from going into effect.

[00:52:59.10] - Speaker 1

Great, okay, to the mic. Is that Angie?

[00:53:02.04] - Speaker 5

Uh, great, to me?

[00:53:03.21] - Speaker 1

Yeah, I'm sorry.

[00:53:04.19] - Speaker 5

Amanda Frost, I'm a law professor at the University of Virginia. Virginia. Thank you for the panel, and thank you for the conference. Um, a question for, I think, both Lucas and Nancy relates to nationwide injunctions. I, uh, was particularly curious about your thoughts on the relationship between class actions and nationwide injunctions. And I'll say, I am concerned about the criticism of nationwide injunctions, or at least criticisms that go to the degree of saying we should get rid of them or almost never use them, in part because I think class actions are very difficult to bring. The courts and Congress have cut back on those. And when I think about what a next administration could do regarding a sweeping travel ban, for example, it seems unrealistic to think that we could get a class quickly in place and hundreds of thousands of people could be affected. And to ask each of them to sue separately to get justice in each case seems extraordinarily difficult. So I guess I wondered if you could speak to that concern that class actions really can't fill the gap and that nationwide injunctions, even if they're overused at the moment, are still needed.

[00:54:09.08] - Speaker 5

And thank you.

[00:54:11.20] - Speaker 1

Quick, both of you. You can divide the answer.

[00:54:15.18] - Speaker 3

Well, I started my career suing the Social Security Administration in the early '80s on disability policy. And we were never able to get a class action that was nationwide. Nationwide. We could never, never get a nationwide injunction, even though it seemed unfair that there were legal resources in some locations and not in others, and that, uh, that we just knew when we defined a class as being, you know, just in New York or in the Second Circuit, that people who were in places where there weren't as many lawyers were just never going to get relief. So I'm very sympathetic to the idea that nationwide injunctions can serve a function, but you have to look at it in the context where we are now. First of all, people can't really bring class actions for most immigration issues. I mean, the Supreme Court has cut back so much. It's not that it can never happen, but it's a very, very difficult thing to do. And, you know, and then, you know, there's the question of who's bringing these actions and sort of how are these injunctions happening. So anyway, I'm sympathetic to the idea that that's a way to make things happen, but I think that when you're sort of looking on the ground, you know, what's happening is that you're getting one decision that's covering everything and in front of one judge who's often handpicked, and That is just not a very good situation for us to be in.

[00:55:48.10] - Speaker 1

You want to disagree, or—

[00:55:49.27] - Speaker 2

No, no, I mean, I think it— I'll just echo what Nancy— I mean, I think it's a really important and complicated question, as I said. And sometimes, of course, nationwide injunctions are very appealing if you're trying to stop a government program. And so I think you've raised important questions. Amanda's written on this, extremely knowledgeable on it. I think it is the common— it's an asymmetrical use of it, in my opinion, now, because of the red states, the Fifth Circuit, and the limitations on immigrants being able to effectively challenge policies and practices. And there's not the same appetite in blue state or blue states or blue state circuits, like the Ninth Circuit, for issuing nationwide injunctions. So, you know, leaving aside exactly where it ought to be, it's not available equally as a practical matter, uh, at present anyway.

[00:56:38.03] - Muzaffar Chishti

So my, I can't see everyone, but there, can I take two questions here together? Mm-hmm. Could you?

[00:56:43.23] - Speaker 6

Yes.

[00:56:44.06] - Speaker 6

Couple of them? Well, mine is maybe a little bit of a shift in focus. Um, there's been a lot of talk about the impact litigation.

[00:56:51.12] - Speaker 1

I'm sorry, could you introduce yourself?

[00:56:52.16] - Speaker 6

Oh, pardon me. I'm Lisa Perkins Cohen, Casa Cornelia Law Center in San Diego, so I provide direct representation to a lot of immigrants immigrants in asylum proceedings. There's been a lot of talk about the impact litigation going on in the federal district courts, but not a lot of discussion about what's going on in the immigration courts. And I'm very, you know, as far as all these policy changes, it's, you know, we all have whiplash as attorneys, as practicing attorneys, from watching the dramatic changes under the Trump administration. Administration, and then we'd have a law, and then we'd watch it get reversed or stayed, and it's been a very challenging environment to practice law. But one thing that has stayed steady is that when we go into immigration court, we always feel like we have two adversaries. We have counsel for ICE, and we have the judge, who was probably counsel for ICE about 5 years before. They were sitting in the judge's seat. The— it's very frustrating to us that the immigration courts are within the administrative branch of government and thus subject to the political whims of whoever happens to be in office when they're appointed.

[00:58:13.08] - Speaker 6

I know there's sometimes policy discussions about whether immigration judges should be not within not within the Justice Department, but rather in the judicial branch of government. But it is very challenging every day to face someone with an enforcement mindset rather than the mindset of a neutral arbiter interpreting the laws. And so I just want to put that out there to have your thoughts on the immigration courts and reforms that are necessary to the immigration courts.

[00:58:49.04] - Speaker 1

Great. Thank you. Could we have the next question so we could get them quickly answered by our panelists?

[00:58:54.11] - Speaker 7

Yeah. Hi. My name is Tanya Wolf. I'm a local community advocate based in New Orleans, Louisiana. I work with a coalition of organizations to provide legal orientation and know your rights presentations in 9 ICE jails in Louisiana and Mississippi. My question is, really just taking advantage of Nancy and Lucas's legal minds, so forgive me, but I'm just listening to everything that we've been discussing and talking about. So, in this current legal climate, like, what are the implications, good and/or bad, of organizing and advocacy campaigns pushing for an executive order that feels, like, really brittle, that prohibits privately ICE jails. And again, in our current state, are there other strategies that could support local coalitions, particularly those working with legal advocates, that could lead to an end to private companies profiting off the pain and human suffering of people in jails?

[00:59:55.25] - Speaker 1

Thank you. Okay, so I think I'm going to take the last question here, and then we'll answer all of them, and that'll be the end of questions.

[01:00:01.07] - Speaker 8

Sure. So I'm going back to the Back to the national level, Teresa Brown with the Bipartisan Policy Center again. Lucas, at the beginning when you were asked—

[01:00:07.29] - Speaker 1

Could you—I'm sorry.

[01:00:08.24] - Speaker 8

Sorry. Lucas, when you were asked at the beginning—

[01:00:11.06] - Speaker 1

I said, could you introduce yourself?

[01:00:12.10] - Speaker 8

Oh, sorry. Theresa Brown with the Bipartisan Policy Center. Hi. Lucas, when you were asked at the beginning about Congress not doing anything, so executive actions, and you said, well, it depends on what Congress is doing, right? Bad legislation is bad. What about bad law coming out of lawsuits. Is that a danger? Like, these cases, where they end up, they're going through different circuits. We don't know what the Supreme Court's doing. What's the danger of getting bad law out of trying to do something good at the beginning? Great. And then another— if I can just real quick— another factor to add more uncertainty, these cases go beyond a single administration. So what happens when a when a new administration comes and says, well, my DOJ is not gonna defend this policy that the previous administration does? How does that change the dynamic? Thank you.

[01:01:05.14] - Speaker 1

And it is also, you deal with the two opponents.

[01:01:13.07] - Speaker 3

You mean the first question?

[01:01:14.04] - Speaker 1

First question, yeah.

[01:01:14.16] - Speaker 3

I was gonna take on the second question.

[01:01:16.04] - Speaker 1

Well, do the second one first.

[01:01:23.11] - Speaker 3

I would just say, okay, so if you want to talk about the independent immigration courts, people have been talking about that for a long time. I think that it might not be as perfect a solution as you think it will be. I mean, the people who might be appointed to be judges on those courts might also be people who come from the immigration agency. I mean, I think that that is something we would have to worry about as well. You know, so I think it might be better. Many people think it would be better, but I just, I'm just not sure. And I think you might get a more uniform view of immigration law that is a little less, it's captured by one court in a sense, the way you have the the Federal Circuit or whatever, but it might actually, it might be helpful on some issues, but not on other issues. So I think that it's sort of unclear whether in the end that would be better. I do think that, you know, the fact that you have an ICE prosecutor and a judge, you know, does mean that often the most important thing is if you can persuade the ICE prosecutor, you know, that's is something anybody who's in immigration court knows, because so many issues get resolved in that court.

[01:02:42.29] - Speaker 3

And I think one sense of whether that is possible really depends on the kind of court you're in front of and the kind of administration. I think that is a place where administration— changing administration can make a huge difference in terms of what— how ICE prosecutors are acting in court. Can I just make a short plug on one other thing? I do think that the Loper-Bright and all the rest of these things and the judicial review system that we have, which does allow review of law as applied to fact, means that really sort of having undisputed facts through the immigration court system becomes super important, which is just, if you're talking about immigration courts, that's one thing I'd be focused on.

[01:03:30.09] - Speaker 1

Judicial restraint, answer both the first and the third question quickly.

[01:03:33.29] - Speaker 2

I'll try to say very quickly on the, on the, on the immigration judges. The only thing I can say is that I think the Biden administration and Attorney General Garland has made a concerted effort to appoint a diversity of new judges with a range of backgrounds. And there have only been relatively few positions funded by Congress since the administration came in. So it's still overwhelmingly overwhelmingly prior appointments, but there's been a real recognition of the need to diversify the background of the immigration judges so they are not all, or principally, or even, even majority, uh, DHS, former DHS or, uh, uh, oil attorneys. I would say with regard to brittle executive orders, um, I would favor a, a good brittle executive order over nothing, uh, and try to make it affirm. So I think it's always worth the effort, um, and then try to preserve it rather than not seeking it in the first place. On making bad law from lawsuits, I think that's the biggest challenge of litigation in this context, about how to both be, uh, strategic, effective, uh, not give up, and at the same time recognize that having major issues go to the Supreme Court is likely, uh, to lead to unfortunate outcomes.

[01:04:47.22] - Speaker 2

And we've And we've seen that in some recent decisions from the court on immigration in just the last term.

[01:04:55.16] - Speaker 1

Okay, folks, let me— help me thank Camilo Montoya-Galvez, Lucas Guttentag, and Nancy Morawetz. And thank you all for joining us.