The fundamental right to seek asylum

Refugee and immigrants rights attorney Melanie Nezer shares an urgently needed historical perspective on the crisis at the southern US border, showing how citizens can hold their governments accountable for protecting the vulnerable. "A country shows strength through compassion and pragmatism, not through force and through fear," she says.

Last summer, I got a call
from a woman named Ellie.

And she had heard about the family
separations at the southern border

and wanted to know
what she could do to help.

She told me the story
of her grandfather and his father.

When they were kids in Poland,

their father,

fearing for his son's safety,

gave them a little bit of money
and told them to walk west,

to just keep walking west across Europe.

And they did.

They walked all the way
west across Europe,

and they got on a boat
and they got to America.

Ellie said that when she heard
the stories of the teens

walking up across Mexico,

all she could think about
was her grandfather and his brother.

She said that for her, the stories
were exactly the same.

Those brothers were
the Hassenfeld Brothers --

the "Has" "bros" --

the Hasbro toy company,

which, of course, brought us
Mr. Potato Head.

But that is not actually why
I'm telling you this story.

I'm telling you this story
because it made me think

about whether I would have the faith,

the courage,

to send my teens --
and I have three of them --

on a journey like that.

Knowing that they wouldn't
be safe where we were,

would I be able to watch them go?

I started my career decades ago
at the southern US border,

working with Central American
asylum seekers.

And in the last 16 years,
I've been at HIAS,

the Jewish organization that fights
for refugee rights around the world,

as a lawyer and an advocate.

And one thing I've learned
is that, sometimes,

the things that we're told
make us safer and stronger

actually don't.

And, in fact, some of these policies
have the opposite of the intended results

and in the meantime, cause tremendous
and unnecessary suffering.

So why are people showing up
at our southern border?

Most of the immigrants and refugees
that are coming to our southern border

are fleeing three countries:
Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

These countries are consistently ranked

among the most violent
countries in the world.

It's very difficult to be safe
in these countries,

let alone build a future
for yourself and your family.

And violence against
women and girls is pervasive.

People have been fleeing Central America

for generations.

Generations of refugees
have been coming to our shores,

fleeing the civil wars of the 1980s,

in which the United States
was deeply involved.

This is nothing new.

What's new is that recently,
there's been a spike in families,

children and families,
showing up at checkpoints

and presenting themselves to seek asylum.

Now, this has been in the news lately,

so I want you to remember a few things
as you see those images.

One, this is not a historically high level
of interceptions at the southern border,

and, in fact, people are presenting
themselves at checkpoints.

Two, people are showing up
with the clothes on their backs;

some of them are literally in flip-flops.

And three, we're the most
powerful country in the world.

It's not a time to panic.

It's easy from the safety
of the destination country

to think in terms of absolutes:

Is it legal, or is it illegal?

But the people who are wrestling
with these questions

and making these decisions
about their families

are thinking about
very different questions:

How do I keep my daughter safe?

How do I protect my son?

And if you want absolutes,

it's absolutely legal to seek asylum.

It is a fundamental right in our own laws
and in international law.

And, in fact --

(Applause)

it stems from the 1951 Refugee Convention,

which was the world's response
to the Holocaust

and a way for countries to say never again
would we return people to countries

where they would harmed or killed.

There are several ways
refugees come to this country.

One is through the US Refugee
Admissions Program.

Through that program, the US identifies
and selects refugees abroad

and brings them to the United States.

Last year, the US resettled fewer refugees

than at any time since
the program began in 1980.

And this year, it'll probably be less.

And this is at a time when we have
more refugees in the world

than at any other time
in recorded history,

even since World War II.

Another way that refugees
come to this country is by seeking asylum.

Asylum seekers are people
who present themselves at a border

and say that they'll be persecuted
if they're sent back home.

An asylum seeker is simply somebody
who's going through the process

in the United States

to prove that they meet
the refugee definition.

And it's never been
more difficult to seek asylum.

Border guards are telling people
when they show up at our borders

that our country's full,
that they simply can't apply.

This is unprecedented and illegal.

Under a new program,

with the kind of Orwellian title
"Migrant Protection Protocols,"

refugees are told
they have to wait in Mexico

while their cases make their way
through the courts in the United States,

and this can take months or years.

Meanwhile, they're not safe,

and they have no access to lawyers.

Our country, our government,
has detained over 3,000 children,

separating them from their parents' arms,

as a deterrent from seeking asylum.

Many were toddlers,

and at least one was
a six-year-old blind girl.

And this is still going on.

We spend billions to detain people
in what are virtually prisons

who have committed no crime.

And family separation has become
the hallmark of our immigration system.

That's a far cry from a shining city
on a hill or a beacon of hope

or all of the other ways we like to talk
about ourselves and our values.

Migration has always been with us,
and it always will be.

The reasons why people flee --
persecution, war, violence,

climate change

and the ability now to see on your phone
what life is like in other places --

those pressures are only growing.

But there are ways that we can have
policies that reflect our values

and actually make sense,
given the reality in the world.

The first thing we need to do
is dial back the toxic rhetoric

that has been the basis of our national
debate on this issue for too long.

(Applause)

I am not an immigrant or a refugee myself,

but I take these attacks personally,
because my grandparents were.

My great-grandmother Rose
didn't see her kids for seven years,

as she tried to bring them
from Poland to New York.

She left my grandfather
when he was seven

and didn't see him again
until he was 14.

On the other side of my family,

my grandmother Aliza
left Poland in the 1930s

and left for what was then
the British Mandate of Palestine,

and she never saw
her family and friends again.

Global cooperation as a response
to global migration and displacement

would go a long way towards making
migration something that isn't a crisis

but something that just is,

and that we deal with
as a global community.

Humanitarian aid is also critical.

The amount of support we provide
to countries in Central America

that are sending refugees and migrants

is a tiny fraction of the amount
we spend on enforcement and detention.

And we can absolutely
have an asylum system that works.

For a tiny fraction of the cost of a wall,

we could hire more judges,

make sure asylum seekers have lawyers

and commit to a humane asylum system.

(Applause)

And we could resettle more refugees.

To give you a sense of the decline
in the refugee program:

three years ago, the US resettled
15,000 Syrian refugees

in response to the largest
refugee crisis on earth.

A year later, that number was 3,000.

And last year, that number was 62 people.

62 people.

Despite the harsh rhetoric
and efforts to block immigration,

keep refugees out of the country,

support for refugees and immigrants
in this country, according to polls,

has never been higher.

Organizations like HIAS, where I work,

and other humanitarian
and faith-based organizations,

make it easy for you to take a stand

when there's a law that's worth opposing

or a law that's worth supporting
or a policy that needs oversight.

If you have a phone,

you can do something,

and if you want to do more, you can.

I will tell you that if you see
one of these detention centers

along the border

with children in them -- they're jails --

you will never be the same.

What I loved so much
about my call with Ellie

was that she knew in her core
that the stories of her grandparents

were no different than today's stories,

and she wanted to do something about it.

If I leave you with one thing,

beyond the backstory
for Mr. Potato Head,

which is, of course,
a good story to leave with,

it's that a country shows strength

through compassion and pragmatism,

not through force and through fear.

(Applause)

These stories of the Hassenfelds
and my relatives and your relatives

are still happening today;
they're all the same.

A country is strong
when it says to the refugee,

not, "Go away," but,

"It's OK, we've got you, you're safe."

Thank you.

(Applause)

Thanks.

(Applause)