He also happens to be the president of Refugees International, and hes seated next to the expresident of Refugees International. O, eric . Thanks. Thank you, mark. T is it really is a distinct pleasure to be here today. And i want to thank hias and the Carter Center for bringing us all together for this very important event. And needless to say, this is a critical time for us to be considering not only the refugee act of 1980 but also the very future of refugee protection in the United States. Nd around the world. At a time when the number of people displaced by conflict, by human rights violations, by persecution, is at the highest number in recorded history, governments around the world and in the United States in articular are using nativist rhetoric designed to appeal to peoples fear and to encourage hostility towards refugees and others who are forced to flee. They are closing borders and making life more difficult for refugees. This panel and this daylong event is timely, and our panel will consider refugee protection issues in the context of implementation of the refugee act of 1980. And we have three highly distinguished panelists. Its an added benefit for me that all are friends of mine, with whom ive worked over decades on a variety of projects. Professor david martin, who will be our first presenter, is a leading scholar in immigration, constitutional and international law, and he is one of the countrys foremost authorities on Immigration Law and policy. Hes helped to shape immigration and refugee policy while serving in several key u. S. Government posts. While at the state department, he was deeply involved in legal and policy developments relating to the refugee act of 1980. The focus of todays discussion. He also held senior positions in the departments of justice and homeland security. He played major roles in administrative and statutory developments related to asylum, during the decade of the 1990s and during the obama administration, he was deeply engaged in Administration Reforms relating to Immigration Enforcement priorities as well as a range of immigration issues. Our second speaker, ambassador rank lloyd, has had many careers as a senior diplomat, as a businessman and nonprofit executive, as an attorney focusing on a range of topics from Environmental Issues to economic affairs, to international humanitarianism, refugees and beyond. And i wont try to list all of franks jobs. But i will say that from 1980 to 1981, he was director of the state Departments Bureau of refugee programs and with the personal rank of ambassador, and was deeply involved in the issues were considering today. Between 1998 and 2001, he served as the u. S. Undersecretary of state for global affairs, giving him responsibilities that included overseeing the work of the state Departments Bureau. The successor bureau to the Refugee Programs Bureau that he directed during the Carter Administration. Our final speaker is a former american diplomat, who spent much of his career overseas in southeast asia, he is a legendary refugee advocate. When in the midst of the north vietnamese takeover of vietnam, he was frustrated at the slow pace of u. S. Efforts to rescue vietnamese who had worked with the u. S. Government, he and a colleague made an unauthorized trip to vietnam to help secure the rescue of some 200 individuals. Lionel served as refugee coordinator at the u. S. Embassy in thailand during the Carter Administration and played a key role, as well as in protection and assistance efforts of refugees remaining in the egion. From 1999 to 1990 to 2001, he served as president of Refugees International, establishing the organization s a critical ally of vulnerable populations around the world. And it is a high honor for me to serve as the current steward of an organization that lionel put on the map. And lionels legacy of service and impact is an inspiration to us all at Refugees International. So our topic today, implementation of the refugee act of 1980, could cover a multitude of issues. And ive asked our panelists to consider in no particular order the following questions. First, what were the expectations around the 1980 refugee act with respect to oth refugee admissions and asylum . Second, how did reality interfere . Both with respect to the cuban exodus and other events requiring a response to protection needs that went outside the contours or at least stretched the contours of the refugee act of 1980. Third, how would you characterize and assess overall implementation of the u. S. Refugee Admissions Program over the years . And finally, based on your observations, of each of these questions, what lessons can we draw and bring to bear on current policy challenges . Each panelist will speak for about seven minutes. Well then move to questions from the audience. And rather than offer my own perspectives on these issues now, i will assume the moderators prerogative and perhaps ask one or two preliminary questions. So with that, please join me in welcoming david martin. [applause] thanks very much. Its a pleasure for me to be here. I want to say a special thanks to mark and to hias for putting this together. And also, say a special word of tribute to president carter. I do wish he were here. It was his emphasis on human rights policy as a candidate and then in the early part of his presidency that inspired me to go to the state department to work in the human rights bureau. I didnt really know that refugees were part of the package at the time that i igned up for it. There was a small refugee office. This is 1978, in the human rights bureau. And but by the time i arrived, the flow the boat flow was enormous and i got pulled into that and it shaped my career. And i felt very happy to have the opportunity to work both on human rights policy and refugee policy. Let me begin with a few Simple Truths about the achievements of the refugee act. And then introduce a few complexities that became apparent with implementation. And i want to say, first of all, the refugee act did achieve a great deal, very solidly, in ways that we dont think about very much anymore because theyre just not points of controversy. The refugee act did accomplish its primary aims. And i really want to say that. We need to say that, because theres so much cynicism about the effectiveness of Government Action and legislation. And this is generally overall quite a Success Story and we need to say that. Now, to appreciate what im saying, i want to emphasize one distinction that oftentimes gets lost. The refugee act dealt with, quote, refugees in two situations that are related but they really have very different dynamics. One is the overseas refugee program, selecting people overseas, usually in refugee camps, bringing them here after processing. And that was the main focus at the time, because that was the crying issue, particularly in southeast asia. The second one is asylum. Obviously involving people who would get here on their own. It poses more challenging problems in a lot of settings. And it didnt receive top billing or major focus. It was not the central focus initially. But its important to keep those separate, although theres some overlaps, because n analyzing issues about that, the Supreme Court failed to do that in a case that was very important called stevi vs. Ins, which wound up interpreting the refugee act position to set a more demanding standard than what applies and when people are applying for asylum and they really misquoted some of the legislative history that went clearly to overseas refugees. It was applied to asylum in eaching that decision. And i greatly regret that that happened. Thats part of our framework now. Anyway, there are four things that the refugee act achieved. First of all, it set the framework and procedures for regular and timely decisions on resettlement and admissions and thereby replaced conditional intro and parole, which, for all the reasons we are hearing about, presented their own roblems. It preserved a role for congress. The last panel mentioned some things about that, by providing a very structured consultation process with a demand for certain, very specific kinds of information that are extremely important for anybody trying to follow and understand the refugee program, those annual consultation documents. But it did not give congress a specific voting role. It left that power with the president , which thank goodness, largely avoids deadlock that we would have. We didnt see the sort of Political Climate we have now, but im glad we have it that way. Now, that puts the power in the president. Can he do it badly . Yes, we have evidence. Recent evidence. [laughter] but legal design can take us only so far. Nd im reminded of a comment that was made about James Buchanan who was widely at least until recently, as the worst president we had. Senator john sherman says the constitution provides for every accidental contingency, except for a vacancy in the mind of a president. [laughter] second, the act provided a framework for helping resettle refugees, replaced a lot of special legislation that had specific programs for this group or that group, expiration dates that had to get extended. It did it on a more abstract basis that applies broadly. And the assistance arrangement recognizes the role of ngos and engages the state. Third, an asylum, the statute provided Clear Authority to offer asylum both to people already in the United States and people at the border, excludable aliens as well as deportable aliens, as the old terminology used to have it. And it clearly changed over to the use of the u. N. Definition of refugee. That made a lot of sense in the asylum area. Its been more problematic in the overseas program. More importantly, with regard to asylum, point number four, it provided a clear status for asylumees as well as refugees, known as asylum and refugee. Efore that, people got documents of various kind that mainly said parole. And if youre not a refugee, if youre not into Immigration Law, you look at a card that says somebodys here on parole, you think of the criminal justice system. It didnt clarify. Extended voluntary departure. It provided clear statuses and a direct mechanism, authorization for a direct method for them to become lawful residents. Those were significant changes. Mostly theyre routine now. Its significant for those reasons. The refugee act was popular and celebrated and that lasted about four, five weeks, until the boat lift. As has been also mentioned. And people were really disillusioned, because they said, wait a minute i remember seeing some of those op eds. Wait. We just passed a new refugee act. Why doesnt that solve the problem . It turns out there is no magic bullet for all of this. Theres no magic bullet to address situations when people come in very large numbers without advance notice or planning. Refugee issues are complicated. Response is not easy or straightforward. The field is rife with sudden emergencies that pose big logistical and operational challenges. And the whole business of refugee protection gets entangled with politics, both international and domestic. So the mariel boatlift caused that problem after a few weeks of not really figuring out how to deal with it, sending mixed signals about the u. S. Response. Eventually it became clear that the boat flow had to be stopped. And the decision was made to stop the southbound flow, using various kinds of maritime authorities. All the boats down there were gonna be able to come back with the people that they had on board. But finally, it began to look like a finite problem and it led, as people said, to 125,000 people coming. Meantime, the challenges of screening and accommodation upon arrival for substantial. A lot of people were housed after preliminary processing at the park, moved to the orange bowl. Various kinds of contrived tents. They were living outside. That sounds a bit like some things weve seen recently, either here or in mexico, along the southwest border. Eventually many people were sent to military bases, especially fort chaffee in arkansas. That had a negative political impact. A young, progressive arkansas governor was defeated for reelection in 1980. Thats generally been attributed to backlash against the refugees at fort chaffee. That was bill clinton. He ran six times for governor, won five out of six, by the antiimmigrant candidate defeated him that one time. Perhaps that boatlift had a role in president carters loss of the 1980 election. Any any event, its not so much the numbers that pose the problem. Carters vietnam initiatives, to settle a lot of people there, were accepted much more readily. Its the perception of lost control that provides red meat for antirefugee or antiimmigrant candidates. And we really have to Pay Attention to that. Weve seen that kind of reaction in europe, since the large movements of 2015 to 2016, the socalled merkel million as ive heard it called sometimes. A backlash that gets rolling in response to perceptions of lost control leads not only to bad refugee policy but, quite dangerously, it also leads to the growing strength of openly authoritarian problems. And hungary is a key example. Now, that really poses the greatest challenge to todays refugee and asylum policy. We are really facing an enormous dilemma. Its somewhat hard to be optimistic. Some figures, to put it in context, in 195051, when the Ey International refugee instruments were being drafted, World Population was about 2. 5 billion. In 1980, when the refugee act was passed, it was about 4. 5 billion. In 2020, the population, World Population, is expected to be 7. 5 billion, triple the level at the time of the 1950 convention. There are going to be more people on the move, communications and transport are easier. Now today we are getting the equivalent of a mariel boatlift total each month, along the southwest border, with no sign of a significant end point. The coast guard cant be deployed to deal with this even if you wanted to. So i think were at a very critical time and i worry that this issue is gonna tip, to be crucial in the election. I come one last word. I come to the mexico agreement recently announced with great wariness. I do hope its not clear whether thats going to be the case i hope there will be something more, something in there that will really focus on what mexico says they want, a major aid and Assistance Program in central america. There are ways that that can work. Socalled martial plan for that area. Thats a critical component and clearly the u. S. Administration has no interest in that. Theyve gone in the other direction. But in addition to that, some reduction in flow would ease some of the sheer logistical challenges that are not fully appreciated along the southwest border. For governments and especially for ngos, who have done a heroic job meeting people at the bus station when they get dropped off by dhs to help them ove forward. So maybe some slowdown would help reduce the effectiveness of antiimmigrant or antirefugee demagoguery and help hold us for a longterm and sustainable support for refugee protection. We have a long way to go. We have a real challenge today. Thank you. [applause] so this panel deals with the implementation of the act, not its justification or its origins. Nd i think its important to recognize that you can write an act that sounds pretty damn right and pretty good on paper, but when you try to implement it, youre going to have a hard time. And let me just talk a little bit about the implementation problems that we faced immediately after the passage of the 1980 act. I say and i want to be clear. I think president carters decision to push for that act and to implement it was a hugely important humanitarian decision. And he deserves every bit of the credit that weve heard here today. That said, we have to be realistic and say that that doesnt solve all the problems. And in fact it creates some. Lets talk about some of the ones that we in the state Department Bureau of refugee programs faced in the immediate aftermath of the passage of that act. The first thing was vietnam. And in vietnam, we had a huge moral imperative to act, especially to protect vietnamese that had been working with us, had helped us, had sided with him, and were in the kind of difficulty you can imagine after we pulled out. So we were using the act to identify vietnamese who were eligible under the terms of the act. Nd what we found is that we interviewed in the field, we interviewed boat people and people who crossed borders. But what we found was that pretty soon all the stories ounded exactly the same. And it was pretty clear that there was a path of responses that went from applicant one to applicant two to applicant 25. Nd so the actual identification of persons who have a welljustified fear by reason of their religion and so forth. After a while, you realize its a little hard to tell who had that welljustified fear and who doesnt. And we have to recognize that thats gonna be with us as long as we have standards like that, written into the law, and we should. That means that youre going to have to make some very tough decisions. And some of those may be negative and with consequences to the individual. But if you dont do that, you are likely to be overwhelmed with applicants for status under the act that have questionable validity. So thats the first point. The second point that weve dealt with, and the difficulty of administering the act, was the number of applicants and our ability to bring to the United States, under the law, certain number. But what do you do with the others . And so we spent a lot of time with third countries, hong ong, thailand, malaysia, singapore, trying to and with some considerable success but not total success and not quick success trying to get the country involved to accept some of the applicants for status that we had interviewed and found them credible, but we had numbers problems in the United States that made it hard for us to take all of them into the United States. So one of the things it seems to me, a National Refugee policy on the part of the u. S. , isnt going to cut it. You need to have similar attitudes and similar policies in other countries, because youre going to need them as places where refugees can go if they cant come to the united tates. A second problem i dont want to sound all that negative but my aim here is to identify problems that are going to have to be resolved. And one of them was involved in ambodia. The pol pot regime was so rrational. The cambodian authorities were so irrational in whom they designated as enemies that you couldnt identify this person as having a wellfounded fear of going back by reason of heir Group Identity or their status or their religion, because that wasnt the test. The test might have been whether you wore glasses or not. So that all of a sudden, the standard that we used in that case were simply not applicable. Again, you probably wont have that happen very often, but you did have it happen in the case of cambodia and it was quite a difficult problem to resolve. In the case of the mariel boat lift, that was, of course, in some ways more dramatic, because it was right on our shores. And it was right in president carters office that decisions had to be made. The only time i ever dealt with the president was it was numerous times during those days of the mariel boatlift where the question was, well, how do we make these investigative determinations as to who these people are and why they should be admitted to the United States . So the ideal is you do that before they come on shore, because their status then changes to a totally different status if theyre an asylum applicant than before. But in order to and you really would like to identify legitimate refugees before they come, so you can in some way have some control of the flow. But in order to do that, you would have had to make these determinations at sea. And in fact, president carters first thought was that we would do that. We would have investigations by intercepting boats, talking to people, finding out who they are. And that lasted about 24, 48 hours. And it simply was unworkable. Partly because the numbers involved. But also partly because of the risks involved. The risk involved. So we dropped that. And we had the investigations after they arrived. Just a footnote on the governor of arkansas, who lost his election because in the end, a third issue then was, where do you put all these people while you make these investigations and while you try to resettle hem . And later on, when i was undersecretary in the Carter Administration in the Clinton Administration and dealt with the president on the other issues, he would every time i walked into the office, he would say, you son of a bitch. You cost me that election. And i said, i dont think i did that. And he says, well, where do you think those bumper stickers ame from that says no cubans, no cubans, no carter no clinton. No commies, no cubans, no clinton. [laughter] and that was all because of fort chaffee, where we placed a lot of them. And you have to figure out where to place them. So that was not that was a very messy situation, as you can imagine. At the very last moment of the arter administration, we learned that the cubans were somewhat interested in talking to us about a possible deal where we would send back certain of the what we considered undesirables, people who had had criminal records or were legitimate in mental hospitals and the like. Close to 3,000, Something Like that. We would try to send those back. And they would send to us certain undesirables that they called, which were basically political troublemakers that they wanted to get rid of. And they could have jailed them, and many of them were jailed, but many of them were under house arrest. So i sought authority to have those conversations. And the answer is, well, you can talk to them, but you cant talk to them it has to be in the u. S. And you cant use the state department to have those conversations, because were not we dont have that kind of relationship and we wont permit that. And in fact, you cant use any public facility for those conversations, if you get them. I think they thought we wouldnt ever have them. So i made some phone calls. We did have those conversations. And we ended up having them in my dining room in georgetown. They went on for three and a half days. And they ended about they ended Something Like the 10th of january. The 20th of january, as the end of the administration. And we made a deal. And we initialed an agreement. And the next day, we met again. And the cubans came back and says, well, we sent them back to havana. I think theyd like to try to make a deal with the new administration. That actually did happen. That transfer did happen in a different form, about a year and a half later or two years later. Again, i want to make the the only point i want to make here is that in the administration of these laws, you are going to make compromises and youre gonna make decisions that are a little less than clean and a little less than optimum. And that is the world in which we live. Two more examples of this. Were running short on time, frank. Am i running over . Yes. I cant believe that [laughter] all right. No, i cant handle any criticism from you on that point. [laughter] so no. You want eric on your side at all times. So let me just stop there, and just say that i want to be clear that the aim and the action of the president in putting forth this law and putting forth this standard and putting forth this very high level of ambition is absolutely necessary. If you dont have that, youve got nothing. But even if you have that, you have to recognize that the world in which we live is going to bring that down somewhat as you try to administer it. Thank you. [applause] thank you, eric, and fellow panelists. I wanted to start by citing jim purcells book, extraordinary work. It captures the history of anything i was involved with on the refugee front, right from the very beginning. And i commend it to you. Hes only giving me a small commission. [laughter] i think its for sale outside. So it really is a bible, a handbook, an incredible good history. If youd put that back on the table. Thank you. I can commend it to you. I wanted to start by thanking in particular rose lin carter, who came out to give the indochina a great boost. We took her to probably nine different sites and she was indefatigable, in each place talking to the refugees. Her commitment was evident from the time she got off the plane. Our last stop was in bangkok, really the nicest camp that we had. And she was very upset because the soil was muddy. It was not our great concern, right . We had tens of thousands of people we were trying to get out at this stage. She says, you need to take care of this right away. So i picked up the phone and called iom and said get some gravel over here right away. They did. The next day, it was gravel. But that was the kind of commitment we had from the carters. Not only was president carter but it was definitely mrs. Carter, who earlier on had responded to a Refugees International vigil outside the white house gates and one of the legendary actors in the state department, his wife is vietnamese. She engaged mrs. Carter in a conversation, saying please rescue my people. Theyre drowning at sea. An order after that went out to have the p3 aircraft, out of japan, to begin to look for refugee boats that were afloat and having fleets start to pick them up. The commitment of the carters in so many different ways was extraordinary. I thought i would concentrate on the unforeseen difficulties that the refugee act gave us. We were quite hope with parole actually, in the field. And the switch to for the cambodian caseload in particular was a real watershed moment that led to at least 18 months of trench warfare. I talked prior to coming here a couple of days ago, with doris, the i. N. S. Commissioner at that time. Who i think was supposed to come down here as well but for Health Reasons couldnt make it. I read to her some of the guidance that ive assembled, if any of you are interested, of some of the cables that went back and forth in that time. What happened was that the ins officers in the field, a guy named jack fortner, in bangkok, and his boss out of the hong kong, used the definition to basically run off the reservation not walk off the reservation, run off the reservation. The acceptance rate for cambodians dropped from about 80 to 90 to about 20 , almost overnight. The challenge for washington was, how do we deal with this . Because the interviewing officer has the right to make these adjudications. They put together country studies. They put together a framework of bringing the ins officers back to the state department for briefings. Nothing workout. Finally, ultimately nothing worked. Finally, ultimately, leading into the reagan years, the attorney general went out there. Once again, he had no success. I have a cable in his pact saying, why is it that after the attorney generals visit, the rejection rates for cambodians have gone up yet again . We had to go back through the white house, through the Justice Department to correct this matter. I have a little memo in there. I was sort of the gadfly on the wall, to the nfc, saying we need to engage. Either giuliani or ken starr. Those were good guys in those days, because somebody has got to bring this back together and doris is not able to do this on her own. There were a series of about a dozen cables, the cambodians were applying for refugee status. My success was refugee coordinator in bangkok, sent my old deputy down to supervise all this. Mack, who unfortunately died a few months back, claimed he lost 40 pounds in his four months down there, just trying to watch this process and make sure it got back on track. Among other things, doris said what would be selfevident. We dont think the reviewing officer in a case ought to be the same officer who rejected a case. Common sense. Any trick in the book that they could come up with was applied by i. N. S. To me, its a sign of leadership, starting with president carter, right on down through the senior ranks, jim, doris. They just didnt give up. Normally youd just simply have them walk away from this problem, move on to something else. It was trench warfare, watershed moment that led to not just one quick decision, but including a National Security memorandum, 1983, which is a very hard thing to get through the government. An incredibly fete really, which i think both doris and jim would say set a better tone for the way the refugee act was interpreted after that. You didnt have the kind of wholesale disregard for the applicant that was seen at that time. One of the last instructions was you will sit down when you interview the applicant rather than standing above him and glowering at him, which is what the i. N. S. Officers was doing. Every one of these things had to be corrected. So i dont know where to leave it. Maybe one for the Carter Center, one for hias, one for somebody else, the record of these cables that were required to bring them back on board. It was no mean feat to do that. I guess maybe were running a little bit out of time. Well leave it there. Just two other remarks. The genevan conference of july, 79, i accompanied the thai foreign minister. We helped write his remarks on the plane. We said, you need to publicly thank the United States for getting you up to this number. And his first question was, will you be taking enough out of thailand . I said, yes, sir, well be doing that. That just shows you, at the foreign minister level, how important it was to keep asylum going. A mere two months before that, the thai had pushed 42,000 khmer refugees down a cliff. Today is the anniversary, 40 years ago that happened. Let me conclude on that note. [applause] we have some time for a discussion. Thankfully. Im just going to start by asking two questions to each of our panelists. I would ask you to choose which one you want to answer, if you want to answer both you may as well. I think weve got weve probably got about 15 minutes or so. So just a little bit of time. My first question is, how different are things today . 55 of americans disapproved of haurntion in the hungarians in the 50s coming to the United States. 62 of americans didnt want vietnamese to be resettled. 71 of americans didnt want the cubans. And so really, what other principal differences in our policy today are things so very different, and so thats my first question. Im very aware that the person asking the question often spends more time asking than the person answering. And well, let me start with let me oh. My second question is, how to balance the predictability of the refugee act with the flexibility that you have to have as a Decision Maker if you want to respond to exigent circumstances . Lionel . Let me just go right across. Ok. In terms of flexibility, no, i dont know that maybe were not using that parole aspect of the refugee act than we should perhaps be using it more. Im not quite sure how it might be better engaged, because there is this residual ability. I never understood how that might work. And that might be a fallback if youre running into i. N. S. Difficulties in the future, where theyre just not able to observe the emphasis that we were able to do in the carter and reagan years. Not always going to have that same set of players at the very senior level. I neglected to mention as part of this that ultimately there was a letter from a dozen scenarios given to reagan, saying were still not satisfied with this cambodian issue. I remember, this was done by hetfield. This was put into the hands of schultz, who was meeting with the president. I remember hatfield saying, why are you always giving me a letter on refugees to give to the president whenever i meet with him . He said, you dont need to open it, senator. Just give it to the senator. That finally, finally solved the problem. So i think we need to have that kind of command emphasis. If we dont, were doomed. But also maybe the parole will be helpful in leading some of the more ambiguous situations. I pays to remember that the indochinese were all sitting here today, saying we had an obligation to the vietnamese. In the period when vietnam fell, nobody wanted to take these people at all. They were cowards, losers, corrupt. A bunch of us younger officers had to push and push for anybody to take the parole to congress. We finally got 150,000 parole numbers approved in midapril. Saigon fell on april 30. Didnt leave too much time. That doesnt always happen. Even in a war were so heavily involved with. A new book out called honorable exit if any of you want to read it, about those last six months of vietnam and efforts to push the administration into acting when they didnt want to. Very interesting. Frank . What i think, interestingly enough, geography is part of the answer to your question. If youre talking about vietnamese or even soviet jews, theyre distant and theres a sense that theres a possible filter in the form of some process between their decision to leave and the United States obligation or the united state desire to permit them to have status here. If you have if the notion is you can walk across, that sort of goes away and you have the feeling that youve sort of lost control. And i think the answer is thats not the whole answer, but it is certainly a big part of the answer. And there is validity to it. That is, at the rate were going, were gonna examine these applicants for asylum, you know, two years from now. That are coming today. And in the meantime, they will if theyre permitted to stay, they will have established roots and it will be a very different kind of a process than if it is done outside of the country at the beginning. I fully agree with that. I think basically its a way of restating that the asylum process is just a much more challenging overall process, at least when the numbers get high in ways that are beyond immediate control of the United States. We can you know, people may have the numbers may have polled negatively in the earlier times on some of the groups that were coming in, through the overseas process, but i dont think that ever led to the level of intensity when we often see when people are coming directly to the United States. And people think the government doesnt have a handle on it. So i mean, i think thats part of it. Thats why asylum is going to be the you know, the area of focus and getting some more sense of control there is a key for favorable political developments, i think. I also want to respond, though, to the idea about parole, because and its been mentioned in some of the earlier panels. And different views of it. It had been a law, as skip mentioned, it had been a kind of grievance from congress that i remember encountering early in some of my conversations with some congressional staff. When conditional entry was created, the special provision of 17,000 numbers for refugees, and the legislative history said parole shouldnt be used anymore for those purposes. And then Lyndon Johnson immediately uses that at the signing ceremony for a very Large Program of bringing cubans in. So they wrote it into the statute that parole couldnt be used for refugees, except in certain unusual circumstances affecting the individual. So how then did we use parole for the mariel boatlift . Well, it was a good legal question that came across the desks in my office, the general counsels office. The fact is that we were not paroling these people as refugees. It was cubanhaitian entrance status pending. And frankly, what else could you do . You could call them make up a word. But when 125,000 people come and youre not in any kind of position to just block them, make them drown at sea, force the boats back, theyre gonna come in. Theyre gonna be somewhere and theyre gonna be in some kind of status. I think that was legally justified. They were not being paroled as refugees. Then for the other longterm solution for the mariel situation, one didnt have a problem necessarily for the cubans, seeing them the ones who were welcomed, the ones who didnt have a criminal background. Seeing them get to the point of a green card, because we had this special statute from 1965, the cuban adjustment act, that cubans who had been inspected and admitted or paroled could benefit from, after presence here for one year. That could have been a pretty quick solution for that. But as was mentioned, finally, the situation of haitians was very much part of the mix in dealing with the mariel boat lift. The numbers were lower but the flow had been there for a long time. A lot of litigation, a lot of sensitivity, a lot of advocacy about that. It was pretty clear. You couldnt just sort of waive your hand and say wave your hand and so, ok, all the cubans are fine and not have anything to do with the haitians. I think special legislation in principle makes sense to address specifics of large scale migration. You cant solve everything in advance with an abstract statute. But were not in a good position institutionally now to think of special legislation. And the parole issue has something to do with applying the refugee the u. N. Refugee definition, not only in asylum, where it may be bound by treaty to do it, but in the overseas program. But there was a lot of casual talk about, oh, this is going to be so much better because were getting rid of the old biased provisions that provided overseas resettlement for people who fled communist countries or countries in the general area of the middle east. What do we replace them with . The universal u. N. Definition. A few people try to raise issues. The u. N. Definition might not capture everyone we have, but that train was leaving the station. There have been many efforts to try to advocate ways to change it. I wouldnt necessarily go back to paroling refugees but something more to specifically authorize use of categories to simplify some of the adjudication. In the overseas refugee program, where youve otherwise got a handle on numbers. In the asylum program, your only handle on numbers is really some sort of strict application of the u. N. Definition. Having asked the question, i want to offer my own answer to my own question. I think and let me part company a little bit from stu, who made a distinction between refugees and economic migrants. That aint the world today. A forced migrant, someone who is a victim of forced migration, which is a majority of some of the people that the unhr calls refugees and displaced persons, is somebody who, you know, has every good reason to leave their country of origin. Nobody can say to them, you should be in your country of origin. They are forced out. And that fact and the fact that we are going to be confronted with so many varying situations, to me, means that we need flexibility. Whether that means legislation that is embedded with flexibility or administration, administrative capacity for flexibility, that of course leaves aside the politics of this. But now on the politics of this, 71 of americans didnt want the mariel to come to the United States. I would venture thats probably you could probably get a similar percentage in terms of, should the trump administration, you know, continue to return people to mexico, or detain migrants or be harsh on migrants . Youd probably get about maybe i dont know. It could be 71 , could be 65 . It could be over 50 . My point is that i think we are underestimating the critical importance of Political Leadership on these issues. You know, when all of the republican members im not making a partisan point, im making a descriptive point when all of the republican members of the house voted to effectively shut down the refugee program, that was leadership. It was a certain kind of leadership. And so to my mind, im not saying there arent large societal forces at play here. But i think we have to be careful about underestimating the importance of political leaders standing up for the right thing in the face of public opinion, which is uncertain. I mean, we had the know Nothing Movement in the mid19th century. We had father coughlin with antisemitic rants during the early part of the 20th century. He had tens of millions of followers in the United States. So this notion that we have a tradition of consensus on behalf of diversity, that has at best been a fragile consensus. I think we really have tab have to be careful about diminishing the importance of Political Leadership on these issues. Do we have time for close . Ok. By all means, please, rebuttal and comment and then we will close. Ok. With deep apologies. Its always the last panel that really has to stick to time. None of the earlier ones do. We do. In fact, were less than an hour for this panel. If thats me sounding defensive, so be it. Lionel and then im going to go with one sentence. Your last question was, lessons for the future . I think we actually had one with the indochinese. We had a country of first asylum situation, mexico in this case. And theyre gonna have to do, unfortunately, what i think needs to be done. The interviews have to be done down there, but they have to be done well, with much more attention from welltrained interviewers. We have to give the Mexican Government incentives. We ought to involve somebody else to make sure theyre protected and cared for. What we have now is trump doing his terrible thing and the democrats saying, its terrible whats happening and were not going to get anywhere in this situation. Frank . Stu made the distinction between refugees under the definition of that term and migrants who come for economic, and you question the wisdom of that. Not the wisdom. The accuracy. Alright. You question the accuracy. I would say that you should be very careful in getting rid of that distinction, even though the distinction is frequently not as Crystal Clear as it might be. But the reason is numbers. I think you can persuade americans more easily that they ought to have a very welcoming position visavis people that are discriminated against under the test of refugee status. I dont think you can persuade them that we can solve the worlds poverty problem by bringing people to the United States. Thats right. And i think and therefore, from a political point of view as well as from a practical point of view, i think there is considerable merit in maintaining that distinction, in order to keep the door open for what we call today refugees. I actually dont disagree with your comment with respect to those fleeing poverty. What im saying there is a continuum. There are people who are fleeing all kinds of levels of violence that make their staying in their place of origin completely untenable, who might not meet the refugee definition. Thats a fact. How we deal with that fact, i think, is the subject of has to be the subject of serious consideration. Good point. Because that woman who is fleeing Gang Violence in honduras, who is at our border, has no business being returned to her country of origin. We have to confront that reality. What we do with that reality is a different question. I mean, i agree with the criticism of the sharp distinction between economic migrants and refugees. It is a spectrum. But it cant i mean, we have to bite the bullet and say we cant say yes to everybody who has some level of fear or for other reasons. We have to find other kinds of solutions. That includes things, that we try to do more in the region, that we alleviate the risk. We cant eliminate the risk. We cant do that through the asylum program. Some would say we cant solve the problem of Central American violence to the asylum problem. Their conclusion is therefore we do nothing. We can do something but we cannot do everything. We have to figure out a way to show people that we are somehow balancing that so we can keep alive the optimal level of support. Thats the challenge now. I think we have to recognize we cant solve we cant address all fears. We are going to have to say some people you have to undertake some risks. And actually, i mean, if our country collapsed into authoritarianism, i would hope some would stay and take a risk to try to address that. That is where i think the realistic situation were facing in the 21st century. I think its fair to say weve joined the issue. And so i think thats a really good point of departure for this panel. Please join me in thanking our panelists. [applause] we have time for lunch. [applause] americanu are watching history tv. Beginning saturday at 8 00 a. M. History we bring you 48hours of unique programming exploring our nations past. American history tv is only on cspan3. Next on the civil war Gary Gallagher talks about his academic career and his approach to studying the civil war. Peter carmichael, a former graduate student of gallaghers, conducts the interview. Peter good evening, everyone. Its my pleasure to welcome Gary Gallagher, formerly the third professor of civil history at the university of virginia. Prior to that, he taught for many years at penn state. And im not going to give you a long list of his publications. You have written or edited scads of books and articles. You dont hear the word scads