- We've now told you about the different kinds of immigration and how that system works.

And in New York, you can see this play out right now with the asylum seekers in real time.

The city and the state still don't have a long-term strategy to house those migrants while they wait for a decision on their requests for asylum and because it's so early in the process, those migrants aren't allowed to work either.

Some say these issues are just a symptom of a larger problem, an immigration system in the US that's long overdue for an overhaul.

And on that point, there are two people with a few ideas.

Those are Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition and Dr. Dina Refki who leads the Institute on Immigration Integration Research and Policy at SUNY.

We broke it all down at a special panel discussion at the New York State Museum.

(bright music) So I wanted to start with kind of immigration in New York, I think the attitude towards it has changed over the past year because we see asylum seekers coming in.

So the situation has changed in that regard.

Across the US I think that it's seen differently.

So I wanna ask you both first kind of how you see the attitude towards immigration in the United States right now?

And we can start with Dr. Refki.

- You are right, Dan.

There's always been that tension between seeing immigrants as assets and welcoming them into our communities with open arms, helping support their settlement process.

And on the other hand, there are always forces that see immigrants as vilified, demonized, and throughout history, this pattern has been in existence.

People feel fear, they're acting out of fear of limited resources, of changing the status quo, burdening cities and localities.

But also people, on the other hand, understand that immigration, we are all immigrants, that welcoming refugees or people who need protection is really part of our ethos and our values as Americans.

And it is enshrined in our humanitarian laws, in the international laws, and we have an obligation to welcome immigrants, and refugees, and asylees and provide them with fair, transparent, and due process.

- Very well said, Murad, what do you think?

- I agree with Dr. Refki and think that if you look at the spectrum of immigration in this country, the United States is turning 250 years old in a couple years.

250 years old, and we are still considered a baby democracy because equality, actually we're still fighting for it, but generally speaking didn't happen until the civil rights era in the 60s.

So we're in this moment where the United States has really tried to embrace diversity through the enormous fight of the civil rights era to actually give people equal rights.

And then if you look back, as mentioned, at the pattern of history with immigration, you end up seeing that with every ebb and flow of a new population of immigrants.

You see the same, it's literally stock.

It's copy and paste.

You see the same anti-immigrant narrative for either community, right?

So I think as a nation of immigrants, it's quite ironic that we continue to double down in our scarcity mindset when this nation is one of the or if not one of the richest nations in the world and New York state is one of the richest states in the nation, for us to continue to have that mentality of well, I don't have enough.

It's not about, I think we have to remove ourselves and think about our global community and how are we showing up in that moment to offset some of this negative stuff that we're seeing nationally but also across the state that just recently we started seeing.

- Right, do you think it's, for both of you, do you think it's more a fear of scarcity or more a fear of the unknown?

That's where I get lost in this a lot of the times is when I hear people echo anti-immigrant sentiments, but they don't really know anything about kind of the immigration that's coming in, and why those immigrants are coming here, and what those immigrants are gonna be doing here, and what the status is of them.

Where do you think that fear comes from?

And we can start with Dr. Refki again.

- It's complex, it's a very complex situation and throughout history again, we've seen this phenomena intersect with race obviously.

So racial diversity is very threatening to some people, that it will change the demographic makeup of the country.

So you'll see reaction to people of color becomes very different from the reaction to Europeans or refugees from Europe.

And so there is fear of scarcity of resources, but there's also fear of that demographic change which already is happening and is projected to keep happening as we move forward.

- Murad, just on that same question.

You and I spoke last week for "New York Now" about this issue, about immigration, asylum seekers, everything like that.

How do you think politics gets into this?

Because sometimes I feel like when we talk about this immigration debate, people are often just echoing things that other people have said and not looking into it, and don't have the facts of the situation.

Do you think it's just as driven by politics as fear or I guess those two things are probably pretty intersectional?

- I think politics is driven by fear in general.

So I think the way in which we see lightning rod candidacies actually take shape is through eating at people's fears so that they actually feel a connection to the candidate who is saying the fearful things.

And I think the more it gets said, the more it gets mainstreamed, and then that just becomes fact when it's not.

And what we've seen is I wanna go back to two years ago, not this past year.

But the New York Immigration Coalition welcomed several thousand Ukrainians to New York.

We anticipated 6,000, 30,000 came, and I think that no one actually is paying attention to that community specifically here in New York because they are white immigrants.

And as you get further from whiteness in your immigration journey, the more challenging it is for you to find the supports you need, to find the services you need, to find resources.

Thus far, we've not seen the investment that has been made for other communities made for the recent arrivals who have come over the past year, and we continue to see this kind of nexus between the fearmongering that we hear and people actually running for election, right?

So if you look at county executive, Steve Neuhaus, no one would know he's running for, he's the Orange County county executive.

No one would know he's running for reelection because he's constantly putting out these really horrible press releases about how horrible what's happening with the resettlement in his area is, and that safety and danger and all these things which if you just did a simple Google research tidbit and went to any academic institution, you would just naturally see that immigrants actually make communities safer and immigrants actually give local economies a strong surge of support, and then they become the backbone of it.

In New York City during COVID, I think everyone thought that we were going to have this huge economic collapse.

And while the economic engine was slightly hurt, what actually sustained our economy, not just in New York City but across the state, was immigrant small businesses.

- And a lot of frontline workers who were immigrants.

- And the frontline workers who were immigrants.

Healthcare workers, people delivering food, people still working on the farms, harvesting the food we eat, nourishing us.

So I think for us, I think the fear is very based in irrationality as opposed to fact or rational, any rational thing that you can point to.

It's just a talking point that then gets picked up and mainstreamed and then continues, what's the saying?

You could say a lie and it runs a million miles.

If you say the truth, it doesn't go very far.

I think that's a situation we continue to find ourselves in.

- I think so too and I think as we talk about this, a lot of this is kind of snowballed by a lot of misinformation and a lot of bias too that kind of couples in and brings it all together.

Before we kind of narrow down into the asylum seeker conversation about it, Dr. Refki, I wanna ask you just on a wholesale big vision, this is a big question.

How does this change?

Do you think the US ever gets to a point where a new population of people immigrates here and we all just say, "Great, welcome?"

- Well, I think it's not going to be unfortunately in our lifetimes, but every research says that the younger generation are more progressive, are more tolerant than the older generation.

So we are hopefully evolving into this ideal state where we welcome everybody and we don't look at people based on their racial makeup but on the merit that they have, so I'm optimistic that we will get to this point.

I mean, the statistics tell us that by 2020, I think 2050, this country is going to be a minority majority.

And so the demographic changes are also going to change the equation I believe.

- In New York, I feel like we, as a population of the state, sometimes view immigration differently because of we have the Statue of Liberty in our harbor.

We have Ellis Island there, as we just saw.

I was a public school student in Central New York who got the opportunity to go to the Statue of Liberty as a child and learn about it and why that's so important.

And I was traveling at the time with a group of students from Costa Rica who were exchange students for us and just sharing that culture was really important to us at the time.

Just kind of exchanging ideas.

As we look at this on a much grander scale right now with asylum seekers coming into New York, we don't know how many have come in over the past year.

I think you had told me last week maybe 100,000, somewhere around there?

It's a big population and in some ways we can see this play out in real time, how policy directly affects these people and what we can do to make them feel more comfortable here as asylum seekers.

Murad, I wanna go to you first on this.

I asked you this last week.

How do you think the state and the city have done with this situation so far?

- I think we started actually receiving people back I would say in March and April directly from the southern border who were being bused initially to Washington DC and then were being supported to come to New York City 'cause that's where their final destination was going to be.

And we immediately met with the city and said hey, this is happening and you might start seeing a uptick in individuals arriving at the shelter system.

We just wanna make sure that the frontline staff understand that these people have, these are their rights and this is type of support that they need.

And then fast forward to August 5th, we're almost at the one year mark of the first bus coming to New York from Texas.

And between June and August, we asked the city to do three things.

One is emergency expand the shelter system, invest in emergency legal services, and then invest in community-based supports that will support people in actually becoming self-sufficient so that they're not in need of city support anymore.

We got one of the three immediately which was emergency expansion and I give credit to the city.

And I think that sometimes it's easier to criticize than actually give the credit, so I'm giving them the credit for being able to do that.

I think that they've had a number of missteps that were easily avoidable and actually aren't taking the perspective of how do we solve this issue for the long term?

And how do we make sure that we're supporting people, but also doing it in an economical fashion, right?

And I think our recommendations are rooted in what we also see are issues for historically unhoused people in New York City and I think the city doesn't like that because that is an entire industry, right?

It's people who, institutions, private institutions that are thriving in this moment and for us, we see it more economical to actually support people into getting to permanent housing than actually keeping them in shelter.

One thing I would say on the state level is that we immediately started advocating to the state when we started seeing the numbers actually increase significantly and to the credit of the governor, she made additional funding available, right?

And that was immediate and then as we went into the budget season, she made more money available to support the city in their efforts, but also nearly quadrupled immigration legal services funding which if you've been following that fight, it started off, even the fight to create the office of New Americans which manages the money and makes sure it is spent appropriately, has been a almost decade fight, right?

And for us to get to this point where we're having that level of investment is a huge victory.

I think people are doing the whole I'm gonna stand back and wait and see what happens and plug in where I can, and that's not the leadership we need in this moment though.

We need people to come to the table to actually have really creative and innovative ideas that are going to be outside of the box 'cause this is what the moment calls for, and we're not seeing that.

- Dr. Refki, I wanna ask you the same question, but also can I ask you?

In a situation like this where we have a lot of immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers coming to New York, is this kind of the typical thing that happens?

Is they come, we scramble, and kind of figure it out?

Or are there more permanent systems in place?

Or should there be?

- Yeah, I think, Dan, there is really a consensus now that we have a broken system, a broken immigration system.

We have a system of asylum that is not designed to accommodate mass immigration.

It really is a system that is designed for individuals who are facing persecution based on the religion, race, nationality, political opinion, or membership of a social group on a case-by-case basis.

But then when that system, it becomes the only channel for people to migrate.

And so in the absence of any alternative, that system crumbled, it really fractured and disintegrated and it could not accommodate because it's not set up and designed for that.

We need an alternative system that really policies that are driven by humanitarian needs, by considerations of the dignity and respect for people, and a system that accommodated labor and family migration because we need them.

They need us and we need them.

There is a massive shortage of jobs in this country that can only be filled by immigrants and people coming into this country, but we are making them wait for a year to get authorization to work.

And so there is a need to rebuild the system and it takes a whole government approach.

We need the federal, the state, and the local to work together to create coordination, organization, efficiency at the border, and really draw on the refugee system which is much more organized.

It's much more endowed with resources to settle people who come, support them, provide what they need in terms of employment, education, housing, and health services.

So we need to fix the system.

If we don't, then we're always going to be dealing with this emergency situation.

We don't have plans, we don't have systems to accommodate, and we're always going to be really making people more vulnerable and adding to the people who do not have legal pathways to citizenship and settlement in this country.

- Some people will say that this situation that we're in right now is unique because New York maybe wasn't expecting this massive influx of people to come to the state and that a line should be drawn at some point in terms of offering services or housing people and things like that.

What do you think of that view of this?

Should there be a limit?

Should there be a line where we say okay, we're done?

- I mean, if we have an emergency plan in place and we have a system that is in those countries of origin really coordinate the passage of asylees or migrants from their countries to this country and coordinate that process before they come here and a system that responds to our economic needs, that will avoid the chaos and the vulnerability and the exploitation that we're seeing right now.

- Just one more question for you before I go to Murad on the work authorization that you had mentioned.

So it is a year and I know that the governor and the mayor have been asking the White House to kind of shorten that.

Can you talk about why that's so important for these immigrants to be able to work as they are awaiting their decisions?

- Right, so we wanna avoid them going into the informal economy which is exploitative, which really takes advantage of them.

We also know that it's the human dignity to be able to, it's a matter of dignity to be able to earn your own living.

As the mayor of New York City said, they don't want our free food.

They don't want our free housing.

They want to work.

The first question they ask, "Can we work?," and we need them to work, so we don't know where the disconnect is.

- Just from a strict logical perspective, people who make that journey, it's not an easy one.

So they're not coming here for anything easy.

Of course, they would wanna work.

Some people say they don't and of course, they would.

Murad, I wanna go to you kind of from more of a policy legislation perspective in a little bit.

But first just moving forward as the state continues to respond to this, where do you think there are areas, avenues for making this smoother moving forward?

Is it more housing?

Is it just that work authorization?

Or is it something else?

- I think it's everything and I think the bigger piece here is that everyone mistakenly calls this a migrant crisis that we're dealing with when it's not.

It's actually this state and our different regions in New York have been dealing with an affordability crisis coupled with a housing crisis, right?

So that in itself has been something that we have been talking about for a long time and ignored on, right?

So when people started seeing their eggs going up to $8, right?

It was like what the hell is happening here?

No one was paying attention to the affordability crisis that people were screaming about.

My mom always told me when I was a kid if you don't know the price of a gallon of milk, you are not actually in tune to reality.

- I use that same exact line.

- And so you and my mom must be good friends, and I bring that to our elected leaders and tell them what is the price of a gallon of milk today?

And I can tell you that many of them do not know.

So for me, it's always going back to the folks, we will be known about what we've done in our country, in our states, in our local towns and our legacies will be how we treated those who were at the margins.

And I think for folks who are in power, they need to understand what is happening on the ground.

So when we talk about what is the path forward?

The path forward is a path for everyone.

This is not a migrant situation.

This is not a historical New Yorker situation.

This is a everyone situation.

And instead of seeing this as a challenge which people have continued to talk about it in that regard, it's an opportunity.

We have over 5,000 agricultural jobs that have been vacant.

Our fields are not gonna be harvested.

We have over 10,000 hospitality jobs.

We have so many jobs that are just languishing across the state and instead of being like hey, we have over 100,000 people here who wanna find work, we're seeing it as oh, well, I don't wanna deal with this.

The solution is a statewide coordinated effort that is in partnership, and I think that's a key word, in partnership between the federal government, the state, and localities with the S 'cause localities, multiple localities.

Not one locality dictating to other localities what to do, in partnership with the community-based organizations on the ground who are doing the services and have been doing them without any support.

So making sure that the ecosystem is there and strong to support however many people need the support, right?

And I think when we move away from the scarcity mindset and actually think about it, $1.8 trillion of our state economic wellbeing is already in large part to a quarter of the population.

Imagine if we were able to invest a little bit more to support new folks who in New York City, by the way, the adults who enter the shelter system are actually only staying 30 to 45 days.

They're not staying long term and we want them to get work authorization as quickly as possible, but also understand that people will work as they see fit to make sure that they're able to support themselves, and people do quickly get a job in an informal economy and then start supporting themselves to rent a room or get a shared apartment and move forward that way.

So this is already a community that's illustrating to the general public and they've told this to me when I was welcoming buses at Port Authority.

They were like, "We don't want your help.

We want to work."

And that was several thousand people.

The first thing that they asked for, extremely tired, extremely exhausted but with a glimmer of hope in their eye of just saying, "I just want a job."

(bright music) - And that conversation at the State Museum was part of a preview event highlighting the PBS series, "Iconic America," which examines national symbols and shares their significance to American culture.

The discussion revolved around an episode on the Statue of Liberty and how its symbolism has changed over time.

Something a lot of New Yorkers don't know about.

You can watch that episode of "Iconic America" and the rest of the series for free either on the PBS app or at wmht.org/iconicamerica.