Making Migration Policy in an Ever More Complex World

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CHAPTERS 

[00:00:00]: Why Demetrios Papademetriou co-founded MPI in 2001 

[00:04:04]: U.S. immigration policy in the 1980s and 1990s: legalization, reform, and stalemate 

[00:10:55]: Is migration policy more complicated today than 20 years ago? 

[00:13:59]: Evidence-based research vs. advocacy: how MPI navigates both sides 

[00:16:44]: How to build a middle ground on immigration—and why listening matters 

[00:19:47]: The future of migration: global competition for talent and worker shortages 

[00:27:41]: Advice for the next generation of migration policy professionals 

[00:29:54]: Climate change, immigration management, and the road ahead 

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:03.03] 

Welcome to the World of Migration, the podcast that the Migration Policy Institute has launched as part of its 20th anniversary celebration. This series showcases some of the top thinkers on migration policy who were central to MPI's creation. In this podcast, we're asking our experts to reflect on how policy has changed over the past two decades, and we're also asking them to share some of their reflections on their careers and thoughts for today's emerging migration experts. My name is Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan and I'm associate director of MPI's International Program. Today I couldn't be more honored to speak with the eminent Demetrios Papademetriou, who co-founded MPI back in 2001 and has crisscrossed the globe many, many times to share his trenchant analysis of migration trends around the world, the effects of migration policies, and to offer policy prescriptions on what governments should do to leverage the most out of immigration and mitigate any downsides. Demetri is internationally recognized and has been called on by governments and others in Europe, North America and the Asia Pacific for many years now. His positions are too many to enumerate, but I'll just briefly note: he directed immigration policy and research at the U.S. Labor Department, chaired the OECD's Migration Group, chaired the World Economic Forum's Migration Task Force, co-founded the International Metropolis Conference, and has had a long academic career teaching at a range of universities.

[00:01:37.14] 

Demetri was MPI's founding president and today remains a distinguished Transatlantic Fellow and convener of MPI's Transatlantic Council on Migration. He also founded MPI Europe in Brussels in 2011 and was its president until 2018 and he remains President Emeritus at both institutions. Our topic for today is Making Migration Policy in an Ever More Complex World. Honestly, it's going to be a challenge to tackle this considering the short span of this podcast and the long career of our guest, but we're going to do our best. Demetri, thank you so much for coming on this podcast.

[00:02:16.06] 

It is my pleasure, Natalia.

[00:02:18.22] 

So it seems appropriate to start by going back to the beginning. Demetri, why did you feel the need to create MPI?

[00:02:26.12] 

I think at the time, which was probably 1999 or perhaps early 2000, a team from the Carnegie Endowment from International Peace, where I had gone to work with Doris Meissner in in 1992 following my almost four-year tenure at the Department of Labor, we reached a conclusion. The we here is Kathleen Newland and I and Alex Aleinikoff, who was at that time affiliated with us, that the subject matter, the issue had become important enough and was beginning to dominate conversations in the United States and elsewhere that it deserved an independent, self-standing organization that would focus in the entirety of the migration set of issues. So it was about protection and it was about U.S. immigration policy and international migration and all this, including, of course, integration of all these issues that are now very, very dominant in conversations both in policy circles, but particularly in political circles all over the globe.

[00:03:48.22] 

It's almost hard to imagine a time when immigration was just beginning to dominate the conversation, since it's so prevalent now. Can you take us back to that time a little bit? I mean, what was the field of migration policy like when MPI was first founded?

[00:04:04.20] 

Well, there had been sort of two periods in, let's say, the last 20 years of the last century where immigration was a lot in the headlines. The first one, of course, was in the first part of the 1980s where we had a high, very animated conversation about legalization of what at that time we were estimating were about 6 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States. It took then what we thought was going to be a long time before we could reach agreement and pass legislation. About five or six years, from the very early 80s to 1986. And it was a struggle. Spirits were high, a lot of feathers were ruffled. And at the end of the day, however, the people who were the dominant personalities on this issue in the US Senate, because at that time, I suspect that the Senate was very important on this issue, as it is today, but so was the House of Representatives. Mr. Rodino was the chair of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. But the two people that had to basically agree on most issues were Senator Simpson and Senator Kennedy. And to give you an idea of how different things were at that time, despite the fact that the issue was such a hot political issue, was that their parties deferred to them.

[00:05:46.22] 

The immigration subcommittee in the Senate always had just three members. Now, of course, everybody would sort of would really love to be a part of that subcommittee. And two of those three members, who are Senator Simpson and Senator Kennedy, if they agreed on an issue, the caucus, Republicans or Democrats, would typically defer to them. So it was all about these folks and their staffs agreeing on the outlines of policy. And of course, we had a President, President Reagan, that was very committed to the issue of immigration and the value of immigration. And yet again, it took five or six years before we ended up with a piece of legislation at the last minute, essentially the very last minute of 1986, just before Congress went away. So that was the 1980s. In the 1990s we were trying to do something different. Instead of sort of focusing on what to do with the unauthorized population, we were focusing on trying to modernize our NIV system, the non immigrant system, this extensive. I think that the system even today has probably more than 70 categories and subcategories of temporary immigrants who come to the United States for a variety of activities, from diplomatic services, you know, to teaching, you know, to doing-working in summer jobs, etc.

[00:07:31.00] 

Etc. And we did a fairly good job at that time in 1990. And we modernized the system with a focus on bringing up to, in a significant way, the quality, meaning education and credentials of people who would be coming through the system. Focusing on the H1B system or the age system before that time, we also introduced new categories of outstanding or highly qualified immigrants. And that took us until 1990, 91, 92, before we fixed those things. And then, sort of the difficult times came back, which was, what are you going to do with all sorts of different types of migration, including unauthorized migration? And we had several pieces of migration on immigration in 1994, 95, 96, which allowed us to begin to make a bit of a difference on how we treated people and what kind of an environment newcomers would face in the United States. It was certainly not the perfect anything. Passions had gotten to be already quite angry, but that was the last time that we really passed any legislation. Again, not a perfect legislation, but any legislation on this. And 25 years later from, let's say from 1996, we seem not to be able to find our way in any of this.

[00:09:11.18] 

All of the problems that international migration, particularly unauthorized immigration, was created in the United states in the 80s have returned, and we know what's going on today. Around 11 million people. Who exactly knows? I don't know. But the Migration Policy Institute estimates that's about 10 and a half to 11 million people. And most other analytical shops think that the number is roughly right. And we've been struggling to figure out what to do with these people. And that brings us to today. And that's the story of migration in the past 30 or 40 years.

[00:09:55.02] 

So these challenges are really cyclical. These trends keep rearing their heads up. And the politics that seemed intractable 20 years ago, you're almost thinking back wistfully to those days where you could get things done. Now my question is, do you think that it's actually more complicated to advance effective changes and reforms that benefit all elements of society today, given that migration has become more salient, more politicized, and more complex to tackle, perhaps given the confluence of challenges we're facing greater humanitarian pressures than we've ever seen, mixed flows at borders, climate change, globalization. Haven't even gotten to the pandemic yet. Is it really more complicated than it was 20 years ago, or do you just see these patterns repeating themselves?

[00:10:55.18] 

Well, it is more complicated, but I suspect that when we live through a period of great disruption, which is really what we've been living through, and it's not just the pandemic, although pandemic certainly has contributed to that, we're reaching a lot of inflection points which require that we reconsider an awful lot about what we think about international migration, how to manage it to advantage for the immigrants, for their families and communities from which they came to the families and communities in which they settle, and how to incorporate newcomers in a way that they can make the greatest contributions to their new homeland, their new society.

[00:11:46.18] 

We're also in a new information landscape right now where the evidence on which we're supposed to be making these decisions is itself being questioned. And we're seeing this proliferation of fake news misinformation, call it what you will, that's entering the bloodstream of public debate. And so I'm wondering what you think is the role of a think tank like MPI in this environment? And has it changed? Has what we need to do changed from what it was 20 years ago?

[00:12:25.02] 

This is a fantastic question, Natalia, and also one that's very difficult to answer, but I will give it my best. What MPI did you know back 20 years ago and what the original group of four or five people that started MPI were thinking and doing at that time is not all that different than what MPI has to do today, which is you have to stick to the analysis and then you have to take your results and filter them with deep knowledge of immigration systems. And this is really what distinguishes MPI from other organizations. Other organizations may start from an advocacy place perspective. All immigration is good, and let's try to make sure that immigrants have whatever the same opportunities as natives, regardless of status. And there are other organizations that start from the premise that this is too much immigration. There are too many immigrants, they're taking jobs away from Americans, and in a sense, they bring down the standards, work standards and wages for all people who work next to them. And wages don't have to go down in order to have an adverse effect on wages. You also need to look at something that's very difficult, which is try to estimate how wages would have behaved and how they are behaving.

[00:13:59.04] 

So these are the kinds of things that MPI was founded on. These are the kinds of things that MPI has to do today, and these are the kinds of things that MPI does today, and it does them so well. We don't take sides then or now. We're trying not to make enemies, enemies unnecessarily. You know, sometimes I fail that test, but.

[00:14:24.03] 

No comment.

[00:14:26.07] 

But the vast majority of my colleagues do not fail that test, and we have to. And this is really something that is, if not necessarily unique to MPI, but certainly one of the strengths of MPI. We know our audience, because what is the sense of having a think tank, of working in a think tank, if you do not really understand that you are in the business of public education? This is why you have the status that you have. Nonprofit organization, an educational organization. But that goes beyond that. If you're going to make the kind of effort that colleagues at MPI have been making for the last 20 years and before that at the Carnegie Endowment, if you're going to do that, you're going to have to understand that you're in the business of educating the public. And the public, in this instance, includes policymakers and their assistants. It includes people at universities and their students. You know, it includes the average person that is interested on the issue and wants to read and understand and in a more, you know, sort of in a deeper way, what it is that the various issues are. So we write in an effort to be understood and to educate.

[00:15:49.17] 

And in fact, you know, sometimes I smile when people tell me that there's this MPI kind of writing that they want to emulate. And I must say that you need to take as much credit of this as I do, because ultimately, this thing evolved over time, and the colleagues there are really expert now on how to write by focusing on the audience. So, yes, we speak truth to power. Yes, sometimes what we say people don't like. What I take pleasure is when what we write is both attacked and adapted by both sides on the issue, because then you know that you have hit that, you know, that equilibrium point that I think is ideal on this issue.

[00:16:44.20] 

That's the true test of being able to speak to both sides. But how do we carve out that middle ground such that we attract more people to populate it? We don't want to be the only ones in this middle space on an island, with others at the poles. How do we bring more people to this middle ground?

[00:17:07.15] 

Well, you have written some compelling pieces on this, and-

[00:17:11.13] 

I want your opinion!

[00:17:15.23] 

Thank you. I think that the sort of the cat's meow on all this is by respecting people who hold different opinions on the left, on the right, or if you don't want left and right on the one side and the other side, by acknowledging that what it is that they feel about this issue is legitimate. It may not be the whole truth, meaning sort of the whole universe of how to understand the issue. And here is what we need to do. We need to help them sort of understand sort of the whole aspect, you know, the whole issue, the broad issue. But you need to take what it is that they are saying seriously. Ultimately, you need to respect people for the way that they, they feel and experience migration. We didn't come here, MPI or any of the other organizations, you know, with a monopoly not to the truth, but to how people should feel about this issue. You have to respect that. You have to have exquisite listening skills. We have, you know, an opportunity to do that. But listening skills are also required of our politicians and policymakers. Here is where most people, most politicians, most policymakers in the United States and in most other places on earth are failing, because ultimately, that's what it comes down to.

[00:18:51.22] 

And countries that are doing relatively better than other countries on immigration, they do so because their politicians have trained themselves and their society expects them to have exquisite, not just good, exquisite listening skills. And if we don't do that, we'll never be able to reach agreements.

[00:19:14.24] 

Demetri, that is one thing I learned from you very early on, which is that there is no one truth on migration. There are many truths, and sometimes these are in competition. And it's our job to understand that and always understand the trade offs. Right. So. So now I'm going to ask you to peer into your crystal ball, no eye rolls, please. And tell us what are the one or two biggest challenges facing the field. Where is migration policy going?

[00:19:47.13] 

It's easy to talk about it, but it's hard to be accurate on this because, gazing, you know, in the crystal ball is, is more art than science.

[00:19:59.11] 

We'll come back in another 20 years and see if you were right.

[00:20:03.05] 

There are certain things that are easy to predict simply by looking at what's happening today. Clearly there's going to be more competition for talented people. You notice I say talented people rather than the other words that the field uses, because an education for me—in other words, if you have even a PhD or whatever it is—it certainly doesn't mean that you're going to do well in another country or in a new firm. So you need people who are talented people as well as high-skilled people. And you have to focus not only at the high-end, which is what high-skill implies, but you have to on focus along the entire continuum of jobs because you will need jobs more and more in the future. Demographics will guarantee that all along the jobs continuum. So you have to focus on experiences, you know, on the kinds of, let's say, tacit skills. You have to focus on skills more generally and test those tools and add to them as necessary in order to help immigrants succeed. Because one truth about this I'm convinced is that when immigrants succeed, we all succeed. You can imagine societies and there are many, we're not going to discuss them here, that actually putting, or used to put many of them obstacles to immigrants success.

[00:21:46.21] 

And they all fail together. So we all succeed together or we all fail together. And I think most societies today in 2021 understand intuitively at least this particular principle. So we're going to have, I suspect there are two or three of the things that I that I'm sort of thinking about. First of all, there's going to be much more migration. And it's not because places like the United States, Canada or Germany or for that matter other members of the European Union will need many more people, although they will. It's because new actors, new countries are going to come and play in this game. You know, I'm always thinking of China. China is the only country in recent memory. You know, I'm not a historian, but I love history, where the transition from having too many people to not having enough people to meet all of the needs of their workforce, of their labor market is going to be extremely constrained. Let's take Mexico. Mexico took 30 or 40 years before it went from far too many people and far too many children to today, which is roughly at enough children to continue to replace the population.

[00:23:16.17] 

And as a result, the labor force of Mexico in China, because of the one child policy, et cetera, et cetera, by the 2030s, which is tomorrow practically, we'll have about 250 million people retiring. The number could be higher than that. So amazing as it may sound, you will have increasing worker shortages in China. And China recognized this and as of a couple of years ago has developed an immigration system that looks a little bit like the US system where employers call the shots, but also like the Canadian system where there's a point system. So yes, China will be a major player 15 years from now and so will a lot of the other nations that, today still look like having too many people who are not in the labor force because they cannot find a job. So think about China, even your Indonesians, turkeys, etc. etc. etc. So there's going to be a democratization, as it were. The number of countries that are looking for people will increase and increase again, but there's going to be a big difference. Immigrants in many of these places will not enter a situation in which they will actually have the kinds of rights that that they have in the countries that they now immigrate into.

[00:24:53.13] 

Not citizenship bearing things, perhaps not working conditions that would be acceptable to the, let's say, the advanced countries, the wealthier countries together. And all of this will append the way that we think about immigration. When we try to think about what is the immigration system the landscape likely to look like, let's say, 15 or 20 years from now. This is something that is important that we need and we need to be thinking about. Another thing that sort of, I guess, worries me a little bit is because it's an issue of controls. It's the sense that when that legality order need to be part and parcel of a successful immigration system, it does not mean that there will never be any more, there should never be any more people who are unauthorized. There is no way that borders can be defended in quotes the way that some people may imagine today in the United States and elsewhere. But it is important for us to realize that you need to be able to continue to demonstrate to your own public that you're serious about border controls, that you come as close as possible to selecting immigrants—and I don't mean fancy immigrants with degrees—but to allowing those people who are supposed to be allowed to enter your country and keep away those that are not supposed to come into your country.

[00:26:36.04] 

And to show you one more time something that you know, well, you know, sort of my conservative side, you have to make sure that immigration formulae always keep in mind the interests of the people who are already in the country. If we don't pay attention to that, then we're not really serious about developing an immigration system that will indeed offer the best opportunities for everybody. And you will not be able to deal with these things only through enforcement. You're going to have to talk to other countries. Immigration control is no longer a sovereign issue alone. In order to protect your sovereignty, you're going to have to talk to other countries. This is especially true for the United States that has a very long border with countries that are much less well developed. So these are the kinds of things that we ought to be thinking much harder about over the next decade or so.

[00:27:41.14] 

Well, you've laid out a very nice set of challenges for those of us who work in the migration field with this picture that you've painted of more competition for migrants, much more migration and different kinds of migration and challenges to the systems that we've built intentionally or unintentionally over the past few decades. So I think we all have our work cut out for us. Demetrios, what's the final piece of advice that you would give to somebody entering this field?

[00:28:17.00] 

Now, my advice is the same one that I have given forever. Work hard. This is not just an occupation. People who succeed on this issue, and I suspect there are other issues that one would find that need to meet the same requirements, work hard, work with other people, because you don't have a monopoly on knowledge or analytical skills. Make sure that you understand that one understands that the responsibility that you have first and foremost is to yourself, the institution that employs you, but also to the broader society. At the end of the day, it is society that will make the rules. I don't care what it is that the progressives or the nativists or whatever it is that you know, whoever it is that's making the greatest amount of noise, at the end, society will make the rules. And what is the arsenal of society? It's called elections. Politicians, at the end of the day, are responsible to the people. And our job as think tankers or as people who enter the migration field or are early in the migration field, in the early stages, their responsibility, our responsibility is to make sure that we provide information, that we provide options, and that we help evaluate each one of those options.

[00:29:54.23] 

And that is what I meant earlier about truth to power. You walk into a minister's or a prime minister's office and they want to know what it is that they should do. The first thing I always said is, I will tell you the two or three things that you ought to be thinking about doing, and then you are responsible for choosing the one that works best for your country, your society, the way that you are organized. And this is really how we ought to be thinking about, and the challenges will increase exponentially. You notice I haven't even used the word climate change. Okay, climate events. In other words, if we think that somehow this is about controls or about letting everybody in or being generous, et cetera, et cetera, nonsense, you're going to have to think about doing immigration. Not just controls, but immigration management and helping develop robust immigration systems. You're going to have to do that outside of your country too, in your neighborhood and beyond. Immigration used to be a neighborhood affair, no longer.

[00:31:03.19] 

Thank you, Demetrios. Honestly, we could listen to you speak for another hour at least, but this is all we have time for today on the podcast. We appreciate you coming on and giving us these fascinating and provocative insights.

[00:31:18.19] 

As always.

[00:31:19.09] 

It has been my pleasure.

[00:31:24.04] 

Demetrios Papademetriou was MPI's founding president and remains a Distinguished Transatlantic Fellow at MPI, where he convenes its Transatlantic Council on Migration. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the World of Migration, MPI's 20th anniversary podcast. For more on MPI's first 20 years, please visit migrationpolicy.org/about/20th. You can find all the episodes for the World of Migration and other MPI podcasts online at migrationpolicy.org/podcasts or you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for World of Migration and please give us a review while you're there. This episode was produced by Michelle Mittelstadt and Yoseph Hamid and made possible through the assistance of Lisa Dixon. Our music is a song called Geographer by Bright Idea. My name is Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan. Thanks again for listening.