Global crises are driving a surge in migration to the United States. Stephen W. Yale-Loehr, professor in the Cornell Law School, joins host Chris Wofford to discuss the nuances of our nation’s approach to immigration.
Officials are struggling to keep pace with the migrant surge in the United States. How can local and federal leaders work to manage the increase and support individuals seeking refuge in our country? Cornell Law School Professor Stephen W. Yale-Loehr discusses the possibilities with host Chris Wofford.
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Chris Wofford: Welcome to Keynotes from Cornell University. On today's episode, we discuss the increasingly urgent migrant crisis here in New York State with Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of Immigration Law practice at Cornell University's Law School. Steve is also faculty author of the online Immigration Law Certificate Program at Cornell and has been a steadfast frequent collaborator on several immigration related keynotes in recent years.
Chris Wofford: Steve, so great to have you in studio and back on the show.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: Great to be here, Chris.
Chris Wofford: Steve, as of early September, more than 110,000 migrants had arrived in New York City since the spring of 2022, most of whom initially had crossed the southern border and made their way here. What do we know about their activity, Steve? Are people quickly at work? Are they in shelters? Are they moving in with family? Or are they struggling or faring well? How would you characterize the experience going on there?
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: As background, this is not unique to New York City. It's not unique to the United States. We have more people crossing boundaries and borders these days than ever before because of climate change, because of wars, because of various kinds of persecution. So we're seeing it here in one manifestation, but it really is affecting the whole world.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: And that's why we here at Cornell have a migration global grand challenge dealing with this issue. When it comes to New York City, many of the people have crossed the U.S. Mexico border and are coming not just to New York, but to Los Angeles, Chicago, other places where they may have friends or relatives or other people from their country, where because of that connection, they think they may be able to find work.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: Many of them are struggling to find work for a variety of reasons that we'll get into in a minute.
Chris Wofford: Great. So who are the migrants? From what countries do they tend to come from? We're talking about Central and South America, some African migration going on as well. Who are the migrants?
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: Well, again, historically, it used to be mostly Mexicans that would cross the US-Mexico border to come to work in the United States and used to be single males. But over the years, because of these various crises, we see more families crossing the border and we see more variety in terms of the countries that they come from. For example, I co-direct an asylum clinic at Cornell Law School, and a couple of years ago we had somebody from Ghana who've traveled from Ghana up to Spain, then over to South America, then walked all the way through Central America to the US-Mexico border, where he was detained.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: And luckily we are able to assist him in getting asylum. But there are as many countries represented crossing the US-Mexico border now as there are countries in the world.
Chris Wofford: Steve, from a legal standpoint, how do we distinguish between immigration statuses, asylum seeker, parolee? For many people, the legality or the illegality of their presence here is kind of the key issue for a lot of Americans.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: It is very complicated. We have a very complicated immigration system and people come in a variety of ways. Many people are fleeing persecution and so they think, well, I'll get asylum. But asylum is an international legal system and you can get asylum only if you have a well-founded fear of persecution based on one of five characteristics: your race, your religion, your nationality, your political opinion, or your membership in a particular social group.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: So not everyone will qualify for asylum. Less than half of all people who apply for asylum actually get it. You may be able to come into the United States under something known as Temporary Protected Status or TPS for short. This is a designation created by Congress in 1990 that says, if a country suffers from certain situations like civil war or a natural disaster, we will allow people who are already in the United States from those countries, give them temporary protection so they don't have to go back.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: But the president makes those designations. And unfortunately, the way that statute is set up, it only helps those people from those countries, who are already here. It doesn't help new Venezuelans or Guatemalans or Nicaraguans, who want to come to the United States. They cannot get temporary protected status. A third way that people may end up in the United States is something called parole.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: And this is a discretionary program by the President that says, if there are significant public reasons why we should let you into the United States, we’ll do so. For example, 76,000 people were paroled in from Afghanistan, when that country's government fell. Another 100,000 or so people from Ukraine came to the United States on parole when that war broke out.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: So, unfortunately, we can't deal with all the people at the border immediately. Our immigration courts are very backlogged. And so the President has used his parole authority to allow people to come in and say, you show up at an immigration court in New York or Los Angeles or whatever, and several months and get your case started. In the meantime, we're paroling you into the United States.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: So each of these different categories have different consequences in terms of whether they can apply for work at all or if so, how soon they can apply for work. And it creates a, sort of, patchwork of statuses that makes it very difficult for both the migrants and for lawyers to figure out.
Chris Wofford: So when we talk about legal protections for migrants, what legal protections do people have to protect their safety, keep their families intact, right, and altogether. The right to shelter that you have, just kind of spoken about a minute ago, access to food, warmth, all of that. What legal protections do we offer people, no matter the status?
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: We have a patchwork of protections for migrants. They're not U.S. citizens, so they do not qualify for the same kind of public benefits that U.S. citizens get. But they are offered various protections, such as the right to education and elementary school and middle school and high school that was created by the Supreme Court in a case called Plyler v. Doe.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: They also have the right that if they do work and get hurt on the job, they can get worker's compensation because we want to make sure that everyone, whether they're a migrant or a U.S. citizen, have a right to a safe job environment. Certain cities like New York City have a right to shelter law, where if you are unhoused, the city, by a 1981 settlement in a court case, agree that they would provide shelter to such individuals.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: It's not unique to New York City. Massachusetts has a statewide right to shelter law, too. So depending on where you are, your rights may be greater or more diminished.
Chris Wofford: On several cases, it seems the National Guard has been dispatched to deal with this. What function are they fulfilling?
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: They're trying to help out. Many of these migrants need, they need blankets, they need food, they need transportation to training centers where they can learn new skills. So, for example, in Massachusetts, Governor Healey there has dispatched over 200 National Guards people to help the people who are housed in hotels in various parts of Massachusetts. They've got a good program there, where they're trying to train these migrants various new skills, whether it's plumbing or whatever, where we have a shortage of people.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: The problem is that they don't have work permits yet, and so they can't actually use those new skills that they're learning. And that's a real problem.
Chris Wofford: Steve, the New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, blew up the other day frustrated, said this crisis will destroy New York City, suggesting that the city has a $12 billion deficit that we're going to have to cut every service in the city is going to be impacted. Now, whether it's Eric Adams, the governor, Kathy Hochul, senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer have all suggested that getting people to work is a solution to this, short and for the long term.
Chris Wofford: Can you describe why you think this might work or not?
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: I think it will work. I think when you think about immigration generally, we need to think about it either short term or long term, nationally or locally. Francine Blau, who's a labor economist here at Cornell, led a study by the National Academy of Sciences in 2017 that found that at the national level, immigration is good for the United States.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: They contribute a net benefit of over $3 billion a year, but that doesn't account for short term costs. New migrants, whether they're asylum seekers or otherwise, have to get acclimated. They need to find a place to live, they need to find jobs, and that can have some short term costs, whether it's in New York State or anywhere else.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: And so, we have that mismatch between the net long term benefit and the short term cost. And I can understand the frustrations of Mayor Adams or anyone else when dealing with this surge of migrants, who are coming to the United States. But we also have labor shortages here in upstate New York with farmers or manufacturing or hospitality or home healthcare aides.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: And so we need to figure out a way to train these new migrants, particularly in those industries where we have a shortage. And that can be a win if we do things cooperatively rather than bickering at each other. But part of the problem is the fact that they don't qualify for work permits immediately. If you are an asylum seeker, the U.S. immigration statute says you cannot get a work permit until at least six months after your application has been pending. And that's way too long. Some people have proposed cutting that back, to say, 30 days, but that would take an act of Congress. And I don't see that happening any time soon. If you are in one of these other statuses like parole or Temporary Protected status, you can apply for a work permit immediately.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: But many people don't know that. They don't know how to fill out the forms. There aren't enough immigration lawyers to assist them in filling out those forms. And the immigration agency has a general backlog in adjudicating work permit applications. So all of these things need to be coordinated to overcome this short term problem.
Chris Wofford: Not knowing anything about it, but what might a work training program look like? I'm having a difficult time imagining it. Who's administering it? Who's handling the operation of it? Is it a state operation? Is it federally funded? How does this play out?
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: Our training programs, again, are a patchwork of different things. Some are done at the state level, some are done at the federal level. The federal Department of Labor does have money to provide for training programs. I just read an interesting article about people in Massachusetts getting trained to become plumbers, and they weren't plumbers in their home country, but they're going to become plumbers in the United States once they get that work permit.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: So we need to do a better job with training programs generally, not just for migrants, but for U.S. citizens who are laid off as well, too. So, we've got a lot of problems in the United States. And this we've got a housing shortage in the United States before these migrants came. So, we've got a lot of problems, and the migrants are exacerbating some of these problems.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: But again, I think if we think about it and work cooperatively at the state, local and federal level, we can figure out a way to make this work for everyone.
Chris Wofford: Speaking of which, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York here is calling for bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform. We've heard that before. She is working on this with Senator Bill Cassidy, who's a Republican from Louisiana, to right size the system and increase the amount of work visas for industries with labor needs like health care. Again, some of the industries and the, you just described agriculture, hospitality, tech, and we all know farming and some of the trades.
Chris Wofford: Of course, comprehensive immigration reform. It's been a while since we've been able to pass anything even close to this. Is this aspirational or is she right on the money?
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: Well, she's on the money. The question is whether she can persuade 60 other senators to pass a bill along these lines and then get the House of Representatives, which is dominated by Republicans, to go along. Unfortunately, our immigration system is broken. The last time we reformed our legal immigration system was in 1990, and the last time we reformed our deportation side of immigration was in 1996.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: So we have an incredible backlog of several years in immigration court. We have backlogs and people who have applied for a Green Card but are waiting years because of quotas that were set by Congress back in 1990. A Congress has tried over the years to pass comprehensive immigration reform. The Senate, in 2013, passed a 1200 page comprehensive immigration reform on a bipartisan basis.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: But then it went over to the House of Representatives and did, sort of, die there. And comprehensive immigration reform really has not been able to come back since then. I think most people think that comprehensive immigration reform is impossible right now. But we at Cornell think that targeted small bore immigration reform still is possible. For example, public opinion thinks that we should have more work visas for where we have labor shortages.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: Public opinion thinks that we should do something about the border and public opinion thinks that we should help those so-called Dreamers, the young children who came across the United States at an early age through no fault of their own and became out of status. So we think that we're putting together a white paper that will focus on those three areas.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: And we think that there should be a consensus, not just among the public, but also in Congress, to try to reform at least those three parts of the immigration system. And that would be a good downpayment to comprehensive immigration reform being enacted a few years later.
Chris Wofford
So short of legislation, what would you recommend that the national response be at this time?
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: Well, I think we need to all pull together at the local level. For example, Ithaca Welcomes Refugees is a local organization that helps people not just refugees, but other new migrants to the United States. And it's great. And other organizations like that are around the country, but we need more of them. At the state level, we need to do more.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: Governor Hochul should call a special session to try to get the state legislature on to pass more funding to deal with the migrant crisis, not just in New York City, but across New York State. And at the federal level, we need to have Congress step up to the plate and appropriate money to allow those cities that are dealing with this crisis to better have resources in place to do that.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: Cities in Texas, for example, have been dealing with this for years. It's just a new phenomenon here in the Northeast and other large cities in the north. And so we need a comprehensive approach. We need people working together. The United States did this pretty well, both with Ukraine and Afghanistan. We stood up military bases very quickly to allow Afghans to adjust in the United States.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: We have a program that allows individuals to sponsor Ukrainians for work permits, etc. So there's a lot we can do. We've done successfully in the past. We need to have that kind of focused, comprehensive effort again on this situation to be able to turn around what is a crisis into something that is an opportunity that will benefit all of the United States.
Chris Wofford: Is there anything you could recommend that we do as New Yorkers and as citizens, potential advocates, toward this? What can we do here in New York?
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: Well, it may sound too trite, but I still believe in the power of individuals writing their member of Congress, writing Governor Hochul, writing their state assembly person or their state senator to say, I want you to deal with this, because they do pay attention, not necessarily to each individual letter, but to the quantity of letters and emails that they receive.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: So if enough people stood up or wrote or emailed their legislatures, either at the local or state or federal level, then I think people would take it seriously and we would get maybe a special session at the state legislature level or an effort to really deal more with the problem at the federal level.
Chris Wofford: Stephen Yale-Loehr thank you so much for coming into the studio today.
Stephen W. Yale-Loehr: It's my pleasure.
Chris Wofford: You bet. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss new episodes as they are released wherever you listen to podcasts. To learn more about legal issues around pressing immigration challenges like the migrant surge, check out the episode notes for more information on Professor Steve Yale-Loehr immigration law online certificate programs. Thank you for listening.