At the start of november, we are back on the east coast for the boston book festival. In the middle of the month is the louisiana book festival. At the end of november, we are lied for the 18th year in the room in florida for the Miami Book Fair international. And the National Book awards from new york city. Just some of the fairs and festivals this fall. We are about to start at the bipartisan policy center. A discussion of the syrian refugee crisis. The humanity unitarian and security concerns and creating a coherent u. S. And global policy. We will be hearing from state department officials, specialists in the field. Live coverage set to begin shortly. Good morning and welcome to the bipartisan policy center. Thank you for joining us this morning. We are very pleased to welcome you to todays event on the refugee crisis in syria, europe, and the u. S. Response. Just a call out a couple of news stories over the weekend that will frame our discussion. With russian backing, the Syrian Government renewed an offensive in aleppo over the weekend that is estimated to have caused another 70,000 syrians to leave aleppo and perhaps causing new wave of refugees entering neighboring countries that are already hosting many refugees. Lebanon, jordan, kurdistan, and turkey. The Prime Minister in response to this said, we cannot accept an understanding like give us the money and they stay in turkey. Turkey is not a concentration camp. For those of you who noticed the chill in the air this morning, the New York Times reports about the challenges facing refugees traveling to europe with winter coming. With large flows of refugees and migrants trying to enter europe, and with the u. S. Grappling the like the it feels conversation is often boiled between theextremes imperative of giving humanitarian aids and the security challenges of letting people we dont know into our country. Ye are the bipartisan polic center and we like to explode binary choices. We want to bring together a conversation to day to explore the tensions between those two needs. Discussion, we have christian roberts, National Editor of politico. Before joining politico, she was managing editor of National Deputy and served as bureau chief for the washington reuters. Holtz masters degrees from Georgetown University and columbia kristin holds masters degrees from Georgetown University and columbia. [applause] this is a really important conversation. I want to thank everybody for joining us here. Weve got an incredible panel. The only country in the world that is generating refugees. There are 15 million refugees in the world. The United States takes the largest proportion of those refugees. The case for the 4 million Syrian Refugees is different. What we are going to talk about today is how to balance the security and the humanitarian dimensions of this crisis. Weve got an a on panel. Lets start with larry. Weve got an excellent panel. Lets start with larry. Is Deputy Director of refugee admissions. s director of advocacy for the lutheran immigration and refugee service. Lorenzo vidinos director of the program of extremism at George Washington university. Is senior fellow at the german marshall fund. Larry, can you help us understand the men to do for we are dealing with the magnitude of what we are dealing with . Wheres is a time for us overall displacement is at an alltime high since world war ii. 16 Million People are displaced. Of which a quarter are from the syrian conflict alone. Ways, we are seeing the International Community really dealing with the biggest crisis with refugees in decades. Depending on how you look at it. They could be since world war ii. Enormousally catastrophe of humanitarian issues. It comes at a time when we are refugeeome very large emergencies. Whether that is in the Central African republic, yemen, central america, sudan. It is already coming at a time when the system has been extremely taxed already. And then there is dimensions with the Syrian Crisis there terminally in internally displaced. It is a situation where half of a countrys population is either displaced or refugees. And in even larger number made some kind of international assistance. If you talk about the numbers, they become almost unimaginably big. You lose people in the numbers. They just seem so enormous. There has beene, an unprecedented and Good International response whether it is through funding or resettlement or humanitarian movements. It is still an emergency. Ive been in refugee work a while. Going back to the vietnamese era. Usually emergencies have a curve. Slack off at some point. We are now in the third year and there is no slacking. In fact, what we see is a metamorphosis, a changing into different players. Differentees from locations and different causes spilling into neighboring countries like iraq. So i think its a huge emergency. And coupled with what we have seen in the last two months, the pictures of people migrating into europe. Again, for europe, it is another unprecedented since world war ii kind of emergency. I dont know if i have said the word big and large enough. Us whethert all of it is it International Organizations or countries or ofugees are in the midst something that is really beyond what most of us have ever experienced. Can you talk about how this compares to the other crises your organization has responded to . Every refugee flow is unique. Whats interesting to note about the syrians is that since the beginning of the conflict, the u. S. Has only welcomed about 1900 syrians. So given the huge numbers that were mentioned, 4. 1 million syrians worldwide, we really have not opened the doors in the u. S. Yet to syrians arriving here. And some of the other refugee crises that we have responded to have such as kosovo. The response of bringing individuals to the u. S. Was more immediate. When we resettled people, they had fresh trauma, violence that they had just experienced. Many of the syrians now are being told that the weight they face in the region in the camps in turkey or lebanon could be three or four years. So what we are seeing is a highly traumatized population, almost all syrian families have experienced a death a husband, brother, child. But they are not able to find that immediate protection that they need. Thats one big difference. A comparison would be to central america. Where we have heard interviews of young men leaving syria who have said, my choice was stay here or die or get on a boat and face the possibility of death there. With Central American children being interviewed, we also hear the same story. I can either stay here, faced at that the hands of a game, gang, or i can try to find safety may be in costa rica or mexico or the u. S. But the choices the same. Death in my home country or possible death on the journey to safety. Although there are some , we seeces in scale similarities in levels of trauma as well as a desperation to find safety among all refugee populations. Talk aboutsible to the demographics of the population you are seeing in the Refugee Community coming out of syria . At large, the demographics as far as gender, it is about a 5050 split. As far as age, i was looking that up. It is again about a 5050 split. 50 would be 18 and under and 50 over. There is a relatively small number of elderly. That would be people my age and older. So only about 3 are making it out as refugees. Thats a little bit of a difference than some other populations. In the sense that we see a lot of women and children, it is common to many refugee situations. Some of the migration happening to europe is a little more mail more mittle younger ale and a little younger. In part because it is risky. Some of the motivation to move is running out of resources. And the host countries who have done this unprecedented job of ining these c lebanon, one out of three people is a refugee. Thats astounding. That would be the u. S. Hosting 100 million from Different Countries and having the children be in schools and using resources Public Resources etc. They have maintained generally open borders although at the moment we see borders closing. As borders and options close, people go on the move. You saw people who were relatively welloff, a lot of people who were middle class and had resources when they left. They have burned through those resources. I think the situation is changing and the level of desperation is changing as time goes on. International community we are only at about 40 for the syrian appeal. That means food ration cuts by the world food program. It means other kinds of educational supplements. There is also that curve. I think we are seeing changes in the way the population looks. Certain people heading out the custom are running out of options. In termsbout your view of the demographic divide . Can we talk about the countries in europe who are taking many of the refugees . What those numbers are and what burden that is bringing to those nations . Any of you . We have had a Resettlement Program. Theres about 30 countries involved from as big as the United States to my favorite, liechtenstein. But also other countries outside of the region made opportunities available. So thats on one side of the settlement. And of course there is a much larger number of people directly leaving europe at this point. We are seeing arrivals of 6000 people per day. Over 500,000 asylum applications filed in europe since the start. And the countries bearing the biggest brent at this point unt at this point would be countries like germany, sweden, norway. U. K. T announcements by the for multiyour commitment multiyear commitments. There are ones we hope will do more. There will also be a european relocation plan. That has been put forward by the European Union. Which will also involve local members. We have also seen certain countries putting up fences. Some of my colleagues have described a new iron curtain coming down in certain parts of europe to block the immigrants. Germany promised to take hundreds of thousands of refugees. But they have been criticized for that being a threat to german culture. Hungarian officials are talking about the threat of terrorism. Is this a fair concern . No. Its not a fair concern. It is a fair concern the sense that security is important. In the sense that integration is important. Flowo view the refugee through a lens purely of security, that there are terrorists embedded or extremist embedded in these refugee flows i think is a mistake. Ofis a major issue integration and inclusion and of whether or not the europe the future, particularly the new europe, the countries that you mentioned, are they going to be open . Are they going to integrate populations that frankly dont look like them or may not have the same religion . The humanitarian questions that have been raised and the security challenges that are certainly present, i think one of the Silver Linings in this one of the positive outcomes could be that europe is not grappling with is now grappling with and will decide whether it is open to immigration or whether it is closed. We have seen leadership from germany and france and other countries. We have also seen a rise in far right movements and Political Parties grabbing more and more seats. Switzerland for example. And we have also seen violence against you mentioned germany. The mayor elect of munich was stabbed because of his presumably because of her open views on immigration. A lothink you are seeing of reactions. Lots of negative reactions. But we are happy that europe is grappling with these issues and in a emerge unified, position to actually speak with one voice. And that is what we are seeing today. We have seen croatia, who initially sort of wavered. Actually talking about resolving it as opposed to some of the other countries like hungary who are just putting up barbed fences and so forth. So it is a positive outcome in the sense that it is framing the issue. Lorenzo, your thoughts. I would echoed his comments. The debate gets very heated and politicized. We have seen statements from hungarian officials and throughout europe trying to exploit the conservative fears about the terrorist threat in europe. Which is real, but is not necessarily linked to the refugee crisis. Im not saying it doesnt exist completely. Because anecdotally we can find examples of course when we have such large numbers. Its statistically impossible that everybody will not be linked that you cannot find at least one or two people linked to terrorism. But if you look at the events of the last few years, we do not see that link. Lets start with the u. S. We talked a lot about europe. We just concluded a study of the individuals who have been arrested for isis links in the u. S. Not one of them is a refugee. These are people arrested in the last year and a half. 40 of them are actually converts born in the u. S. The vast majority are people who are born and bred in the u. S. You can argue that there are a few of them of somali dissent to have a refugee background. T who have ascen refugee background. The attacks that have been perpetrated in europe with a syrian linked over the last two years, all of them have been perpetrated by people who are european citizens or have long lived in europe or have no links to syria. Seen homegrown terrorism and not so much an imported terrorism threat coming from refugees. Obviously we have seen a few cases here and there. I think most of them have to be decided by court. E had a case in italy we had a couple of cases in bulgaria and the czech republic. All of them need to be adjudicated in the courts. But we are talking about anecdotal. If you look at the big numbers, the 5000 individuals who have gone from europe to fight, they are european citizens. Second and Third European citizens second and Third Generation european citizens. So the link is disproven by facts. There are many officials attempting to cite things as fact. One such fact goes to the democratic demographic question. That a large number of people coming from syria are primarily men of for lack of a better description fighting age. Do you attribute that to the difficulty of the journey . That seems likely. Obviously we do see the majority are meant. N. Half of them are women. It tends to be younger people for a variety of reasons. It is a difficult journey. Even more if you take the southern route from libya to tunisia. Obviously i think thats why younger people attempt it and older people do not. I think thats the history of migration in general. Younger people attempt it. The fact that they are military age obviously goes with that. I understand the concern. Thatusly i am not saying because in the past we have not seen a terrorist threat coming from people who come as refugees , the issue should be completely disregarded. I am and everybody else is concerned by the fact that it is very difficult to triage the thousands of people that are coming every day. And its pretty clear that some of these people have been fighting and been involved in the conflict. The stories can range from involved inere coming togroups europe as infiltrators to carry out something. People cases you have who were fighting and for one reason or another got disillusioned with the conflict and left. Picturede seen people with machine guns in syria and then coming as refugees and the european media has been full of pictures like that. Each story needs to be vetted. Why were they fighting . Who are they fighting with . Why did they leave . It doesnt make them a terrorist. It would be naive not to check for what is possible the background of these individuals. That is the challenge. You have something to add. One thing to add. This is a humanitarian challenge and a security challenge. The results also a propaganda war going on. There is also a propaganda war going on. Points to isis out there on social media in these refugee flows. If we except what basis is saying, lets take a closer look. Lets really think about this and not just fall into fall prey to what i view as isis propaganda. Of course it is in their interest to make us not want to take these refugees. Of thes the narrative west doesnt want you, stay away, join the jihad, etc. Of except these conventional thoughts as a given but it really does require when you are making major policy decisions allocating resources which large parts of europe dont have, you really have to dig and understand what is happening on the ground. That isnk another thing often lost i certainly think all the agencies are dealing military activity is something we are interested in. And there is mandatory conscription in syria into the syrian army itself. Talk about a lot of terrorist organizations without realizing that we are on guard as well because people may have been in the Syrian Military as well or they werent, they avoided it because there are lots of ways to not be in the Syrian Military. So perhaps the people dealing with the issue are naive. People are not looking for issues. Cases,rviewing particularly when you get to resettlement which is highly individualized, or asylum when you spend a lot of time with the this is going to be a big part of every interview. Particularly if you are a male. Is country of origin information, there are resources you go to. There are experts who follow these issues. When things are unclear, i would say the process stops until they are clear. Caribbean andthe other regions. We have some syrians that have been in the caribbean. I see all the submissions coming to the u. S. And a great deal of time is spent exploring peoples what did you do, what was your military history, what was your situation. What intersections did you have with the conflict . So one of the things i would love to dispel is the idea that big splitere is a between those who are concerned about security and of those who are concerned about humanitarian agency. Everyone in the humanitarian field knows that if you dont have security, you will lose confidence in the system. And the ge