[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. Whatever you did with your three-day weekend, you probably didn't travel as much as Mayor Eric Adams, who traveled from New York to El Paso and back before taking part in Martin Luther King Day observances yesterday. When you look at what Mayor Adams, Mayor Leeser of El Paso, President Biden, and also Colorado Governor Jared Polis and other Democrats, they're all Democrats, are doing and saying, one thing is becoming clear.

It's not just Republicans anymore who are experiencing the sheer number of asylum seekers coming across the southern border as a problem for the United States. Mayor Adams said a crisis is not just a crisis for the migrants themselves who are obviously facing crises. Pretty desperate circumstances for anyone, if you think about it. If you haven't been in this position yourself, what do you have to be experiencing in your life to uproot yourself from your home to a strange new land where you don't even speak the dominant language and to make that very risky trip? Here's Mayor Adams in El Paso on Sunday.

Mayor Eric Adams: Our cities are being undermined and we don't deserve this, migrants don't deserve this, and the people who live in these cities don't deserve this. We expect more from our national leaders to address this issue in a real way.

Brian Lehrer: From our national leaders, he expects more. Here's President Biden announcing a crackdown on January 5th.

President Biden: If you're trying to leave Cuba, Nicaragua or Haiti, or have agreed to begin a journey to America, do not just show up at the border. Stay where you are and apply legally from there. Starting today, if you don't apply through the legal process, you will not be eligible for this new parole program. Let me reiterate. You need a lawful sponsor in the United States of America, number one, and you need to undergo a rigorous background check, number two.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe you've heard that clip. It's almost two weeks old by now. The new Biden policy comes as not just the Republican Governors of Texas and Florida, but also Democratic Governor Jared Polis of Colorado has been sending asylum seekers from his state to New York. Now, one of the numbers cited in the press is that the fiscal year that ended on September 30th was the first one ever to include more than two million stops in one year of migrants coming across with no prior authorization.

Biden's new policy would set a cap of 30,000 people a month or 360,000 in a year from the four countries named, but as you heard, only if they have sponsors here and pass background checks. Theoretically, at least, everyone else will be sent back. Whether that policy is right or wrong morally, we'll also see if it can even be enforced. One of the Republicans' main critiques of Biden border policies is that they're ineffective.

Let's get a take on all of this from Krish O'mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. She previously served in the Obama White House as policy director for First Lady Michelle Obama, and at the State Department as senior advisor under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry. Her bio page says Krish was nine months old when she and her family escaped a country on the brink of Civil War and built a life in Maryland. Her parents came to this country with no jobs and $200 in their pockets, it says.

She has the rare combination of a bachelor's degree from Yale in biology and a master's from there in political science, and again, is now President and CEO of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Krish, thanks for coming on again. Welcome back to WNYC.

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah: Brian, appreciate you having me again. Thanks again.

Brian Lehrer: First to be clear and transparent, you oppose the new 30,000 asylum seekers per month limit from the named countries, Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela. How come?

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah: Yes, just to be clear, what we opposed was President Biden's announcement of expanding Title 42, which was a Trump-era purported public health rule the public health officials said was unnecessary even when it was instituted a few years ago. What we were concerned about was tethering that expansion to the announcement of new humanitarian pathways.

We certainly support the need for creating new legal pathways to come into the country because we do think that that will reduce the stress on the border of so many coming in through Mexico, because they feel like it's the only pathway open right now. We didn't feel like it was appropriate to say for those who couldn't afford a flight, who didn't have a US-based financial sponsor, who weren't able to stay in their home countries, that to them, they couldn't access the legal right to asylum.

Brian Lehrer: What should the standard be?

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah: Our view is that you should have humanitarian tools and refugee resettlement. You've seen the administration now create three humanitarian parole programs, which are valuable in the sense that they can help people come into the US quickly. The difficulty with them is that it is only temporary assistance. It provides two years of temporary residents in the US, and for some who are fleeing their homes and war and persecution, they don't need a temporary band-aid, they need a permanent solution.

That's where refugee resettlement comes in. That's a program that has been built over four decades. It was meant to respond to humanitarian crises, and instead of being the program through which we've accepted Afghans, Ukrainians, those coming from Central America, Venezuela, we haven't rebuilt that program. It is still very dysfunctional. The president made announcements in terms of expanding it to allow in, first 62,500 in his first year, and now 125,000.

We've gotten nowhere close to that. In his first year, we only resettled 11,000 of the 62,500 cap. Last year we only resettled 25,000 of the 125,000. Our point is we need to rebuild refugee resettlement. We need to allow for humanitarian parole to the extent that it is necessary for some of these urgent crises, but we can't prevent people from coming to our southern border and seeking asylum because that is a legal right that's codified in both US and international law.

Brian Lehrer: It's definitely weird that Biden is using Title 42, that Trump-era policy, as a legal basis for which to limit people coming across the border because the Biden administration is in court challenging Title 42, wants to be able to undo Title 42 and have the legal right, at least, to undo Title 42, but now is using Title 42 to crack down and set this limit. That's weird, but a Republican who heard your last answer might say, the policy you advocate is open borders.

Just let an unlimited number of people come across and file an asylum claim with many of them immediately needing to be supported by the public's tax dollars, and long-term, you were just saying. How is what you advocate at the Lutheran Immigration Refugee Service different from what Republicans would call open borders?

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah: I think there's significant major differences. First, we aren't calling for open borders. We believe that as a sovereign nation, we need to have a border. It needs to be patrolled. People shouldn't try to avoid detection. They should actually go through customs and border protection. We do believe that there are 21st-century technologies. The border wall, obviously, in many parts of our southern border has not been effective. There are far better technologies that recognize that we are operating in the year 2023.

Our point is, we shouldn't have a system where immigrants believe that the only way they can come into the country is by claiming asylum. For economic migrants, they shouldn't come through the southern border. We should actually have a coherent system that functions, where if you're an agricultural worker, if you are a high-tech worker, we know that there are 10 million jobs that are not being filled right now, we only have six million workers to fill it. That's obviously a major gap. The country needs to figure out a way to solve that problem because it is leading to inflation, it is leading to supply chain shortages, and it's not going away.

It's a dynamic where with more people retiring, with our population, the birth rate being the lowest since the census has been tracking this issue, immigration has to be a part of the solution for how we remain an economic powerhouse. That's going to require [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: If I can follow up, you are drawing a distinction between economic immigration and political asylum seekers, but I think critics would say most of these people claiming asylum when they come across, really are economic migrants. In fact, the history of the asylum-seeking populations in court would indicate that because the large majority of asylum claims get rejected by the courts in the United States because there isn't really a threat to the person's safety that a political asylum claim would require proof of. How do you square that?

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah: I think it's understanding, first of all, the messiness of the situation. Oftentimes you'll find a family who they're farmers, due to crop failure related to the climate crisis, frankly, they relocated internally in a country like Guatemala, because they then were in a temporary impermanent solution, they're then in the less stable setting, they're more prone to being targeted by gangs.

They then are facing persecution, violence that leads them to migrate internationally. Yes, they are an economic migrant because that may have been the first reason for why they move, but in terms of recognition for an asylum claim, they also meet that criteria. For many of the clients that we serve, what we find is that they are incredibly poor, which allows them to be more vulnerable to persecution, to war violence.

On the point of what happens in courts, we strongly believe that there is bipartisan support to make this process more efficient, effective. No one wants for there to be a two to three-year delay for a person understanding the outcome of their case because it's unfair to them. They're trying to put down roots in a new country, because they don't know what will happen.

It's not fair to the country in the sense that we should make a determination that allows for a person to have their day in court, but that doesn't require a year's on end process. I think that's where we should have a real investment in the asylum process, make sure they're asylum officers, make sure the people are meeting the credible fear initial threshold, which allows them to come into the country, but then after that, let's have an efficient system so they know what their ultimate state is and they can move on with their lives, whether they remain here or have to return.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're going to open up the phones, and if you are one of the asylum seekers who've arrived recently, you get first priority in the phones, we welcome your stories, 212-433-WNYC. If you are helping or know someone who is a recent asylum seeker, either you're helping them professionally or you know them personally, you too. What should be done and by whom, and at what level of government?

212-433-9692. If you're a Lutheran and you want to talk to Krish from the Lutheran Immigrant Refugee Service about your denomination's values, come on in, or anyone else with a relevant comment or question, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet your comment or question @BrianLehrer. Krish, let me get to a fundamental tension and fundamental question here as I think it comes from Mayor Adams and other mayors' and governor's points of view.

You heard Mayor Adams in the clip saying cities are being undermined. He also said the other day that aiding the migrants with their basic needs will likely cost New York City up to $2 billion this year. Also, Christine Quinn, former New York City Council speaker who now runs a family homeless shelter system, including for many of the migrants, says the budget of her nonprofit is being very stressed and she doesn't know where that's going to head.

What's the balance, in your view, between the needs of asylum seekers to come and make their claim and the desire of communities here that want to help, not to be asked to do more than they can do, whatever that limit is, without diminishing the quality of life of needy people already here?

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah: This is a fundamental question because it's one that the US doesn't face alone. When we think about the over seven million approaching eight million Ukrainian refugees who have fled the country and have now resided in different countries in Europe, it is the burden of humanitarian crisis. I wish there was a simple solution of how you solve it, but I do think it's important to understand that local communities, local nonprofits, are certainly bearing the brunt of what this costs because it's obviously not easy.

Our view is that immigration is a federal issue, so it does require national solutions. This is where the federal government, in the omnibus package passed at the end of the year, has put towards not just border shelters, but shelters throughout the country helping asylum seekers, an additional $800 million. That needs to be deployed quickly. We certainly believe that when you hear from different mayors, both Republican and Democrats, that this is a clear burden on budget that didn't allocate knowing that there were going to be 40,000 migrants coming into the New York City system since spring.

That's where I do think the federal government needs to step up, because decisions at the border are impacting communities all across the country. Then just the other point I would make is nonprofits like LIRS, we don't get federal funds or anything like that to help asylum seekers. To your question earlier about, well, what would a potential republican say in response to how this is impacting American communities? We are only able to do this because of the generosity of private individuals, but obviously that can't be the way the system works in the long-term.

Refugees have a well-built system that is funded by the federal government. The assistance that's provided is quite meager. People who are now resettling here in the US only get $1,00 or $2,000 in [unintelligible 00:16:34] but for asylum seekers, there's nothing. Unless local communities, local governments, local nonprofits are willing to step up and help, there is nothing that they're automatically given. I think that's a major disparity that explains in part why we are seeing the crisis that cities are facing.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call from an immigrant, but not an immigrant to this country. Mari in Switzerland, you're on WNYC. Hello from New York, Mari.

Mari: Hi. Thanks so much for taking my call. I'm very excited to hear about this segment. I am, as you said, an immigrant to Switzerland. I'm American. Incidentally, I grew up in Minnesota and I was raised Lutheran and that was very formative for my life, seeing how generously Lutherans in Minnesota welcomed refugees from Eritrea and Ethiopia, Somalia, the [unintelligible 00:17:33] and how it enriched our culture.

Here in Switzerland, 25% of the people living here are not Swiss, they're immigrants. Switzerland is extraordinarily generous to immigrants, allowing people to come in very easily. You need a job and you do need a background check, but the job can be anything. You don't need to have a fancy degree, you don't need to have a lot of money. You can come in and work in a simple service job and they make it very easy for you.

The other thing to get on the record is that this helps the Swiss economy. The Swiss per capita GDP is about 133% of the US. We have lots of immigration and lots of prosperity. The one thing that I will say is the difference is the Swiss are very generous bringing people in. They make it very easy to come in, but the entire country cooperates enforcing the law. It's very easy to come in legally, and it's very difficult to come in illegally. You can't rent an apartment, you can't even get a cell phone contract unless you have your paperwork in order. Every single person from a shop clerk to landlords to gas station attendants to car salesmen, everybody cooperates to make sure the law is enforced and I think that's a great way to run it.

Brian Lehrer: What is the lesson in that for the United States? Is it in part that you-- because it sounds like you're, in spirit, very welcoming to immigration and you're an immigrant yourself, but that there should be a hard line on, you can come up to that limit, whatever the limit is set by the country, and no more people beyond that limit and they enforce it effectively in Switzerland. Is that the lesson for the United States?

Mari: Yes, but I think the limit should be much higher than what's being proposed, because I think there are a lot of jobs that need doing and a lot of immigrants who could do those jobs. In fact, if you have everything legal, then the workers have protections. For example, my cleaning lady is totally legal and paid not under the table, but officially. She gets health insurance, she gets retirement, she gets vacation, and all of those kinds of worker protection. She has insurance, things like that. Whereas if you pay someone under the table, or somebody is illegal and knows that immigration can be called at any point, they don't have protections. I actually think that-- Sorry.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. You can finish your thought.

Mari: No, I actually think that it would be great to have more immigrants brought in, but to have everybody cooperate to make it legal immigration instead of just winking and letting people be here illegally.

Brian Lehrer: Mari, thank you very much. We actually have to go to a short break, but we'll continue with this conversation in a minute. In fact, relevant to something that Mari said, we're going to bring in another comment from Mayor Adams, which reportedly, according to the New York Post, he's asking Governor Kathy Hochul to resettle many of the migrants coming to New York City in upstate cities that are losing population and could be economic saviors for some of the upstate cities.

I don't know how the upstate cities are reacting to that so far, but yes, the question of the economic advantages of the migrants coming in in large number is certainly one that needs to be included in this conversation, so we'll continue in a minute. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

[music]

Mayor Eric Adams: This is a national problem. We must have real immigration reform and we must immediately have a short-term fix of making sure that the course of this does not fall on our local cities.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Eric Adams again from his trip to El Paso over the weekend, asking the federal government for more help and more of a national blueprint to help the migrants from Latin America and Haiti as we continue with Krish O'mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, previously in the Obama administration as policy director for First Lady Michelle Obama, and at the State Department as senior advisor under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry. We'll get to more of your phone calls at 212-433-WNYC and your tweets @BrianLehrer.

Krish, does Adams have a point about needing a federal response so the burden doesn't fall disproportionately on cities, and for you, as someone who served in high White House policy positions, can there be policies developed that would nationalize the response to the national issue of immigration and asylum and refugee services in our country in a way that would satisfy Mayor Adams?

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah: I think so. I think what we see right now is haphazard, it's ad hoc, it's people making decisions because someone approaches them and says there's a bus going to X City, and that may not be their final destination, but they figure it's at least a step in the right direction. I think when you see what's happening at the southern border, it's a dynamic where we need to have more of a federal presence and that's both in terms of the coordination of where people are going, but also in the resources.

I think when Mayor Adams puts that cost at 1 1/2 to 2 billion, it's heartening when you know that FEMA is supposed to give close to eight million, but that's obviously such a small fraction of what the city has invested into making sure that these families, these individuals have roofs over their head. I also think that it's sensible because of what we are seeing in New York, for example. We have a presence through the nonprofit, The Center, in Utica. Utica I think is a great success story of where refugees and their families make up about a quarter of Utica's population.

This is a city that was losing massive population decline as a result of the economy, and what you have found, is the revitalization of the economy, a repopulation, in large part because of immigration. That's not unique to Utica, upstate New York. It's true in Detroit. We're headquartered in Baltimore, and what we're hoping is that the population decline as a result of crime and other reasons, that we could stop and reverse that trend through immigration.

I think just the final point I'll make is it's not just upstate New York where immigrants are playing a role, even just thinking about New York City, the hub of commerce, nearly half of Fortune 500 companies are either founded or co-founded or founded by an immigrant or their child, and so this is where I do think we have to understand this not as a cost, but as a benefit, so long as we can provide some initial assistance as these individuals resettle.

Brian Lehrer: We do know that immigration to New York City in recent decades has helped keep it economically strong compared to cities that are losing population in the so-called Rust Belt, and you just named some. The tension comes around the short-term cost, as you were saying, of getting people resettled. In that context, what do you think of that idea from Mayor Adams that I mentioned before the break? He's quoted in the New York Post asking Governor Kathy Hochul to resettle some of the asylum seekers coming to New York City in cities upstate.

He's quoted saying, some of our cities are suffering, they're losing populations. If this is done effectively, we can help those cities that are struggling and at the same time give people a good start in this country. Sounds like you would support that happening, at least voluntarily. What do you think about having Governor Hochul direct people to other cities upstate from New York?

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah: It wouldn't be unprecedented. That's why when I refer to refugee resettlement, it's a system that has been developed over four decades, and I think it's a good example of where we should be looking to some solutions. With refugee resettlement, refugees who are approved to come into the US and resettle. There's a calculation made in collaboration with the food department and the nonprofits like LIRS where there's an algorithm, a number of different factors are considered, including where do the immigrants want to go, what is the job market like, what does affordable housing look like, what is the community and your saturation levels of how many immigrants have already gone to that area?

I think it makes a lot of sense to take those considerations all into account to make a decision in terms of where people ultimately should go. I also think that if we can implement some education on, here are the short-term initial costs, but these are the long-term benefits, this would be voluntary, as you mentioned. It wouldn't be someone thrusting a decision on someone because we would understand that in the end, in the long-term, this is actually a benefit to these communities that have been losing populations, but they've been also losing that entrepreneurial spirit that immigrants can bring into these communities.

Brian Lehrer: Juan in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Juan.

Juan: Hey, how are you? I've been in the country since 1987 and my experience has been a little bit unique, I would say, but I'm a full-time college student now. I'm about to be 38 years old. I'm taking a bachelor's degree in information technologies. However, I haven't been able to prove I'm a US citizen since 1999 through the naturalization process, I became a US citizen, but I can't prove it and I can't get a state ID at the DMV.

This is something that's so basic, and so transition-- well, seamless to the regular US citizen, to the born US citizen, but even if you care to bring all of your efforts to this country, which you are a stranger to, and all of you collectively, Americans, make it be known through xenophobia how is a great terror of immigrants in this country. We need to acknowledge that. Xenophobia is extremely true, and the fact that someone like Donald Trump has a voice in this country is absurd and obscene.

The fundamental things that I think we need in light of the conversation is that for the Fortune 500 companies and Mayor Adams, they're not hiring the immigrants who have been here for a while and can manage both the cultures to help the migrants in, but you have to pay for those services. I don't know what is going on. This is like a free fall. It's like a circus. I want to go back to my country. Homeland Security gave me a false paper saying I was getting deported even though I was a US citizen. I don't even know if I can foil that document to prove it. It's like a big circus going on around here.

Brian Lehrer: It sounds like your situation is complicated. Juan, let me ask you a follow up question on xenophobia, because Trump's xenophobia is one thing and pretty self-evident, but Democrats like Biden and Adams see the migrants coming now as sympathetic and in the great tradition of refugees and other immigrants coming to America even probably has a longer term benefit to the US and New York economy, but feel like they need to draw a line somewhere on how much of the short-term burden of resettlement New Yorkers or Americans should be forced to bear.

Biden would say 360,000 in a year is still really a lot. Trump tried to reduce the number close to zero. Your reaction to that in terms of, are you considering Biden and Adams, for example, also expressing xenophobia?

Juan: Joe Biden, absolutely not. I don't think he's a xenophobe at all. I think his policies express it, his mannerisms, his character, the way he embraces things. Adams, I'm not sure that he has enough racial experience. I know the term is a little edgy, but it's a reality. I want to just highlight what you said earlier about Governor Hochul. The upstate communities severely need these migrants. What you said previous to receiving my call about the economic benefits that the migrants bring to the city is totally true.

I think that the only thing that's really missing, with all due respect, is the accurate migrants that have come here, have been here for years and can navigate both cultures, whether it's Hispanic. The other migrants count too. If we're dealing with the Hispanic, then you definitely need that Hispanic voice to be able to navigate both cultures in a way so that both feel safe and we deal with the xenophobia.

Brian Lehrer: Juan, thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate your voice and your perspective with your experience on all of this. Krish, we're going to be out of time in this segment in a couple of minutes. I mentioned Christine Quinn, the former New York City Council speaker, who now runs a private nonprofit shelter system for unhoused families, describing how much additional budget stress her New York agency is taking on with the rapid influx of migrant families they're trying to add to their services. Are you experiencing anything like that at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service?

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah: We are obviously strapped for resources just because there is an influx and we're trying to do what we can with what we have. Part of what we tried to do is to repurpose infrastructure that we have that serves other populations. Our point is, rather than what the federal government does right now, where you have one agency supporting one immigrant population, another agency supporting another immigrant population, and a third agency supporting a third demographic, our point is, why not integrate these services?

This is why we've launched what we call a welcome center. We actually have a welcome center in New York in partnership with Lutheran Social Services, New York. We think it's a more efficient system. Obviously we also think that the federal government does need to put more resources towards this rather than private prisons. One thing we haven't touched on but I think it's important to highlight is President Biden as a candidate did make a commitment to push private prisons out of government contracts, but he exempted the Department of Homeland Security.

You have these major private prisons who are profiteering off of immigration as their new profit center, as they've been pushed out of the domestic penitentiary system. I think that's where there is an opportunity. There are a lot of faith-based, secular nonprofits that are doing this work, but they're doing it on their own dime because the federal government should be allocating more resources to them rather than the 24/7 detention. The private prison companies [unintelligible 00:33:56]

Brian Lehrer: Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. She previously served in the Obama White House as policy director for First Lady Michelle Obama, and at the State Department as Senior Advisor under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah: I always enjoy our conversations. Thanks, Brian.

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.