Center for strategic and international studies. We really appreciate everyone coming out on this gorgeous thursday before labor day. I think this is a really important topic and really important report that we are putting out right now. I appreciate all of you taking the time out to do this. Before i give a brief summary of the report, which i hope all or most of you were able to get, it will be posted online by the way right after this event. I wanted to say a couple of thank yous. First is to the Ford Foundation that we are just completing our second year of funding with the Ford Foundation. They have been a great partner with us. Thank you to the Ford Foundation for believing in us, slightly nontraditional partner for them on this. I want to thank my coauthor, Carmen Garcia gallego who is currently in laos, working for unicef. If you are watching online, hello, carmen. And then i want to thank our panelists, who i will introduce in a minute. This is an issue that has come onto mine and our team radar more and more over the last couple of years that we have been looking at this. It really is an issue, this issue of irregular migration that is frustrating in a lot of ways. When you talk about people who are moving without some sort of regular status, so often you are talking, at least in the United States, about Illegal Immigrants. In the report, we shouldnt say that Illegal Immigrants dont exist, they do, but they are a small subset of the overall stock of migrants globally that doesnt have status and is in is not able to move through regular, orderly, and safe means. Theres a really important conversation to be had about what to do for those people and what to do with those people. I see this report is the beginning of a conversation. We need to be having more conversations like this in policy circles. We need to have more panels like this, and more discussions and roundtables that are talking about this real phenomenon of people on the move, and desperate people moving out of desperate circumstances, most of the time, and what do we do about that . The shadows contract is one that construct is one that we have thought about here at csis because the regular irregular migrants not only live in and travel through the shadows, but the idea of the migration has been one that has been caught in the shadows are broader forced migration forced displacement and forced migration conversations globally. Those conversations typically revolve around people with internationally recognized status. These are legal immigrants, refugee or asylumseekers, and i think those are really important architectures that we have for those people and we need to maintain those and we need to strengthen those. But irregular migration is a critical, global and underappreciated phenomenon, hence the existence of this report and hence why you are here today. We estimate there are over 100 million irregular migrants, slightly more than our friends at iom. We have taken our own slightly broader definition of irregular migration. The reality is we dont know. That could be an overblown estimate. That could be conservative estimate. A lot more work needs to be done on this and we hope that we can do it. Heres where i Say Something controversial. People in d. C. And the United States and europe and elsewhere dont really like to talk about migration right now. Csis is a bipartisan institution. We are not in the gotcha game. We want to present good, credible, Bipartisan Solutions to the challenging global issues of our time. I think the u. S. Needs to take a leadership role. That is my controversial opinion. I think that even in todays political environment, ignoring the root causes of why people are moving irregularly and only focusing on people who are arriving on the border and the size of the wall is a mistake. I think that mistake has long term ramifications. We, carmen and i and our program [no audio] that u. S. [indiscernible chattering] [laughter] erol hello . That was for all of you folks on cspan [applause] cspan2 that broke from the Pete Buttigieg rally to join us here on csis. I think the u. S. Leadership is both critical and feasible. Realistically not on everything. This is where my controversy and low opinion maybe gets tempered with a little bit of reality. But i actually think ignoring this issue is not an option and so, thank you again to all of you for being here. And i would like to invite y to the stagend k for what i know will be a very interesting conversation. Are we going on these microphones . Good. [applause] everybody can hear us . Great. We have soiled their plans. You probably came in small part to get a free copy of the report, and thanks for doing that. Hopefully you got one. But i hope you also came to hear from three people who i think are really important in this space. This andaddressing other issues from a whole host of different perspectives, so i aboutthat it is not just the report, and it is not just about listening to people like me here at csis. One of the benefits and privileges of working at csis is i get to email people like brian, cindy, ky and say we are doing this thing, would you be a part of it, and thankfully, they say yes. Brian, i will start with you. You are the head of the Community Stabilization unit at the u. N. Migration agency, also known as iom. You have been with iom since the year 2000. And you have worked in the balkans, afghanistan, indonesia, nepal, iraq, afghanistan pakistan and countless other places. You are a published author yourself on Climate Change and displacement. You have written a handbook on communicating with disaster affected communities, and relevant for a later part of this conversation i think, you have also written about bolivia and labor migrants suffering in libya, caught in the crisis. You a if i could just ask broad question first about, you know, we talk about shadows in this report, where irregular migrants find themselves. You work with stabilization and in some of these places where these shadows exist. Can you talk a little bit about how you think about these issues . Brian sure. But i must begin by thanking you for the opportunity to be with such an esteemed panel. It is great, and the report is very helpful in the commitment sis has had looking at these issues that are really important, so thank you. I look at the issue probably mostly through the eyes of the people that i have met, the faces of the people in the conversations that i have been fortunate enough to have over time. Just a couple of anecdotes. As mber being in august in an Extorre Gold Mines it point for migration heading north, and i met this , and he had just come back after a veiled trip to europe. He told me about the consistent, horrific events that had occurred. Until then he had been imprisoned in libya, and he told me with a smile on his face and eyes itnocent actually brought me back to a philosophy class on kierkegaard, where he talked about the best day of his imprisonment in libya was when he was sold from a north african prison owner to a Subsaharan African prison owner because he thought he would be deemed valuable enough to live. Just last week there is an article in reuters about 15 migrants that were trying to cross the mediterranean. 14 of the 15 died, the one gentleman from ethiopia who survived was talking about the boats and the ships that were passing him, and that he saw their faces and they moved on. So what does it mean to me . When you get too attached to the stories that we face, it can affect you personally. So we have to take a step back a little bit and take a look at some statistics and numbers and you have got to wrap yourself and that her the missing migrants project. 1750 that have died so far this year. That is down from three years ago, where it was over 5000. And at least now theres a little bit more of an understanding of data. If you go back to libya, i when qaddafi was killed and iom, my organization was being asked very reasonable question, how many migrants are in libya . Check out the press releases. You go back and look at it, but 75,000 . 150 . 250 . No. We did not know what the answer was. Now approximately 670,000, show male, there are minors. It also made me rethink the vulnerability, and when you apply that to migrants because when you think traditionally i have done a lot of humanitarian response you think traditionally with vulnerability, and unaccompanied female is fairly high up on the list in the midst of a crisis. But it was actually a twentysomething groups of guys who were migrants who were the most vulnerable in libya because they were perceived to be party to the conflict. They possibly could have been recruited because with qaddafis greater pan african plan, there was a lot of migration from Subsaharan Africa, so these are subsaharan men in their 20s all targeted. Whereas the unaccompanied females, who primarily were working at residences, where fairly safe. What does that mean in real terms . It means what kind of commodities we needed to have on the other side of the border when people were coming across and anticipated a lot of women and they did not come and they thought it was happening. These real implications. That was 2011. 2011 was kind of a fairly big year when you look at dealing with migrants and the issues they were facing because you remember in thailand, there was a big flux that came into bangkok and further up in the north, and there were all these myanmar nationals that were there in the irregular status. I think there are approximately about one million. And all of them did not speak the language. They do not have access to services. They were isolated and they had to get assistance. I remember there was a time in talking with the head of the thai red cross who was in a really difficult political spot and i really appreciated his commitment to helping migrants, but if you only have so many resources, you are also not helping someone else, and you helping these tight nationals who may be donated to the red cross, so it really tested the concept of impartiality and needbased assistance. Luckily, just trying to put a little bit of a positive spin on and then move forward 2014 came, the migrants in countries of crisis, which are less and more developed countries, and then you also had 2015, the federation of the red cross came forward with a campaign on migrants, right . Collectively, i think the space we are heading now, we are starting to institutionalize some of the needs of migrants and how to best address them. Erol i hope so, and one of the things that i think we should globalout here is the compact and how that is moving forward. Brian, if you would allow me, we will go to the other panelists, but i would love to touch on the compact and what you are seen coming forward and how that is going to be operationalized. Before that, cindy, thanks for being here. I was looking back on your bio and reminded that you are actually dr. Cindy huang. Forr. Huang, thank you being here. For the time being, you are a senior policy fellow at the center for global development, and i really cannot wait to hear you talk about what you are going to be doing at Refugees International because i think it is interesting and relevant. He were director of policy at the state department, cso, bureau of conflict and stabilization operations, Senior Advisor to the counselor and chief of staff of the state department and you have done some really incredible things throughout your career. Thank you again for being here. You have tackled these issues both in the migration for displacement and irregular migration stuff, and from research angles, policy, and from within and outside of government. Can you just talk a little bit about your reactions to what brian settled this issue in general . Cindy thank you. Its a real honor to be here. It has been really fun to have this collaboration. Sometimes different agencies can play nicely together. Erol absolutely. Cindy it has been great because there has been the need more attention, and i agree with your controversial statement of a need for u. S. Leadership on these topics. So, you caught me in a little bit of a philosophical mood. Not as philosophical as kierkegaard. [laughter] and i read your report and congratulations on it. But it did make me think about some of the questions and ideas you pose there around what is the state of those postworld war ii order, the 1951 convention on refugees, the protocol and the caveat here is 1967 that most of my research and work has been focused on refugees, so i come at it from that angle. But i completely agree it is time to take a step back and that we should not be yes, there are real refugee protection concerns in the world , and that is why i am so proud to have joined Refugees International because i think we need those independent voices out there, but we also have to grapple with the fact that the world order is changing and we can either approach it from a position of fear and say we have to clamp down and protect what is there and protect the institutions providing Invaluable Services for some of the most Vulnerable People in the world. So, we can clamp down or we can a fresh lookake and say this is going to be a challenging time, but i will say a little bit more about the research we have done has really challenged us to take an approach that we know will be longerterm to rebuild the system, and im very interested in your thoughts on the gcm and gcr because they are not perfect and will not be perfectly implemented, but i think they are the next step in trying to outline the future of the architecture that we need. I was really moved by what you said about the experience in libya around who are the most vulnerable . Course, it has evolved, and it was really around who are the masses of people the most vulnerable at the time. But we have to question that. So from the research that i have not doing, just a few, but just myself but also my colleagues and this is mentioned in your report, around thinking about the Central Americans who are fleeing and that is at the top of the political discourse. But some of the regulars empirical work that cg has done finding that, there is no way to disentangle people who are fleeing violence from people who are also looking for economic opportunity. Its a mix. In using statistical methods you yo can say there is this relationship between people. It increases in particular municipalities and the presence of longterm unemployment and underemployment. So, it really challenges us to think about how we cant separate if someone answers on a survey i came for economic opportunities. Well, it could be that, and the school they sent their child to was closed because of Gang Violence and their neighborhood has been targeted, and maybe that does not respond to a definition of Refugee Status that exists, but they are really fleeing difficult circumstances. So i think theres an opportunity to bring together different methods to create a better understanding of vulnerability and displacement today. One other thing i really appreciated about your report is that it does talk about a spectrum. It challenged me to think about looking at refugees where some governments, like turkey, has provided permission for people to be in turkey, but only in specific places. So in the news recently, there was the fact that there were reports of the deportation of syrians who are not in the government that they were registered in. Again, theres a spectrum of situations and so even for refugees and those who have Refugee Status or in refugeelike situations, even their status can be irregular in some ways. That is just another example in the news recently that came to mind. Just to give us a teaser on the work that ill be doing at Refugees International, it is really around how to better take that fresh look and better understand also about how the public, i know that is too general of a term, but how does the public think about migration , and my focus will be displacement and refugees in particular. In that example of someone whose neighbor has been killed, mother has been threatened, i do believe, and some hope so that the average person or many people we can say look at that and say, that person deserves protection. We need to help that person, and so what that looks like. We have to do a lot of work to build consensus around these realities and vulnerabilities. We have not even yet touched on climate vulnerability. So we have to build a consensus. Around the understanding that they do need public support. And to me, u. S. Leadership means uterus about ship at the highest level but also engaging in public dialogue and Public Education about vulnerability and protection and what that means from a very basic human level, and also what that means at the level of systems and institutions. I almost always say this in panels, even though there have been challenging times on refugee and asylum issues recently, i an optimist and i do setave to believe that this of challenges, which will affect not only the United States but has already affected other countries, that there was a way for it. End with one last country i have been looking at that is providing a lot of leadership, which is colombia. They are hosting so many venezuelans and have taken a very positive approach, and some of the research i have done talks about that given the right to work, not only permission around residency or status that refugees are actually given the right to work and allowed to contribute. I think there are governments that are keeping the doors relatively open and seeing that optimism and potential opportunity in hosting refugees or even those without status. Erol you brought up about a zillion really important points there. Just two i wanted to highlight. I had the opportunity last week to help lead a course were a course here with a bunch of journalism students, and they chose venezuela and displaced venezuelans and their status issue as their topic. And so together with my ndon, wee, moises re were the topical experts on this, and we learned a lot about why we do this verbal dance every time we talk about venezuelans. We talk about venezuelan migrants and refugees. We