Transcripts For CSPAN3 Origins Of The Refugee Act Of 1980 20240714

Issues are still with us today. President jimmy carter signed the refugees act which raised the ceiling for refugees allowed in america. Held at the jimmy carter president ial library and museum in atlanta, this is an hour and a half. I want to lets get started again. Were going to start with our first panel. I will introduce the moderator, then she will introduce the panelists. Honored to introduce monica stadke. Shes with the raven group. I know monica from her time on the Judiciary Committee, House Judiciary Committee where she focused on immigration and refugees issues. Also i know monica for another reason. Her father was a refugee from uganda resettled to new orleans by hias, my organization. So with that, monica . Thank you very much. And thank you for being here. Thank you to mark for putting on this wonderful event. As mark said, my father was resettled by hias in 1972. So i have a very personal connection. As counsel on the House Judiciary Committee, i worked closely on refugee policy and been in immigrant rights space for awhile. It is wonderful to be here. Today we want to sort of diverge from the morning standup panel and get more into an intimate conversation about the lead up to the refugee act. We have two wonderful speakers here today. Really want to take a look at how the refugee act came to be, take a step back, look at where we are today and see if there are any lessons that we can learn from that time and how we can move forward as the morning speakers talked about sort of a difficult time we are in now for the United States Refugee Resettlement. What lessons can we take from also a difficult time. So with that, i will let skip introduce himself. I am skip andress. I was chief counsel to the immigration subcommittee for 15 years. Spent 25 years on capitol hill, working for legislative giants. I retired from there, went off to join the private sector and work with railroads. I want to thank mark and hias for inviting me to participate in this event. It is an honor to join a distinguished group of speakers and panelists. I have known most of them a very, very long time. I have to tell you, these are some of the finest Public Servants ive ever met. My first introduction. He had been chairman of the committee 22 years at that point, been in congress 48 years. One week on the job, calls me into his office. He is a great story teller. A walking history book. He regailed me of stories of encounters of president s harding, hoover, a history book. Then he gave me the first assignment. He was being honored for his immigration and civil rights work. He said could i draft him some remarks. Being a dutiful staffer, i rush out, did my research at hias and on his activities over the years. Found out that hias was a wonderful, effective humanitarian organization dealing with refugees around the world. And i learned firsthand. I mentioned last night, mark, i learned firsthand when i develop Close Relationships with people glick, shapiro, jacobson, my advisers out there. When it came to foreign issues, i would call them and get sage advice returned quickly. Always on point. That was my first assignment. Second thing i learned in my research that he was legendary for battles for senator joe mccarthy and president roosevelt over immigration restrictions imposed in the holocaust. The most important thing i discovered in research that his maiden speech opposing National Origins quota system, mentioned by dr. Evans or ambassador peters, the 24 act. Very restrictive, very racist. It was a system placed on eligibility for immigration solely on place of birth. If you happened to be from northern or western europe and were white, youre fine. Southern europe, not so fine. If you happen to be from africa, middle east, asia, forget about it. He spent 40 years trying to get rid of that system. A tough challenge. He finally succeeded in 1965. That was mentioned earlier today as well. The 65 act was tough to pull off. Before my time. From what i understand, they were able to stack, he was able to stack the committee with allies to come up with sufficient voices, subcommittee and full committee to get that legislation removed. It was reinforced in the 52 act. It perpetuated that National Origins quota system. When lbj got his act together, they were able to finally eliminate that. The reason i mention this is to show there was such a restrictionist mentality through the 50s and 60s and into the 70s. Place of birth and things like that really determined whether youre able to come in as an immigrant or refugee. The refugee act of 1980 replaced what was an ad hoc system, totally an ad hoc system. Before that time you had maybe 11,000, increased to 17,000, conditional entries, refugees. But in addition to that, the attorney general emergency role authority. Thats what was the mechanism for bringing in refugees because theres no basis in law otherwise. Even the parole for emergency refugee crisis had no basis in law. It was an administrative creation to supplement what was a nonexistent refugee system. That was used all during the 60s for the cubans, used during the 70s for the soviet jews, wanting the attorney general to have that Rule Authority for so far yes, sir jews. Then the situation, i wont get into detail now, the situation with regard to in dough china refugee access. And why the refugee act was there in place. It is always a conflict between the executive and legislative branches as to who had power over immigration and refugee laws. In the early days, the Supreme Court said congress had power. The president has the authority. Thats going to continue to go on for years and years. During our time, both soviet jewish situation and indo china situation, it was kind of we enjoyed collaborative power. There was excellent cooperation between the executive and president s refugee team and the executive. There was a complete and continuous consultation on manual admission levels between the two and during carter, reagan years, the process worked. The other is disagreement. Jim testified, it is a lot of give and take. A torturous process. At the end of the day, we always came up with agreed upon level of annual admissions for refugees that continued through the geneva meeting in july of 79. I want to mention two things quickly, then ill stop. Two things happened of significant importance. One was 1972. It was the upset election of the decade. Maybe the century, liz. As we mentioned earlier, she was the youngest female member of congress at that time, randy seller at that time was the longest serving member of the house of representatives. There was tremendous election upset. Liz came in, joined the subcommittee, and we spent quite a few years on the subcommittee. She sat there from 1979 to 81. Thats what always took place. Again, that was one of the early indications. 72, liz came in. 79, chaired the subcommittee. We are off to doing the refugee act. She recognized she needed a systemic and orderly system for handling the refugee problem. Before that there was no law. It was ad hoc, piecemeal. Some cases not to Effect Response to emergency crisis like indochina. She recognized the definition. How to correspond with the u. N. Definition. She wanted to be sure that ideology, geography, none of those came into play. Had to be a fair and humane process that eliminated the idea you had to be escaping communism or communist dominated country to qualify. So the u. N. Definition was a great way to go. Also make sure money is available. One of the problems after indochina. Jim can testify to that. You had all these people floating around the South China Sea in boats. No one for transporting, processing and resettling the refugees. Within a month of the fall of saigon, he goes to the house floor, gets 400 million to reprogram a previously appropriated funds to take care of that indochina migration. Thats one of the things liz insisted on. You had to have a system coordinated between admission and resettlement side but properly funded to take care of the problem. Office of refugee for settlements, jim created bureau of refugee programs, off and running, and the refugee act was a milestone. It is landmark legislation. So that all concluded. We can talk in greater detail later on other refugee issues. Establishment of what were talking about today, what i was thinking about is so much is the same and yet so much is different. I was part of four or five refugee consultations. I can say that they were not i guess collaborative. It is easy to say the current climate is different because of our president , but those of responding to the crisis in uganda at the time. It is a good segue, jim, talking about the legislative branch and those challenges. I would love to hear from you. Please introduce yourself and talk about your role prerefugee act of 1980, as relates to the executive. My name is jim percel. I was designated by secretary advance and christopher to leave a good job in the state department and go up to the Refugee Bureau which was not a desirable place to go. There were three committees investigating them. And we were i was told to try to get things set up. June of 1979 was really difficult for our government. Asia, things were falling apart. We had probably the highest flow of refugees over that long period coming into thailand, malaysia, indonesia. Theres no place for it. They can stay in asylum camps. The association of Southeast Asian nations declared a moratorium. After june 30, no more crossing the border. They were pushing back boats. In tie land, the thai pushed 40,000 cambodians back across the border. This was the back story of what was happening that month. So i was told to go up there and try to take remnants of the old Refugee Organization and create something new, something that worked. And i did a lot of studying. I didnt really want to do it. I said i will be a good soldier. I went and checked. I read all of the reports of the committees on the refugee act. I read one where they had joe califano, secretary for hw, and discussion between members and joe was dont you think it would be better to take the state department domestic resettlement and consolidate it all. Went home, look on my desk, a report from the house appropriation subcommittee on foreign operations recommending we take all our program and send it over. I said if i take the relief programs and resettlement, theres nothing left. So i had another meeting with christopher and ben reed, undersecretary for management. I said ill do it for a week. But, you know, this is like youre asking me to rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic. But ill do it. So i got up there. Im going to tell you, that one week has been the rest of my career. So i work with my colleagues there. I said with these events in asia, we have to do something. Word started of an initiative, a Resettlement Initiative that would be big enough to get the asean governments attention, quick enough to avoid disaster. So we were told we have word, start doing work on Resettlement Initiative. I took my staff, we did three or four options for resettlement. We did the budgets for. We had no money. The committees had done zero action on supplemental and appropriation. So the bank was dry. Were going for this big initiative. We end up with i am sure many of you know about the op center, seventh floor of the state department. Big table, Foreign Policy leaders of the day are all there. Said how many people are we taking in. That was the issue. We had u. S. Refugee coordinator. Because the issues were dollars and people, he thought i should take the lead. After 30, 45 minutes, the discussion is between me and dick holbrooke, assistant secretary for east asia. Holbrooke wanted to go big. I said i know the constraints. I know it is not possible. Congress is not even giving us money for present operations. Youre talking about quadrupling the program. We had to negotiate, come out with a decision. I eventually agreed with 10,000 per month. Thats going to break the bank, probably unrealistic, i will go that far. Left that meeting and did normal thing, memo to the white house. We got no word. No decision. President carter announced he was going to tokyo on this economic summit. While he was there, wanted to make announcement on refugees. So we started, went back double duty. We had our options ready, our preferred was 10,000. On the flight on the way over, holbrooke, if you know dick holbrooke, he was banging away at carter the whole trip. On the plane, i search the record, no indication he made any decision. Next day at this economic summit, carter announced it would be 14,000 a month. I said nobody has ever done that before. I couldnt as a career bureaucrat, i couldnt do that. Anything above that has to be president ial. That really, i really came to greatly respect jimmy carter for having the guts to make the right call, and he ignored all of this noise here, i was telling him he said this is what it needs. He made the right call. Thats what a real president does. Now, we came back from geneva. I mepntioned one thing on Vice President mondale, his speech was absolutely brilliant. It was so accepted by the delegates. But he left out one little thing, he came and said it is a test of civilization. After the delegates left and a few weeks later the night closed in. And you know, that struck people. They started who wants to match what we did. Came out of there with 260,000 resettlement platces for next year, with 290 new million dollars. Doesnt sound like much, back in those days, that was a lot of money. We all came back to washington. My job was to start carrying it out. We have 168,000. I called the team in that did resettlement, i was just horror stricken. We did not have the competence to do this. The few people i had working on resettlement were in geneva. I said what if something happens in new jersey, whose going to review it. I moved it back, i called all of the ngos in the United States to a meeting in cool font, west virginia. We spent three difficult days there. First half day was letting them tell how the government hadnt been treating them as reliable partners. A lot of venom had to be released. Hias was there, your predecessor, mark. Then for the next two days, two and a half days we sat down there and we said what is the responsibility of an ngo to resettle a refugee in this country. And we carved it out. Now, before we said the legal vehicle for all of this was contract. It is not a contract, it is a cooperative agreement. We have to use that procedure. Some of you working on this may now remember the cooperative agreement, it is still here. Under its terms refined and improved much over the years. The United States has safely successfully resettled 3 million refugees in the country. I also from geneva conference created english as a second language program. I brought a lady who was the peace corps country director from thailand back. We sat down and carved it out. What it ended up being was the largest English Training Program in the philippines at a refugee processing center. Did a lot of other improvements that flowed from the act. I had the privilege to stay during in the state department during president carters term. Then left, the other team had to leave. I was asked to stay on. I transferred over the republican years. George schultz came in, i ran into george before, he asked me to be the permanent director, which i did for the last four years. When i was leaving, president reagan and secretary schultz nominated me to be u. S. Candidate to go to geneva to be the iom director general. I spent ten wonderful years there. I had a chance over the years to see in virtually every complex or significant crisis the world has been involved in, and i can see u. S. Leadership, it changed from me, frank lloyd, other people. Each one added. We strengthened and improved the program. It was great. I keep coming back. After all this work, i say what started it all. What was the seminal event that made all of this possible . It was jimmy carter at that economic summit in tokyo. Apology, mr. President , i salute you, mr. Vice president mondale, you were terrific. As you are talking to, we talked about the importance of leadership, you were talking about the importance of elected officials, but it is importance of leadership at the staff level, right . It is importance of leadership of president s and members of congress on making sure that they are putting good, hard working, dedicated people in those positions. Because as someone thats a former staffer, you know, thats where the work gets done, at the deep level. So thats really the benefit of this conversation, sort of opening the curtain behind the scenes, figuring out how the refugees act of 1980 came to be. Thinking about how that came to be, it was a particularly challenging time both in the world and the Political Climate and if you took the refugee act of 1980 out of the picture app looked at the crisis, the fact that the refugee act of 1980 was able to be passed and signed into law and voted on unanimously in the senate is a remarkable achievement. It is a tribute to president carter. But i would love to know what else, was president carter the catalyst . What else was happening that really allowed the act to be pushed. I would like to start with you, skip, from the legislative side. Jim mentioned some of the events. My judgment, it was three. One is in dough chinese refugdo crisis. We always came to agreement. It was a tough time getting there. Some of the conservative members on the subcommittee at that time, but this was constant. Consultation process became a little unworkable. Annual consultation, there was regular consultation, refining the categories for indochina east to come in. I am trying to find people all over the world. This is when the branches could Work Together and worked well. This is one of the events. The other one here, liz took over the subcommittee in 79. In the senate you had the retirement of senator jim meesland, and ted kennedy took over chair of the senate Judiciary Committee. And you also had rodinos leadership through the process. With regard to some members or chairs of the subcommittee, he was watchful. He served on the subcommittee 24 years before he became chairman in 1971. And he continued to watch the subcommittee chair man with the exception of liz. Liz came over, he said he had complete confidence. Let her run it whatever way would be. He was there to help if she needed it, generally she didnt. He had a deep and abiding interest in immigration matters those years. Her involvement, rodinos study hand, kennedy taking over, it was a confluence of events that made the refugee act possible. Politically at the time senator kennedy and president carter were politically opposed. Yet they were able to Work Together on this. In the current Political Climate, it is sometimes hard to imagine two political opponents coming together, working so seamlessly together. Or was it seamless . Thats my question. I was close to dale, he became deputy, president ial politics never entered into the equation of passing the refugee act of 1980. It just was not an issue. Little known fact and helped in the process as well, little known fact and an aside. Rodino was on the short list to be jimmy carters running mate until mondale in the last analysis, he was riding high after watergate and impeachment. Carter was very good at that period of time. Jim, do you have any thoughts . Well, events of that time, i think events were propelling us as society to do a better job on refugees. Not only was it indochina, december of 79, looked at cable traffic. Low and behold the soviet union had invaded afghanistan. Three and a half to five million more refugees going to iran and pakistan. About a week later i knew africa chief comes in, he said the somalis invaded eat ee opthiopi. We have a million somalis in the desert. Castro starts to empty his institutions and we have mariel. Now i am on the new bureau with very little capability and staff, we have the indochina, cambodian holocaust, weve got afghanistan, horn of africa. That was just the first of many, many african crises that would occur. We had to do something. We needed a better way to say who is a refugee. We were bringing all these people in through parole. Then they would have designated categories. If youre in a designated category, youre in free. That wasnt adequate. We had to have a new legal mechanism. And the events were propelling. I think it is wise. I will agree with skip, we had some wise leadership on the hill. And we had wise leadership from jimmy carter. Just recognizing what was happening and that we got to do something. Events were propelling us forward. And the result was we acted. We acted with we had great Cooperation Amongst branches of government which normally doesnt have. Sometimes a little more take than give. As you were speaking what came to my mind is we talk about Refugee Resettlement policy and landed in the immigration context currently, but really what youre reflecting back is an entirely different world view. Foreign policy world view, american identity world view and thats what, correct me if im wrong, was propelling us forward. Right now theres a movement in our country thats isolationist restrictionist world view. And yes, while some of that is related to immigration, at the end of the day it is who are we as a country, who are we in the global community. That seems to me to be a sharp distinction. I dont know if you have thoughts on that. I do. If you take the Indochina Program and carry it through carter years, carry it through reagan years, end of the reagan years we made enough head way that we needed to start looking at an end game for southeast asia. I assembled a group called the igc. Americans, canadians, deputy high commissioner, started thinking about end games. We got governor bob ray from iowa, got him to go around, do a study to give their recommendation. Had some illustrious americans. Those two came together. As i was leaving rp, 1986, i had an expanded igc meeting in tokyo. We got the governments all to agree on this approach. And it had things like return to vietnam. Which is unheard of before. It would be difficult. That package was then given to the u. N. Cr. And my great colleague took that package and maneuvered it through the u. N. Bureaucracy and that became the plan of action for indo chinese refugees. Now, it took another ten years. That was very, very difficult. A lot of indo chinese had to go back home. Lot of vietnamese had to go home. Lot of cambodians had to go back to cambodia. We took the tough steps, and by 1997 we called thats 75 to 9722 years. Given that the region was upset, and we dealt with some really, really thorny issues over many governments. But we produced a model in my book which i have recently written, youll see copies of it here somewhere, i called that the indo china model. It is based on global cooperation, active american leadership, partner collaboration. Burden sharing. Recognition that all of this flows from human rights. Every person is entitled to dignity. That model, i think very successful. Now i think in my book i describe what weve got now. And as a contrast, it is a National Interest model. Whats good for me, what will help my country, my pressure groups and what not. But we lost the notion that jimmy carter pioneered that this can only be solved humanely with global corporation. And i think my characterization of todays model is a National Interest model is probably pretty much correct. Do you have any reflections on that global world view . As you mention, current Political Climate, i was har kenning back to what was said about climate in the 50s. 24 act was mentioned by dr. Evans and peters. Immigration law was reinforced again in 1952. Truman vetoed, and was quickly overridden by congress. Those restrictionist climate is returning. And that was again, very restrictionist, very staunch, anticommunist and the rest. I am afraid we are going through the same process of looking within rather than without. The indo chinese. Remember clearly the conference in geneva, july of 79 where all nations come together to respond. At that point in time, one of the problems was a little bit of immigration indochina fatigue settling in. Settling in to members, i remember one that became chairman of the Judiciary Committee later, on the republican side, at that point in time was worried about spending all that kinds of money on the resettlement process. I have a couple more questions, then were going to open up to the audience. One of the things i would be curious to know, someone who was so instrumental drafting and passing and doing legislative nittygritty that needed to get done to pass the refugee act of 1980, if you knew what you know today, would you have done anything different . We talked a lot today, listen to kelly clearly about the other categories of people out there, whether persecuted, displaced by conflict or military hostilities or by civil disorders or violence or terrorism, we looked at all of that. Should we have done something and created special categories, independent of the u. N. Definition of refugees, we were making such a giant leap forward going with u. N. Definition, didnt think we could go beyond that at the time. Whether we need to go beyond that today to take care of the Central American situation, there are victims around the world, even people displaced by natural disaster, that authority had been used for that on occasion as well. Thats one thing i wish we could have looked at more deeply, but i dont think we could have. The second thing is, and you and i talked about this, the consultation process has become a farce. I dont think it was a farce back then. Do you agree with that . Oh, no. It was action forcing. But it worked and that was the point. We did try to codify some consultation process in the refugee act of 1980. Obviously that process has not worked. Some delineation of what Congress Role in admission levels needs to be restored. I looked back then, white house vetoes, committee vetoes, two house vetoes, whether you could substitute, we have done it with base closure issues and other issues, we couldnt come to resolution how to make Congress Role as a house staffer, we thought about having, we have introduced bills to have congress have a stronger role setting the refugee ceiling. One of the challenges is that the executive is actually the branch that implements Refugee Resettlement. I am curious for you, i understand the refugee consultation was more collaborative than currently. But one of the challenges of giving the legislative branch more authority is that the executive, one, makes it harder for the executive to respond in terms of crisis of the day. Also executive is the one who is processing. I am curious to know what on that particular point if you had any thoughts on how to improve. Well, let me just say if you look at the refugee act and compare it to parole that we had before, the refugee act made a fundamental decision. It took major policy Decision Making from the attorney general a and gave it to the president. That was a very, very wise decision. And we found as we were going through consultation, the hearings would identify issues. I remember the cambodians. That was a big issue. I testified up there that i was lead administration witness, first reagan consultation, there were no political appointees back then. I said were not barring catastrophe, not launching a Resettlement Program for cambodians, unless the situation deteriorates and high commissioner makes a request to us. Well, conditions deteriorated, high commissioner came in with this outrageously large request. I said no. We cant do that. We will have to be more modest. I decided to launch a small cambodian Resettlement Program using then we had six priority categories, i would use only the first three. That gets everybody that really needs to get out of there. I had a new boss that came in about that time, he didnt want to slow it up by consulting. I said we pretty much told the committees that we werent going to be resettling. Here we are starting it. Finally we agreed on simultaneous implementation and consultation. My new boss went up there and talked to ron misoli in the house and simpson in the senate, they were not happy. But i said, you know, it is starting. We have really no choice. But that took some time. Over time, that became probably, lionel, you can comment when you have a chance, lionel was the man watching over these things in the field. That became the most ive got thousands of letters about cambodians. Secretary of state got them, i am sure congress as well. The consultations gave us context. We learned from that lesson, once we establish a new program, we want to not breach trust we built there. To do that, it interferes with implementation of the program. I think we had a pretty good record. I have a hard time myself talking about these issues. Personally, i poured a lot of my heart and soul and life into this bureau. I was over there this past week, to see whats become of it is frightening. Im going to give you a figure. If you take the 2020 budget and you go into it and look under population of refugees and migration, for 2019 it is 3. 5 billion. For 2020, it is 400 million. Now, that rest has been taken out, shrunk, and transferred over to aid where it will be combined with other aid monies in a new humanitarian Assistance Program under their jurisdiction. This decision is trying to eliminate the state department from the refugee program, and i think it is such a tragic mistake. State looks at the human rights side, looks at the root causes, it looks at partners. And during the cpa, we had hundreds of consultations and negotiations partners. This, what is happening now is a tragedy. I have been working with a group trying to let all of our relevant congressional committees know that we think it is a disaster. So far we havent heard much from the other side. I am waiting to hear. Theres great support for that up on the hill. I think it is very important. People here need to be letting their Congress People know that we dont agree with this decision. And it is not just agree or disagree, youre destroying one of the most important human rights arms we ever had. I think human rights and refugees are flip sides of the same coin. Thats whats happening now. Can i respond . You mention the cambodian situation. I had a chance to have dinner with lionel, but one of the major policy decisions made in the refugee act of 1980 that wasnt discussed a lot was to leave basic refugee policy making responsibilities in the department of state, to reflect appropriate humanitarian concerns for Foreign Policy concerns. And to leave in department of justice the final say on who qualifies for refugee and asylum status. We talked about whether that was the right decision or not. We thought it was the appropriate balance to make, not only as checks and balance, but to provide domestic and Security Issues with traditionally handle by department of justice, and asylum country relationships and all those things with department of state. I still think that was the right way to go. We talked about that. Whether that was the right way to go, was something lost in the shuffle with regard to cambodians in terms of executing the guidance delivered by people above to the people below. One of the things we didnt do and probably should have, liz, is probably asylum and refugee training became part of department of justices Officers Training program. That was late in coming. Probably should have come earlier. Maybe should have mandated that earlier. Once they started to understand guidance and that theyre supposed to follow instructions from above, it would work out well. Again, i dont know if you have a thought on that, jim, or not, because we went through that a lot. I want to go back to the other question about if we go back, what would we put in the refugee act now. I think we need to look at the definition again. We have found many instances over there where we had to expand that definition you and lionel can tell you later about what we had to do in cambodia. We had to revert back to the category and got the president to agree to that. Kelly mentioned this morning all of these 70 million people. Well, next year theyll have consultation on 30,000 refugees. Were missing the elephant in the room. And congress i think has a very Important Role to also educate the American Public. Consultations were an educational device. But if you con sul at a time refugees and miss the idps, i dont mean we want to resettle them all, the American Public needs to know and Congress Needs to know whats under way. What should we be doing to enforce that are helping these internally displaced persons. But we dont know anything about that. But the consultation needs to be more comprehensive about whats occurring in this country, what our american citizens ought to be aware of. You know, the refugee act also created a position of u. S. Coordinator for refugee affairs. It was a good idea at the time. And we got senator dick clark in from iowa, first refugee coordinator. Didnt last long, but he really was useful in getting the refugee act through congress and raising all of the numbers. The history of that position, particularly when it got out of the democratic years was that it was politicized. And we got political folks from pretty much far end of the extreme. And if anything, it made our life much more difficult. And ended up during much of that time i was in rp, Doris Meisner was in justice, phil harps was in hhs, and the three of us talked to each other constantly. And later i went and told secretary of state George Schultz that this is unneeded position. It complicates our life. I would eliminate it, which he did for a couple of years. Then they brought it back. But i think we have to watch what actions are taken on vehicles like the refugee act actually improve things. I want to open it up to questions. I have a burning question. Forgive me for those of you in the audience that have burning questions. You know, i think it is important for me to reflect on it has been 40 years since president carter resettled. Over 200,000 refugees. One of the common arguments that happen in the current refugee consultations i can tell you from experience having been in the room, is a question of assimilation. Theres a real question in the minds of members of congress and refugee consultations whether if we allow large numbers of refugees, whether theyre going to be able to assimilate. I work with congressman lofgren for many years, she has a line she likes to say that, you know, you go up and down the coast of california, all of the High School Valedictorians have vietnamese names. Not to saying being valedictorian is sign of assimilation, but im curious to know. We settled so many refugees. Our country is not broken. Our country has been enriched. But from your perspective, looking at the past 40 years, thinking about members of congress and the American People who fear that Refugee Resettlement would somehow lead to degradation of our identity or lack of assimilation, how would you respond to that, given that you have lived through very large resettlement periods. Either one of you with a thought. Weve had commission after commission on undocumented migrations which also focused on refugees. Every study ever been done, i served on one of the commissions, theyre the contributors. They contribute much more to the system than they take out, whether you talk undocumented or whether you talk about refugees. And the refugee assimilation, we tried various methods of doing it. And every one of these cases, it is a period thats been successful. The cuba thing was explored in great depth, all of the numbers there about the mental institutions, prisoners, most were successfully resettled. We decided with the cubans should we leave them all in miami where theres tremendous network of support. They didnt need it. They were resettled nationwide, a lot of them migrated to south florida. Every study i read, assimilation has not been a problem. I dont think especially during our time, skip, i dont want to imply i can talk about current times much, we put a lot of thought into assimilation. I had as i mentioned esl program for every indochinese refugee that came to this country, they spent six months at a camp in the philippines. English language training, cultural orientation. Vocational skills. We worked with partners here where refugees were going to go, like 3m corporation in minnesota, we sent a lot of hmong. They were receptive and helpful. Early indochina days, we had a lot, we tried to make sure we had good geographic distribution around the country. You could go to any church, parish, temple, what not, and you would find and this is true with the secular organizations. You would find a refugee in that church group and the people in that church would be hard at work helping them to assimilate. I have said before that i think for the American Public to resettle large numbers of indo china, and pour their heart out to help them, we had more of what they would call american learning during that indochina period than any period that i can remember. We were learning what it is like to have a foreigner dependent on you. How do you help them. I think we did really make deliberate attempt to be sensitive to both needs of the refugees being resettled and to the communities in which they were being resettled. I think that deliberate attempt was very successful. I dont want to pat ourselves on the back who i want to pat on the back, ngos, organizations like hias and the other wunlz are the ones that are the front line an who can affect that assimilation. I would also mention if i could that is another area where it is vanishing, voluntary agency capacity. They have been cut back to drastically. They move into other areas. I dont believe we fully appreciate what a loss this is going to be to our country and our society. If we dont have these voluntary agencies on the firing line, i can think of a dozen different ways they can be helpful, but you got to have an appreciation and sympathy too. Time for one question and my apologies for taking there is a microphone coming to you. I think it is for the tv. Thank you very much. Mr. Purcell correctly pointed out the refugee act of 1980 transferred the authority to make decisions about refugees from the attorney general to the president , which i think we all agree was a good thing. At least at that time it was. Not so sure about today. But if i remember correctly, the act also took away the authority of the president to parole or the executive to parole large groups of people, like we did with vietnamese refugees from saigon, et cetera. And then not three weeks after the act was signed, we had the mariel cuban boat lift. I was the only immigration in atlanta and i had only done a few political asylum cases for soviet pentecostal christians and a federal judge knew me as having dabbled in Immigration Law in 1980 and judge marvin shoe, a close friend of the president , called me and asked me to represent all the cubans that came to america. I said i dont know anything about Immigration Law. He said i dont either, well learn together. We were debating this hard nosed attorney from the Justice Department named rudy giuliani. So my career changed from being a mergers and acquisitions lawyer to Immigration Lawyer for the last 50 years. As a result of that, 40 years, but my question is when the mariel boat lift happened a few weeks, the ink wasnt dry on the refugee act, did it send shock waves through you gentlemen . Did it seem like the refugee act was being turned upside down by this event happening . After all, president carter said i welcome them with open heart and open arms. It wasnt exactly giving them parole, but it was pretty close to it. How did that affect you . You know, parole is based on a concept we call presumptive eligibility. If youre a member of a designated class, youre presumptively eligible for refugee service. There were many people in this country felt that that was not adequate. The refugee act requires an individual determination of persecution. Thats been very, very controversial over the years. The transition from parole to that refugee act scenario was not easy. It was very, very difficult. But i was there during the mariel and we, first, the white house didnt know whether this was a refugee crisis or an immigration crisis. So do we give it to justice or state . They decided then they couldnt decide so they asked the coordinator to take it over. We had a new coordinator, very good guy came in, victor palmieri, he had the cuban issue. We decided that we needed to bring in the ngos. We had meetings down in miami and all over cubans were coming. But we had to use the refugee the system, but we sort of cheated a little bit. We used because the refugee act hadnt totally come into effect yet. So we used sort of a combination of parole and refugee stuff. But we did examine them. We had a very, very dangerous element who came in to the country with the cubans. I had Hamilton Air Force base, we put him as a temporary place, i got a call from our coordinator there, said, a lot of the cuban guys and men, broken out, making a bline for the childrens wing. I said, you get the mps and get the police and arrest every one of them. And they then confiscated they had all kind of knives and guns and what not that they had found on this camp. So we had to transfer these kids, gave them to the Justice Department Community Relations service. And they resettled them some place else under a different guise. But resettlement under the refugee act is really it is a strenuous test. Cambodian issue came to head in cambodia. Many of the people we were reviewing were remnants of the old khmer rouge, ineligible for refugee status. When we sent them to the ins with all of the files we normally do, they were getting turned down in large, large numbers. We couldnt do that. We worked and got a hybrid came through with a National Security decision memorandum, just for cambodians. And it allowed us to really sort of reinsert the categories. Wasnt popular when a lot of but there was no way otherwise that we could do it. But it is hard the transition from parole to refugee act was really, really hard. By design. We did not repeal the Parole Authority. In the refugee act of 1980. If we learned our lesson from earlier, you mentioned about the ink being dry, i remember the story i heard, lyndon johnson, when he signed the 1965 act into law, at the statue of liberty, the legislative history on parole was very clear. We had some conservative members at that time, back to francis again, who wanted to make sure that parole is not utilized for, quote, groups or classes of refugees. Very clear the house report, legislative history that as soon as he signed that law, johnson announced we will take any and all cubans who are able to leave that country. So we why get into that again. So we just let it go, did not repeal parole, thinking it may be flexibility for some future event. Mariel came about. My apologies, were over time. I dont want to but thank you, jim and skip. So we have gotten a congressional perspective. And state department perspective. But we also are going to get a white house perspective. Stewart eizenstat, who was president carters domestic policy adviser throughout the Carter Administration couldnt join us today. But i did manage to sit down with him two weeks ago at his law firm in washington at covington and burling and talked to him about the refugee act. And his role as domestic policy adviser under president carter. My name is mark hetfield, the president and ceo of hias, founded as the hebrew immigrant aid society, American Jewish communities Refugee Organization. Im here today with ambassador stewart eizenstat, who was the domestic policy adviser to president carter throughout both of president carters president ial campaigns and also throughout his white house years. Ambassador eizenstat was a key actor in the implementation of the refugee act of 1980. Ambassador eizenstat, thank you so much for joining us today. I also want to note that ambassador eizenstat recently released a book he authored called president carter the white house years and the refugee act plays a prominent role throughout this book. Thank you very much for let meg do this by interview process, because i have a conflict timingwise, my grandsons graduating from high school the day of this conference. Which is the only reason i wouldnt be here. Im a great supporter of hias, personally, financially and because you do an important job in helping with one of the Untold Stories in this administration, that is how we help get 50,000 iranian jews out in the midst of the iranian radical revolution. The Carter Administration was confronted with really four refugee crises without a legislative framework to address them. How did that work . In 1952, Congress Passed the immigration and nationality act. And in 1968, the u. S. Was seated to the 1969 u. N. Protocol on refugees, which set some framework. From that time to the 1980 act, president s acted under what was called Parole Authority. And under the 1952 act, Parole Authority was not intended by congress to take the role that it did. So the first real major test of that came during the Ford Administration. When the vietnam government fell in the south, the north took over, started butchering anyone who cooperated, collaborated with the south vietnamese and u. S. Governments and the boat people started. And the Ford Administration began to use Parole Authority to let tens of thousands of people in, but then decided to stop it and seek comprehensive legislation. When we came into office, president carter saw that this was such a gigantic humanitarian crisis that we simply couldnt wait for the legislative process and so we started again the parole process. And before the passage of the 1980 act, over 200,000 vietnamese refugees came in and in the end, between 1975 and 8 198, 360,000. Vice president mondale gave a very important speech in july of 1979 in geneva, in which he convened a number of countries. And he gave a remarkable address which would be very important for hias history. He reminded the governments there that we had failed in 1938 at the conference called by president roosevelt when one country agreed to lift very restrictive immigration quotas that had they been lifted would have saved hundreds of thousands of jewish lives from nazi germany. It was in a way a signal to hitler that jews were dispensable. And mondale very cheerily said clearly said we must not have it on our conscience that we failed again. That was the catalyst for getting 20 countries to agree to take their share of vietnamese refugees, germany, number of countries in europe, and of course the United States. But even that was still stretching the Parole Authority which is highly individualized, to almost the breaking point. Senator kennedy had been working on legislation. And he introduced it with our support in 1979. And it passed and was signed into law by president carter in march of 1980. For first time we moved from this ad hoc policy, using the parole authorities, to a legislative framework for the first time, believe it or not, we defied what a refugee was. There was a number set of up to 50,000 through 1982 and then there after the president had some discretion with congress to do it. There was a diminution of the Parole Authority only in highly individualized cases. So it really set a framework, but we quickly learned that even that framework couldnt accommodate what we faced very shortly there after. You mentioned senator kennedy. I would like to hear more about the politics of the refugee act of 1980. What was remarkable and so hard to imagine in todays environment is the refugee act passed the senate unanimously. Passed the house nearly unanimously with bipartisan support. Senator kennedy, who was challenging president carter in a primary campaign at that time was the lead advocate in the senate. So how did everything manage to come together to pass the refugee act with that kind of bipartisan support in that kind of a political environment . It is a terrific question. And it really shows how much we lost in todays world with bitter partisanship. This was a humanitarian crisis which republicans and democrats agreed on and even in the midst of what was an extremely bitter primary campaign, by senator kennedy, which divided the party, we were still able to cooperate because the problem was so massive and so important. One other anecdote, after we lost the election, senator kennedy asked me if we would appoint Stephen Breyer to the First Circuit court of appeals, which is his stepping stone, and i said, look, you know, there has been a Bitter Division between the with of you. He said, thats why im asking you, not the president. I asked the president , i said, dont worry about kennedy asking, steven would be a tribute to, he agreed and i called kennedy and i said, well, how about Strom Thurmond . Hes going to be the incoming chairman of the senate Judiciary Committee. All he has to do is wait two and a half months and reagan can appoint a conservative republican. He said, stroms in the bag. Strom supported steven. Even though he and kennedy were ideological opposites. This was an era where people still, even when they had very partisan divisions, worked together for the common good. And another kind of political question, president carter in 1980, as you mentioned, he admitted a lot of refugees. The number was 207,116. Which is more refugees than any president in history has ever admitted in a single year, before or since. How did that work . How was the United States able to absorb such a large number . We used again, before the legislation, the socalled Parole Authority which was being stretched for sure to its maximum. But we included in that number that you mentioned, and it is a great tribute to the president and one of the underappreciated parts of the presidency, that included the vietnamese boat people, it also included a number of soviet jews. Hias was also involved. We doubled the number of soviet jews who came in from 25 to 50,000 before the afghan invasion. We saved the life by saying he was not a spy. And so there was a bipartisan consensus that after all this country stood for helping those who suffered greatly abroad and we were a beacon of hope, a light. It was the statue of liberty, all of the things that were important there at that time and i hope we can return to that at this time. But we were challenged almost immediately, mark, when the act was hardly dry with crises that were not anticipated by the new act. So, for example, only 50,000 refugees were to be allowed. And the mariel boat lift in cuba, in the space of a couple of months in 1980, 125,000 cubans came in. Again, oftentimes by rickety boats, from mariel harbor to florida. We also faced the iranian jewish crisis, not anticipated. And so we had a whole raft of issues that confronted us that had not been anticipated by the 1980 act. And we had to deal with those in a more ad hoc way than the act intended. So, for example, for iranian jews, after hostages were taken, november 4th, 1979, in tehran, our diplomats, president carter issued an executive order expelling all iranians from the United States and there were hundreds of thousands, students, business people, visitors. And i had a delegation of young iranian jewish students who came to see me in the white house and they said, if were subject to this expulsion, it is a death sentence. To go back to this radical regime that is just in power. The head of our community has just been killed and his body strewn through the streets of tehran. You cant allow us to be included in this expulsion. So we had a some emergency inner agency meetings, some of the people in your panel, Doris Meissner, involved, david cross was involved, the state department, after a lot of difficult negotiations, we came up with a very, very unusual process and that is we used in the sense the structure of the 1980 act, which was a well founded fair persecution based on race, religion, national origin. But we were going over the 50,000 limit. And so what we did is we had those students, jews, christians who were in the United States, file asylum petitions for well founded fear of persecution but because we didnt want to risk their families having said they did, i got david cross and Doris Meissner and others to agree to sit on those asylum petitions and not act until the shah came back on the throne, which we knew would be never. They would be able to resettle. We also were able to instruct our consulates in europe at a time when yous a s jews and christians could get out of iran, to assume because they were religious minorities, they were in effect covered by the 1980 act and had a well founded fear of persecution and in the end 50,000 iranian jews and krinz we christians were able to come in. So in a way we used the framework of the act, but we had to do it in ways that stretched the definitions. This shows, i think, the importance of the president having a certain amount of discretion and it can be abused as we have seen in the current administration. But congress cant keep passing acts as the new crises occur. You have to give the president certain leeway. That was critical in getting 125,000 cubans in. Critical in getting soviet jews in, iranian jews in. So it was critical, of course in getting the vietnamese in. All four required a certain amount of discretion on the president s part. Also bipartisan support. If we as we have today, people getting up on a bandstand and saying we dont want those foreigners, we couldnt have done it. As you mentioned, the 1980 act was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, something so sadly missing today on this issue. If you could talk more about the mariel boat lift, and as you mentioned, the mariel boat lift happened almost exactly one month after president carter signed the refugee act. If the timing had been a little bit different, if the mariel boat lift had happened first, do you think the refugee act would have still been passed, would it have looked different . Thats a good question. One reason why my book got excellent reviews it because it is honest. We were very slow off the mark in dealing with this unexpected outflow from mariel harbor in cuba. We didnt have places to resettle people. We werent sure whether we could turn boats back. And are risk people drowning. The policy took more time than we should have to come to terms with it. Having said that, i still believe that had mariel preceded the refugee act if anything it would have further incurred, it would have indicated how bankrupt our current refugee policy was, how ad hoc it was. How it relied on this Parole Authority that had never been intended going back to the 1952 immigration and nationality act to deal with the mass numbers of refugees. Remember, please, for the cuban boat lift, you had an extremely active cubanamerican community in south florida. And there our biggest problem was that Shirley Chisholm and other members of Congress Said we have a crisis also in haiti. And were in the going to allow you just to get cubans in. And so we came up with a special cubanhaitian immigration program, which also allowed a number of haitians to come in. Under the umbrella of the cubans. If they had been isolated, i dont think we would have had that degree of support. But the cubanamerican community was heavily republican. And so that led to a buyin for this bipartisan process of allowing the cubans in. My last question for you is looking at the last 39 years. The refugee act in action, what do you think should have been done differently or how should it be amended today . There needs to be a clarification about how you apply for refugee status. The difference between a refugee and the asylum advocate is that a refugee is applying to come in on a well founded fear of persecution from outside the country. An asylum applicant is doing so inside the country. And now we have a situation on our southern border in which people are coming over and claiming asylum and there is not a clear process of how thats being done. The president is trying to force them to go back, which i think is not permitted under the act. That should be defined. How do you apply . What happens during the time youre there . Now because there is tens of thousands, up to 100,000 people coming from central america, theyre overwhelming the process until they can get a hearing. This was not really intended. And i think last, it should be very clear while the president has to have discretion, that discretion should be bounded by clear legislative principles. I have to ask you one more question. I lied about my last question. Right now one of the reasons the refugee act has gotten so bogged down in the implementation in this administration are socalled security concerns, concerns that refugees have to be extremely vetted because they represent security threats. But refugees brought in under the Carter Administration were from the soviet union, sworn enemy at the time, from vietnam, a country where we had been at war. Where there could have been north vietnamese sympathizers coming in. Absolutely. And cuba, not to mention iran, very Real Security concerns at the time. How do you explain that . How are the concerns of security and unrest during that time, especially looking at it through the lens of today . I think history has shown that there were no security concerns. The closest one could come to it is that of the 125,000 cubans that came in, perhaps 3,000 were prisoners, criminals. And that is where the controversy now in retrospect, people said they were all criminals. Thats not the case. Our history shows there wasnt a security issue. There is no security issue that has been shown by any study with the tens of thousands of people coming in at our southern border, from central america. None. No indication that there are murderers, rapists and, yes, youre going to get one or two perhaps, the vast number are coming. We also have to define who is a refugee or asylum seeker, well founded persecution and who is an economic migrant. And if youre an economic migrant and coming purely for economic reasons, that is an abuse of the system. Then you should stay in line with others who are legally seeking to come in. As much as we want to have people come who are seeking a better way of life, not fleeing persecution, we are not in a position to let every economic migrant come in, thats not been our policy, wasnt our policy in 1980 act. Shouldnt be our policy. Separating out the massive flow from the south of those who have a fear of persecution and those who are economic minded migrant is a huge burden. We need additional resources. Certainly if there is some person who has a criminal record, thats not the real problem. The real problem in my opinion is overwhelming assistance that the ad act did not anticipate in terms of economic migrants and people claiming their persecution came as a result of being in a quote unquote social group. Thank you, ambassador. Thank you. [ applause ] all week, were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend on cspan3. Lectures in history, american artifacts, real america, 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. Saturday on American History tv, at 10 00 p. M. Eastern on reel america, the 1970 film communists on campus. Yes, they are communists. Their mission proudly proclaim the violent overthrow of the democratic system. And, yet our nation seems unbelieving, even unconcerned. Sunday morning at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on oral histories. Artie cornfeld details how the festival came together. I said, yeah, well if we took it outside, michael, suppose we had joplin and all these people, how do you think would come . Oh, 50,000. I said, no, there would have to be 100,000. My wife said more than 300,000. Just like that. I swear to god, he looked off the terrace and i saw that field. Everybody says you spaced out. Of course i was spaced out. I was looking at a dream that came true. And at 6 00, on american artifacts, Virginia Museum of history and culture curator karen sherry on their exhibit of 400 years of africanAmerican History. They were not content with their lot. They wanted to resist their enleifment and tried to win away. Unfortunately this were not successful, they were cab chur captured. As punishment, Robert Carter got permission from the court in 1708 to have their toes cut off. Explore our nations past on American History tv, every weekend on cspan3. In 1980, president carter signed the refugee act, which raised the ceiling for refugees allowed in the United States. Now officials discuss the challenges they faced with refugee admissions. The impact of public opinion, and Lessons Learned in light of current refugee policy. This is an hour. Welcome. Welcome back, everyone. I want to