For humanitarian affairs during the Clinton Administration on the National Security council and most importantly on the highest board. He happened to be in the presence of Refugees International and is seated next to the next president of Refugees International is my pleasure to be here today and needless to say, this was a critical time for us to be considering not only the refugee act of the 1980s but also the future of refugee protection in the United States and around the world. At a time when the number of people displaced by conflict, by human rights violations, by persecution is at the highest number in recorded history, governments around the world and the United States in particular and are using a rhetoric designed to appeal to fear and to encourage hostility towards refugees and others who are forced to flee. They are closing borders and making life more difficult for refugees. They would consider refugee protection issues in the context of implementation of the refugee act in 1980. We went through highly distinguished panelists its a benefit to me that all of our problems and with whom ive worked on a variety of projects. Professor david martin is our first presenter and is a leading scholar of immigration constitutional and International Law and is one of the countries most authorities on Immigration Law and policy. He has helped to shape immigration and refugee policy while serving in several key u. S. Government posts. While at the state department who is deeply involved in legal and policy developments relating to the refugee act of 1980, the focus of todays discussion. He also held positions in the department of justice and Homeland Security and played major roles in administrative and Statutory Development relating to asylum during the decade of the 1990s and in term of the Obama Administration he was engaged in Administration Reform relating to Immigration Enforcement as well as a range of key immigration issues. The second speaker has had many careers as a senior diplomat and a visit a business a nonprofit executive. As an attorney focusing on a range of topics from Environmental Issues to Economic Affairs to International Humanitarian is a and refugees and beyond. And i wont try to list all the jobs that i will say that from 1980 to 1981 he was director of the state Department Bureau of Refugee Programs with the personal rank of ambassador and was deeply involved in the issues we are , today. Between 1998 in 2001 and to the Refugee Programs grow that he directed during the Carter Administrations. She spent many years in Southeast Asia and was a legendary refugee advocate. Lying in the mitts and take over of vietnam, he was frustrated at the slow pace of u. S. Efforts to rescue vietnamese who had worked with the u. S. Government. And a colleague made an unauthorized trip to vietnam to secure the release of individuals. Is refugee quarter during the Carter Administration that he played a key role in the processing of news relations and cambodian refugees as well as in protection and assistance in the region. From 1990 through 2001 he was the president of Refugee International establishing the organization as a critical ally of vulnerable populations, high honor for me as the stewart and lionel service of impact was an inspiration to us all. So, today they could cover a multitude of issues. About the panelist to consider, in no particular order the following questions. First, what were the expectations around the 1980 refugee act with respect to both refugee admissions and asylum. Second, other events required and ask response that when outside the contours or stretch the contours the refugee act in 1980s. How would you characterize and accept overall implementation of the u. S. Refugees Admission Program over the years. And, following based on the observation of each of these questions, what question could we drawn bring to bear on current policy challenges. Which panelists will speak for seven minutes and we will move to questions from the audience. I would assume the moderators rocketed in one or two preliminary projects for with that please join me in welcoming our panel. Laptop [ applause ] thank you very much, i want to say a special thanks to mark for putting this together and also a special word of tribute to president carter i do wish you were here. To go to the Human Rights Department i didnt know refugees are part of the package at the time i signed up for it. There was a small office in 1978 in the bureau, but by the time i arrived the flow was enormous and i got pulled into that i felt happy to have the opportunity to have both policies. Let me begin with a few Simple Truths about the achievements of the refugee act and then introduce a few complexities that became apparent with implementation. I want to say first of all that the refugee act did achieve a great deal of very solidly in ways that we dont think about much anymore as theyre not points of controversy the refugee act did accomplish its primary and i really want to say that and we need to say that because theres so much cynicism about the effectiveness of Government Action and legislation. This is generally the overall white a Success Story and we need to say that. But i want to emphasize one distinction that often times get lost. We dealt with refugees into situations that are related but have derek very different time and amex. One is the overseas Refugee Program, people overseas bringing them hereafter a project the best a process. That was the main focus because that was the issue in Southeast Asia. The second one is asylum obviously involving people who get here on their own it poses more challenging problems and a lot of setting and didnt receive the major focus initially but its important to keep those separate. I know there are some overlaps , in analyzing issues about that, is a in court failed to do that and in a case that was very important which wound up interpreting the refugee act to set a higher standard, more demanding standard than when people are applying for asylum they really miss loaded some of the legislative history that went overseas refugees, applied to his island in reaching the decision before the subcommittee. I greatly regret that that happened and thats part of the framework but there are four things the refugee act achieved first of all is that the framework and procedures for regular and timely decisions on resettlement and admissions and thereby replace conditional entry and parole that didnt sit well and presented their own problems it preserved the role for congress and some things were mentioned about that, by providing a very structured process with demand for specific information extremely important for anyone trying to understand the Refugee Program. But it did not give congress a specific voting role left that power with the president and we didnt foresee the type of critical climate we have now but im glad we have it that way that puts the power in the president can we do about the . Yes, we have evidence of recent evidence. But, legal design can take is only so far and am reminded of a comment that was made about buchanan who was widely regarded as the worst president we ever had. Senator john sherman said that the constitution provides for every accidental contingency and executive except for the vacancy in the mind of a president. Second, the act provided a durable assistance framework for helping resettle refugees get this placed a lot of special legislation with civic grams and expiration dates that had to get extended, it did this in a more abstract basis that applies broadly. To recognize the role of ngos and engage the states. Expects third asylum the statute provided Clear Authority to offer asylum both to people in the United States the people at the border of this is the old terminology. And, it clearly changed over to the use of the definition of red chilies this has been more problematic and we will discuss more on the overseas program. And more importantly with regard to asylum it provided a clear status known as asylum in refugee but before that people got documents of various kinds and if youre not into immigration look at a card that says someone is here on parole and you think of the criminal justice system. It didnt clarify but it provided clear statuses and a direct mechanism for people to become green card holders and permanent residence after year. These are significant changes to mostly routine now and people dont think about it a lot. But for those reasons the refugee act was celebrated. As also mentioned, people were really disillusioned i remember seeing some of the editorials of the new refugee act why wouldnt that solve the column is no magic bullet and people come in very large numbers the sudden emergencies, logistical operations and around the whole business of refugees getting people involved both international and domestic that the postwar had to be stopped and be able to come back with the people they had a and 25,000 people coming. Meanwhile accommodation upon arrival a lot of people were in the preliminary process, recently, either here or in mexico on the southwest border. Eventually many people were sent to military bases especially for chappie in arkansas. This had a negative political impact a young progressive arkansas governor was defeated for reelection in 1980 thats generally been attributed to backlash against the refugees to he went six times for governor in 15 of the six but the antiimmigrant candidate defeated him that one time in the wake of the movement and perhaps the mayor had a role in president carters loss in the election. I want to be clear, its not so much the numbers that pose the problem, carters vietnam initiatives were accepted more readily its the perception of lost control that provides red meat for antirefugee or anti immigrant candidates and we really have to Pay Attention to that. Weve seen that kind of reaction in europe since the large movements 2015 to 2016, the merkel million as its called sometimes, a backlash that gets rolling in response to perceptions of loss control, not only do they have refugee policy but, quite dangerously, it also leads to the growing strength of openly authoritarian parties not just other immigrants but authoritarian parties. This is a key example that really poses the greatest challenge to todays refugee and asylum policy. We are really facing an enormous dilemma. Its somewhat hard to be optimistic some figures put it in context, in 1950, 51 the Key International refugee implements are being drafted , 2. 5 million. 1980 when the refugee act was passed it was for 5 billion and in 2020, the population was expected to be 7. 5 billion triple the time of the 1950 convention. Communication and transport are easier with people on the move and now today were getting the equivalent each month around the southwest border with no sign of a significant endpoint, the coast guard cant be deployed to deal with this even if you wanted to. So, or at a very critical time and i worry that this issue is going to tip. I come to the mexico agreement recently and i do hope and its not clear right now i hope there will be something more for something in there that will really focus on what mexico says they want a major aid and Assistance Program in Central America and there are ways this can work, the Marshall Plan for the area. This is a critical component and they have no interest in that as a gun in the other direction. Some reduction would ease logistical challenges enormously , not fully appreciated along the southwest border. For governments and ngos have done a heroic job theyve done a heroic job meeting people and they get dropped off by dhs to help them move forward. So, maybe islam some slowdown would help reduce anti refugee demagoguery and help hold us for a long term and sustainable support for refugee protection. Have a long way to go with a real challenge today. Thank you. [ applause ] so the implementation of the act not the justification of the origins i think its important to recognize that you can write an act that sounds pretty good on paper, but when you try to implement it, youre gonna have a hard time. And let me just talk a little bit about the implementation problems that we face immediately after the passage of the 1980 act. I say and i want to be clear bigger than carters decision to push her the act and to implement it was a hugely important humanitarian decision and he deserves every bit of the credit youve heard here today that said, you have to be realistic and say that this doesnt solve the problem and lets talk about some of the ones that we at the state Department Face in the immediate aftermath of the passage of the act. First thing was vietnam and in vietnam we had a huge moral imperative especially to detect vietnamese that had been working with us and ed help desk and had sided with us and were in the kind of difficulty you could imagine. So, we were using the act to identify the vietnamese eligible under the act and what we found was that we interviewed in the field, we interviewed both people, people across borders, but what we found was that pretty soon all the story sounded exactly the same. It was pretty clear that there was a path of responses that went from applicant one to applicant to to applicant 25 so, the actual identification of persons justified here by reason of religion and so forth but after all you realize that its a little hard to tell whos justified and who is in. And you have to recognize its going to be with us as long as were standing like that listening to the law and that means that youre gonna have to make some tough decisions and some of those may be negative with consequences to the individual. But, if you dont do that youre likely to be overrun for status under the act with questionable validity thats the first thing the second point and difficulty administering the act is the numbers that applicants and the ability to be in the United States under the lock of a certain number and we spent a lot of times in different countries, trying to observe success but not total success are quick success. Trying to get the country involved to accept some of the applicants for status we found them credible but a National Refugee policy isnt gonna cut it. The second problem i just dont want to sound all that negative but my aim here is to identify problems that need to be resolved. One of them was involved in cambodia. This resume was so irrational and the cambodian authorities were so irrational and the room they designated, that you couldnt find or identify this place open go back by reason of the Group Identity or status or religion because that wasnt the tests, the test mightve been where you have glasses or not. So this suddenly was not applicable. But again, you probably dont have that happen very often but you did have it happen in the case of cambodia and it was quite a difficult problem to resolve. In this case, that was so much more dramatic because it was right on the shores and it was right in carters office that decisions had to be made. The only time i ever doubt with him was numerous times in the early days where the question was how do we make these investigative determinations as to whether or who these people are and why they should be admitted to the United States. So, the idea is that you do it before they come on shore because the status changes a totally different status. But the in order and that you really would like to identify legitimate refugees before they come so you could in some way have some control of the flow. But, in order to do that you had to make the determinations that see. And, in fact, president carters first thought is that we would do that, we would have investigations by intercepting and that lasted about 24 to 48 hours. It was simply unworkable partly because of the numbers involved but also because of the risk involved. So, we dropped that and we had the investigations after they arrived. Just a footnote on the governor of arkansas who lost the election because in the end , the third issue is where you put all these people during these investigations and where do you resettle them. And, later on when i was undersecretary in the Clinton Administration, with the other issues, every day i walked into the office he said you son of a pitch, you called the election and i said i dont think i did that and he said where do you think the bumper stickers came from that say no cubans, no clintons, no commies, no cubans no clintons . And that is all because of fort casey where we faced a lot of them and you have to figure out where to face them. So that was not, that was a very messy situation as you can imagine. But at the very last moment of the Carter Administration we learned that the cubans were somewhat interested in talking to us about a possible deal where we would send back certain of what we considered undesirables people with criminal records or mental problems but we would try to send those back and they would send to us the undesirables basically political troublemakers that they wanted to get rid of and they couldve gelled them and many of them were jailed but many were under house arrest. So, they said you could talk to them but you cant, you cant leave the state department to have these conversations because we dont have that kind of relationship and we want to permit them and in fact you cant use any public facilities for these conversations if you ever get them. And if you ever have them. So we did have those conversations and we ended up having them in my dining room in georgetown they went on for 3 1 2 days did like 10 january or 20 january for all of the administration. And that we made a deal. And the next day we met again and they came back and said i think theyd like to make a deal with the new administration. So that actually did happen and a year and a half or two years later, again, the other point i want to make is that any administration of these laws, theyre going to make a compromise, you gonna make decisions that are less than optimum and two more examples. And my running over . I cant believe that. [ laughter ] you know im on your side at all times. So, let me just stop there and say that i want to be clear, the aim in the action of the president when putting forth this lawn the standard in putting forth this very high level of ambition is absolutely necessary. If you dont have that, youve got nothing. But, even if you have that, you have to recognize that the world in which we live is going to bring that down some much if youre going to try to administer it. Thank you laptop [ applause ] thank you. I wanted to start by citing this extraordinary work captures the history of anything i was involved with right from the very beginning. Youve only given me a small commission [ laughter ] but it really is a bible, handbook and incredible history. Thank you. I wanted to start by a local who came out from the china Refugee Program in 1979. We went to nine different sites she was talking refugees, she was learning, from the time she got off the plane, i met at the Transit Center in bangkok the nicest up we had and she was very upset because the soil was muddy. It wasnt a great concern, we had tens of thousands of people we were trying to get out of this stage and she said you need to take care of this. Get some gravel over here right away. But that was the kind of commitment we had and not only was president carter but mrs. Carter who, earlier jan had responded to a Refugee International outside the white house eight with this hit moment of one legendary act as and she engaged mrs. Carter in a conversation saying, please rescue my people, and in order when out to have these out of japan and began to look for boat to pick them up so the commitment of the carders, and so many different ways was extraordinary. That it would concentrate on the unforeseen difficulties that the refugee act gave us. We were quite happy in the field and the switch to the cambodian in particular, it was a real watershed moment that led to at least 18 month of trench warfare and and i think we were supposed to come down here as well but we can make it and i wrote to her some of the guidance that went back and forth at that time and initially, what happened was the ins they use the definition to basically run off the reservation or walk off the reservation or run off the except since rates dropped from 80 to 90 to 20 almost overnight. The challenge was how do we deal with this because they dont have the right to make the adjudication. They put together studies and a framework to the state department but nothing worked. Now, finally into the reagan years the attorney general one there and once again he had no success he said why was it after the attorney generals visit that the rates have gone up yet again. We had to go back through the white house and Justice Department to correct this matter was looted going on there as well so we need to engage, because somebody has to bring ins back and not able to do this on his own. So ultimately it was just as important. The other thing but theres a sign of leadership starting with carter but normally they just have them walk away from the problem and move on to Something Else it was trench wars that learning a National Security decision which is hard to get to the government but to set a better tone for how the act was interpreted after that. You didnt have a whole disregard for the applicant that was seen at that time. One of the last instructions was you will sit down when you interview the applicant. This is what they were doing. And, every one of these things had to be corrected so i had to leave it, one for the Carter Center and one for someone else and we were required to bring them on more. There were no men free to do that so i guess maybe were running a little out of time. We will leave it there, whoevers remarks you leave the conference i was privileged to go and the foreign minister to help the remarks on the plane going over. Three had carter and he said you need to publicly thank the United States for getting you up to this number. The correction was you taking nfl and it shows youre at the foreign minister level how important it was and how i plan on going. I should end on that note. [ applause ] gonna start by asking two questions of the panelists. You can answer this one or both i think we probably got about 15 minutes or so so a little bit of time. My first question is how different are things today. 55 of americans coming to the United States 62 of americans didnt want to be enemies to be settled. 71 of americans didnt want the children. So really, what are the principal differences and also so very different and thats my first question. But my second question is a how to balance the predictability of the refugee act with the flexibility that you have to have is a decisionmaker if you want to respond to circumstances i know that maybe were not using the parole aspect that we should perhaps be using and we might be better engaged in terms of residual ability and how they work. The other thing and that may be a fallback in the future were just not able to do this and through the reagan years we had the same set at a very senior level level and ultimately it was a letter from the president. They were still not satisfied with the issue and i remember this is putting your hands it was meeting with the president and why you can engage and give me a letter on refugees and they said, open it and give it to the president. And they finally saw. So, i think, we need to have that kind of demand and assistance and if we dont of the maybe see you this role will be helpful in reading some of the more ambiguous situations. But the chinese also had an obligation to the vietnamese and between january and april 30 nobody wanted to take these people at all if they were cowards, losers and corrupt and a bunch of the younger officers had to push and push for anybody to take the parole request and we finally got 150,000 pro members approved in mid april 1975 so i didnt waste too much time. So if the policy is where he wanted them to be, theres a new book out called honorable legends and its wellwritten about the last six months of vietnam and the efforts that push the administration when they didnt want to and its very interesting. Okay. Well id like to answer some of the geography as part of the answer to the question. If youre talking about the jews were very distant and their decision to leave the United States if emotionally you can walk across that sort of goes away and i think thats not the whole answer but its a certain big part of the answer but at the rate were going were gonna examine the applicants for asylum two years from now and in the meantime whether there is a different kind of process outside of the country are at the beginning. I fully agree with that and its a way of restating the asylum process is a much more challenging overall process an immediate control of the United States and the numbers may have changed but i dont think that ever led to the level of intensity we often see when people come in directly to the United States and people think the government doesnt have a handle on it. So, i think that is why asylum is gonna be an area of focus and getting a sense of control is key and political developments. And the idea about parole because of mentioned earlier remember early in conversations with professional staff that and but its a good legal question that came across the desk in my office but the fact is that we were related but we were not pulling these people as refugees. It was cuban haitian status pending and what else could he do x you can call them to make up a word but 125,000 people come do not in any position to block them. They could benefit and that couldve been a good situation but as was mentioned finally, the situation with the haitians as part of the met and the numbers were lower and theres been a lot of litigation and advocacy care about that but you cant just wave your hand and say all the cubans are fine and not have anything to do with the haitians. The special legislation and principle makes sense to address specifics of largescale migration. You cant solve everything in advance but not in a good position now to take a special legislation. The parole issue has something to do with the client , one with asylum. I wouldnt necessarily go back to parole and refugees but something thats a specific authorized use for categories to simplify adjudication. With some sort of application for strict application. You asked the question. I want to talk company a little bit and made a distinction between refugees. That fact and the fact that we are going to be and how many situations, to me it means that we need flexibility whether that means legislation or flexibility or administration, administrative capacity for flexibility. That is probably gonna be a similar percentage in terms of the Trump Administration to choose to return people to mexico. When all of the republican members and i make in a descriptive point, when all of the republican members of the house voted to effectively shut down the Refugee Program that was leadership it was a certain kind of leadership and so im not saying there are large forces that plague you but i think we would have to be careful about underestimating the importance of critical leaders standing up to the right things in the face of Public Opinion which is uncertain. We had movements in the mid 19th century and in the mid part of the 20th century we had tens of millions of followers in the United States is to this notion that we have a tradition of a consensus on behalf of diversity and inclusion the best in a project consensus so we really have to be careful about diminishing Political Leadership of the issues. Do we have time for close rebuttal and comments and then requests. Its always the last panel that has to stick to time, none of the other ones do, we do in fact were less than an hour for this panel. So be it. The last question, in reference to the future you had a situation in mexico in this case and we are going to have to do, unfortunately what needs to be done, it has to be done down there and it has to be done well with much more attention to give the incentives for somebody else to make sure they are cared for but we have trump doing his terrible thing and the democrats are saying its terrible but when i can make anywhere in the situation. Okay. You question the wisdom of that. Not the wisdom, the accuracy. The accuracy. I would say that you should be very careful getting rid of that distinction. Even though the distinction is clear, the reason is the numbers. In order to keep the door open for refugees i dont disagree with your comment with respect to those in poverty but what im saying is theres a continuum of people with all kinds of levels of violence in their place of origin but may not use the refugee definition. How we deal with the messages has to be the subject for consideration because that young woman who is fleeing violence has no business in her country of origin. Would have to confront that reality. What we do with the reality is a different question. I agree with the criticism and the shirt distinction between migrants and refugees. But we have to bite the bullet and we cant say yes to everybody whos has some level of fear, we have to find out if theres a solution and that includes those and we alleviate the risk but we cant eliminate the risk, they cant do that through asylum, we cant solve the problem of Central America this includes doing nothing for relocation to asylum. Im not put in that position, we can do something in me cant do everything and we have to figure out a way to show people that we are somehow bound to that so we king keep alive the optimum level of before report even though asylum is an unruly factor in the system. Thats the challenge now, but we have to recognize that we cant solve or address. Now its a different situation different circumstances but its a different situation were facing in the 21st century. I think its a really good point for the panel. Thank you to our panelists. [ applause ] this is a special edition of American History tv, a sample of the compelling History Program that airs every weekend on American History tv like lectures and history, american artifacts, real america for the civil war oral histories, the presidency and special event coverage about our nations history. Enjoy American History tv now and every weekend on cspan3 a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Friday, look at the anniversary of the telephone the river fire 1969. Even though it wasnt the worst fire the river has been, historian David Stratton trained us to talk about the fire, the myths associated with it and the camping that found solutions. The coauthor of where the river burned carl stokes in the struggle to save cleveland. American history tv on friday at 8 pm eastern time on cspan3. This weekend on book tv saturday at 555 a. M. Eastern, Morgan Farrell discusses his book the boy crisis, why boys are struggling and what we can do about it they dont have that success and they go down a slippery slope and all the mass shootings. At 80 stern in her book such a pretty girl for disability rights activist contracted polio as a baby and talks about growing up with a disability. I was never sick until that fit all night this invaded her happy home installed me from my family. Then sunday at 9 p. M. Eastern former virginia democratic governor talking about his book beyond charlottesville taking a stand against white nationalism. It sends a signal to people that while the president can come out and say the seven i can to. Its embolden them and thats where they felt comfortable coming to charlottesville. If he can say it so can i. Thats the point. They used to do this at night but they dont think they have to wear hoods anymore and in charlottesville they came out, this is a comingout party, but they got saturday at 8 pm eastern on lectures and history. Female activists in the 1960s civil right movement. Women were instrumental in helping to organize and put the marks together, the events were clearly dominated by men. Sunday at 4 30 pm eastern the global significance of the declaration of independence during and after the american revolution. Multiple translations of our declaration also made their way to columbia venezuela and ecuador over the course of the 50 year period after 1776. A halfcentury known to scholars is an age of revolution. At 6 pm, all witness accounts from inside the white house during the apollo 11 lunar landing. We really stick ourselves into the cabinet room and throughout the day e