Thousands of people are fleeing to europe at this very moment. Can anyone tell me from what countries they are fleeing . Leighton. Ok, syria. Any other countries . Tess . Kosovo. Sarah . Russia. Any other countries . Stephen . Eritrea, thats correct. Patrizio. [inaudible] prof. Garcia thats correct. So they are traveling very long distances to find refuge in europe, and this map gives you an idea of the routes and distances they are traveling in order to reach safety. Some are traveling alone, others are traveling as part of family units. Some are traveling in search of economic opportunity. Others are literally fleeing for their literally fleeing for their lives to escape war, devastation, rape, and forced conscription into armies. The vast majority of the refugees are syrian. Can anyone tell me why the syrians are fleeing . Ok, thank you. Albert. Civil war, absolutely. Would anyone else like to venture talk . Meredith. War is very violent. People are getting killed ritualistically. [inaudible] health care, the economy. [inaudible] prof. Garcia absolutely correct, all of you. Thank you. The country has been locked in a bloody civil war for the past four years that has internally displaced one third of its population. That is 7 million out of 21 Million People. Some 4 Million People have been forced to Cross International borders, mostly to neighboring countries like jordan and lebanon. They are fleeing enormous devastation. Last month, the Obama Administration announced it would increase the annual refugee quota over the next two years to assist with this humanitarian crisis. The annual quota, which has been set at 70,000 to 80,000 for over a decade now will increase to 100,000 by the end of fiscal year 2017, presumably to accommodate a greater share of Syrian Refugees. Within our immigration bureaucracy, there are several tracks for admission. Over the course of the semester, we have discussed some of those tracks of admission. Today we are going to discuss two of those additional tracks, the refugee and asylum tracks. As you know from your class reading, americans have used the word refugee throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to describe a wide range of migration experiences. , forg the mid19th century example, americans referred to the germans fleeing the 1848 revolution in europe as refugees. In 1865, as part of the postcivil war reconstruction, the federal government established an agency known as the bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands, more popularly known as the freedmens bureau, to assist the newly freed slaves. During the mexican revolution of 1910 to 1920, an estimated one Million People fled mexico and settled in the southwestern United States. American journalists and politicians commonly referred to these people as refugees. But there are many other historical examples we could. 2. We have used the term refugee over and over again throughout American History. However, today refugee has a very precise legal meaning, and that meeting has developed over the past 60 years, as we will see in todays class. We dont see a distinct refugee policy until the end of world war ii. Two congressional acts are generally considered the origins of american refugee policy. The 1948 displaced persons act and the 1953 Refugee Relief act. Under these two programs, the federal government allowed 600,000 europeans to immigrate to the United States over and beyond the established immigration quotas, because it was deemed in the National Interest. Can anyone tell me why the truman and Eisenhower Administration would have deemed it in the National Interest to accommodate european refugees and displaced persons . Anyone want to venture a guess . Sarah. Trying to be the better the soviet union. Prof. Garcia right. We are already locked in a cold war with the soviet union. We are battling for the hearts and minds of the developing worlds. This is a way of signaling to the rest of the world our humanitarian commitment. Any other reasons . They wanted european stability. That was in the interest of the u. S. Economically. Prof. Garcia absolutely. They wanted european stability, to assist in europes postwar economic recovery. Any other reasons you can think of . These are all very good answers. At the end of the war, there were an estimated 10 million inple left homeless and, some cases, stateless, just in europe alone. Truman wanted to accommodate a greater share of the displaced persons in order to assist europes postwar recovery. As tess pointed out. Financial aid to the wartorn nations was not enough, he said. The United States had a moral obligation to accept a number of the displaced persons in europe. And yet congress resisted. Even after americans became more fully aware of the horrors of the nazi death camps, congress resisted. Can anyone venture a guess or tell me why congress would have been so resistant at this time to accommodating displaced persons, refugees . Anyone want to venture a guess . Bear in mind that at this moment in time, the National Origin quotas are still in place. Admitting people outside of those National Origin quotas was a highly controversial idea, resisted on capitol hill. When the displaced persons act finally passed, it passed three years after the war had ended. President though truman had advocated on behalf of the displaced persons, he was tempted to veto this particular bill that came out of congress because he felt it was wholly inconsistent with americans sense of justice. But in the end, he signed the legislation because he wanted to be able to assist some segment of the displaced population, even though it was not the bill he was looking for. So why did he consider this to inconsistentolly with the american sense of justice . The bill that came out of congress had so many restrictions on who could be sponsored. You had to be located in austria and germany, for example, and you had to be living there by 1945. This excluded most of the jewish refugee population. The law was amended two years later in 1950. By august 1952, of the 415,000 europeans that were brought in as displaced persons, only 80,000 of them were jewish refugees. The majority of those who were granted visas to come to the United States were ethnic germans. Believed truman also that much more had to be done to assist the countries of western europe, countries that were still economically recovering from the war and now facing the additional burden of thousands of refugees fleeing the eastern bloc, the newly emerging communist countries of the eastern bloc, and moving into western europe. This time, Congress Responded with the Refugee Relief act of 1953. This act granted 214,000 visas over the next two years to expellees,efugees, and escapees. The law defined these terms in particular ways. Escapees were those who left communist countries, while refugees were those in danger of persecution anywhere in the world. However, because the vast majority of those admitted to the United States under the Refugee Relief act were fleeing communist countries, the term refugee became synonymous with those who were fleeing communism, at least in this country. Refugee policy became a tool of cold war Foreign Policy. Assisting those who were fleeing communism. People who were fleeing communism lets say there was a great deal of suspicion in the United States among americans about whether these individuals were truly democracy loving, freedom loving individuals. Those who came from communist countries tended to be heavily screened because of American Fears about sponsoring communist spies and saboteurs who would enter the United States and do harm to the United States. As the cold war developed, the United States was forced to deal with a number of humanitarian crises. These responses helped to further develop our refugee policy. 1956, for example, socialist revolutionaries in hungary overthrew their prosoviet communist governments. This prompted of either crackdown on the part of the soviet union. Within days of the crackdown, tens of thousands of hungarian refugees had fled into neighboring austria and yugoslavia. Some 200,000 hungarian refugees eventually took refuge in austria alone. To accommodate these refugees, the Eisenhower Administration used a littleknown codicil in an act known as the Parole Authority, which allowed the attorney general to parole people into the United States without a visa and outside of immigration quotas if it was deemed in the National Interest. The immigrant parolees could states, butunited they could not become permanent residents or citizens unless Congress Passed legislation that helped them normalize their status. Eisenhower used this Parole Authority to admit some 32,000 hungarian refugees into the United States, just from austria, and an additional 6000 were brought in under a variety of other visas. But because americans were concerned with sponsoring communist spies and saboteurs, the u. S. Refugees were brought to camp kilner, an old army base in new jersey, where they were screened, interviewed, housed temporarily before they were released to their assigned american sponsor families. In this photograph you see here, we see Vice President richard hungarianing with refugee children around christmas time. The next humanitarian crisis came in cuba in 1959. And his july 26 movement overthrew the government of bautista. Between 1959 and 1973, roughly half a million cubans are admitted to the United States, the majority of them through the socalled freedom flights of the mid to late 1960s. Today, this very day, december 1, marks the 50th anniversary of the first freedom flight from havana to Miami International airport. The Kennedy Administration created the Cuban Refugee Program to screen the refugees to find sponsors for them, and to help them retool for life in the United States. By the time the Cuban Refugee Program was phased out in the mid1970s, the federal government had invested some 900 million into cuban Refugee Relief. As i mentioned earlier, those paroled into the United States could not become permanent residents or citizens unless Congress Passed enabling legislation, legislation that allowed them to normalize their status. And this is what congress did. Congress passed the hungarian and 1966t of 1958 cuban adjustment act, which allowed hungarians and cubans to become permanent residents in residents of the United States after living just two years in the United States. So we begin to see the origins of a distinct refugee policy taking place in the 1950s and 1960s. Members of congress became increasingly concerned that the white house was using the Parole Authority too much as a backdoor to bring people into the United States outside of the established immigration quota. Consequently, when Congress Passed the hart cellar act of 1965, which we discussed a couple of weeks ago, they oferted a oda of a quota 10,000 refugees per year. Once again, refugee was defined as someone who fled a communist, communistdominated, or communistoccupied country. We see that further association of the word refugee with someone who was fleeing communism. Refugee withion of anticommunism continued through the 1970s. Those admitted under the hart cellar refugee quota, almost all of them came from refugee countries. The executive branch continued to parole anticommunists outside of refugee odors quotas. After the fall of saigon in 1975, 130,000 refugees were admitted from vietnam, cambodia, and laos. Congress passed the indochina indochina migration and refugee assistance act to provide resettlement assistance to those 130,000 refugees. The decision to admit refugees was always contested. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Public Opinion polls showed americans were generally sympathetic to those fleeing communism, but they didnt necessarily want them to come here. They didnt want them to come to United States. They wanted them to go someplace else. In 1956, the Eisenhower Administration had to enlist the assistance of Public Relation firms from madison avenue to help them sell the idea of hungarian refugees to a reluctant american population. These Public Relation firms worked with specific journalists who published story after story in newsmagazines, like time, news weve, newsweek, and life, portraying the hungarians as hardworking, freedomloving people. The photo i showed of Richard Nixon meeting with the hungarian refugee children was part of the pr campaign to sell the idea of hungarian refugees to a reluctant american population. Many americans were still not convinced. 20 years later, americans were even more resistant to accommodating Southeast Asians, who they viewed as too culturally different to be properly assimilated to the United States. The pain of the vietnam war also probably had a great deal to do with that reluctance. Reluctance to sponsor Southeast Asian refugees, despite the news of squalid refugee camps in thailand and the news that hundreds of people were dying as the to reach safety somewhere in the world. Public opinion polls tell us that less than one third of americans were in favor of sponsoring vietnamese or other Southeast Asian refugees on american soil. Despite this public opposition, the white house always took the lead on refugee policy. They favored refugee admission for humanitarian reasons, but also as a tool of cold war foreignpolicy. Refugees served an important symbolic function during the cold war. They demonstrated the desirability of democracy over totalitarianism and demonstrated the desirability of capitalism over communism. Refugees went to Great Lengths to escape a communist country, as you see on the photo. These photos are from people are of people from east berlin trying to reach west berlin. As you see in these photos, some refugees went to extraordinary lengths. They built underground tunnels, they jumped over fences and walls. In some cases, they built hot air balloons to fly them aCross International borders. They demonstrated, they symbolized the hunger on behalf of humans to live in free societies. Or so the argument went. Refugees were also the highly skilled of their societies, or in many cases they were the highly skilled of their societies. In some cases, they brought important intelligence that informed our military policies overseas. Refugee scientists like Albert Einstein excuse me. Ok, thank you. Refugee scientists like albert played a keyfermi role in the development of Nuclear Physics in this country. The United States also went to Great Lengths to bring in people they considered the brightest to the United States. As we discussed a couple weeks ago, the secretary of state even expunged the nazi records of some people like werner von brown and some fellow nazi scientists so they could work in u. S. Intelligence. Werner von braun and his nazi scientists played a key role in the development of the u. S. Space program. Refugees also informed our political life. Think of henry kissinger, madeleine albright, the german political theorist hannah arendt. There are others that played a key role in shaping our political life. They have shaped our cultural life. ,he actress Marlena Dietrich the austrian composer schaumburg, and the russian french painter chagall. There are many other refugees we could highlight. Always have always played an Important Role in the economic and cultural life of our nation. Public opinion polls tell us americans were very concerned about accommodating refugees, no matter how noble the cause, no matter how noble the individual. In 1980, Congress Passed the refugee act in response to what they perceived to be the continuing misuse of the Parole Authority on the part of the executive branch in service of cold war foreignpolicy. Tried torefugee act free the definition of refugee from the anticommunism connotations and instead adopted the u. N. Version. Can anyone tell me the five pr