The Ukraine Crisis

In this episode we discuss the crisis in Ukraine from Russia's invasion and what to expect from the Biden administration's use of Temporary Protected Status.

Show Notes

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Spencer:
All right hello everyone welcome back to another episode of fair's understanding immigration podcast I’m your host this week spencer raley fair’s director of research and I am accompanied by jason piña also of our research department so continuing the theme of the biden administration so far it's a new month so we of course have a new crisis to go with that and unless you've been living under a rock you know by now that russia has invaded ukraine and as of this recording the situation continues to rage on and just get worse and worse at this point ukraine has been able to keep control of kyiv the country's capital but it's really doubtful that they can hold the city for any real length of time without significant outside support especially now that we see that russia is clamping down on the city just with convoys that are tens of miles long at this point it just it turns into a numbers game eventually you know can the can ukraine hold out destroy supply lines and you know just hold out long enough until morale among the russian troops are you know get really declines and and they give up on the process or is russia gonna be overwhelmed before that so of course there's real no clear picture of how this is going to unfold even by the time we publish this this podcast and we can honestly sit here all day and discuss why this conflict developed what could have been done to prevent it and whether the weak sanctions advocated by the bi-administration will ever have any impact whatsoever but we are an immigration focused organization so we want to have a quick discussion today about the immigration related implications both already realized and potential that this conflict is going to have on the united states and kind of the global scale in general so like most wars like occurs in most conflicts the ukraine conflict has already caused many people to flee their country as of march 2nd the UN has estimated that more than 800,000 people have fled their homes and millions more could leave if the situation isn't resolved soon the vast majority of these individuals are going to neighboring countries particularly poland some are going to romania some to other neighboring countries some of the russian sympathizers have actually gone to russia albeit that's a very very small amount less than I think believe less than 5 at this point which kind of adds credence to the idea that most of these individuals do not want to be a part of russia if you're going to run away temporarily you're going to go to whatever country is most welcoming of your views on that topic however even in the best case scenario if this all were to wrap up and end in a couple of days somehow and you know putin goes back to russia withdraws his forces gives all the land that has been occupied so far back to ukraine you're still talking about needing a significant amount of time to just repair and rebuild in addition to you know bringing putting the country back on its feet so that means that millions will likely remain displaced for at a minimum at least a few months if not longer so either way whether this is dragged out for months or it ends tomorrow there is going to be a significant refugee issue that results from this conflict so jason I want to go ahead and turn to you and have you discuss just the broad implications of this a little bit especially how many how many ukrainians are currently in the united states and what is being discussed to assist that population namely those ukrainians that are here in short-term visas that may be expiring and which would of course require them to go back to the country in the middle of a conflict what are we what could we do to help them and what does that demographic look like right now

Jason:
it's good to be here spencer no it's definitely there's a lot going on right now so some quick fast facts so right here in the united states we have 355,000 ukraine born individuals in the united states of those 259,000 are naturalized u.s. citizens we have another cohort of 96,000 that are not us citizens when we're looking about what we can do to help the ukrainian the foreign-born population here in the united states we see that 30 more than 30,000 are here on some sort of temporary non-immigrant visa that said a lot of people have been talking about giving ukraine a TPS designation now for our audience who are unfamiliar or who need a refresher TPS stands for temporary protected status what this program entails is it allows individuals of a designated country who are here on expiring visas or who are here unlawfully to essentially not be deported back to their home country if their country is going through some sort of natural disaster epidemic or in this case an armed conflict you know and as fair has chronicled for many many years that this program while it's well-intentioned there are many issues surrounding it and we want to make sure that not only are we helping the ukrainians who are here in the united states but we also have to make sure that our immigration laws are in place to where they're not being taken advantage of and that there aren't any adverse effects for the american people

Spencer:
right absolutely and situations like this are what TPS was designed to address right however many I’m sure many of our listeners are skeptical about any implementation of TPS or deferred deportation parole anything like that and right and honestly rightly so if you look at the history of TPS like you alluded to jason there's there's nothing temporary about in fact we like to joke that it's a temporarily permanent program [Laughter] which even in situations where natural disasters in countries like you had in central america and they individuals from venezuela honduras other places got TPS when the trump administration tried to end some of these TPS programs he was sued for it and at this point a lot of those countries were still facing economic struggles you know they don't have strong economies they have corrupt politicians but none of those particular situations would make the temporary residents of the united states eligible for TPS economic economic trouble is it does not qualify however like we've seen these programs are typically renewed in in 18-month intervals right in perpetuity so this is one of these situations where while of course forcing individuals to go back to a country that's in the middle of an intense war is quite arguably an inhumane thing to do it's also unfair to the american people who are dealing with right now the worst border crisis in the history of this nation to expect the u.s. to absorb potentially hundreds of thousands of more permanent migrants during a time when our labor market is condensed we're recovering from a global pandemic and we quite frankly don't have a handle on our own borders so obviously any kind of relief we offer to individuals who are obviously in a get difficult time right now needs to be put in place in the proper manner so jason if the united states were to offer some kind of TPS or deferred enforce deferred enforced departure program or something like that for ukrainians in this country what should that program look like and ideally how could we use that as a template to reform these programs going forward

Jason:
of course spencer so as we just discussed TPS every virtually every designation that has been placed on on the on whichever country it just seems both administrations whether it be republican or democratic just seem to want to renew it at the end of at the e at the end of each period right what an ideal situation for TPS would be is and again ukraine could be the model example going forward if it turns out to be successful what could happen is once this armed conflict ends and there is some semblance of the ukrainian government being able to get a hold of the right resources get the right infrastructure in place so to speak for their countrymen to return home that would be ideal what we were constantly seeing is for example when the earthquake hit el salvador in 2001 obviously it was it was a rough time for salvadorans to go back to their country of origin however we are now in 2022 and that designation is still going

Spencer:
it's still going on this is a situation where yeah right after the earthquake occurred it made sense you don't want to send people into a dangerous situation that could literally cost them their lives just because their visa expired in the united states well how long does it take for that not to be a dangerous situation anymore of course individuals keep saying well the economy's not right there I mean there has to be there has to be definite protocols put in place whether that is okay power has been restored potentially or even just saying three months you all have three months to figure out how to go home and and work through the situation or in the case of ukraine it would have to be something like the end of armed conflict and you know power being restored to 80 or more of the country or something like that right instead of just saying it'll be open-ended and we'll just keep renewing it until we feel like it because again what that ends up doing is just kind of becomes a de facto amnesty and then people get settled into the united states they live here for 10 years and then it looks really bad if you try to to send them back home even though the status they had was never intended to be anything more than just a short-term bridge to get the country in a slightly more stable place so these individuals can go home and not risk their lives by doing so

Jason:
exactly no I mean there has to be a moment whether it be the bite administration or any subsequent administrations we need to take a long sober look at okay is the armed conflict legitimately over because what what happens more often than not we have the open borders lobby who will say well you know el salvador has high crime rates or honduras they just got hit with like a somewhat somewhat devastating storm or what have you there's always some excuse as to why we cannot end these designations I think going forward if this armed conflict ends under the administration they have the opportunity to set the basically set the groundwork for what future designations could be right so if and when this armed conflict is over under their watch they can analyze the situation and say okay listen there's clearly a stable government here in ukraine there are the conditions you don't have the the hostility and the threat of russian insurgents coming in here and threatening the lives of ukrainians right now is the time to return you know and again this is how it should be with TPS again if we were to if every country if every illegal immigrant here in the united states couldn't go back to their country because of economic public safety reasons then virtually every every

Spencer:
right you would have literally billions of people in the united states at this point because I mean again as you alluded to the open borders lobbies essentially with these other situations like honduras or el salvador anywhere else that has had a TPS status in the past making the argument of well life isn't perfect there right now therefore these individuals shouldn't be or even life isn't as good there as it is in the united states therefore these individuals should not be required to go home that's true for most countries the vast majority of the people on this planet come to the united states because they're trying to get away from less favorable conditions in their own country TPS is not designed for that it is designed to get them past an initial situation that is gravely life-threatening and once you get past that situations may not be perfect in your home country but that does not give them the right to stay in the united states and definitely we cannot be the welfare system for the entire world right so yeah that has to be that has to be permanently established a hard deadline once these criteria are met the program is over I mean and if something else happens it's unrelated like we keep seeing in these central american countries well then you would need to go through a new designation of TPS see if require see if it can be passed etc instead of just you know indefinitely renewing the old program so ideally if such a such a reform took place it would help end some of these perpetual TPS programs that have been going on for decades now right while opening the door obviously to assist some of these individuals who are in legitimately life-threatening situations of course in addition to that it is still very important to understand that the united states should not should not be expected to bear the brunt of TPS or any refugee program that eventually results because of this crisis because as is this is this is essentially entirely a european conflict so it makes sense that europe should assist most the refugees that are displaced by this conflict and of course any refugees that come to the united states we need to offset that by making cuts to immigration programs elsewhere or ideally getting a handle on the situation at the southern border and reducing the amount of illegal aliens coming into this country because we can't just keep again adding new immigration program after new immigration program after new immigration program during a time where again our economy is condensed it's not operating at the level it should be and we are still dealing with a pandemic even if things seem to be looking up finally for sure so we have to keep the interests of american citizens first and foremost as much as we want to help everyone that's in a difficult situation we can't do that if it's going to put americans at a disadvantage because they require our attention first and foremost and we need to ensure that those that are more directly related to the conflict and quite frankly have cultures that are closer to individuals at risk are doing their fair share at this point it seems like the only country that's really pulling their weight when it comes to comes to this conflict is poland because if you look at the estim the refugee estimates on as being tracked by the united nations right now you're looking at poland accepting at this point nearly half a million refugees and no close no other country I believe has even done a fifth of that you're talking you know germany you're talking even romania and just so many other countries nearby that have capacity right and many of which have been accepting refugees from the middle east and other countries that ideally should be pulling their weight here but instead they're saying hey hon challenge i'll just all go on to the u.s no so there is that there is that accountability we need to ensure that we are putting on european nations as well

Jason:
no you're absolutely right spencer you know last summer when we had the afghan the disastrous afghanistan withdrawal I felt like this was a missed opportunity by the biden administration to say hey listen obviously we have some form of an obligation to help out the afghans here who are under duress but at the same time neighboring countries we could have done an example there of regional resettlement individuals have similar languages similar culture they're much closer to home so when that time does come to return and whether the country whether the problems are fixed themselves or they can go back themselves at an appropriate time to to go ahead and fix it themselves so let's hope that this can also it's good to see that other countries in the region are stepping up

Spencer:
right and of course the as we saw with the afghanistan withdrawal these were by far and wide largely young single males coming to the united states jumping on evacuation planes they're not vetted at all correct they come from a country where most the people in the country still hold some form of radical islamist views we saw pew research polls from the mid 2010s showing that a plurality of afghan residents believe that suicide bombings are justified in some or many instances to defend islam that's a problem of course again a plurality doesn't even necessarily mean a majority but it's a large number of the individuals in the country and so when you're bringing hundreds of thousands of people in from a country like that you have to go through a crucial and intense vetting process to make sure that bad actors aren't coming into the united states and surprise surprise reports have just come out showing that a lot of people that are in the us in the us now free in the us now had connections to terrorism even had their fingerprints pulled off of ieds in afghanistan and now we can't find them we've gone trying to find these individuals so that we can rightfully deport them and they've disappeared into the country which is extremely alarming now in a situation like ukraine most the individuals there are highly nationalistic people they want to go back home unlike a lot of individuals in afghanistan who have already said they intend to stay in the us as long as possible also the individuals fleeing ukraine are mostly women and children again many of the men have stayed joined the armed forces they're defending their country so these are families that want to be reunited they kind of have a highly nationalistic attitude so they want to go back home they want to rebuild their homeland and I think that needs to be taken into account as well are these individuals coming over as refugees desiring to go home or do they want to be new migrants the same is true with individuals with TPS right are they just looking for any excuse to stay in the united states longer even though they are not qualified as permanent residents or are they wanting to go home eventually they want to rebuild their country they want to contribute to their societies so I think that needs to be taken into account here because just like TPS refugee programs were never originally designed and intended to be permanent migration solutions

Jason:
right when we're looking at TPS designations you know again I bring this up because I think it'd be a good opportunity for the button administration to consider this since they got an office they've granted TPS or they've added new designations to venezuela haiti syria burma yemen and somalia as of this recording sudan and south sudan also receive designations I think there needs to be some sort of stop in the in terms of designate just brightly giving countries gps just for the sake of it I think again I think ukraine could be the flash point to where we can change this program for the better something that puts the american americans interest first

Spencer:
right and and it would be really tragic if we don't use this as an opportunity because the individuals we're seeing fleeing ukraine have a very valid claim to this whereas a lot of these other countries you just mentioned don't necessarily and the bite administration seems to seem to essentially be trying to dismantle any form of non-permanent immigration to the united states it seems like their agenda would be to if they could give every single person that wants to come to the united states permanent residency as soon as they get here right and that's part of the reason you're seeing them implement so many abusing so many programs to try to keep migrants in the united states to the extent that they can then make the argument will be inhumane to send them home now and so therefore we must give them amnesty or we must give them permanent residency or citizenship it's it's all part of that mass immigration goal that they have well anyway I think that's probably a great place to stop today so for everyone listening we hope you enjoyed today's episode and learned something new about this important and serious issue I also want to encourage you all to listen to our previous episodes if you have the time and be sure to subscribe to this podcast share it with your friends and family to learn more information about fair and our mission you can visit www.fairus.org or you can find us on social media we're on twitter @FAIRImmigration and we're also on facebook go to our youtube channel we got a lot of great videos there on this topic and on many other topics as well so until next time this has been the understanding immigration podcast presented by fair