Efforts. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the center for stra tee teethic and international studies. Im a senior fellow here and also the Deputy Director of the project on prosperity and development. We really appreciate everyone coming out on a thursday afternoon thats gorgeous before labor day i think this is a really important topic. And a really important report that were putting out right now. So i appreciate all of you taking the time out to do this. Before give a brief summary of the report which i hope all or most of you were able to get, it will be posted online right after this event. I you want to say a couple of thank yous. The first is to the Ford Foundation that has were just completing our second year of funding with the Ford Foundation. Theyve been really great partner with us. So thanks to the Ford Foundation for believing in in us. A slightly nontraditional partner for them on this. I want to thank my coauthor who is currently in laos working for unicef. If shes watching, hello, carmen. Then i want to thank our panelists who i will introduce in a minute. So this is an issue that has come on to mine and our team at csis radar more and more over the last couple years that weve been looking at this. Its really an issue, this issue of require regular migration. Its frustrating in a lot of ways. Because when you talk about people that are moving without some regular status, so often youre talking at least in the United States about Illegal Immigrants. And the report, you know, we shouldnt say that Illegal Immigrants dont exist. They do. But theyre a small subset of the overall stock of migrants globally that doesnt have status and isnt able to move through regular orderly and safe means. I think there is a really important conversation to be had around what to do for those people, what to do with those people. I see this report as the beginning of a conversation. We need to have more conversations tl conversations like this in policy circles and more discussions and more roundtable thats are talking about this real phenomenon of people on the move and desperate people moving at a desperate circumstances most of the time and what do we do about that . The shadows con instruct is one we thought of here because Illegal Migrants live in and travel through the shadows, but the idea of irregular migration is one that has been caught in the shadows of broader forced migration, forced displacement and migration conversations globally. You know, those conversations typically revolve around people with internationally recognized status. These are legal immigrants, refugees, Asylum Seekers and i think those are really important architecture thats we have for those people. We need to maintain those. We need to strengthen those. Irregular migration is an underappreciated phenomenon hence the existence of this report and hence why youre here today. We estimate that there are over 100 million irrelevant 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 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. Dont really and the United States and europe and elsewhere dont really like to talk about migration right now. 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 too take a leadership role. Much thats my controversial opinion. I think even in todays political environment, ignoring the root causes of why people are moving irregularly and only focusing on people arriving at the border and the size of the wall and other things is a mistake. I think that mistake has long term ramifications. We, carmen and i and our program here, argues that u. S. Leaders [ no audio ] hello . That was for all you folks on cspan2 that broke from the pete rally to join us here. I think that u. S. Leadership is both critical and feasible. Realistically not on everything. Right . This is where my controversial opinion maybe gets tempered with a bit of reality. But i actually think ignoring this issue is not an option. So thank you again to all of you for being here and id like to invite brian and cindy and key to the stage for what i know will be a very interesting conversation. Everybody can hear us . Great. We have foiled their plans. You probably came to get a free cop copy of the report. Hopefully you got one. 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 whole post of different perspectives. And so i think that its not just about the report and its not just about listening to people like me here at csic, one of the benefits and privileges of working here is i get to email people like brian and cindy and key and say were doing this thing, would you be a part of it . Thankfully they say yes. Brian, im going to start with you. You are the head of the Community Stabilization unit at the u. N. Migration agency. Also known as iom. Youve been with iom since the year 2000. And you have worked in the balkans, afghanistan, indonesia, nepal, iraq, pakistan and countless other places. You have youre a published author yourself on Climate Change and displacement. You have written a handbook on communitying with disaster affected communities and relevant for a later part of this conversation, i think, youve also written about libya and labor migrants suffering in libya from caught in the crisis. So, brian, if if you could if i could just ask you a 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 the places where these schacht yoez exist. Can you talk to us a little bit about how think about these issues . Sure. I must i must begin by just thanking you for the opportunity to be such an esteemed panel. Its great. The report is helpful. And the commitment that youve had for a few years now looking at this issue is really important. So thank you. You know, i look at the issue probably mostly through the eyes of the people that ive met, the faces of the people. And the conversations that ive been fortunate enough to have over time. You know, a couple anecdotes. I remember being in neitheaster niger in a historical transit point for migration corridors heading north. And i met this i think 17yearold guy from the area. And he had just come back after a failed trip to europe. And he told me about the consistent, horrific events that had occurred until then he was imprisoned in libya and he told me me with a smile on his face and his innocent eyes about, actually, it brought me back to a philosophy class where we talked about the best day of his imprisonment in libya is when he was sold from a north african prison owner to a subsaharan owner. He thought he would be deemed valuable enough to live. Just last week there juan article in reuters about 15 migrants that were trying to cross the med. 14 of the 15 died. The one gentleman from ethiopia that survived is talking about the boats and ships that were passing and he saw their faces. They moved on. Its horrible. So what does it mean to me . I mean when you get too attached to the horrific stories that we face, it can affect you. And so we have to take a step back and look at some statistics and numbers. Because you have to wrap yourself in that for the missing migrants project. Its 1,750 that have died so far this year. Thats down from three years ago where it was over 5,000. And at least now theres blailt more of an understanding of data. If you go back to libya, i remember when kadavy was killed and iom, my organization was being asked very reasonable question. How many migrants are in libya . Check out the press releases. You have to go back and look at it. 75,000 . 150 . 250 . Just didnt know what the answer was. Now 670,000, 80 male. About 10 are minors. And it also made me rethink vulnerability. And when you apply that to migrants, because when you think traditional, ive done a lot of humanitarian response, you think traditionally with vulnerability an unaccompanied female is fairly high up on the list in the midst of a crisis. It is the 20 Something Group of guys that are migrants and they were perceived to be party to the conflict. They possibly could have been recruited because with kadavys greater pan africa plan, there was a lot of migration from Subsaharan Africa. They were all being targeted. Whereas the unaccompanied females who primarily were working at residences, were 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 boarder when peop border and we were aping a lot of women coming through. We said we thought this was happening. And these implications, and that was 2011. Just 2011 was kind of a fairly big year when you look at dealing with migrants and the issues that they were facing. We also had, remember, in thailand there were the big floods that came in to bangkok and further up in the north. And there were all these mae yar nationals. I think there were about a million. All of them didnt speak the language. They were isolated. They had to get assistance. I remember i was there at the time. And talking with the head of the thai red cross who was in a really difficult political spot. And i really appreciateded his commitment to helping migrants. But if you only have so many resources, youre also not helping someone else. Youre not helping the thai nationals that donated to the thai red cross. So it really tested the concept of impartial alt and needs based assistance. Luckily, just trying to put a little spo spin on that, you move forward and then 2014 came the migrants in countries and crisis which did less developed countries and more developed. Then you had 2015, the federation of red cross came forward with a campaign on migrants rights. Collectively, i think its part of the space were heading now, were starting to institutionalize some of the needs of migrants and how to best address it. I hope. So one of the thiings that i the should talk about here is the Global Compact and thu is moving forward. Brian, if youll allow me, well go to the other panelists. I would love to touch on the compacts and what youre seeing coming forward and how thats going to be operationalized. The but before we do that, cindy, thank you for being here. I was looking back on your bio and reminded that youre actually dr. Cindy wang. So dr. Wang, thank you for being here. You are a senior policy fellow. The but the incoming Vice President of tra steejic outreach at refugees international. And i really cant wait to hear you talk a little bit about what youre going to be doing because i think its very interesting and relevant. You were director of policy at the state departments cso, bureau of conflict and stabilization operations. You were a Senior Adviser in the chief of staff in the state department and youve done other incredible things throughout your career. So thank you again for being here. You know, youve tackled these issues both in the migration, forced displacement, even some of the regular migration stuff. From research and policy angles both from within and outside of government. So can you just talk a little bit about your reactions to maybe what brian said or just this issue set in general . Great. Thank you. Its a that you pose there around, you know, kind of what is the state of this postworld war ii order, the 1951 convention on refugees, the 1957 protocol. And the caveat here is most of my research and work is focus ond refugees. I come at it through that angle. But i completely agree that its time to take a step back. Yes, there are real refugee protection concerns in the world. Thats why im so proud to have joined refugees international. I think we need those independent voices out there. But we also have to grapple with the fact that the world order is changing. We can either approach it from a position of fear and say no we have to clamp down and just protect whats there and protect the institutions like unhcr which is providing Invaluable Services for some of the most Vulnerable People in the world. So we can clamp down or we can, you know, take a fresh look and say this is going to be a really challenging time they really challenge us to take an approach that we know will be longer term to rebuild a system and im very interested in your thoughts on the gcm and gcr. I think although theyre not perfect, they wont be perfectly implemented. 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, you know, who are the most vulnerable . Of course its evolved, it is really kind of around who were the masses of people who were most vulnerable at the time . But we have to question that. And so just from the research that ive been doing just a few, so not just myself, sorry, also cgd and Michael Clemens 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, you know, in some of the rigorous impeerical work theyve done, finding that, you know, there is no way to disentangle people who are fleeing violence, from people who are also looking from for economic opportunity. Its a mix. And using statistical methods, can you say there is this relationship between people increases in homicide and in particular municipalities and the presence of long term unemployment and underemployment. And so it really challenges us to think about, you know, how we cant separate. If someone answers on a survey, you know, i came for economic opportunities, well, it could be that. And the school they sent their child to is closed because of Gang Violence and the neighborhood is targeted and maybe that doesnt respond to a definition of Refugee Status that exists, but theyre really fleeing difficult circumstances. And so i think there is really an opportunity to bring together different methods to create a better understanding of vulnerability and displacement today. So one other thing raily appreciated about your report is that, you know, it does talk about a spectrum as ive discussed. It really challenge md he to think about looking at refugees where some governments like turkey have provided permission for people to be in turkey but only in specific places. And so in the news recently the fact that there was the, you know, reports of the deportation of syrian whos were not in the governments that they were registered in. So again, how do you, you know, there is a whole spectrum of situations. And so even for refugees and those who have Refugee Status or in refugee like situations, you know, even their status can be irregular in some ways. So that is another example that was in the news recently that came to mind. And so just to give a teaser on the work that ill be doing at refugees international, its really around how to better take that fresh look and better understand. Also about how the public, you know that, is too general of a term, but how does the public think about migration and my focus will be forced displacement and refugees in particular. But in that example, you know, someone whose neighbor has been killed, mother threatened, i do believe and some polls show this, that the average person or many people we can say look at that and say, you know that, person deserves protection. You know, and what that we should we need to help that person. So what that looks like. We have to do a lot of work to build con ssensus. And theyre around some of the understandings. We do need public support. That is leadership at the highest levels 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 hf systems and institution. And i will i almost always say this in panels even though there have been very challenging times on refugee and asylum issues recently, i am by disposition an optimist. I do have to believe this set of challenges will effect the United States and is affecting so many other countries that there is a way forward. Ill just end with one last country that ive been looking at that is, i think, providing a lot of leadership which is cl colombia. Taking a very positive approach in the research ive done talks about, you know, given the right to work so not only permission around residency or refugee a rs that refugees are actually given the right to work and allowed to contribute and i think there are governments that keeping the doors relatively open and saying that optimism, and that potential opportunity in hosting refugees or even those without status as well. 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 here at sea i see as i asked for a bunch of students and it shows venezuela this venezuelans as a touch issue as a topic and together with my colleague we were the topical experts on this and i learned a lot but why we do this verbal dance every time we talk about venezuelans we talk about venezuelan money migrants and refugees and venezuelan People Living in refugee like situations theres. The stance that happens it was really important point that we figured out through the course of that week which was part of the reason is because countries like columbia are a footing a version of temporary protection and status so if we go fullon into the refugee asylum bush that may actually have overall negative consequences over the grand scheme of things so unintended consequences of good intentions all of that to say is that its a very complicated issue and theres no easy answer to this. If i could follow up i do think it is time when those are shifting relatively quickly but what kind of factor this on the ground and with the poli