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 StatesRefugee 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 subc