The Myths and Realities of Global Migration

16:51The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:It's enormous. And you know what? That is a real shift that I've seen even over the course of my work. When I first started working on issues around border management and the movements of people, what we would see, especially on the U.S.-Mexico border, where more people try to enter the country in a clandestine way, using smugglers to cross, you know, in often very sophisticated ways, you know, over and under fences, through tunnels, through the sea, all sorts of different clandestine ways. But over the last couple of years, what we've seen are more and more people recognize that the asylum path could be a path that at least allowed them many years to live and work in the country of destination while their case was wending its way through the courts.

17:44The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:So we saw increasingly, instead of people trying to kind of get smuggled into the country, we saw more and more people go up to the border, basically present themselves to a border official and say, I'm here to seek asylum. And then they'd kind of be put into a system and the system would take years and years and years and years to evaluate their asylum claims. Now that happened in the US, but it's happened across Europe as well. And there was a growing recognition that the system was not built to bear those pressures. And it's then created a perception that the asylum system doesn't work. It's not worth investing in.

18:24The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:And so let's just throw it all away. Whereas what I believe, what we see is the real issue is that actually asylum isn't meant to be the pathway for people into a country. It's meant to be kind of the option of last resort. And we really need to be thinking of smarter ways to manage the movements of people.

18:45Amy Pope:How does the political backlash globally to these historic migration levels look from where you sit? It's obviously very front of mind for people in the United States watching events in Minneapolis and elsewhere. It's really at the heart of our politics. But if you look globally, to what extent does that seem central to the kind of political crisis of this moment, as it certainly feels in the U.S.?

19:04The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:It's playing out everywhere. It's playing out in Europe. It's playing out in South America. It's playing out in Australia. It's even playing out in places like Pakistan and Iran. There is sort of frustration across the board with what feels like a chaotic movement of people, feels like there's very little support for the movement of people. Communities get overwhelmed. It's very easy to weaponize in a political debate. And as you're seeing play out in the politics, that frustration is leading to lack of confidence in governments around the world, a lack of confidence in multilateralism around the world.

19:46The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:And we're kind of at a breaking point where the need to come up with new ways of dealing with the issue is increasingly urgent. And not just to better manage the movement of people, but to make sure that we maintain trust in governments and democracies and the rule of law.

20:07Amy Pope:As you look back into the post-COVID period, if you could go back and advise policymakers to handle things differently, to avoid that sense of chaos and avoid the resulting backlash, is there anything you would advise them? Are there things that could have been done to get us to a different place now? Or was this the kind of buildup of historical forces over so long that it's hard to imagine near-term policy changes would have made a huge difference?

20:34The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:There are policy options that are available. It does require some hard political decisions and it requires some hard financing decisions. And I've seen this firsthand in my work across many years in different places. it's much easier to sell to the public, let's spend billions of dollars in border security. And I can tell you that it is relatively easy to get congressional support. And I see it play out across many of the countries where we work. It's relatively easy to get parliamentary support, to add more surveillance systems at borders, to add more border patrol agents, to add more you know, balloons and fences and, you know, all of the hardware.

21:21The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:Those billions of dollars, if put into systems that enable people to find some stability closer to home, could go so much farther. And if we look at a couple of the active conflicts right now, you look at something, a situation like Sudan, most Sudanese are going to Chad, they're going to Egypt, they're going to South Sudan, they're going to Libya. What we see is where the Sudanese cannot find safety, they cannot find options in those countries where they go first, then they move on. But they don't come in with an intent to go to Europe. It's along that pathway if they cannot get support. That is certainly the lesson of Syria and the movement of Syrians when that crisis started.

22:10The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:They first settled in the surrounding countries. And they started moving to Europe when the pressures on them in those countries became too great. And the countries themselves either lost political will or lost capacity to manage those populations. So that's the first lesson is, you know, this is not about people tend to think about movements of people. Everybody wants to come into Europe. Everyone wants to come into the U.S. That's actually not our experience. Most people want to stay as close to home as possible. And they only keep moving when things become so bad in the first country of destination that they can't really make a life for themselves.

22:56Amy Pope:So that's Afghans going to Pakistan or Iran or Venezuelans in Colombia or other South American countries, I suppose Syrians in Turkey or something, who start there and then eventually end up in Europe or the U.S. or other wealthy countries? Right.

23:12The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:So you look at, just take the COVID days, and most of the Venezuelans had gone to places like Colombia, they're in Peru and Ecuador, in surrounding countries. COVID stressed those economies significantly, much, much more than the U.S. economy. That created pressures on their services and the ability for those communities to support even their own nationals became strained. And so then the pressure to also support Venezuelans became strained. So if I were to advise, sort of seeing what we see now, if I were to advise a government in the sort of early COVID days, I would have said, actually look at what we can do to support those countries in the region first, because they're really hurting.

24:01The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:Their politics are now spinning out because of this. Can you provide capacity around healthcare, around schooling, around job training and help take off the burden? Because those communities actually started out as very welcoming of Venezuelans. And it was the pressures, especially the economic pressures post COVID that, that led to some of this backlash.

24:25Amy Pope:I have to think, hearing you say this, that given the crisis in the multilateral system, all these problems are going to get worse rather than better, at least in the near term, with UN funding crises and collapses in development assistance, not just from the US, but from European and other wealthy countries as well. That just seems like a challenging situation for poor countries that are trying to manage these flows from their neighbors.

24:44The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:We're seeing it firsthand. I mean, I was just in Libya within the last couple months, and the number of Sudanese showing up in Libya, it's doubled. The number of Sudanese who are now getting on boats to the Mediterranean is going up. And it's because they're not finding support. Much of that early humanitarian support is gone. We're also seeing it with the number of Somalis who are on the move. Traditionally, Somalis, we've not seen high numbers of Somalis come. We've seen an increase in Somalis. And again, it's correlation, not causation. So I want to be careful that I don't draw too straight a line.

25:19The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:But what we're hearing when we speak to those migrants is that they're not finding support in the countries that they first go to, reflecting the fact that much of that support has come down. So it is, again, I certainly understand the political calculations that governments are making, but we are cautioning them that you can't take your eye off where the movements of people are actually happening and the value of engaging closer to that center, both from a financial point of view, but also in terms of a saving lives point of view.

25:55Amy Pope:We'll be back after a short break. What if you could explore places in the news like a reporter does? I'm Nicholas Wood, a former journalist with the New York Times and BBC. And 16 years ago, I created the travel company Political Tours. Our small groups are led by top correspondents around the world. In the next few months, we're off to Mexico, followed by South Africa, Japan and the French presidential elections. Come and join us. Go to politicaltours.com. That's politicaltours.com.

26:56The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:www.feyondependenthq.com

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27:27Amy Pope:And now back to my conversation with Amy Pope. So you write in the essay, you're in the foreign affairs essay, quote, states that focus on border restrictions, mass deportations, or the abrogation of legal protections for asylum seekers will fail to solve the problem. They will simply redirect it while creating a new host of problems that will, in the long term, feed the problem rather than solve it. if we look at the U.S. crackdown today, which is front of mind for many people and perhaps the most pronounced version of this, it does seem to be working on its own terms. And you can criticize the cruelty and the objectives and everything else, but it has slowed flows quite dramatically and has resulted on large numbers of migrants leaving the United States.

28:06Amy Pope:Again, that may be a bad thing, but it's certainly worked on its own terms. How do you understand the effects of that in the short term? And if it's in fact true that we'll see long-term costs from that? What do you anticipate those will be?

28:16The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:So no question that the very, very enforcement minded policies we're seeing are slowing the movements of people. And we're actually seeing people moving in the other direction. That is in the short term. There's no question that that's going on. But then, OK, you take a bigger view and you look at the American economy and where there are sectors where there have been insufficient numbers of Americans who can take the jobs. Agricultural sector is probably the most obvious one, and we see it in many, many economies, not just the American economy, where you do not have nationals. I don't care what you pay them, you do not have nationals who are willing to go and work in the fields.

29:00The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:At some point, the demand for those jobs is going to increase and it's going to create a pressure in the system. that demand will fuel effectively irregular smuggling routes because either we just decide we're not going to have strawberries or tomatoes for the American public or the pressures to get the workers to do that work are going to grow so much. And if they cannot go through a safe and legal channel, they'll come other ways. And this has played out in the United States for many, many years. So you just look at the evidence of how smugglers exploit those pathways. And then, of course, the downside of that is when people are coming through smuggled routes, when they're coming and working in the black market, it then depresses wages.

29:46The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:It then creates conditions where people are more likely to be exploited and trafficked. It then creates effectively an off-the-books economy that becomes much more difficult to control. So that's what we're feeling because the demand for that labor isn't going away. And in many economies, the demand for the labor is increasing and it has to be fed somewhere. So that's an important piece that states need to grapple with. And of course, there will be changes. There will be efficiencies that are driven by AI, but there are some jobs where AI is nowhere close to being able to deliver, especially in healthcare and in the service economy in agriculture and construction.

30:31The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:You can get efficiencies on the margins, but not to deliver at scale and not to meet the demand.

30:37Amy Pope:You note that in the U.S. case, you know, this in the piece, that 5 % of the overall workforce is undocumented. And in sectors like agriculture, it's something like 70%, which, you know, we all have a sense of that. But those numbers were quite striking when you gathered them all together in the piece. You know, you mentioned being in Libya, there's been this proliferation of third-party post-country solutions to migration crises where one country will pay another to basically take migrants that are not in fact from there. How widespread is this? And do you see this as part of the solution or purely a kind of danger to the well-being of these people and to the viability of a system?

31:17The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:It's kind of a mixed reaction. So we are not seeing the widespread use of the return of what we call third country nationals to countries. There is a legitimate issue that states are trying to address, and that is when there is a person who's come in who does not qualify for refugee status. So take an Afghan, for example, fleeing maybe terrible circumstances at home, economic pressures, the impact of drought, the impact of the Taliban, all the things we know are happening, but they do not qualify to get asylum in a country. What do you do with that person? And right now, states are grappling with, well, we have an order that the court has decided they don't have a right to stay in our country, but they can't go back to Afghanistan.

32:09The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:So does that mean we just kind of live in this limbo? So there's a problem that states are trying to solve around where can or should people go in those circumstances. So that's not widespread, but I certainly see many states grappling with it and trying to come up with some new ways of addressing it. The bigger issue is the return of migrants to parts of the world where they have no connection at all. They don't speak the language. They have no hope of getting a job. They're going into a situation where the capacity of the local government is very, very weak. And you actually risk creating some conflicts within that country and creating negative dynamics and negative pressures.

32:58So returning

33:00The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:persons from Latin America to some small state in sub-Saharan Africa with nothing, for that particular person, it creates a vulnerability. For the country that is receiving the migrant, they often don't know what to do. They don't know how to integrate this person. And so you're kind of just moving the problem somewhere else. So we're encouraging states, okay, we understand the need to come up with some innovative solutions here, but let's think through the consequences and let's think through how do you mitigate those consequences.

33:34Amy Pope:When you look at economies that need migrant labor and where you see the scope for a more kind of rational and mutually advantageous approach to this. I think what comes to mind for many people is the Gulf countries where you have huge numbers of migrant laborers and small numbers of actual citizens in many cases. That model has a lot of problems with exploitation and abuse and everything else. There are people though, and the economist Lamp Pritchett is one who comes to mind and he's written about this in our pages, who argue that that is in fact at least the kind of basis for a more sensible system that would be better for both wealthy economies and for migrants.

34:13Amy Pope:Do you see that as having the kind of seeds of anything useful? Is that a model that others should be pursuing, even with more kind of protections built into it?

34:22The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:It's really important that we underscore the more protections built into it, right, Peace? Because I do think, and long within immigration advocacy communities, there has been suspicion of temporary worker programs and a perception that they're just a channel to get cheap labor. in a channel to exploit your workers and then send them back home. But what we know from speaking to so many of the migrants that we serve, many, many, many, many of those migrants just want a job and they very much want to be able to go home, but because they're in illegal or informal or irregular status, they're actually afraid to go home because the costs of coming back to get a job the next season become too high or too dangerous.

35:07The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:So they end up staying in a country when they actually had no intention to stay in the country. And that to me suggests that there is something to this issue of temporary labor. And if you can build it in a way where you have meaningful protections around wages, on worksite enforcement, and opportunities for people to report, whether they're being trafficked, you can actually build something better. So if you look at the Gulf countries, they rely almost entirely on a foreign workforce. Something like 80 % in some of the countries are foreign workers. They've had to make some adjustments, including getting rid of the kafala system, getting rid of a system where the migrant basically has no rights at all because of pretty serious concerns about the treatment of workers.

35:59The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:But the concept, and again, I've spoken to so many migrants who say, well, look, I just want a job. I have nothing available to me at home. So we need to kind of break open some traditional notions of what it means to work and how you work in today's economy. And I think not be constrained by an orthodoxy here. take some lessons from what's working in different parts of the world, improve on it, build on it. And I think ultimately that will lead to better outcomes. I want to just sit for a moment with an example that we're seeing play out right now in real time, which is Bangladeshis who are now showing up in very, very high numbers in Libya and are the highest number proportionately of irregular migrants going into Europe.

36:47The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:So they're about 16 % of all arrivals now into Europe are coming from Bangladesh. And it's an increase of 59 % from last year.

36:55Amy Pope:And this is spurred by the political crisis in Bangladesh? Is that the cause of it? No, it's not.

37:00The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:It's not connected to the political crisis. And it's almost entirely young men and young men whose families are raising funds to send them abroad. So what we're hearing is the cost of coming from Bangladesh into Europe can be something like$10 ,000. Families will sell property, they'll sell whatever goods they have, they basically will have kind of fundraising drives, you know, informally to then invest in this young person. Many are first going into Gulf countries, and then leaving to go through Egypt, find their way to Libya. And without exception, that group of people is looking to go across the Mediterranean and into Europe to work.

37:44The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:This is not a question of people who are fleeing conflict or violence. These are people who are looking for a job opportunity. This is their fastest way.

37:51Amy Pope:And what caused that spike, if not the crisis? What is our theory about what drove that?

37:55The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:So the theory is that it has been happening in slow movements over the last couple of years. And what we're hearing from the migrants themselves is that once you see a group of people go and set up and you know you can do it and you have, you know, a friend of a friend or a cousin or whatever, it then fuels more people to go. And in fact, some of the patterns we're seeing is that people are coming from some of the same parts of Bangladesh and they're very often telling very similar stories of poverty, lack of opportunity, impacts of drought, lack of, you know, or flooding or, you know, there's just, There's no future for them.

38:32The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:What I see is interesting right now, countries like Germany and Italy are signing agreements with Bangladesh. And in exchange for a certain number of worker visas and in exchange for investment and technical training for their nationals, the Bangladeshis are then agreeing to help facilitate the returns of the irregular migrants. So that is quite promising to me because what we know from our conversations with the government in Bangladesh is they're highly reliant on remittances. They have young population without job opportunities. They very much want to work. They're not necessarily looking for permanent resettlement.

39:12The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:And if they could go through a visa, a legal channel, these are not the poorest of the poor. They have enough of a means to scrape together thousands of dollars to pay a smuggler. So if they could find a way toward a better job opportunity, they're all in.

39:32Amy Pope:You note in the piece that this anti-immigration wave is coinciding with a global demographic crisis, especially in rich countries. We all have heard plenty about dropping global fertility rates, but when you look especially at East Asia, the numbers are just staggering. You note in the The essay that by 2050, nearly 40 % of the population in Japan and South Korea will be over the age of 65. Lots of Europe will have similarly quickly aging populations. Do you see shifts in the politics of migration, especially in East Asia, which is historically being quite restrictive, but where the demographic pressures are becoming quite acute?

40:08The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:I see different countries with very different experiences. South Korea itself has taken a much more forward-leaning posture. We work with them to set up visa processing centers, for example, in Central Asia, places where they have Korean diaspora, for example. They're investing in language training. They're investing in skills training in certain communities with an eye toward creating a pathway for people to come and work in Korea. Japan, it's been much more challenging. And much of it is around culture and identity and language. And they've experienced a backlash even to government policies where they've looked to be more forward-leaning or find pathways for people to work in Japan.

40:53The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:And so they've had a much, much harder time figuring out how to meet their demographic crisis. Now, it's hard to break down why one society is able to move forward with more forward-leaning policy than another. There are lots of different factors coming into play, but it can be very culturally specific. And it's also how the issue is being used within political circles.

41:19Amy Pope:Do you have conversations with the Chinese government about these questions?

41:23The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:we do although the chinese government isn't asking for support in how to address what will be their own demographic challenges they're more looking at how do we build capacity to work in other parts of the world where china has manufacturing or china has operations or you know So they're looking at how do we train a workforce outside of China. They're not coming to us to talk about how do we manage demographics in China.

41:57Amy Pope:We tend to focus on relatively wealthy countries and governments and having this conversation. As you look across the global South, especially in many of the countries that are dealing with the greatest numbers of migrants from neighboring states, do you see innovative solutions or interesting political developments there?

42:14The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:Yeah, I mean, this is why I love working for this organization. because actually we have the opportunity to kind of pull out and look at where we might have opportunities to work with governments. Interestingly, there are several countries within the Caribbean that have workforce shortages themselves and are very actively looking at how do we attract the workforce to come and help our demands. Likewise, you see in many of the South American countries, countries like Uruguay is also an aging population, countries, even where they have some more challenging political dynamics, they still have to attract a vibrant workforce.

42:58Places like Brazil has been open and interested in attracting

43:02The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:the workforce. Even in Mexico itself, they had a million jobs that went unfilled last year. So In the Pacific Islands, we're seeing, with cooperation with Australia, New Zealand, about attracting talent from the Pacific Islands to work in their countries, they're also talking to countries like Bangladesh about attracting a workforce. In Africa itself, in East Africa, you see really vibrant economic development. Parts of Southern Africa, you likewise are seeing that there's a need for certain skills that they don't have. even in Cote d 'Ivoire and in Senegal, their finance ministers have said to us, look, we have gaps in vocational workers.

43:46The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:So it's actually, this is where I think it's really interesting. We're not talking about every migrant should go to Europe or the US. That actually isn't the answer and that's not good for development as a whole. But there are these pockets where migration is needed and countries are trying to figure out how do we attract the workforce we need. And working with them to develop it would be a very good use of resources.

44:13Amy Pope:It's fascinating to me that you work for a multilateral organization, you're part of the international system, and yet you're talking to governments about issues that have these kind of economic and technocratic dimensions, but also get at these very delicate, sensitive questions of identity and race and culture and everything else. How do you navigate those dimensions of it as you're working with different governments? I know it's very, very different state by state, But I imagine that must be a complicated part of this job that in some ways is just a very, very different set of questions than most of what we've been talking about today.

44:46The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:Well, I mean, first of all, is you have to take seriously their concerns. And I know sometimes the language around migration can be quite polarized and people will throw around terms like xenophobia or racism. Really, actually, there's something more fundamental at stake. And it is important to hear that from states and understand what's at play and figure out if there are ways to address it. Just an interesting anecdote from some of our work in Japan, there was some effort to attract Japanese diaspora who had lived and worked in South America, who'd grown up in South America. You know there's a big diaspora community there.

45:30The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:There was a very poor fit when some of that diaspora came to work in Japan because they were perceived as too loud and not respectful of the culture and kept different hours. So those are real issues. And if you lose the support of a community, then you lose the debate. So I think it's important not to shy away from those issues. The way to address them, it really requires a level of engagement across different parts of a society that are not typically engaged. So we tend to think about migration. You just tend to think about the Department of Homeland Security or Home Affairs or Interior Ministers.

46:12The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:That is one teeny tiny piece of this equation. And you really need to be looking at what's happening within communities. are these migrant communities supported? Are the faith communities involved? Do the kids have access to schools? What's the access in terms of hospitals? All of that. And governments don't typically look at that. And I think both in Canada and Australia, they had some issues because there were housing crunches and a lack of access to services that really frustrated the population and then undermine some of their migration policies. So, you know, our goal is just to, is first and foremost to share what we know and to give the examples of what's working, what's not working to, in some cases, we provide solutions.

47:02The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:You know, we do things like run mobile health clinics for migrants, but they're also available to other community members, right? Or we'll do things like add additional capacity to provide support for young people or kids or schooling. I mean, things that just help take a little bit of the pressure off of the local community that's hosting a lot of migrants. And I don't want to pretend it's easy. It's not easy and it's not something that any UN entity is going to solve. It's really going to, it takes a lot more than that. It takes a lot of buy-in of community members. But that for me is what makes it so interesting.

47:40The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:This is not a straightforward problem, right? It's not a challenge that has, okay, we just do this or that. It really requires kind of some really lateral thinking.

47:51Amy Pope:As you look at the incredibly fraught and difficult U.S. situation right now, are there lessons from other governments, whether developed states or developing states, that you think the U.S. should be trying to employ at this point?

48:07The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:Depends what their goal is, ultimately. And that is not entirely clear. And there is a tension you see even playing in the U.S. between the demand of the private sector, the demand of business, and the concerns about migrants and migrant integration and irregular migration. And there needs to be a clearly articulated objective, and then we can identify what strategies might work. Obviously, in smaller states, it's easier to come up with solutions because their populations are smaller and it's easier to put your arms around what the options are. But the beauty of the United States is that it's large, it's diverse.

48:57The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:You have communities that need migrants. You have communities that don't need migrants. You have communities where the churches are very actively involved and welcoming. I mean, that is the interesting thing about working in the U.S. is that actually you can create solutions that respond to whatever pressures are being seen in the community. But the U.S. first has to articulate what it's trying to achieve.

49:23Amy Pope:I want to make sure we turn to some of the solutions and prescriptions in the piece before we close. there's a paradox when you try to get to the forward-looking part of this in the essay where you note that revising the refugee convention to expand access and protection, as you put it, is a political non-starter just given where things are. And yet, quoting you, without a modernized approach to the movement of asylum seekers, increasingly negative public perception of immigration may cause governments to chip away at these protections. Given that paradox, what are the kind of near-term policy options?

49:57Amy Pope:And then looking a bit further ahead, what does a new system look like to the extent you have kind of pieces of that in mind? What might those be?

50:06The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:So first of all, I think governments need to take a hard look at what their labor market needs are. Because unless you are very honest about that and honest about capacity that you have within your existing national system, you're not going to solve the problem. You'll always create a demand that's being, if you don't have the proper channels for it to be filled, will be filled with other mechanisms. So it's first, let's look at what you need. Second, let's look at the policies that you have to meet those labor market needs. And migration is one piece. It could be other pieces, right? It could be let's get more women in the workforce.

50:41The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:It could be let's extend the retirement age. It could be, you know, it's all sorts of things. But migration for many countries is a necessary piece of that puzzle. and it needs to be built into the system. Then I actually think we should be looking at populations where people are coming from and identifying what are the particular drivers in those communities. And you have a range of policy options to respond. There'll be some subset of those populations who could actually help fill those labor market needs, right? People who could, in some cases, it's lower skilled work. They don't need training.

51:21The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:It's just about making sure you have a proper way to get a visa to go and work in that sector. And we see that there is very high compliance rates with those visas with migrant communities because they have a vested interest in being able to come back. I've seen it, for example, the UK has an agricultural program where it's drawing from Central Asia, high compliance rates with that agricultural program because the Central Asians want to be able to go back the next season and they're making good money. They're learning practices. They're investing that money back home and it's kind of win-win.

51:55Amy Pope:High compliance meaning when people leave when they're supposed to leave?

51:58The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:They leave when they're supposed to leave. They get their proper documents. They complete whatever checks they need to pay. The employers are following the rules because the employers want to be able to keep bringing them in. So there's a lot of incentive for people to work within those systems when they're working. So some population you'll want to recruit to go and work in some of those underserved communities in the destination country. The other piece though, is how do we think about building out regional economies and how do we use the lack of opportunity in a home state to help meet some of the labor market needs in the surrounding states.

52:37The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:And there are so many examples of states that are looking for migration. If I look, for example, right now in many of the states in Central Asia, in the states that are adjacent to the EU, some of the EU accession countries, the Balkans, they have pretty serious labor market needs and they don't necessarily have the way to fill them yet. And they've lost a lot of their talented nationals to go and work in Europe. And so they're trying to figure out, well, how do we attract and retain labor? Again, it's not just about the US. It's not just about Europe. It's about thinking broadly, all these economies that are evolving and how do we enable them to attract labor?

53:16The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:Because as I said, most people move first in their region. Most people want to stay in their region. So let's figure out how to make the East African community function more properly. How do we take advantage of what's happening in the ASEAN country so that people can move? How do we take lessons from what's happening in the Gulf so that people move more safely and with protections? And then you actually link, and this is the part that doesn't happen now, but I believe should happen. You actually link some of your development assistance to creating the skills and opportunities for people to move.

53:55The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:And you do so in a way so that you name the sector where there's insufficient skills. Okay, let's train nurses in this country and then enough nurses who can work in the UK, but also can work in the region. So you link it. And then when people go back home, after they've worked in whatever sector, then you help them invest that money into creating jobs in their own economy. And we see lots of little examples of where this is working already. And so it suggests that if we were to create a model where we start to link these different pieces together, we actually could come up with something better.

54:35The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:And ultimately what we want to do is protect the asylum system for those people for whom it was originally designed, for those who cannot find safety at home or at risk of persecution, whose lives are being threatened because of who they are. And we'd see, I suspect, those numbers go way, way, way, way down.

54:56Amy Pope:If we don't manage to fix a system, if we don't see the political will to embrace some of these solutions and the system continues to decay and the backlash continues, what are the consequences of that over the medium term?

55:08The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:Well, people are people. And people will do what people have done since the dawn of human civilization. They move. And if you are not safe, if you don't have a way to feed your children, if you don't foresee a future for yourself, people move. And we see it all the time. People are moving and they're moving whatever way they can move. So this isn't a question of whether people will move. It's a question of how they move. Do they move through the hands of smugglers? Do they move in the shadows? Do they move in extremely dangerous and exploitative ways? or do they move in ways that people can have a better sense of who they are and where they're going and connecting people and opportunities.

55:54The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:So the fact that people will move is not something we're going to be able to control. No one's ever been able to truly, truly control that movement. So it's really politically, from a human rights point of view, from a development point of view, it's really in our interest to come up with a better way of responding to and managing that movement.

56:18Amy Pope:Amy, that's a good note to end on. Thank you for doing this today. Thanks for the wonderful piece. It was exactly right for the moment a year ago and continues to be incredibly relevant to what we're seeing in the U.S. and globally. So really appreciate that.

56:31The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:Pleasure. Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Thank you for listening.

56:40Amy Pope:You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show at foreignaffairs.com. This episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Rose Kohler and Kanesh Klerur. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Irina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.

57:26The Foreign Affairs Interview Host:We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview. you. Don't forget to visit foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight to sign up for Dan Kurtz-Valen's free weekly newsletter featuring more of the clear-headed analysis that you enjoy here on the podcast. Sign up today at foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight.