Building a Modern U.S. Immigration and Asylum System in the National Interest

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

CHAPTERS 

[00:07:54]: How 9/11 securitized U.S. immigration and derailed the Bush-Fox reform moment 

[00:13:14]: Labor shortages, aging demographics, and the economic case for reform 

[00:15:24]: What a flexible, 21st century U.S. immigration system could look like 

[00:19:07]: What the pandemic revealed about essential workers and unauthorized immigrants 

[00:22:38]: Then vs. now: how the stakes of U.S. immigration leadership have changed 

[00:26:58]: Advice for the next generation entering the immigration policy field

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:03.06] 

Welcome to The World of Migration, the podcast that 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, asking them not only to reflect on how policy has changed over the past two decades, but also to share some of the reflections on their careers and offer thoughts for today's emerging migration experts. My name is Ariel Ruiz Soto. I am a policy analyst with Migration Policy Institute's U.S. Immigration Program, and I'm delighted to speak with Doris Meissner, who has been foundational to MPI's existence and has been with the Institute nearly all of its life. MPI is the outgrowth of the International Migration Program that Doris founded at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace before she rejoined the government as INS Commissioner. Doris is known to most people who work in the U.S. immigration policy space and well beyond. Her first encounters with immigration came while she was at the Justice Department, and Doris joined the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, where she was Executive Associate Commissioner in the 1980s and where she returned as Commissioner in 1993 after unanimous confirmation by the Senate.

[00:01:19.18] 

During her tenure, which continued through the 2000s, the INS reformed the asylum system, increased border enforcement, and expanded cooperation with Mexico and Canada. I cannot think of anyone better to tackle our subject today, Building a Modern U.S. Immigration and Asylum System in the National Interest. Doris, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

[00:01:43.01] 

Well, Ariel, thank you. This is really a pleasure to be doing this together. Somewhat of a maiden voyage for both of us, but I really look forward to it, and thanks so much for those kind introductory remarks.

[00:01:55.24] 

Thank you. This is exciting, and I'm very eager to talk with you because this question of how to build an immigration system that reflects today's realities and builds in the flexibility to take into account future developments is one of the preoccupying—is one that's been preoccupying you and your colleagues, I know, through our MPI Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy initiative. So let's dive in. The first question that I want to ask you is, as you know, the U.S. legal immigration system is virtually no different today than it was 20 years ago when MPI was founded, if you look at its legislative architecture. In fact, it last was overhauled more than 3 decades ago in 1990. At the same time, the system received a huge shock in 9/11 and was completely reoriented around a security frame and received massive infusions of money for immigration enforcement. Given these dual realities, how do you see the evolution of immigration policy debate over the last two decades?

[00:02:54.04] 

Well, it's really more than two decades, I think, that one needs to grasp and understand in order to make some sense or at least reckon with what it is that we have today. So In answering that, I'm going to go back to 1980, actually, because in the period in 1980, really actually 1978 to '80, there was a critical activity that took place called— well, it was known as the Hesburgh Commission, but it was a study commission which was set up by Congress in the late '70s as a substitute for— in the late '70s, the Congress being unable to actually enact immigration legislation. And so, a commission was set up, and the person that chaired it was Father Ted Hesburgh, who was president of Notre Dame University at the time and a very well-known civic leader and moral voice in the country. And that commission worked very effectively over the course of a couple of years to come up with what an immigration policy for the country should look like. And one of the things that Father Hesburgh always said in connection with that commission is that in order to have, as a nation of immigrants, an effective immigration policy, we needed to open the front door in order to close the back door.

[00:04:28.16] 

Obviously, illegal immigration even then was a driver of this effort. Was far less in numbers than it is today. But that concept of opening the front door in order to close the back door, to me, captures really effectively what the issues are and what they continue to be. What that led to was the 1986 Act, which was IRCA, and which is best known for the legalization program that it brought into place. It had other elements to it. But even then, the formula that the commission put forward of dealing both with unauthorized immigration as well as with legal immigration was not able to be accomplished in 1986. In 1986, the only thing that Congress could accomplish was a response to illegal immigration at the time, and it took until 1990 for the second piece to fall into place, which was what to do about legal immigration. But by that time, even though the 1990 Act reflects the debates of the 1980s, it actually was behind what was beginning to happen in the 1990s. Because the 1990s saw the greatest job growth in the history of the country since the Second World War, and it also saw the beginning of a demographic change for the first time in our history as a country of less younger people being born, native-born in the United States, and coming into the workforce than had been the case prior to that time.

[00:06:18.21] 

The 1990 Act happened just in advance of those things, those two things, the incredible job creation, the real setting in of the information age and the end of the industrialization era of the American economy and of the change in our demographics. And we've never really gotten past that even though it's 30 years since. Now, we had a real chance to get past that disconnect in 2000 when President Bush became the president and then in 2001 when President Bush put very ambitious and high priority thinking into place about immigration reform. That was a very fortuitous moment in our history because it coincided with President Fox being inaugurated in Mexico. And so the issue of Mexico and the United States, President Bush's experience as a Texan with Mexico and the the way in which migration was a function of two countries, not simply a matter for the United States unilaterally. And so that moment of hope, which lasted less than, than a few months because 9/11 happened— yeah, the fact of 9/11 happening is still the reality that we live with today, because it not only took away the political moment for an updating of what happened in 1990 with legal immigration.

[00:07:54.09] 

It also created a real enforcement mega force, right, by putting the Department of Homeland Security into being and moving immigration functions into that security framework. And also, you know, now as we look back 20 years later, which so much of the post-9/11 retrospective is reminding us, it ushered in this extraordinary atmosphere of fear. The country became a country of fear and fearfulness, and immigrants and the foreign-born were very much a part of that fear. Some of that, of course, was brought about by the fact that 9/11 and the burning of the Trade Center and so forth, I mean, the airplane crashes, all of the 9/11 issues, of course, did have to do with people who were foreign-born, who came to the United States and attacked us. But at the same time, that has since expanded so broadly as a general outlook on the world and incorporating immigrants and immigration into the things that we need to be afraid of as a country. And so, we've continued with that mindset. And to take it back to Ted Hesburgh and to the opening the front door in order to close the back door, we've really got it backwards because all of the issues that we've been trying to deal with in immigration and the issues that we've been trying to tackle legislatively have continued to be looking at unauthorized immigration, whereas the real way to solve our unauthorized migration issue and the problems of the border is to have immigration laws that align with the needs and realities on the ground of who we are as a country, where we're going demographically, what our labor market looks like, how it is that immigration serves as an advantage for the country, as an asset for the country, and

[00:10:16.24] 

how to harness that. And instead, we've been in the grip of this idea that you have to solve the enforcement problems first before you can get to that. I would argue that in fact the way to solve the enforcement problems is to get to what kind of an immigration system do we need, and then the enforceability of those laws becomes far more possible.

[00:10:41.08] 

So it sounds, and I think what you're suggesting is that there was the puzzle pieces of this backbone to immigration that really happened before 9/11, but that 9/11 itself was a defining moment because of securitization, because of fear, that really put together the demographics and the context that was happening to really change how we envision migration going forward. And that in the last 20 years, we've continued to see some of those trends. I'm curious specifically, what do you think about this securitization effort that we've seen in the United States clearly, but that has also spread across other countries internationally? Do you think that this securitization frame continues, will continue to dominate over the next years, or do you foresee a day when the other considerations will take over?

[00:11:25.12] 

Well, certainly the securitization frame is now deeply embedded and institutionalized and has been supported heavily with resources by the Congress.

[00:11:37.07] 

And we do need to always remember that the resource investments that have been made in immigration enforcement have been made by both parties. Yep. And they were in the leadership in Congress, and by both parties when they held the presidency. So, you know, we're very quick to say that there are no areas of consensus in the immigration world and in immigration policymaking, but in fact, the kinds of resources and the kind and the direction that immigration has taken actually has been an area of consensus across the last 20 years. And I don't see that that will change dramatically. But that doesn't mean that it might not be recast, that it might not have different points of emphasis. I mean, there's no question that more and more we have to confront the reality of our own economy and labor market and source of productivity that comes from a workforce. And we are an aging population, and the ability that we have to tap immigration is an extremely important and really unique comparative advantage that we have over most other countries in the world. And so the market rationale for a more realistic immigration policy where employment is concerned is very pressing.

[00:13:14.15] 

And we're seeing that as part of coming out of the pandemic. We're seeing it with the way in which labor markets are and are not adjusting. We're seeing it with where the labor market needs are. So I think we do have to keep in mind the likelihood that at the end of the day, employers and employer interests and the drive for productivity as well as innovation. The other part of this is that innovation and our edge in innovation around the world in competing in a global economy is so tied up with immigration and with the talent that is available to us through immigration. So, those forces certainly are not only there, but they're growing, and they presume— and I think we will see that they become more prominent as the years go on. The difficulty is not there. The difficulty is that our political system is in paralysis. These things that I've just been talking about are well known. They're well known by many people in the Congress. We have lost a strong political center in our politics, and we have to have a strong center in order to make progress on immigration.

[00:14:41.13] 

No, and I think that that's really important to highlight because I think it does suggest that even though there has been this paralysis in Congress to try to advance immigration over the last 20 years or so, there is this overwhelming consensus that the system that we currently have does not work for anybody. You mentioned employers. There's also immigrants themselves and also U.S. residents seeking to reunify with family members. So if, and I know this is, you know, trying to get more into the future vision of what we can do, but if there could be something that you would propose, what should a 21st century immigration system look like? And how realistic do you think that is in this current political reality that we live in?

[00:15:24.22] 

Well, you know, this proposition that the system is broken and doesn't work for anybody, I mean, certainly the system is broken as a system. It's astonishing that for how broken it is, it actually does continue to work for lots of people. I mean, it definitely works for families, family unification, as frustrating as it may be, and as long as the backlogs are and so forth, the basic tenets of our immigration system do serve many national interests and many, the interests of many individuals. But it could work so much better instead of limping along and being handicapped in the way it is. It could be so much more effective and if it was updated and, you know, to your question about what is really the important thing to update, I do believe that it does come back to the economy and it does come back to how dynamic and changing a country like ours is and the change seems to be getting faster all the time. So the issue that we keep talking about at MPI and working on has to do with flexibility, recognizing how difficult it is legislatively to do things about immigration. And even though it's very difficult today, if you look back over our history, we've only enacted major immigration changes over decades.

[00:16:54.23] 

It's taken decades. It's not an area of legislation where we do something every 4 or 6 or 8 years, as we should, but it takes much longer than that. So in light of that flexibility in the system whereby we that we could adjust the levels of immigration, particularly where the employment-based economically related aspects of immigration are concerned, is what I would hope we can get. And the example that I would use for a precedent for that does have to do with our humanitarian stream. I mean, we're very much seeing now what's going on with how quickly the humanitarian needs and protection commitments that we have as a country can shift given the Afghanistan question that we're confronting and working with now. We do have in our laws where refugee admissions are concerned a flexibility mechanism. We do set the numbers differently each year depending on what we believe to be the needs, and that's what I'd hope we can build into our immigration law for employment-based immigration. Now, at MPI, we've been working on proposals for how that could be done for quite a number of years. We have seen fingerprints of those proposals in legislative proposals that have not ever been enacted, but it is part of the discourse that's out there.

[00:18:26.20] 

And so that's something we will continue to work very hard on. That's something I think can make a real difference.

[00:18:33.03] 

That's, that's, I think, yeah, that's absolutely right. Now, to go back to how 9/11 was such a defining moment, we find ourselves under an ongoing pandemic. Do you think that this current pandemic setting has made things easier for moving some of these issues about labor migration, but also skilled migration going forward? Or how do you... Do you think, I guess the question is, do you think there's been any positive effect that the United States will learn from this pandemic into how it implements or at least tries to conduct immigration policy? Do you think that's going to change anything?

[00:19:07.19] 

Well, I do think that's an on the one hand, on the other hand proposition. On the one hand, the pandemic experience has been very illuminating from the standpoint of the idea of essential workers and how it is as a society that we depend upon essential workers, a large share of which are foreign-born, and within that foreign-born are people that don't have a legal status. And so this question of how can you really tolerate as a country the notion that you have a large share of what you deem to be essential workers who also are without legal status and deportable. That is an untenable position. It's an untenable position morally, but also just as a practical matter for a country. And I think that that has become increasingly clear. I mean, this is something that those of us who are in the field have known for a long time, but it's become through the pandemic a much more broadly understood phenomenon and cognitive dissonance disconnect. So that's an important lesson learned and an important issue that I think will carry forward. But it's also the case that the pandemic, I think to the great disappointment of those of us who lived through the post-9/11 period, when the post-9/11 period of crisis for the country for a while was a period of extraordinary unity and extraordinary coming together.

[00:20:51.20] 

One could imagine the pandemic having been a similar national experience that pulled us together as a country and made us remember and recognize the ways in which we share common experiences, share common needs and goals, but it's of course not happened. It's split us further apart. And that way in which it has split us further apart does infect things well beyond just the issues surrounding vaccines and masks and public health. Concerns and what is our responsibility to ourselves versus our neighbors. And that continues to be deepening the political paralysis that we were talking about earlier. So it's hard to know which of these things will abate and which of these things deepen.

[00:21:50.13] 

Yeah, and unfortunately, I think it's as the pandemic continues, I think we are going to begin to see more of these difficult questions coming up, not just in the US context, but also across other countries in our hemisphere, but also across the world. We've talked about Congress, we talked about a little bit about the current setting, but I want to take just a moment to go back to your experience. Clearly, you've had a lot of experience working with the government. And I guess a question that we have is, since you've headed the US Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Reagan administration for a time, and then you went through also with the Clinton administration. When you look at what leaders of today's immigration agencies have to face, given some of the same just things that we've discussed, what do you see as the key differences from your time and your tenure?

[00:22:38.17] 

Well, you know, we had lots of issues and they were intense at the time. We had emergencies, the boat flows across the Cuban Straits from Cuba. We had the murder of the Cocos in 1980. I mean, we had just enacted a new refugee law in 1980, and within 6 months, parts of it were moot because suddenly 125,000 asylum seekers arrived in Key West, Florida. Similarly, in the 1990s, we ultimately negotiated accords with Cuba. The Central American flows began for the first time in earnest in the 1980s, and clearly questions on the southwest border, ongoing questions, with migration almost entirely at that time from Mexico. So, and we also had governors that were suing the federal government over the costs of hospital care in Arizona, for instance, et cetera. So a lot of the issues are not new, right? I guess I would say history repeats itself. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes because, you know, some of these issues are similar, but I would not in the I would not ever say that, oh well, today dealing with these issues, we had to deal with them before. It is different today. And even though there is a rhyme in terms of the underlying reasons and the difficulties of responding, immigration is now so completely broadly experienced throughout the country.

[00:24:12.05] 

It is no longer an issue of just 6 states, of just the traditional destination areas. And it is an issue that is affecting us geographically everywhere around the country. It's affecting us institutionally in most every possible realm. It is part of foreign policy in a way that is much more broadly experienced in different parts of the world. Migration and migration flows are now very much merging with issues of climate and these mega forces of the 21st century that are looming for us as a planet, and in a way where there is less goodwill and less ability to solve problems. I am very taken with what President Biden says again and again, that democracy is really being tested today. That the issue of whether democracies and just specifically ours, the United States, can effectively grapple with the problem solving required for the 21st century going forward, that's what's being tested. And immigration is very much a part of that. So, that dials up the issue in ways that were not the case earlier. Even though there were similar dilemmas and difficulties, the issues were, they did not have as broad a reach in terms of our politics, fundamentally our system of government, our relationships around the world, and our future as a people and our future as a planet.

[00:26:04.14] 

Yeah, and that's what, that's what I really find so interesting, that there are certain things that have repeated themselves across even the last 20, 30 years, but then there's new dynamics that throw in different details that make it more difficult to find a solution that we thought once was a solution. Now is something more difficult because the the issues around migration are becoming more and more encapsulated in all facets of our life. But that actually brings us to a good segue into our last question. So thinking about our audience and those who are listening to us now, looking specifically at the emerging generation of thinkers and doers in immigration space, after we've had this discussion, what's the best advice you can think of to offer them? What can they be thinking? What can they be learning? What questions should they be asking, do you think, would be most important for those folks who are listening to us?

[00:26:58.13] 

Well, you know, the people of my generation mostly fell into this issue. You know, if you talk to people that, I mean, even our colleagues at MPI, others that have been in this field for a long time, we would tell you stories of just the accident of stumbling upon immigration. Immigration, it was not a field of study. It was not a defined policy arena. Now it is. There are curricula surrounding it in graduate schools. There are law school courses. There are certifications. Immigration lawyers, for instance, are one of the largest subsets of lawyering in the country at, at this point. At this time. So people who— so being interested in immigration today as an area of policy, as an area of work, offers such a broad range of opportunities. And the ability to be prepared, not just to stumble into it and learn on the job and make mistakes along the way, actually prepare through academic training and learning, as well as structured opportunities from mentoring and internships and so forth. They're just such a wide-ranging. So, you know, I would say that it is important to get as much preparation as possible. And also, I think too, if one wants to, my experience with this issue is that once you get into it, you get hooked.

[00:28:39.02] 

It, for some reason, it just has a grip, it has a hold. And I think that is because it is so bound up with us, with our country historically, in terms of our heritage and our core principles, but also because it really goes to the core of identity of who we are as individuals and then who we are as a people. So, I definitely encourage people to stay in the field, stick with the field. You probably won't be able to avoid it because you will get hooked by it. I think immigration equals Velcro where connection is concerned. I've seen that so often with people. But what I would say is that as a career, it's important to experience different aspects of it. Advocacy is important, research is important, policy work is important, state and local level work is important, providing services are important, but do a variety of them, a range of them, because there are so many different lenses, and to be wise about it, and it's important to be wise about this issue, this issue so fundamentally affects people's lives that one does have to be thoughtful about it. And the best way, I think, to be thoughtful about it is to have as broad a range of experiences as possible.

[00:30:08.04] 

No, that's excellent advice, Doris. I think for a lot of our audience, they will be able to take a lot of information and pieces from your insights, specifically with the experience you have, but also how you've seen immigration really go through different again, stages and facets in our country, but also across the world, given these days, as you suggested, everything is so tied together. It is difficult to take off that Velcro and to move without listening or being present in some way or shape with immigration. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today, Doris, but this has been such an interesting and rich discussion. Thank you so much for joining and for coming on with us today.

[00:30:48.15] 

Well, thank you, Ariel. Thanks for the great questions, and we enjoy being colleagues, and now, and now I've enjoyed being interviewed by you. So thank you.

[00:31:02.01] 

Doris Meissner is a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, where she leads the U.S. Immigration Program. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The World of Migration, MPI's 20th anniversary podcast. For more on MPI's The 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, Yoseph Hamid, and made possible through the assistance of Lisa Dixon. Our music song is called "Geographer" by Bright Idea. My name is Ariel Ruiz Soto. Thanks again for listening.