two wonderful authors here too. wonderful gentlemen and patriots who are really helped us along today on racial justice. please join me and expressing gratitude to ted johnson. good afternoon, everyone and welcome to the 2022 annapolis book festival. it's great to be back in person after a couple years being virtual. so thank you all very much for being here. my name is gary gallant. i am the president of the gallant government and law group. it's a bipartisan government relations and law firm based just down the road here in washington, dc. i'm delighted to have the honor of moderating this afternoon's panel entitled a place for us stories of the immigrant and refugee experience and to be able to join our highly

accomplished and insightful author here today ali. norani. to call ali just an author and a thought leader would not be sufficient. he's a principled activist and doer doing doing work as you will hear that is helping us all better understand the us policy framework that surrounds immigrants and immigration. a bit about his background ali ali norani is the president ceo of the national immigration forum a nonpartisan. advocacy organization working with faith law enforcement and business leaders to in their words promote responsible federal immigration policies addressing today's economic and national security needs while honoring the ideals of our founding fathers who created america as a land of opportunity. through innovative constituency communications and advocacy strategies ali is that is one of the nation's most creative coalition builders. ali provides a highly prominent voice on immigration policy and politics at the local national

and global level. ali is an emerson dial fellow a fellow at the arizona state university's social transformation lab a member of the council on foreign relations. he holds a master's degree in public health from boston university and he is a graduate at the university of california, berkeley. his latest book is crossing borders the reconciliation of a nation of immigrants. ali's work and dedication not only illuminates where we in the united states are on immigration policy programs and perceptions. he is rolling up his sleeves and doing something about it. so let's get started. ali you write that we are facing a crisis a crisis which is not phony temporal or manufactured wanted the border you mentioned that we have a real crisis of confidence where parents have lost confidence their children will do better than they citizens have lost confidence that their governments can control migration and you suggest that this is all fueling a fear of immigrants.

can you describe this fear and how deep it runs? sure. well, first of all, i really want to thank the annapolis book festival. it's great to be here and annapolis has certainly one of our favorite towns in the region. so it's just it's wonderful and looking forward to going to downtown annapolis and getting some ice cream. just wish the weather would and crab cakes. right right and crab cakes, but not in the same cone in any case crisis and confidence. this was something that actually art. oh dear. i'm blanking on his last name with the storm lake tribune. he is the editor of the storm lake tribune and as i was interviewing him, he had this really really astute observation that president trump his strategy very much was to rode the confidence of the united states public and the point that he was making in as after talk to him became very clear is that trump would always identify kind of a mysterious threat that

existed because of immigrants and immigration and as a result of that threat. um, the government was supposed to act and bring things under control, but since trump kept on saying well, you know, it's an invasion. it's a situation where over which we have no control art would tell me you know the you know, the idea of a strong and powerful america was being eroded and so the question really is. okay. how do you recapture that strength? and how do you more importantly build the confidence of the american public that yes, we are both a nation of laws as well as a nation of grace. the phenomenon of fear is not confined in the united states. it is global and you discuss and analyze other examples in europe and elsewhere. you look particularly at honduras in your book. could you talk a little bit about the underpinning reasons there for honduran's risking so much for their journey?

sure. so in 2019, i was able to do two different trips to honduras. the first was to san pedro sula and san pedro sula in 2013 and 14. was this the it had the notorious title of being the myrtle murder capital of the world and the second trip. i did was to get sigalpa, which is the capital about i would say about four or five hour trip our drive away closer to kind of the mountains and in that trip. i actually spend some time up in the coffee highlands on both trips either the first one or the second one where we brought along a delegation of colleagues you go to honduras and for based on everything you hear you expect it's going to be a country that is on edge respect that it's going to be a community of people that are afraid for their lives and every single day are looking to get out of honduras instead what i found was a very proud people people who were who quite

frankly the last thing they wanted to do was to leave honduras, but as we talked to them as i sat with everybody from you know shopkeepers to the attorney general of the country what you realize is that the picture and place like honduras is much more complicated. it's a combination of poverty corruption climate change violence that combine to lead families to make a perfectly natural decision to leave the country and you know, the story that often tell is that, you know, if you're a taxi driver in tegucigalpa in order to maintain your tax this what do you have to do? you have to pay rent to a gang? if you can't pay that rent or that bribe that gang then says i will kill you or your family. so then you pay another gang to get out of honduras. then you pay another gang to get from guatemala through mexico to

the us mexico border. and then once you're at the us-mexico border in order to cross the border and merely ask for protection from the united states, you're paying yet another gang. so the corruption the poverty the violence that begins in honduras is really monetized and quite frankly weaponized in the worst possible way by cartels from that community and to go scalpa all the way to the us mexico border and there's so many factors around that one story of that one taxi driver that sometimes it feels overwhelming to solve or to address, but there have been put there have been solutions put into motion that have, you know purged the national police rooted out corruption hunter national police and as that happened you saw 6,000 police officers fired from their jobs for corruption and at the same time they were being fired what happens to the homicide rate in honduras it goes down. so there's the you know, these

are real quality of life indicators that you know provide hondurans the confidence to remain in the country and there's a similar story not similar but it's there's a it's a tragic story another one about a nicaraguan woman in your book. could you tell us about that one? sure, so part of that second trip to honduras. we you know, like i said we started in tegucigalpa. i had come in a couple days early and spent a few days in the coffee highlands and then we actually spent the second half of the week in el paso and juarez and el paso is an amazing city because you know, it's four hours from really any other metropolitan area whether it's to mexico, you know, north to san antonio or you know even towards new mexico. so el paso is just a very isolated place. so it has its own character and on that trip. what we also did is with and partnership with hope border institute. we were sit and watch hearings

at the immigration court in el paso and the el paso detention facility is literally on the other side of the fence from the el paso airport. in the deleg we walked into you know the kind of the court building which is kind of the squat building in this dhs compound and you walk in you go through metal detector. it's kind of you know, what you would expect right? it's cinder block walls. it's the kind of white linoleum square tile floor walk down a hall and it's the courtroom and in the courtroom immigration court. it's probably about you know, 20 30 seats for viewers. you know, there's a judge the immigration judge to his right is a clerk to his left is the translator at the table in front of the the judge running perpendicular. you have the the immigration customs enforcement attorney and at the end of the table you have the migrant the immigrant and in this one particular case that we

viewed this this particular morning was a young woman from nicaragua and she was very well. she you could tell that she spoke with a poison a clarity and a power that we didn't we aren't seeing or hearing in the other cases that were being heard. and in each case the judge would lean forward over the bench and kind of looking down and read through the same set of instructions who's very very specific. and the instructions were do you understand the case? do you understand what your you know why you're here what the next step is in the process? and there were always be some clarifying questions. and the judge in this case asks the woman you know why she left nicaragua what had happened who was their sponsor for asylum while she was in the united states and she answered it again all these questions a poison a clarity. and the immigration customs enforcement attorney could sense this poise in this clarity and the strength of her case. so she came back really really hard. and she pressed against the case

and she said this is a woman that had crossed the border as part of these caravans and put police and babies in harm's way. and the woman from nicaragua sat calmly in the face of really just a brutal onslaught from this attorney. and she answered very clearly. she said um, i left nicaragua before the the caravans. i understand why there's a problem. i am here because i was a student nicaragua and i was being for my political beliefs. and she said it with this clarity again and the judge remember it every time it's leaned forward when speaking to. a an immigrant in case he leaned back. and the immigration attorney representing the government she looked down. and the judge flip through the case a little couple more pages asked a couple more questions. it was the only case that morning that was granted bond.

and this young woman she broke down in tears. because she was going to be released from immigration detention after months being detained and she would then be able to be with her family. and hopefully be able to pursue her case and it was just a very clear indication of you know the way the system was the immigration court system is set up to presume the guilt of an immigrant. and you know the immigrant that she did not have legal representation. she had no rights to legal representation. she could if she could afford it she could bring it, but she couldn't afford it. so she was sitting there on her own fighting against the government. this judge who was presuming her guilt and ultimately merely asking for protection. there's you know, there's and you touched on upon this in your opening remarks about the you know, the polarization and how the previous administration kind of used immigration as a weapon beyond the normal domestic

political benefits that come with being, you know quote tough on on immigration. tell us a little bit more about using immigration as a weapon in the political process in america and what impacts that's had. sure. so what through crossing borders i actually told talk wrote about two streams of migration global migration one was honduras to the us mexico border that we just talked about the other was very much about the syrian refugee crisis that began really in 2010-2011 and spiked in 2013 14 and 15. and when i ended up learning through the process of writing the book, is that victor urbane who is and continues to be the prime minister of hungary he weaponized he in essence kind of established the blueprint that we all live within whether or not we realize it of how migration is weaponized. so in 2015 you have actually let me take a step back in 2013 pope francis ascends to the papacy

his first trip outside of the vatican is to lampedusa italy it is a island that is closer to tunisia than to sicily. pope francis arrives as a very humble journey. all right, it's not the pump and circumstance of a typical visit by the pope any offer he you know mass is is delivered on a field that is typically home to thousands of refugees and the holy objects the object studies holding the sepulch or the chalice others are actually made from the boats that were crashed against the rocks of lampedusa holding refugees. it is amazing story that i learned about the individual made these objects. two years later you see instead of syrian refugees crossing the mediterranean now moving through the balkans and by and large through hungary in 2015 summer 2015, angela merkel prime minister of germany says that

germany will welcome 1 million refugees days later victor urbane who at that point is struggling politically realizes that he can weaponize migration. he writes in a german newspaper to paraphrase those who are coming from syria are not christian. in essence victor urbana saw that sought as his role to keep europe christian. and he was successful in terms of not just winning a reelection, but at that time really bending the political approach of the european union with regards to immigration further and further to the right and i ended up being able to paint a i hope a clear picture between what our bond did how that then laid the blueprint for what nigel farage did and the uk to lead to the passage of brexit. and then what trump did or the course of the campaign in terms of weaponizing the syrian refugee crisis and really trying to erode the confidence the american public and propel himself to the to victory.

i think it's worth pointing out now the role and you talk about this in your book about how immigration policy played in brexit. so more expand on that a little bit sure. so brexit was interesting because you know the the uk independence party had been around really since you know the early the first days when the uk, you know. designing trade agreements with european union and then eventually joined the european union. so it's a multi-decade effort by farage in and out of this party to try to get the united kingdom out of brexit and what they found in the early days of the brexit campaign, is that the economic message in essence of the message that britain would be harmed economically by remaining in the european union that fell flat. so what they did is they pivoted and instead of talking about the economics. they talked about culture. and culture by and large at that

point in britain was defined by the migration of syrian refugees. but also even eastern european european union members into britain. and farage over the course of the brexit campaign. he conflated eastern europeans with you know syrians, but keep in mind that britain the united kingdom was not you know if a syrian gets to germinate that syrian can stay in western europe as the european union was at that point, but they were not able to enter britain because britain was not a part of kind of that part of the agreement. so my point here is that farage was able to tell a lie by and large to the public in the uk that there was a an invasion of syrian refugees when that was the furthest thing from the truth. you know one of the whether it's you know across the globe or here here at the states. there's you know, and there's the last panel just mentioned

this as well. is that there's this, you know, and this goes even many decades back before the trump administration. there's this loss of civility in our political discourse and you write in your book about how human dignity of immigrants and immigrant labor has not been respected and the lack of respect you write leads to ultimately to poor and dangerous decision-making on border security management. you know, what is the what is that impact if we've lost our ability to engage in respectful discourse? what's the impact on humanity and empathy? well, it's interesting because the initial the original title of the project was going to be i think restoring america's dignity and when i started in the early days of the the effort, i really started trying to pick apart, you know, what does dignity mean how is dignity? represented through policy and what i the case that i started to develop is that are

immigration system was stripping the dignity of the migrant go back to that. core immigration court and el paso but along the way what it was also doing is that by having a set of immigration policies that really dehumanized immigrants. it was stripping americans and our country of dignity. and what i ended up writing in the second half of the book is really examples of at the local level women pastors police chiefs others who were not only restoring the dignity of the migrant, but restoring the dignity of the country by really trying to think about how do we have a better level of better conversation? how do we treat immigrants better? but how do we it's it's more than civil discourse. it's it doesn't feel like an advocate term. i think it's a discourse based on. on treating people with dignity and i think that goes beyond civil civility and what i think

is is really fascinating that you write about is the fact that you and your your efforts in this area have been focused. not only on people who you know are inclined to agree with you but to also reach out to others and could you talk a little bit more about that? so the national immigration form itself has been around since 1982 our mission is to advocate for the value of immigrants and immigration to the nation and you know coalition building is always been in the dna of the organization, you know, since the early days, we've always tried to put together coalitions of you know, labor business faith and others, but in 2010, we realize that when you look across the immigration movement, there was a lot of really great work happening kind of within the traditional progressive community, but there's really no concerted effort to focus in on conservative and modern voters in a really strategic but more importantly an going manner, so in 2010 we started we launched an effort that has come to be known as bibles badges and

business for immigration reform and the basic kind of value proposition. is that if you hold a bible you wear a badge or you own a business you want to comment sense solution to the immigration system. what does that mean in practice what it means in practices that? we really try to have these conversate we try to have conversations with folks who have legitimate concerns about immigration, but have those conversations through their cultural framework whether it's through their faith through their belief in law and order through their belief in in the free market and what that means is that, you know oftentimes we're kind of at a very parallel path to what our colleagues kind of who are more progressive and they're important work because we're really trying to as we've always put it meet people where they are, but we just don't want to leave them there and what's been your you know reaction what's been your your sense of how that has worked for, you know, i mean so much winning. i mean, come on.

i mean, it's a hard question right because you know, we've come out of i don't know if we've come out of this right. we're in a really really difficult part difficult moment in the nation's history. there's just a high level of anger that people are directing each other that certain politicians are using to further divide the country and that's that is the reality that we live in and how is the, you know, the recent tragic events in the ukraine. how is that impacted this effort? well, i think that there is a you know there is there's an organization that i'm on the board of called more in common and what they've identified is an exhausted majority and it's roughly according to their estimates roughly two-thirds of the the population that are they don't see themselves as far left or far right they're looking for ways to work together and ways that lawmakers can work together to advance policy solutions whether it's on immigration or

otherwise ukraine is an interesting example, and i would actually go back from ukraine to afghanistan last of summer. where in afghanistan remember you had this massive evacuation of tens of thousands of people and what happens is that the american public stands up and says we're going to not just evacuate. 75,000 afghans, we're going to welcome them into communities and who was leading that effort was by and large the military community. so that really changed. i think the way that the american public not just saw refugees, but saw the importance for the weakness of our immigration systems. and then six weeks later you have about 15,000 haitians who arrive and del rio, texas asking for protection and the biden administration spins them around and expels them to haiti. we were working with people who were terribly upset and engaged in the resettlement of afghans and they were doing everything they could right there are

delivering a materials donating money etc. and then what they when they saw what the biden administration did to haitians they asked this question of why right why are we treating haitians so differently? and now when you ask the question right, ukraine and the outpouring of not just support here in the us, but globally for ukrainians. again, it kind of creates the same sort of a dissonance in people's minds of okay? yes. we should be treating ukrainians with you know, everything we can helping them in every way possible. but why aren't we doing that for other communities and or bond for example? you know two months ago, he both he and you know, the president of poland were pushing syrian and afghan refugees out of poland and and hungary now, they're both welcoming ukrainians. so it's very easy for us to shame those who were opposed to previous refugee populations or previous immigrant populations. we would rather i would rather see this as an opportunity to

expand that conversation and help all of us understand that any one of us can become a refugee very very quickly. well, i have a couple more questions, but if anybody from the audience wants to line up at the microphone will get to that in just a minute, you know, you mentioned about poland and and elsewhere in europe and do americans in general or they're more similarities or more differences in our approached it as a collective approach american approach to immigration and kind of the misperception of the the prejudices. we have do europeans think of it differently. that's a really important question because you know, the united states has a it has a cut we have a culture of immigration for better or for worse, right? you know, some people are asking me you know, why do you call this? why is the subtitle reconciliation of a nation of immigrants? we are, you know, a lot of people don't even think we're a nation of immigrants but on the other hand were you know, many of us are very proud of our history our family history of of immigration, but that culture

and that history of immigration is deeply ingrained within the us and by no means are we doing that perfectly obviously within the european union, there's not that history. you know if it was just it's relatively recent that through the european union that people are able to cross borders so easily within the year within the eu so, you know, i would have hoped that after the syrian refugee crisis that the eu would have said, okay. we actually have to create a functioning immigration and refugee system instead because of our bond to a a large degree they just built more walls as a result. i think europe is much less the us is in for a really really difficult future because you know, the ukrainian christ is easy for the public to understand. right what's going to happen in six months? when all the wheat that is typically exported from ukraine to africa no longer exists and you see this massive food

insecurity starting to sweep across africa. those folks are going to want to leave. just to get food and they're going to head north. and i don't think you know, i would you know developed nations liberal democracies have not contended with that challenge by any means they're not ready for it. right and just the circle back to your domestic coalition billing. there's a chapter in your book about your work with evangelicals. go into that. i think it's interesting. yes, so back in 2013. we launched an effort called the evangelical immigration table and in my first book there goes the neighborhood actually ended up writing kind of how we came up with that strategy. but the idea was by and large to engage like i said earlier is to engage pastors so that they were in a better position and better equipped to engage their congregations after the 2016 election. we realized that okay, that's great. but unless we're actually having conversations with voters with

congregants. we're not getting all the way there. so in partnership with world relief and my former colleague kathleen farrell is here who led the effort for us at the time we started to kind of create a coalition of conservative and modern evangelical women and in the book, i tell the story of bri standridge bree before we had a chance to meet her. she worked at the at focus on the family and she led many of their in essence family planning programs. she then as a consultant worked for the public policy arm of the southern baptist convention bree told me that she grew up a pk master. what's a pk? the pastor's kit, right? so she is from and of the evangelical church, and she shared and she was part one of the first delegations of evangelical women that we took to oaxaca probably in 2018 ish 2019-ish to meet with migrant

women in their children. and bree was kind enough to share with me her story of that moment where she realized that as a pk as a pastor's kid so much of the world. she was completely unaware of. and that she realized that she was not she was her definition of life was not. encompassing the migrant mom much less the migrant child. so now bree and a really incredible team have built out this community. that is engaging evangelical women in these conversations about immigration. not through the framework of rights or economics or kind of what many of us on the left would say but through their faith? and you know in this particular chapter, you know, she shares her story test clark another leader within the community shares her story and you just we just i wrote about how they were

starting to create an in-group that was not asking people to change their identity. we weren't asking people to become democrat. we're asking people to become, you know, turn away from their faith, but it was an in-group for them to think about and talk about immigration and a way that was different from what they were getting from their friends and their families their communities now end with at least this answer because you know, i'll keep talking. we often forget how much courage it takes to kind of step away from your friends or your family. and i saw this over and over and over again where women would with tears in her eyes described kind of the tension within their families because they were thinking about immigration differently. and i i think that if we you know to you know, if as liberals we were to offer more grace to conservatives who are going to that process. we might be a little bit further

along and getting things back together. finding solutions. so we do have a couple questions and invited to step up to the microphone. hi, how are you? so it seems like on the conservative side at least that the drum beat of immigration is ongoing it's a pervasive issue but on the liberal side, it seems like we have like an uptake. so in 2016 when there was the muslim band people are protesting at the airport and then it's sort of the interest dulls down and then we have the ukrainian crisis and i'm just wondering one why you think that is and then two why is immigration an important issue that liberals should get behind and pay attention to now like what's on the horizon? that's a really important question. so. over the course of you know, so let me put it this way. in the book, i wrote about a storm like iowa storm lake, iowa. is this little town northwest, iowa about 13 14,000 people.

it went through the vietnamese, you know resettlement of vietnamese refugees. it was a very positive experience the farm debt crisis the kind of emergence of big ag that pushed out native iowans and brought in a massive amount of immigrant labor created social tensions who shows up in the night in 1996. patrick buchanan patrick buchanan and others in the 90s saw that these communities were changing and they said okay, how do we weaponize these changes to their political benefit? so really since the 1990s you have had a segment of the republican party incessantly beating the drum that immigrants and refugees are an existential threat to the united states of america. these days is tucker carlson talking about the great replacement theory. but as a result of these years if not decades of of kind of fear-mongering that is why when you pull republicans immigration is always a top top three issue of concern.

every year boom what one two or three? trump obviously understood that that's why i always talked about it. for democrats democrats rarely talk about immigration. unless donald trump was in office. then it was then you did the polling and instead of immigration being a typical 7 8 9 10 11 12 number issue for a democrats. it was one two or three because of that that polarization. i think it's important for both democrats and republicans to be much more focused on immigration in a much more constructive way because if you are progressive and you want a solutions around climate around healthcare around jobs around democracy what is the consistent attack that comes from the right on those issues when they start to emerge immigration? if you're a conservative republican and you want, you know issues addressed around taxes or jobs or the economy and you're seeing kind of how the

voter demographics and voter opinions are changing. there's a growing number of hispanic and asian voters who are first generation or second generation american who are agreeing with republicans. and so i think if we were able to resolve the immigration question issues kind of on both sides of the aisle that of importance would really move forward in a much more constructive way could tensions on immigration policy ultimately lead to a third party because within the republican party being so splintered, that's a yes. well, let me put it this way. i'm not i i'm not sure it will get to a third party, but it certainly creating a pretty significant fracture like you're saying, you know even within for example evangelical america. there is a division between those who are going to politically demagogue immigration, but still, you know claim to be people of faith versus others within the evangelical community who are going to say, you know what i

agree with republicans on issues x y and z but i don't like the direction of this is going on immigration. in fact in 2018. i would argue that democrats were so successful in that midterm because there were large number of republican and independent voters that moved to democrats because of trump's approach to immigration and to large degree the same diamond diamond dynamic played out in 2020. another question. yeah, hi full disclosure ali and i used to work together. but this question i've always really wanted to ask him because we will always been focused an awful lot on the here and now but ali you've spent the last couple of decades of your life trying to answer this, but what does an immigration system. there's no perfect system. but what does an immigration system for the modern era really look like we're looking at you know, syria was a war triggered by climate change. we're going to see more and more climate change movement migrants refugees afghanistan and ukraine

are conventional wars. what and and you've written often about this country's need for the high skilled engineer and the high skilled farm workers. so what does our immigration system look like that? we're not segmenting and talking, you know about refugees or about the undocumented but the entire system. sure. thank you kathleen, so there's a simple answer here. then there's a more complicated version of the answer. the simple answer is that we need to do three things in terms of fixing the immigration system. first is legalize the tendo 11 million undocumented immigrants so that they can pursue a path to citizenship and fully own the american dream. second is to create a functioning legal immigration system. so that meets the needs of our economy right now with a labor shortage, you know, one of the few quick fixes that we have at our disposal is actually

increasing immigration, but also the needs of families, so that families can be reunified and then third is to have a an enforcement system that not just treats people humanely but is actually effective and strategic. so for example, you know every day in the newspaper right now, what are we reading about? us mexico border a potential surge of migrants and what we have been trained to do is to see the migrant as the one to blame. as i said earlier who's winning here? it's the cartel. the cartel has monetized this entire stream this entire flow of migration. and so i would argue that we're actually outsourcing our immigration system to the cartels. so if we want to undermine the cartels and make the border more secure. create legal immigration pathways. and there's another number of other other ways to to improve both enforcement but also legal immigration, but kathleen you bring up something really important in terms of the refugee system.

so the refugee system is separate from kind of your immigration system because technically if you know a refugee is somebody that we invite here and they have to meet certain criteria to be able to qualify for as a refugee. they are fleeing, you know persecution because of their political affiliation race gender religious belief social group. but no and also in particular violence it state-sponsored violence. so there i think as we look forward there have to be some fixes and some modernization to a refugee system so that it accounts for violence inflicted by non-state actors cartels climate change and then how do you define a climate event that then leads to mass migration or forced to play displacement and there's some people much much smarter than me that are working on those questions. but ultimately it will require a level of political support to

realize realize those changes. you explain a little bit more about the climate change impact and where around the globe that you know is particular importance sure. so i mean i when i was in honduras just to provide a story from the book and that trip to goose galp. i went up to the la union a region of the country and i sat on these beautiful mountaintop like beautiful mountain top like a hillside with carlos and his family. carlos and his family had owned a small coffee farm for a number of like years, but their crop was struggling because of a coffee rust but then also because of a drought and the drought had been going on for a handful of years so faced with a dwindling crop healthcare expenses from his oldest child. he was faced with a decision of okay, does he stay and staying men's either selling his land or going to the cities and he didn't want to go to the cities because of the poverty the

violence in the big cities in honduras or paying a smuggler and trying to get to the us-mexico border. so for carlos, it was very much, you know, the drought that was led him to this decision of okay. i've got to get out. now when you look across around the world you have kind of ongoing climate incidents and you know africa, you know as hurricane ita in central america that pushed out a number of hondurans, you know ongoing struggles in haiti. this is all kind of taking place, but we don't have the legal structures in place to assist people as they're being forcibly displaced from their countries. thank you. are there any more questions? and if not, i just want to thank the annapolis book festival for hosting us here today and ollie. norani. thank you so much for for being here. i really appreciate it. the book is called crossing borders the reconciliation of a nation of immigrants. it's an excellent book. please go out and to your local

bookstore or amazon and go purchase it. there's a book sale that down the hallway here. so we hope you come visit and thank you very much for everybody for being here. good afternoon, everyone on hope we're starting. my name is noel king. i'm delighted to be here at the annapolis book festival. i am even more delighted that we are seeing each other in person as opposed to overseas. everyone if your cell phone volume is turned on which you might turn it off. and i'll let you know a little bit about the program. we're going to talk about 35 minutes and then we're gonna open it up to audience questions. so i know that you are here to see these two gentlemen not to see me. so come with your