Nonetheless, outside counsels like this case. And yet there is one more approach being taken and this is by our indiana governor and Vice President ial candidate, mike pence who directed his voluntary agencies, the ones responsible for receiving and placing refugees in the states to withhold funds. So hes not going to allow them to get reimbursed by the federal government. Hes going to stop the flow of funds until he gets some Additional Information from the federal government. Threatening government in a sense. What made the news in this case was that one agency had our defend the process of placing the syrian family in indiana. Exodus ended up going to court against the direct to an indiana said this is a clear violation of the equal protection clause given that it is identifying people by National Origin and to refuse and are victims of refugees. Yet despite all of these legislative proposals and losses and threaten lawsuits, there is no amount of begging that i could find they would know for sure that with revenge for sure the possibility that a refugee may commit a terrorist act in the future. We have a rigorous system in place already. The first one is of course federalism. The federal government under the United States constitution article i clearly establishes the immigration power to the federal government. Confirmed later on a number of important cases, this is largely indisputable. Extensive background checks. Unlike in europe oversight in europe the United States does not allow refugees to come into the country until the background checks are completed. We dont necessarily have any potential threats until after weve come to the full screening process. Coordination with states is very extensive. Orr coordinates well with the states, giving them information about placement and of course the screenings have already been done so theres no reason for them to provide Additional Information to the State Government. This is not an area in which the state cannot. They do have the ability to console. They do have the ability to request certain place is to say that certain placements would be inappropriate. A lack of resources, lack of community. However, i surmise any of these attacks to propose legislation, executive orders or even amendments to the constitution are ultimately going to fail. They dont have the Political Support and the issue is likely to blow over in the next year or so in my opinion as politicians move onto some demon that election year. With that, i will turn it over to my esteemed colleagues to provide you some more information. Thank you. Thank you very much, kevin. Thank you very much. , to start explaining the irc. Most people associate that with overseas crises and humanitarian assistance delivery internationally and not with the u. S. We are best known for International Work we do have 29 field offices in the United States. Weve been assisting refugees and others to integrate and to adapt to life in the United States than it did 30s when we were founded. Weve assisted many hundreds of thousands of people who settle in the United States. By the time we have this current fiscal year but will have assisted for 10,000 people to resettle in the United States plus additional clients that we serve firms to communities as well as other categories. So ive been asked today to speak about the settlement from the Vantage Point about what has been happening at statelevel. I wanted to start by repeating what was mentioned at the start. The u. S. Has resettled over 3 million refugees through this Program Since the start of a trend in 1880 refugee at. 800,000 individuals have been reset is sent and a muffin. For the first several decades of the program, there were a few constants we could rely on. The first thing that we could reasonably rely on with this program is to visit skew program is divisive scare and unknown to no one really cared about it. This has been built on a strong public partnership, on Community Support. Much of that support has come from a diversity of faith communities and congregations around the country. For that reason as well as a simple fact that it is a managed and legal pathway to protection here is also a program that has long enjoyed bipartisan Political Support. In that context of a security were not that many politicians really gave much thought. The other big factor here is from 1975, well into the late 1990s, most refugees settled were coming from conflict such as the vietnam war, such as the conflict, the dissolution of the soviet union and the refugees that left her in that situation. For the ideological means to be understanding about who these refugees were or are was very clear to average americans. But they can have any in the 1990s, a program that away from being a program focused on resettling refugees along these ideologically aligned lines to a program that began to diversify and begin to work along the lines of resettle in the most vulnerable of the most atrisk refugees regardless of nationality whether they were a refugee from the time for syria or cuba, essentially the program embraced all of these seat early based on their needs. And so we went from a program that was pretty accessible and understandable to average americans to one that was less assessable unless understandable perhaps as it had more diverse populations are rising. Certainly post9 11 you have new National Purity security concerns that arise. You also have a post that delivered. With an economic recession were agencies began to find the urgent need to diversify the geographic scope. Whereas we prevent here is the resettling into mainly large gateway cities of immigration. They began to diversify so we began to look for new places to resettle refugees. Perhaps the metropolitan areas were arrivals of this very diverse population become more visible, where perhaps its desirable because cost of living is lower, housing prices and costs are lower, better. Research agreed new dynamics about how the program is viewed. In the 1990s, particularly with the arrival of the iraqi population, the antiresettlement act to get some of you may have heard from Refugee Resettlement are organized at times to basically advocate against this program. In the last several years at the movement and alignment with other actors so that Refugee Resettlement begins to morph as part of the antiimmigrant agenda but irish. With that said, but its been happening at the state level . Already drive some of the attempts here in washington to legislate on the program at the federal level. Though we had even more activity at the state level in the last year. Many of you are aware that there was 31 governors that seven of the state took additional actions. You had four states and the louisiana whose governors actually took their statement opposing this and actually issued an executive order basically instruct in their state agencies to do Something Different they whether it was to cease providing different types of federal benefit to refugees, either rob refugees to assert nationalities, et cetera appeared to us that one state, texas that put out an antirefugee regulation. Make them much more onerous for that consultation requirement the professor mentioned to actually take place. You also have to state to choke the more extreme steps of actually choosing to withdraw their states from cooperation. In the Steve Spurrier went to stave refugee coordinator was essentially reporting to the governor and was a state employee, you have governors that is that our state will no longer directly participate in this, which has induced a nongovernmental agencies such as irc to actually take over the state coordination withdraws at the state. A lot of these actions have not been particularly implementable. Some of these things really dont stand up to legal challenge. For example, in georgia when we had one of the first syrian arrivals who was denied federal assistance after the governor issued his executive order, the actual attorney general of the state came forward and issued an opinion saying thats simply not legal. Unfortunately or fortunately for the refugee we were able to make sure they were able to access those bed early. So all of this is really the executive action. But probably the more active problems that weve seen in the last year have taken place were taken place were at the state legislative level. In 2016, we had 52 antirefugee bills introduced in 19 states. A substantial number of these bills for copycat it. They were distributed pretty visibly Trinational Network of antiresettlement is to become increasingly sophisticated and well organized and their average to legislators by the three state legislators are federal and also accompanied by communication suffered through some of the media outlet that are more sympathetic to this type of antiimmigrant effort. All of this legislation in only resulted in one legislative effort in tennessee that was successful. But its required a tremendous amount of effort on part of the local agencies and allies to try to stand this. So i wanted to mention a few of the main themes that these antirefugee bills. Some of them have been trying to actually prohibit the state agencies from participating, prohibiting passing funds through the state to actually support Refugee Resettlement. Some of them have tried to prevent the resettlement on about refugees, the specific certain populations. Many of these bills have attempted to assert more state control over Refugee Resettlement. Including asserting the right to veto the resettlement, which as their previous panelists mentioned is really challenging the federal authority in this area. Some of the bills that have been struggling to assess refugee advocate and people who are working directly with the population, some of these bills have mandated the refugee personal information beastie shared and the Public Domain or have suggested that the State Government should monitor refugees in clear violation of privacy the privacy standards. One bill in particular would make resettlement agencies such as the irc liable in civil court for any crimes or acts of terrorism that might be committed by a refugee, which would certainly place the resettlement agencies and an antenna ball position in terms of the insurance we would meet again such liability. Finally, some of these bills have been suggesting that states should have the authority to audit our program in ways that are much more much, much more detail band is required under the federal program. So having made out that sort of depressing scenario, the local and national respond the local response in particular has been quite different. Weve seen a tremendous disconnect between the national and state level political discourse and the actual book on the refugees are receiving. Throughout all of these. Then particularly since the photo at the syrian boy on the turkish beach went viral last september, we have seen a tremendous dramatic increase in the number of volunteers and Community Donations to resettlement agencies, not just ours but the other eight have received. Weve had a really interesting variety of new Corporate Partners have stepped up, have come to the table to partner with us. If you look at the president , the white house website on the partnership of the Corporate Partnership for Refugee Resettlement camille cemented take names by western union, microsoft link didnt and many, many corporate markets of lesser names that have stepped forward in different locations to support the Refugee Resettlement agencies, whether it is through donations or trying to help us find more Affordable Housing models at carteret. Ive also seen Amazing Community response is in the face of what we do believe are so isolated incidents against refugees. To set an example, is suing 3 million to sound who unfortunately within a few weeks of arrival had to be moved because they received a threatening note on their door from an unknown person in the community. That situation provoked an outpouring of support. They let them know based on having and that the Wider Community wanted them to be there. Yet the album meant that this whole situation really provoked is perhaps new ways of working at the state and local level. Before the threats against the Resettlement Program, really a lot of the advocacy is certainly the lobbying that this community has done was quite separate from our immigrants right colleague and what this site has proven is that we really need all the allies at the table. All of the resettlement agencies around the country, especially in light of the state legislative threat have really found the need and the utility and allies from immigrants Rights Community from and weve demonstrated with in a year how far we go with his partnerships. We were able to mobilize to make sure only one of those resolutions was passed. Just to finalize by saying what has really worked in the face of all these thread. In terms of advocacy tag digs, the first thing that we have to refer to is really just countering rampant information information misinformation. How they are screened and what happens to them when they arrived, how quickly they become selfsufficient, how quickly they move off any government assistance, et cetera. We also had to stretch ourselves in terms of National Information gathering and sharing across that network again in order to mobilize a wide array of proimmigrant civil rights and Civil Liberties partners, we had to double down on our intel gathering and our analysis at the state goes to share with folks so they can use the information if they take too at the state level. Weve done a lot of support of local actors to make sure local immigrants rights organizations want to be active on this issue, have the access they need to Refugee Resettlement, which is so a bit of a secure topic. Weve also had a lot of factors that when the mouse comes to mind is human rights first. Theyve done a great job at mobilizing security validator is, mobilizing veterans that are poor per refugee. Train to mobilize notable voices that can beat to the utility and the importancimportanc e of this program is supposed by refugees are not a threat. A tremendous amount of work weve been doing that we need to do much more as the years come on. Uplifting of Community Support in demonstrating how much support there is that a Community Level as well as telling refugee stories. Just about why they fled and why they are deserving of protection but also telling their stories as they integrate here and as they become not just economically selfsufficient and contributors to a community. They have a tremendous amount of work ahead of us. The political narrative facing refugees at the center of this toxic debate. Im a little bit less optimistic than my colleague, kevin about whether this will go away in that year. To a certain extent but there is antiimmigrants come of grassroots activism in the state, many state refugees will continue to be part of that agenda and so i think we have quite a bit of work ahead of us. Thank you. Alex, help us understand what is going on. Thanks, andy. Kevin said we have no obligation to admit refugees and that is all right and that is curious that the Refugee Convention does have a norm against return but no duty to admit to Asylum Seekers as well as people they select from overseas to come to the states. Think about the cost of resettlement. Resettlement averages 10, 15, 20,000 of refugees for resettlement. United states takes and 80,000 a year. Talking about a billion dollars a year spent on Refugee Resettlement. The budgeted for the care of 15 million refugees. So its an interesting question about why we have settlement. I think they are very good answers to the question that we need to think this through. First of all, resettlement obviously improves human minds in human wellbeing for 10,120,000 refugees in much better shape. The vast majority of refugees that had protected refugee situations, which are situations that go on for more than five years of at least 6 million or more refugees living in these longterm situations. Youre basically that they might send them to pay depends on International Assistance are now assisting than giving them an attempt or possibility to rebuild lives. Moreover, before they sell out the most vulnerable refugees for resettlement in this are then taken in by other countries at the world. A huge gain in the welfare of people who are resettled. Secondly, there is an International Duty on all states who are part of the refugee regime and that is more than 150 nations who signed the convention for protocol to participate in international burden share. Right now we have a situation where Peter Southerland has faced a special envoy on migration described as responsibility by proximity. Refugees flee to a country near their home country and they tend to stay there. In the middle east, 4. 5 million refugees and countries of turkey, lebanon and jordan. A country of 4 million citizen is 1 million refugees. When kevi