Panel Transcript: The Weaponization of Immigration
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Event Summary
The Center for Immigration Studies hosted a panel discussion examining how immigration is used as a political, economic, and strategic tool by governments, non-state, and sub-state actors worldwide. Whether through mass migration crises, policy-driven border surges, or the manipulation of refugee flows, immigration has become a powerful geopolitical weapon and a means of waging hybrid warfare. Examples have included Cuba’s use of the Mariel boatlift in 1980 or the more recent efforts by Belarus to coordinate illegal immigration to the EU.
This panel explored the concept of immigration warfare – how immigration is leveraged to gain political leverage; influence legislation, elections, and the economy; shape public opinion; and even destabilize a country. Discussion also covered how nations can respond to this growing challenge.
The discussion is an activity of the International Network for Immigration Research (INIR), a collaboration among independent policy organizations on three continents sharing the perspective that each sovereign nation has the right to pursue its chosen immigration policies.
Participants
Viktor Marsai, Director, Migration Research Institute, Budapest
Phillip Linderman, Retired senior Foreign Service officer, State Department; Board Member, Center for Immigration Studies
Eric Ruark, Director of Research. Numbers USA, Washington, D.C.
Mark Krikorian, Moderator, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies
Date and Location
April 4, 2025
National Press Club
MARK KRIKORIAN: Good morning. My name is Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank in Washington that examines and critiques the impact of immigration on the United States.
We are doing this panel today on “The Weaponization of Immigration,” essentially the use of migration as a tool in geopolitics – not so much the geopolitical consequences of immigration, but the direct use of immigration as a weapon – or maybe more broadly as a tool, as an instrument – of geopolitics. And this is particularly important today for a number of reasons.
For instance, President Trump’s proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act describes the use of migration to the U.S. by the Venezuelan regime and its sort of minions as, among other things, serving the Maduro regime’s goal of destabilizing democratic nations in the Americas, including the United States. This is a textbook example of weaponization of immigration. Last year there was some talk, including the Inter-American Dialogue had a publication warning of the Nicaraguan government’s strategy of using illegal immigration as a weapon against the United States. And of course, the classic case, which we’ll hear more about – at least in this hemisphere – is Fidel Castro’s unleashing of 120,000 Cubans almost overnight in Florida in the 1980 Mariel Boatlift.
Europe, of course, also has seen migration used against it as a weapon, either for instance by Turkey as a kind of means of extorting cash and other concessions or by Russia and Byelorussia as retaliation against sanctions or other policies undertaken by the EU that they opposed.
Although this weaponization of migration is a worldwide problem, it’s not one that all countries face, because it is a form of asymmetric conflict but the asymmetry is not in kind of means of weaponry or power as one usually thinks of asymmetric warfare, like terrorists use it against countries with large armies. Instead, it’s a kind of – it’s based on a moral asymmetry, things that civilized countries are – norms that they establish for themselves which their opponents do not abide by. As Kelly Greenhill wrote in her 2010 book “Weapons of Mass Migration,” liberal democracies are the main targets of weaponized migration because, quote, “democracies are more likely than their illiberal counterparts to have codified juridical human rights and migration-related commitments” – in other words, things like the U.N. Refugee Convention and Protocol, the European Convention on Human Rights, the Convention Against Torture, and similar measures, many of which are signed, ostensibly agreed to, by both democratic and authoritarian regimes but are basically ignored by the latter and used against democratic countries. What’s more, judges, NGOs, and others within democracies serve as de facto allies of authoritarian regimes using migration as a weapon.
To a degree, this is unavoidable because there really are some things that civilized countries aren’t going to do. We are not going to be setting up machineguns on the southern border wall and just opening fire on anybody who approaches. But there are steps that can be taken. For instance, and maybe even the most important, would be changing our anachronistic, out-of-date Cold War policy of asylum, which is – really represents one of the main weapons used against democratic countries. I’ve written on asylum specifically in the journal Lima making this case. And the Heritage Foundation actually just last week released a report about reforms to asylum that would weaken its effectiveness as a weapon against the United States specifically, but other countries as well.
Before introducing the panelists, I want to point out that today’s event is part of an international collaborative effort starting in 2023 which we have called the International Network for Immigration Research, or I-N-I-R, INIR, which is online at INIRNet – I-N-I-R-N-E-T – dot-org. INIR brings together five research organizations in the U.S., France, Hungary, and Israel, as well as some individual scholars, which independently work to make the case for the sovereign right of their countries to make immigration policies based on their specific national interests rather than on abstract human rights concerns.
So, to discuss these issues, we have three speakers on today’s panel.
First is Phillip Linderman, a 30-year veteran of the Foreign Service – the U.S. Foreign Service whose duties often focused on things like U.S. border security, international travel, migration policies, and what have you. He’s one of the founders of something called the Ben Franklin Fellowship, which he can discuss a little more if he’s like. It’s not part of the INIR network because it’s not focused specifically on immigration, but it’s a group of foreign policy practitioners who try to make the case for foreign policy based on American national interests specifically.
Second speaker is Viktor Marsai, who is the director of the Migration Research Institute in Budapest, which is a fellow member of INIR. And he has actually written and lectures at university on security issues, often related to immigration.
And then, finally, Eric Ruark, who is the director of research at the Numbers USA Education Research Foundation, who has written on immigration and spoken about it at some length.
So after each of them makes a presentation, we’re going to have some Q&A. So if you have questions and you’re watching this live, submit them to the email [email protected] – [email protected] – and we’ll try to get as many of them in as possible.
So, Phil, if you could kick it off.
PHILLIP LINDERMAN: Thank you, Mark. It’s a pleasure to be here. I think it’s an important topic to talk about, particularly after the four years of the Biden administration, which we are trying to figure out exactly what happened. There was, obviously, mass migration, but within that there were certainly examples of weaponized migration. So I applaud the Center’s efforts to take on this relatively unexamined subject.
We should point out, as well, that recently a national security researcher, Joseph Humire, did some testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee precisely on this subject. Joseph brought out – he’d gone undercover in Central America – that the Venezuelan intelligence service was funding NGOs in Central America precisely for the purpose of helping those migrants to move to the U.S. – to the U.S. southern border. And as we will discuss, one of the goals of weaponized migration is creating chaos and harming the interests of the target country.
In my remarks, I will take a bit of an historical perspective, partly from my duties as an American diplomat abroad, and will focus on Cuba. Mark mentioned important work has been done here academically by the – Professor Kelly Greenhill, who wrote a book about 10 years ago on this subject. Her book was called “Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy.” And one of the things that she did in this book – because it’s hard to get your hands around a subject like this because it involves migration, geopolitics, et cetera – but she did put down a definition. Basically, it said that this is – weaponized migration is basically coercive, engineered migration designed to induce political, military, or economic concessions. And sometimes the objective of the blackmailer is to cause chaos or to gain advantage from his adversary. Usually, but not always, it’s a geopolitical tool used by a weaker state to manipulate a larger, more powerful state.
And Mark mentioned in his opening remarks the importance in all of this of the human rights regime that’s been established for migrants since World War II. Professor Greenhill also takes her perspective since that time. And these international instruments have established something that’s a ground floor of what we’re dealing with today in dealing with migrants and their perceived rights to apply for asylum or refugee status, and the obligation that receiving countries have. A critical ingredient in the weaponized migration strategy for the blackmailer is that the target country considers the human rights of the migrants paramount, and in many cases they outweigh any other consideration in the confusion at the moment.
If you look back historically, when the Western countries trumpeted the human rights of people to leave communist dictatorships you find much of the roots of the trouble that we’re dealing with. And even at that time, while the American perspective and our allies’ was much to use this as a – this right to migrate, to leave your country, as a tool against the communist world, we didn’t really think through the consequences of that when, in fact, the outbound migration happened.
We have Viktor here from Hungary, and the 1956 exodus from Hungary was a good example. The Americans encouraged that, et cetera. As it actually happened, some 200,000 Hungarians were suddenly on the doorsteps of Austria and other countries in Europe. The American plan was not exactly clear on how to deal with these people. Resources were used. The Austrians complained. It was managed. But it was certainly an example of that strategy not having been thought out.
The same thing, a version of that, happened after the 1975 collapse of South Vietnam. For decades, people leaving Southeast Asia were an issue – how to deal with them, what were their rights, and so forth.
Even when the West Germans finally brought about the unification of Germany, and the massive movement of East Germans into West Germany was something that they didn’t want, and they of course used all kinds of resources to manage that situation – having announced that everyone had the right to move, but when the moment came they had regrets.
One of the best illustrations of this situation was in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter was negotiating with Deng Xiaoping over trade rights and trade obligations that the two countries would take up as China was opening. And the American president told the Chinese dictator that the United States could not trade freely with China until its record on human rights improved and Chinese were allowed to immigrate freely. Deng Xiaoping looked over and smiled at President Carter, and through the interpreter he said: Exactly how many Chinese would you like, President Carter – 1 million, 10 million, 30 million? The record of the back and forth indicates that President Carter dropped the subject. (Laughter.)
So this leads us to the spring of 1980, some 45 years ago, when President Carter was suddenly confronted with what Mark made reference to as the Mariel Boatlift out of Cuba. Carter’s record in dealing with this situation was, from my perspective, an abject failure. Now, there will be a dispute about this because some people will say, no, we should have taken the 125,000 Cubans and we should have taken any number that came. I think that’s a bad policy. And I think if you fast-forward from 1980 to today, you see why that’s a bad policy. And you remember the language of Deng Xiaoping.
But one of the lessons is that, in looking through this, you will need to find – you have the architecture of human rights, but a critical ingredient that Professor Greenhill talks about as well is political leadership in the target country. This is more important than the obligations that are perceived in terms of the international human rights, how you manage all of that. We see that today particularly in the Western European situation and their experience about their obligations. The European Union, all the legal architecture has suddenly taken over the ability of the political leadership to respond.
So you return to Jimmy Carter in the spring of 1980. Castro had been confronted with disgruntled Cubans. And bear in mind this is 1980; this is long before the crisis in the – in the Soviet bloc. Castro wanted to get these people off the island. It was his old playbook, which was to drive people out, and that was mainly to the United States. So after much back and forth, a process was worked out where American private ships, small ships and boats, could go to the port town of Mariel, which is to the west of Havana, and there Cubans who had been approved for departure could board these boats and come to the United States. After four years of the Biden administration, the numbers of 125,000 sound somewhat puny. But if you’re old enough to remember the experience, it was somewhat sobering in the American context of these people coming without being properly vetted, cleared, and so forth.
So Castro, of course, took advantage of this. He sized up his colleague – his American colleague, Carter, well. He not only let Cubans go who were opponents of the regime; he cleared out his prisons and mental institutions. He put spies and provocateurs into the group. The numbers are still disputed, but probably 20,000, 25,000 might have been people who we would never have accepted as people into our territory. It caused exactly what Carter (sic; Castro) wanted: Long-term disruption in the United States how to deal with these people, et cetera, and so forth. Interestingly enough, Governor Clinton in Arkansas would lose reelection, it is claimed, in 1980 because he did not manage a riot of some of these Cubans who were detained in Fort Chaffee in Arkansas.
Clearly, Maduro is using this same playbook. And that is why we have hundreds if not more of Venezuelans in our country today who are into all kinds of criminal and terroristic enterprises. And you can read the news about how that situation’s being managed.
But what’s clear is that Carter always put the well-being of these migrants over any other consideration in the moment of the bilateral relationship. He never really regretted his response. After his defeat in the 1980 election, which he recognized that the migrants were part – the migrant situation out of Cuba was part of that defeat, he still maintained, Carter did, quote, I have not been elected – “I was not elected president of the United States to kill refugees.” That was his premise.
So you fast-forward from that experience to 1994, when Castro reprises – he’s now more desperate – the same scenario, releasing Cuban rafters to the United States. In the White House is President Bill Clinton. President Bill Clinton also places high priority on migrants from the Caribbean. If you follow the 1992 campaign, he spoke and criticized his predecessor, George Bush – George H.W. Bush – about how he was managing Haitians and other migrants. So Clinton comes into this space not total Carter-esque, but still mindful of the rights of migrants very highly. It’s part of his domestic constituency in the United States, and it is something that he cannot clearly deal with – as easily deal with if he’s confronted with a situation like President Carter was.
So what did Clinton do? Clinton had a compromise strategy in the rafters were intercepted. But unlike the 1980 Mariel Boatlift people they weren’t, obviously, clearly on American terrain when they got off the boats. Clinton, if you remember 30-something years ago, sent these people to Guantanamo – took the Cuban migrants to Guantanamo and to other locations. He disputed that they had implicitly a right immediately to come to the United States.
Now, I would contend that at the end of the day the Cuban dictator still got the better of the – of the situation. I was an American diplomat in Havana in the mid-’90s. We dealt with this issue constantly. We knew that Castro was dealing for his regime to survive, and the best currency he had in that process were migrants. And he knew that President Clinton, as Mark made reference to, mindful of the many hundreds if not a few thousand Cubans who perished at sea, Clinton wanted to deal with that. And so he came up with a compromise. And I think there’s a lesson there. One, for future American presidents, if you’re a Democrat, don’t take the people immediately to your territory. And so that’s what Clinton learned.
But it’s an interesting thing to posit what happened between the Carter administration and the Clinton administration. There were two Republican administrations there. One was Ronald Reagan. Reagan made political hay out of the way Carter handled the 1980 Mariel Boatlift, and he said there would be consequences. And Reagan’s version of going to root causes of migration was expressed by his secretary – first secretary of state, Alexander, Haig, who said: If there is trouble in the Caribbean – and he meant by that migrants or other things – we will go to the source. So that’s the way you deal with root causes in the Reagan administration.
There were no – there were no incidences of the – of the Castro government trying to play in the Reagan or even the Bush years the migrant card. Castro had maintained that Reagan had promised him visas. And this was also part of the settlement that Castro got from the Clinton administration, 20,000 extra visas a year for Cubans. Castro maintained that Reagan had promised him that. But those 10 years he never did anything about that claim, until it came to the Clinton administration.
This comes back to my point, which is that the legal machinery about the human rights of migrants is important, and I’m hopeful that the Trump administration is going to deal with that going forward. That needs to be remade.
But more important, arguably, I would say is the political leadership. You look at Reagan to Carter, you look at Trump to Biden, and you see that if you have strong executive leadership the, quote/unquote, “target country” can, in fact, neutralize the blackmailers in those countries that want to weaponize migrants. And better off in the long term most of these scenarios that the migrants do not move. And in some cases that means they go through hardship. But if you’re going to change – go back to Cuba – if you’re going to change that regime, you have to have people in that country one day who can actually change the regime and not to live somewhere else. If you want to change Venezuela, you need those 8 million Venezuelans who have left their country to be in Venezuela to reclaim that country. So you defeat weaponized migration, I would argue, with strong political leadership.
And I’ll stop with that.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you, Phil. Viktor?
VIKTOR MARSAI: Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s an honor to be here again in the framework of INIR and deliver my thoughts about the instrumentalization and weaponization of migration in the European context.
I think what we can hear previously from Mark and Phil is very important, that it’s asymmetric. And geopolitical context of instrumentalization or weaponization of migration, it’s very important that it’s always the instrument of the weaker parties as we can see in both the European and American context. And paradoxically – and it’s a worrying situation – these countries which are weaponizing immigration actually exploiting our values and our best standards in the case of human rights.
And I would like to underline one important thing in the international asylum system, which was partly mentioned by Phil and Mark as well, which is the – perhaps the weakest point of it, that it’s highly connected to the territory of the – both the United States and the European member states. And you know, while if somebody would like to cross borders legally she or he has to go through a long procedure, vetting, et cetera, et cetera, in the case of somebody who does, no, I’m – asylum seekers, we have a pre-assumption that he or she is a real refugee, so we let him or her into our territory. And in the case of the United States, for example, in the Remain in Mexico program there is a shift, but in the context of Europe you don’t see it. We are letting people into our territory, and after we are struggling to deport them even if we know that the majority is, let’s say, economic migrants and not real refugees.
In the European context, we can distinguish two, let’s say, level of the problem. The first I call instrumentalization and the second weaponization, because there are significant differences between the two phenomenon.
In the case of instrumentalization, we can see some kind of political pressure and we can say blackmailing by certain powers, by Turkey or Morocco, which try to press and try to win something in the context of Europe and certain European state. It’s very important that these countries not causing the flow of migrants; they just utilizing natural or semi-natural processes. You know, not Turkey invited the Syrian refugees into their territory or Morocco the sub-Saharan Africans; they arrived, and both Rabat or Ankara realized that, no, it’s an asset which you can use in the bargaining with the European Union and the member state. It means that even some level of cooperation is possible between these, let’s say, blackmailing countries and certain European countries.
The other level of the problem, weaponization, is a more problematic issue – what’s happened in the case of Belarus in 2021 and still happening in the Polish border, or what Russia is doing also in the eastern part of Europe and in the Sahel region – because it’s not the utilization of natural processes. These are manmade, or let’s say state-made crises. For example, in the case of Belarus Belavia, the national carrier of Belarus, brought the people from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa to their territory in Belarus, and the Belarusian authorities organized the transport from the airports to the Polish border to press and force these people to go to the territory of Poland and other state. So it’s an artificial crisis. It’s very important.
We tend to forget, but it’s also part of a broader hybrid warfare, or somebody calls it gray-zone operations, somewhere with an open and not open engagement of the warfare. Or, as the Russian doctrines say, it’s the part of the Gerasimov doctrine, which uses all assets including the military but also economic, social, information warfare instruments to reach its political goals. And migrants in this context is an excellent part of this weaponization process which is happening.
We tend to forget, again, that it’s not only about politics but because the leadership of many authoritarian regimes is connected, simply saying, organized criminal network. It’s also about money. You know, it was very well detected that during the Belarusian crisis individual migrants paid between 20(,000 dollars) and 40,000 (dollars) – once again, 20(,000 dollars), $40,000 – for the Belarusian state for the visa to reach the territory in Belarus and, after, the European Union. So generating millions and ten millions of dollars income for these states and its leadership. And it’s also documented by the Italian Ministry of Defense, Spanish Ministry of Defense as the Wagner Group in Africa is involved in human smuggling that they are generating millions of money for these networks.
It’s also a useful instrument to test the willing and ability of the affected states and entities, whether they are ready to act, whether they are divided how to answer in the case of the European Union, for this crisis. There are certain experts who are arguing that what Belarus did with the support of Russia in 2021 was actually a test that how Europe will react after a bigger crisis, which came 2022 with the war in Ukraine, when not just some tens of thousands of people but millions of Ukrainians arrive to the territory of the European Union.
And, yes, the Ukrainian war and the Ukrainian refugee crisis is also part of this weaponization of migration. Ladies and gentlemen, currently almost 5 million Ukrainian citizens are in certain European countries under temporary protecting directive, you know. Health care, education, and all other respects of welfare is a huge burden for European countries and citizens. I know there is constant debate who’s paying more for Ukraine in humanitarian, weapon assistance, et cetera, et cetera, but please don’t forget that, you know, feeding and take care of 5 million Ukrainian refugees in – sorry, in Europe, it’s a huge burden on us.
And I mentioned the Sahel region in Africa because, you know, we see the eastern flank of Europe is in flames, but we shouldn’t forget the – to quote Churchill, the soft underbelly of Europe, the Mediterranean region, where we can – where, actually, the migration crisis of Europe started in 2013. And what we see in the last three, four years is that Russia is fueling tension in the region, Wagner Group and – sorry, new name, Africa Corps, a la Erwin Rommel, you know? What they are doing there, they are not there to provide stability, which is the official narration, to replace neocolonial French troops in the framework of friendship and mutual cooperation with Mali, Niger, et cetera, et cetera. No, they are there to fuel tension, increasing stability, because it fuel migration. And, ladies and gentlemen, if 1,000 people arriving to the island of Lampedusa per day, the Italian parliament will not concentrate on how much weapons should be sent to Ukraine but how to tackle with the migration crisis. It’s very, very simple issue, unfortunately.
And last but not least, NGOs, well, were mentioned previously, who’s play a very ugly game saying they are creating facts on the ground. It’s very simple issue, you know. If they pick up people immediately along the Libyan shore, and coming and saying, OK, there are 500 people onboard, what we can do, of course, liberal democracies can hardly say then, no, no, bring them back to Libya, which is a problem because human smuggling networks utilize it. External powers – perhaps Russia – utilize it. It’s proved that there are direct connection, or contact at least, between the human smuggling networks and these NGOs. And of course, they are utilizing this asymmetric model of pressure that we have to take care of the people.
And as I mentioned, it’s a very ugly game because what’s happening during this process is – during this process is that we are making refugees, OK? Because most of the people who are arriving, for example, Libya, they are coming from Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, other countries where there’s no systemic persecution against them, no war. They are, simply saying, economic migrants. But among the Libyan context there are militias, low-level civil war, torture, et cetera, et cetera. After this experience and after crossing Libya, we can’t tell anymore, no, no, we are bringing back just to Libya. Because they are economic migrant? No. Because the situation in Libya is so bad for these people. They’re not in this context legally. They have become refugees. So this is what are utilized, these NGOs, perhaps not just weaponization but directly as an instrumentalization of migration.
Thank you very much.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you, Viktor.
And as just a reminder, if you have questions, if you’re watching this live send them to [email protected] and we’ll try to get as many of them in as possible.
Eric?
ERIC RUARK: Good morning. And I want to thank CIS for putting this on.
So we’ve heard examples of how foreign governments have weaponized immigration – Cuba was mentioned, Belarus, Russia, Venezuela – and the role that NGOs and special interest groups play. And I want to make note of one thing that Mark said about judges, which is an important point – federal judges in the United States, but we see it in Europe as well, who are a big part of the picture, and we’re starting to see under the Trump administration they’re going to be a much larger part of the picture going forward when it comes to how immigration policy is carried out or allowed to be carried out.
So I’m going to talk about how the U.S. government weaponized immigration against the American people. And I know that’s a provocative statement to make, but I think it’s a reasonable one and one that can be defended.
So what occurred the last four years under the Biden administration wasn’t due to circumstances beyond its control. It wasn’t due to incompetence. It was the result of deliberate and willful decision-making. Who, ultimately, made those decisions I don’t know. I think we’re going to find out a lot about that in the coming years. One obvious culprit is Alejandro Mayorkas, who was the DHS secretary under President Biden, who’s a very intelligent and capable man whose previous performance as a public servant notably, as the director of USCIS under President Biden (sic; Obama), indicated what we might expect when he was put in charge of DHS.
In June of 2021, Mayorkas declared that he would decide who was and who was not subject to immigration law. And as it turned out, who wasn’t – who was exempt from immigration law basically turned out to be every foreign national in the world. In May of 2023, DHS finalized a rule which created, quote, “lawful, safe, and orderly pathways to enter the United States.” In the DHS press release, Mayorkas said, “This administration has led the largest expansion of legal pathways for protection in decades.” Now, Mayorkas knew that it was his job, acting on behalf of the president, to faithfully execute immigration laws, and he knew that the executive branch cannot create new lawful pathways to admission.
Why did Mayorkas carry out these policies? Because he banked on the fact that he could get away with them, and in fact he did get away with them. Two weeks after the House impeached Mayorkas, it voted to fully fund programs put in place by Mayorkas for which he had been impeached. Congress sanctioned Mayorkas’ declaration that I am the immigration law.
Of course, Mayorkas knew that his policies were enabling, emboldening, and enriching the cartels and the international smuggling syndicates, and causing great suffering and many deaths of migrants who were journeying to the border. He knew that there was rampant child trafficking. He knew that the cartels were handing out children to create so-called family units. He stopped DNA testing of these family units because he didn’t want to know if these individuals were related. He just wanted them released. And Mayorkas did release millions of illegal aliens into the country understanding full well what the results would be.
Now, this isn’t to pin everything on Mayorkas. It certainly isn’t to absolve him of blame in any way. I have no word in favor of Mayorkas. It is to put forward the proposition, and defend it, that Mayorkas and those he was working with or for weaponized the U.S. immigration system.
I spoke to Phil earlier this week to figure out what we were going to talk about today, and I ran through what I was thinking in trying to flesh out the idea and the question. And Phil said, that would make a great book. (Laughter.) And I agree. I just don’t know how one would go about writing it. I don’t know why they did it.
So when I think about – and when I was thinking about this topic, I usually go back to a book written in 1992 by former Senator – and in 1968 Democratic candidate for president – Eugene McCarthy. The book was entitled “A Colony of the World.” And McCarthy argues that the problem with our current administration – our current immigration system, excuse me, is that it’s based on an ideology that is divorced from historical context and practical realities. McCarthy was a cosponsor of the 1990 – or, 1965 Hart-Celler Act, and he came to very much regret the effects of that bill. He was a man who in his time was very much on the left. He was a staunch opponent of the Vietnam War. There was a rallying cry during his primary campaign to “get clean for Gene.” McCarthy believed that the United States should be an open society. He did not believe that it meant the United States should have open borders.
The Immigration Act of 1965 led to a significant increase in immigration, as well as instituting the family-based system which in effect outsourced U.S. immigration policy, putting previous immigrants in charge of choosing future ones. There was also an increase in illegal immigration, which in 1986 our government promised would cease in exchange for a one-time amnesty. The interests of the American people – this is the Cliff Note(s) version of McCarthy’s argument, but I think it pretty – suits it pretty well – the interests of the American people were subsumed by our government’s battle to save the free world, to show that we were the good guys, which somehow also meant allowing U.S. businesses to hire illegal aliens to undercut American workers and drive down wages. Further, as McCarthy pointed out, it turned the refugee and asylum programs into an instrument of foreign policy with little concern for how these programs affected the domestic affairs of the American people.
We now see an inversion of this – is my argument – with similar results. A remnant of this postwar construction has morphed into the contention by some of our political leaders, certainly the leaders of the Democratic Party, that billions of people around the world have the right to enter the United States because whatever is compelling people to come to the United States – whether it be gang violence or poverty, political instability, climate change – is ultimately or was ultimately caused by the United States. Instead of saving the free world, we are the cause of all of its suffering. The only fix going forward is to open our borders, which also somehow still means that U.S. businesses can hire illegal aliens to displace American workers and drive down wages. It’s funny how this all works out.
As millions of illegal border crossers poured into the United States, Mayorkas repeatedly went in front of Congress and said that the border was secure. The administration reacted callously to tragic killings that were the result of its own policies and refused to change course despite public outcry, instead doubling down every time there was a public outcry, taking the moral high ground to say the problem isn’t the immigration policy; it’s the American people who don’t appreciate it or who have the audacity to criticize it.
Phil also said the other day that the Biden administration weaponized immigration policy against himself. And if he wasn’t here today I would take credit for that because I thought it was quite clever. He’s right in that it was a political disaster for the Biden administration from the very start. And the best response they ultimately came up with was that Donald Trump was to blame for the whole thing. Why would they tell us that the president of the United States, Joseph Biden, the most powerful man in the world, was powerless to secure our borders while blaming the man who as president had demonstrated that it could be done and is doing so again?
When Senator Cory Booker spoke on the Senate floor for 24 – or, over 25 hours, he did not explain why President Trump (sic; Biden) claimed that he had no authority to secure the border, and how Trump has now come into office and accomplished that almost immediately. So people are left to speculate as to the motives and to the reasons for what happened under the Biden administration, who made those decisions, and why they made those decisions. It would have been preferable if Secretary Mayorkas had gone in front of Congress and said: Of course the border isn’t secure, I’m not going to secure it, and here are the reasons why. Then I could have written that book, Phil. (Laughter.)
MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you, Eric.
Again, a reminder, [email protected]. I have a question or two here, but I have my own question first I wanted to ask since I’m sort of paying for the microphones. Actually, it’s the Congress, so we all pay for the microphones. (Laughter.) But anyway, I have them.
I had a question sort of related to what Eric was saying, but maybe for you, Phil, first. You were saying that political leadership is almost more important than what the rules are; in other words, that, you know, Castro didn’t try this when Reagan and then George H.W. Bush were in charge because presumably he knew – maybe even, you didn’t mention this, but from what he did to the air traffic controllers that he was not somebody to be trifled with. But is – the fact is that you’re not always going to have good leadership. You’re going to have weak people, or even if not weak, you know, along what Eric was talking about, people who just don’t believe in the rules. So is there some way to insulate against bad leadership creating these vulnerabilities and opportunities for our opponents to use migration? Do you see what I mean?
MR. LINDERMAN: Yeah. I think the Biden experience has taught us that maybe there is not. If Alejandro Mayorkas, as Eric put it, is – can say I am basically the immigration law, it doesn’t really matter what any of the laws are that we put in place if they’re not followed. I mean, there was a strong case to be made – I think it’s indisputable – that there is an affirmative duty on the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to secure the border. It’s in the statute. It’s the first item. That means detaining and holding illegal migrants. And Mayorkas ignored it. So I think it is – unfortunately, we may have arrived at a point where it is not possible to rely on the statute. I know the Center’s got great lawyers. The INA is a – is a law with all kinds of complications, more complicated than the tax code. But it can be ignored is what the lesson of the Biden administration was, I think.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. Here’s a question that I thought was kind of interesting. Anybody can take this. But any ideas or any thoughts on where else we might see in the next few years weaponized migration, either coming from or who might use – who might use immigration as a weapon? And it doesn’t even have to be against the United States, just sort of generally anywhere. I mean, Russia and Byelorussia, which is basically almost the same thing in this context, are using it. Turkey has used it. Any ideas? And maybe even – and I think I already answered the question – but why isn’t it being used against, I don’t know, China or India or somewhere else? So any thoughts anybody has on that?
MR. RUARK: I think the pressures in the countries – the sending countries are still there. They haven’t disappeared just because our border is secure. So in the – in the governments, which Venezuela’s a good example, who want to send maybe people that they don’t want in their country to the United States, what I anticipate generally is – and this isn’t probably going to happen in this administration – but the argument will be made much more frequently that these are climate refugees, and we’ve – the United States is a culprit in causing climate change, and so therefore it’s our responsibility to take them in.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Interesting. Yeah. So, in other words, in addition to sort of the persecution aspects of refugee law, that climate change could be used or the issue of climate change could be used as a weapon against developed countries. I hadn’t really thought of that.
So we have a question here which you’ve dealt with before, Viktor, but I think would be worth addressing: Where is it easier to defend against the use of migration, on a water border or a land border?
MR. MARSAI: Definitely a land border, which is a surprise we’re always discussing with Mark. You know –
MR. KRIKORIAN: In other words, easier to defend against at a land border. Yeah.
MR. MARSAI: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a land border, of course, yeah. You know, because, you know, if you have the fence, you can stop them before they reach the territory of the member state – or, sorry, the state. Now, in the sea it’s very complicated because there are other law in the sea. You are obliged to save the people who are dying, of course, which is – which is – everybody, I think, thinks it’s absolutely correct and right. But –
MR. KRIKORIAN: And that’s part of the moral asymmetry in those spaces that we’re dealing with. Yeah.
MR. MARSAI: It’s also part of the moral asymmetry. You know, there is an attempt now in the European context which can be very important if it will work. At this point it seems it doesn’t work, but we will see. You know, perhaps you have heard about this Italy-Albania deal, which is about the externalization of the migration crisis and the asylum procedure to stop the illegal migrant before they reach the territory. And the Italian navy stop the boats in international waters. This is the key issue, because if they stop them in the Italian – among the Italian borders, including the sea borders, they have to bring it to the territory of Italy. And after, it’s almost impossible to get rid of people who are not eligible for any international protection. So they are trying to bring them to Albania – from international waters to Albania, to the reception centers. Now it was attacked by the activist courts in Rome. It’s very hard to defeat them. But now we are waiting for an EU directive from the courts of the European Union whether it’s fit to the legal framework of the European Union, because if the court says, no, no, it can work, then Roman courts can withdraw.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah. Well, our courts aren’t all that great either, frankly. (Laughter.) This is sort of a bigger problem – and we talked about this – is that – is that even if you have good leadership – in other words, even if you didn’t have Mayorkas, for instance, as head of the DHS – you still have a kind of network of judges and NGOs, and judges who used to work for NGOs, and all of that who aren’t – who aren’t presumably working for Venezuela or Russia or what have you, but nonetheless, as the Marxists would say, are objectively allied with them.
So, Phil, this is kind of my gloss on a question. The asylum rules were set up after World War II, beginning of the Cold War, the point was in that context. And so it was, you know, other – really, other than the Hungarian flight during the ’56 uprising, it was a handful of people at any one time. I mean, I – with only a little exaggeration, it was designed for a few Russian ballerinas every year. In a sense, weren’t – wasn’t the Soviet Union – and communist China, to relate to your Deng Xiaoping quote – kind of allowing the West to maintain a virtuous moral stance without having to reckon with the consequences because they weren’t letting anybody out? And once people could get out, the inevitable consequences, the conflict between these asylum norms and the interests of the country, really came into the fore.
And so I don’t know what the solution is. I’m not even sure how to state that as a question, but it’s not like we want the Soviet Union back. But I mean, the fact is they were in a sense cooperating with us in preventing large-scale immigration and allowing us to maintain a stance of moral purity without having to actually grapple with the consequences of it.
MR. LINDERMAN: I think that’s exactly right. And going back to the Deng Xiaoping exchange with Carter, Carter clearly had not thought through the amount of people who could come from these countries if they were, in fact, able to send out.
As it played, you know, the Western thinking was mushy. It gave us now a legal regime of human rights for migrants that does not function in a globalized world where largely people are motivated by economic reasons to change their countries and then to claim some kind of asylum status. You know, when people are leaving a country as a migrant, you know, in their head – I think back to my experience in the State Department dealing with, literally, thousands of these people. And you know, they don’t – they’re not sitting around in most cases thinking about I’ve just got to be able to read The New York Times and I can’t get it here, you know, in the eastern provinces of Cuba, and that’s why I’m leaving. (Laughter.) It’s always a mixture of things, people trying to make a better life. And in any case that’s going to have a huge dimension of being – of the economics of it: How can I make a better material life for myself?
So, going back to your question, though, Mark, we never really got our hands – the architecture never really got their hands around it. Your ballerina example is perfect. I mean, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a great moral victory when the Soviets kicked him out and we claimed him as an example, he was able to leave the country, et cetera. The system didn’t work and he’s the example of it, and we beat our chest. You know, it was good and most anti-communists were very happy that Solzhenitsyn got out. The system was corrupt and evil, the communist system. But we have not now – going 35 years into the future, we have not got – the lesson there on the migration track is very clear. We have not got a system that can deal with the potential – human potential to change countries, and we need to remake it.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. We have a question here that I think is kind of interesting. It is: How can immigration be a weapon at all, since according to a lot of these advocacy groups and what have you immigration is a – is a boon? And that kind of relates, it seems to me, to something that – what you were talking about, Eric, is that there are significant elements within democracies that actually see it as an opportunity rather than as – see migration as an opportunity and want to actually foster more of it, in some sense, because – and so they don’t see it as a weapon; they see it as a – you know, as a kind of – they see it almost as a tool of domestic politics to have migration come in from abroad. So that really gets to the – I don’t know, I mean, you could even refer to it as a fifth column issue in that NGOs and judges and others aren’t so much doing it because they see the migration as harmful and they want to do harm; it’s because they see it as a way of getting policies within their own – getting results in their own countries that they could not get democratically. And so, I mean, I think that is sort of an instrumentalization, in Viktor’s formulation, where it’s not weaponization – using it as a – you know, to destabilize or harm the country, although it does that; they don’t see it that way. They do see it as an instrument of almost domestic politics. I mean, yeah, please, go ahead.
MR. RUARK: The one thing – and I absolutely agree with that, but what stunned me throughout the Biden years was – and we saw this during Obama. When it became a political liability, they dealt with it, and much more effectively. It wasn’t just, you know, smoke and mirrors. But the Biden administration didn’t even pretend to address any of the concerns that you raised or the ones the American people raised. They didn’t have to actually effectively do it, but they had to pretend they care, and they did not.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. Did you have a question?
MR. MARSAI: Yeah. Just a small comment what Mark asked and Eric answered. Ladies and gentlemen, at the end of last year 3.5 million refugee people under temporary protection, et cetera – so some level of international – under some level of international protection – lived in Germany. It was more than 4 percent of the population. And Germany changed the citizenship law. So after five – instead of eight years, after five years staying you can apply for citizenship. And among exceptional circumstances you have job – speak, well, relatively good German and you have a job, you can get it after three years. So – and you know, these people, of course, will vote for the parties who provide them these legal frameworks. So we can’t be naïve. And it’s only the example of Germany; we see a lot of different examples all around Europe. And previously, getting German citizenship was almost impossible.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And, Viktor, this is for you, too. You were referring to Russian activities in the Sahel, in the – you know, the area south of the Sahara. It seems to me that’s almost like a twofer in weaponization of migration because they’re trying to destabilize the countries themselves of Mali and Niger, what have you, and destabilize Europe by having those people, you know, illegally go to Europe. So, anyway, that struck me as a sort of interesting idea in that you get kind of double weaponization rather than just, say, Castro sending people which, you know, helps him and hurts us.
We have a question here: Can the panelists address the broader question of human rights? In other words, this is the basic issue, is that authoritarian regimes are using human rights not just laws, but the concept and the genuine sort of concern for them as a weapon against developed, you know, democratic countries. You know, how do we – is there a way to square that circle, to not – is there a way to honor human rights without, basically, harming ourselves? Is the concept of human rights in a sense a self-cancelling idea, because then, you know, you can’t – you undermine the democracy itself? Anybody want to take that up? Go ahead.
MR. RUARK: Go ahead.
MR. MARSAI: Yeah. Just one example, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, you know, we are speaking both authoritarian regimes but, you know, it’s the authoritarian regimes are also different. What’s the level of persecution and limit of rights for their own population? Somebody’s telling that Egypt is an authoritarian regime, but an average Egyptian citizens will tell, no, we are living here; yeah, there’s a president, blah, blah, blah, so no any effect. And of course, yeah, it’s because we existing to our values and norms, we have to examine the asylums requests. But now the acceptance rate all around Europe for Egyptian asylum seekers below 5, 4, 3 percent, you know. So we have to be realistic, and we have to tell the other 90-plus percent that, you know, thank you for the application, it was rejected, it’s high time to go home.
So I don’t – again, we don’t need new legal frameworks. We know we need leadership who are ready to follow the law and telling these people, OK, let’s – it’s high time to go home.
MR. RUARK: That is a difficult question and it gets to the moral asymmetry. And we talked about last night the 1951 Refugee Convention, and I know that’s something you’ve talked a lot about.
I do think, you know, most people – almost all; I can’t say all people – think that the United States has a role to play in protecting human rights and protecting those people whose human rights have been or are being violated. I think the best way to go about that is recognizing that wanting a better life for yourself in the United States is not a human right. There is no human rights to migrate to the United States. And so to distinguish between what is under the U.N. Convention – or, Declaration, I should say – or what we want to establish, not the fact that you want a better life for your family, because Americans want that too and extending that human right to everyone means no one’s going to have those opportunities eventually.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Any thoughts, Phil?
MR. LINDERMAN: Just, I mean, I agree, obviously. We cannot, those of us, I think, in this panel and most people who seriously think it through.
The international legal community very skillfully established the right to exit a country, and that was the first step if there was indeed a plan to do this coming out of the 1948 U.N. convention on international human rights, et cetera. They did establish the right to exit. They did not establish, at least fully – and it’s being resisted – a right to enter. So Eric is right: You do not have – in my scheme of rights, you do not have a right as a human right to enter the United States country. Although we did see this in the – in the Biden years a very concentrated effort in Latin America led by our friend Mexican President – former Mexican President Andrés López Obrador to establish the right to migrate. And he convoked his colleagues from Cuba, from Colombia, and other countries in the region, saying there was a human right to migrate, meaning to enter another country – meaning, in effect, to enter our country. And if we do not resist that, I think we will find our country in a bad situation.
MR. KRIKORIAN: We’re almost out of time, but I just wanted to address the last thing that Viktor talked about, which is externalization, as they call it, which is kind of pushing the borders abroad. You were referring to the deal that Italy made with Albania to catch people, to send them, which was essentially the same as our Remain in Mexico because they still were able to apply for asylum in Europe in this case or in Remain in Mexico apply for asylum here but they had to wait outside. It seems to me that – and this gets to the issue of are there rules we can set up that make it hard even for bad leaders to undo it – is that we need – in my opinion; this is just me – we need to abolish the concept of asylum in – period, and as part of that have arrangements with other countries so that if you – for whatever reason we don’t want to return you, you go to – we send you to those other countries, which we pay. But you don’t apply for asylum here; you end up there. Australia did that with Cambodia, and only five illegal aliens took up asylum in Cambodia, and four of them gave up and went back home. So it was a transparent – their asylum claims were themselves a transparent lie.
And so it seems to me ultimately that’s the direction we need to go to, not even just Remain in Mexico but what I call – what I’ve dubbed Remain in Mongolia. So any illegal immigrant is simply sent to Mongolia if they’re willing to do it, and apparently the Trump administration is, in fact, exploring with Mongolia and several other countries to this effect. And then, you know, once the word gets out, unless you really are fleeing the equivalent of Auschwitz, then you’re probably not going to come. I mean, ultimately, it seems to me that’s the only way, is to make clear you’re not going to get in, ever. And that then takes away the tool of our opponents to use migration as a weapon, because it’s not going to work. It’s not going to weaken us.
So I want to respect everybody’s time. This recording is going to be on our site at CIS.org and you can learn more about it. You can learn more about INIR at INIRNet.org. And I want to thank all of the participants in the panel, thank all of you for coming, and thanks for those who are tuning in from home. (Applause.)
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