We will leave this program at this. To take a life of the discussion on a new report on irregular migration on the smuggling of migrants in mexico. This is hosted by the center for strategic and international studies. It is just getting underway live here in cspan2. Is a gorgeous thursday afternoon before labor day. I think this is a really important topic and the 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 youse, 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, the Carmen Garcia who is currently a louse working for unicef. If you are watching online, hello carmen. And then i want to thank our panelists who i will introduce in a minutes. 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 regular 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 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 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 in more discussion and roundtables this real phenomenon of people on the move in desperate people moving out of desperate circumstances, most of the time and what we do about that. The shadows contract is one that we have thought about here at csis because the regular migrants not only live in and travel through the shadows, but the idea of the regular migration has been one that has been caught in the shadows are broader forced migration forced displacement and migration conversations globally. Those conversations typically revolve around people with internationally recognized status. These are Illegal Immigrants, 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 a regular 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. It could be an overblown estimate, could be a 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 solution 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 here argue that silent [silence] hello . That was for all of you folks on cspan2 that broke 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 a 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 brian, cindy, and key to the stage for what i know will be a very interesting conversation. Are we good on these microphones . [applause] two everybody can hear us . Great. We have the plan. You probably came in small part to get a free copy of the report and thanks for doing that and hopefully you got one, but i hope you also came to hear from three people who i think are really important in this space, they are addressing this and other issues from a host of different perspectives, so i think its not just about the report and is not just about listening to people like me, one of the benefits and privileges of working at csis is that i get to email people like brian, and cindy and say, we are doing this thing, would you be a part of it and thankfully they say yes. Brian, i want to start with you. You are the head of the Community Stabilization you and unit also know it known as iom. You have been with iom since the year 2000. And you have worked in the boston, afghanistan, indonesia, nepal, iraq and countless other places. You are a published author yourself on Climate Change and displacement, you have a handbook on communicating with disasters communities and relevant for a later part of this conversation i think you have also written about libya and labor migrants by offering and libya from those caught in the crisis. So brian, if i could just ask you a broad question first about we talk about shadows in this report where migrants find themselves, you work with stabilization and in some of these places where the shadows exist, can you talk just a little bit about how you think about these issues . I must begin by thanking you for the opportunity for such an esteemed panel. Its great in the report is very helpful in the commit will weve had a few years now is 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 confrontations that i have been fortunate enough to have over time the couple of anecdotes im in which is a historical transit. For migration corridors heading north. I met this 17yearold guy from and he had just come back after a sales 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 his and his and eyes about, it brought me back to a philosophy class where we talked about the best day of his imprisonment in libya when he was sold from a north african prison owner because he thought he would be deemed to valuable enough to live. Just last week there is an article in reuters about 15 migrants that were trying to cross, 14 of the 15 died, the one gentleman from ethiopia survived and was talking about the boats and the ships that were passing and he saw their faces and they moved on. Its horrible so what is it means to me . When you get too attached to the horrific 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 we have to wrap yourself in that for the missing migrants project 1750 that have died so far this year, thats 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 remember when qaddafi was killed in iom, my organization was being asked very reasonable question, how many migrants are in libya . Check out the press release as you go back and look at it, 75000, 150, 250, i didnt know. Just did not know what the answer. Now approximately 670,000, 80 male, 10 are minors it also mean we rethink vulnerability and when you apply that to migrants. When you think tradition, have done a lot of humanitarian at this honor for global development, the incoming Vice President s at Refugees International. Ia really cant blame to hear you talk a little bit about what youre going to do at refugee international. I think its very interesting and relevant. You were director of policy at the state department of cso, a conflict and stabilization, you are 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, you see some of the regular migration stuff from research and of policy and go from within and outside of government, can you just talk a little bit about your reactions to what brian said or this issue . Thank you. Its a real honor to be here when its been really fun to have this collaboration, different agencies can play nice together. Absolutely. Its been great because as you said, the need for more attention and i agree with your controversial statement of a need for leadership on these topics. So, you caught me in a little bit of a philosophical mood. And i read your report and congratulations on it. It did make me think about some of the questions and ideas you pose there around what is the states of those postworld war ii order, the 1951 convention on refugees, the protocol and the caveat here is that most of my research and work has been focused on refugees so i come at it from that angle. I completely agree it is time to take a step back and that we shouldnt yes there are real refugee protection concerns in the world and im 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 and say we have to clamp down and protect what is there and protect the institutions like thats providing Invaluable Services for some of the most valuable people in the world. We can clamp down or we can you know, take a fresh look and saying this is going to be a challenging time was a little bit more about the research he really challenged us to take an approach that we know will be longerterm to rebuild the system and very interested in your approach because i think theyre not perfect and will be perfectly implemented but 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 about who are the most vulnerable. Of course this has evolved and its really a around to where the mass of people who are most vulnerable at the time. But we have to question it. When so from the research that i have been doing, just a few but not just myself but also my colleague 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. Some of the rigorous work that they had 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 can say there is this relationship, 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 opportunity, it could be that on the school may have been closed because of Gang Violence in their neighbor was targeted and may be that doesnt respond to the definition of Refugee Status that exists, but they are really fleeing difficult circumstances. So i think theres an opportunity to bring together different methods and 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 government like turkey has provided permission for people in turkey but only in specific places so in the news recently the fact that there was reports of the deportation of syrians who are not in the government but they were registered in. Again, theres a spectrum of situations and so even for refugees and those who have Refugee Status or situations, even their status can be regular in some ways, its just another example 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 if thats too general of the term but how does the public think about migration and the enforcement placement and refugees in particular, but in that example of someone whose neighbor has been killed, mother has been threatened, i do believe that the quote on quote average person or many people we can say look at that and say, that person deserves protection and we should see what that looks like we have to do a lot of work to build consensus around these realities and yet even touch on climate vulnerability. So we have to build a consensus. Around the understanding that they do need public support. And we do need leave leadership on 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 panel even though there have been challenging times on refugee and asylum issues recently, i am an optimist and i do had to believe that these challenges which will affect not only the United States but has already affected some the countries that there is a way for it. I will end with one last a country that i have been looking hat that is providing a lot of leadership is columbia. So many venezuelans and 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. You brought up about a zillion really important points there. Just to i wanted to highlight. I had the opportunity last week to help lead a course were a bunch of journalism students and they chose venezuela and displace venezuelans and their status issue as their topic. And so together with my colleague we were the topical experts on this and i learned a lot about why we do this verbal dance every time we talk about venezuela. We talk about migrants and refugees. We talk about venezuelans living in refugee like situations. Theres this stance that happens in it was an important. That we figured out through the course of that week which was part of the reason is because countries like columbia are affording a version of temporary status and so if we go full on into the refugee asylum push, it may actually have overall negative consequences in the grand scheme of things. It was the unintended consequences all of that to say these are really complicated issues and there is no easy answers. And if i could follow up on one point, i do think its time when things are shifting and really what is on the ground and what the political narrative approaches potentially even more important so that if you think about these examples where there could be an aunt attended consequences to both practically and politically speaking and looking at a status that seeing are there places where it could grow were columbia could be a role model for other countries in the region and also think about how we build the system from the bottom up is really important. It sounds like you had last week. They were phenomenal undergrads that were not topical experts though are asking all of the right questions and making me hopeful that the future of journalism. The other. I wanted to make was the. About potential americans. We have this case study on mexico and the idea is not to talk about mexicans coming to the United States as we. Out in the case study 1995 called and they want their problem back. Thats not whats going on right now. There are some mexicans coming north, but more mexico even though his policies and psyche in our psyche towards mexico and our policies towards mexico, is focused on mexico going north. The reality is that mexico is in that receiver of people right now. They are having to deal with the influx of the Central Americans the haitians in the venezuelan symbionts and by the way, mexicans that are leaving the u. S. Are going back to mexico. Their systems are not really set up for that. You were talking about this and is part of the research we went to the guatemalan border and to the cover of this is from a migrant shelter in southern mexico. When we are talking to people down there this idea of what you and michael have done Excellent Research on how if you asked someone though so yeah, i came for a better life. But if you peel back the onion just one layer, its because of the reasons you said. Its because if im a woman walking at night and i live in a poor neighborhood in their is not a light in my neighborhood im at risk of Sexual Violence or maybe i dont have enough money to have a lock on my door and so we are at risk of just vandalism, and robbery at any moment. Maybe thats not topoftheline for that person when theyre answering the question on the survey. But if you peel it back just a little bit im willing to bet most of those people are im glad there are more credible researchers than i better backing up that theory. Thank you for that. You are the chief operating officer at the medical corps, you maintain an affiliation with George Washington university. You are at tulane before, you are a man of many hats. And we are very happy to have you here. You were relevant to this conversatio