Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau at the Panel “Global Refugee Asylum System: What Went Wrong and How to Fix It”

DEPUTY SECRETARY LANDAU: Thank you, Spencer. Is this working? Yeah. Welcome, everyone. Thank you very much for joining us for this event. I have to say I think this is a very important topic.

Migration, I think, is going to be one of the defining topics of the 21st century, whether we like it or not. It was, in some ways, a defining topic of the 20th century as well. There were massive population shifts in the 20th century. And the United Nations actually played a role in that, usually in creating international mechanisms to assist migratory flows, to help nations create asylum and refugee systems.

I mean, let’s not forget this organization arose from the ashes of World War II, and one of the lessons of World War II is that countries felt that they had dropped the ball in not giving protection to people who were stranded in Nazi Germany and in the Axis powers, and who were persecuted. So many countries around the world – including my own country, the United States – established a legal framework in the late 1940s, around the same time this organization was created, to create a refugee or an asylum program under our domestic law.

We also, of course, have a completely separate and quite complicated, reticulated system of immigration laws. So, I think one of the points that I wanted to start with is that we’re talking really about two distinct issues that often get conflated. One is immigration. Each sovereign country can set its own procedures for immigration, and immigration – immigrants can be welcomed for many reasons – economic, you might want to improve a technology sector, you might need labor in your country. That really varies country to country.

Again, asylum status was always meant to be a much smaller subset of that. And I can speak to our domestic law – again, every country was going to have its own domestic laws. And I should say, by the way, we haven’t coordinated this on this panel, so we might have different views on this. And so I am speaking here for the United States, for myself. And I think one of the great things here is that we have a chance to have a conversation and talk about these things.

But in our law, in order to qualify for refugee status or asylum status, you need to have a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of certain enumerated statutory characteristics – in a sense, responded to the problem we saw in World War II – the basis of religion, race, political opinion. But it was not generally meant to be something to supplant the migration laws, right? Economic privation is not a basis for asylum.

That might be a basis for migration, but this was meant to be, in a sense, a separate asterisk to the asylum laws, that basically when there are some people who are really at such risk, imminent risk, of harm on the basis of these narrow, defined, protected categories, we will allow them into our country outside the scope of our migration laws, kind of as any port in a storm, right. If they were not allowed immediately to get out of their country, they face almost certain injury or death, right. And so we have those laws.

Again, that is a very noble concept, and I think the UN promoted international standards for refugees, has continued to do that. So, I think the UN has been instrumental in setting up these kinds of refugee or asylum systems all around the world, and in facilitating migration to some extent.

I think now in the year 2025 – we’re a quarter of the way through the 21st century – we take a step back and we see that there are massive migratory flows taking place, and a lot of times massive amounts of people are claiming asylum. In our system at least, when these claims get adjudicated, 90-plus percent of people are found not to be eligible for asylum. And we all know this kind of abuse is happening, frankly. And people who are economic migrants are coming in, in our country, saying that they are – that they should be given asylum. Our problem is when you have hundreds of thousands of people who arrive all at once and claim this, that really requires an individualized adjudication.

So now, we are in a sense saying, okay, well, please, you take a number and we will be back for your individualized interview in six years. And in the meantime, people can live in our country legally. They can start – they might get married. They can work. And so in a sense the migration – the asylum system has become a huge loophole in our migration laws. And we just have to be realistic about this, right? And I think the UN has a responsibility – just as it was instrumental, I think, in encouraging countries to adopt these kind of laws, I think we have to be realistic that these laws are now being abused. And we have to just acknowledge that.

I think the first step in dealing with any pathology is to acknowledge you have a problem. I think this is, again, not just a United States problem. We’re seeing this all over the world. That is not to say, frankly, that there are not real asylum seekers. But I think, frankly, if you have hundreds of thousands of fake asylum seekers, what happens to the real asylum seekers? They get lost in the midst of a massive bureaucratic process.

So, I think it behooves those who really are concerned about the plight of the real asylum seekers in the world to have an international order that accepts the fact that we should discourage people from abusing this process. And saying that you are – saying that the process is susceptible to abuse is not being xenophobic, it is not being a mean or bad person. It is just saying this is not the purpose for which this limited exception was created. And I think – I hope very much, the United States hopes, that this is part of the international agenda or else basically the asylum system will serve as a mechanism to make mass illegal migration legal. And that won’t last for long. What you’re going to see is you’re going to see countries saying, okay, we’re not going to have an asylum system at all.

So, for those of us who believe that asylum can play, as it was initially intended, a valuable role, I think this should be a top international priority to recognize the need to revisit the asylum system in the 21st century.

I think in our view there are five critical principles that the United States would like to put on the table that we see as kind of the basis of, hopefully, an emerging consensus.

First, that every nation ultimately has the right to control its own borders. That’s what it means to be a sovereign nation, to say: We get to decide who comes in and under what circumstances and for how long they get to come in. That is an – the quintessential element of sovereignty.

Second, there is no right to immigrate or to receive asylum or refugee status in the country of an individual’s choice. I mean, sometimes we see people who leave one country and traverse maybe a dozen countries to get to another country, right? And that defies the image of any port, any safe harbor in a storm, right? I mean, that makes it look like it’s no longer trying to avoid imminent injury or death, it makes it look like it’s just a substitute for migration. Hey, I want to go to live in this country. And so again, I think that is not – the basis of asylum, again, is to give someone shelter from immediate injury or death on the basis of certain kinds of characteristics – not, again, to just facilitate mass migration.

Third, refugee status is temporary, not permanent. We should reject the presumption that recognition of being a refugee is just another form of migration. Again, if the idea is it’s any port in a storm, then when the storm is over the presumption should be, okay, we’ve given you the shelter in a storm, but now the understanding is you should go back to your country. Again, for us these are kind of common sense principles, and I think are valuable to prevent the people who are asylum seekers from being subject to abuse and, frankly, from abusing the system.

I was meeting the other day with an ambassador in Washington. We were talking about some of the abuse of the asylum system, and he was laughing. And he told me he was in an Uber the other day and there was a guy from his country there driving the Uber. He says, “What are you doing here?” And the guy says, “I have asylum here.” And this guy, meanwhile, had actually flown back to his country to visit his family, and this is a country from which he sought asylum. Frankly, I didn’t even know that was possible to return to the country from which you’re seeking asylum, go on a holiday, and then come back to the United States.

I mean, we just have to be realistic. Like, these things are happening. And especially I know there’s those of you in this room who are big believers in an asylum system. But if you want to have an asylum system, please do not feel that you need to defend the abuses of the system. Please try to find common ground among all of us on ways that the asylum system can actually fulfill the purpose for which it is meant to serve and does not become a fig leaf in a sense for just ordinary economic migration.

I will just wrap up now, but I think it’s important, again, to emphasize that ultimately sovereign states and not transnational bodies must be making the determination whether the conditions in a country of origin permit return. And finally, every country – and this is, I think, just a basic of international law – must agree to accept expeditiously the return of its nationals.

So in concluding, let me just say I read an article the other day that Greece enacted a new law – again, this is an issue all over the world; it’s not just in our country – that said asylum seekers whose claim is rejected in the judicial system of Greece, or whatever special asylum system they have, have to return within 14 days. And then I saw statements condemning that as illegal. I thought, well, what was the purpose of having an asylum hearing if the person loses and it says you’re not entitled to rejection? Of course the person should have to go home. I mean, if the person is allowed to stay in Greece even if their asylum – as an asylum seeker even if their asylum claim is rejected, then was the whole thing just a farce? I mean, we have to have certain understandings that, yes, you come because you are – presumably you have a well-founded fear of persecution on these grounds. You explain what it is. There is a prompt adjudication, and then you abide by the results of that adjudication.

But really, I am very grateful to our co-panelists for being in this forum to discuss their perspectives on migration and asylum, which I think are going to vary among all of us. But really, I think as the beginning of a serious international conversation that I think we have to recognize that the asylum system around the world has been subject to abuse if in fact we want to save the asylum system itself.

Thank you very much.