let's head overseas. Thousands of migrants have now taken
shelter in a Belarus government warehouse after spending days gathered
along the Poland and Belarus border. Within the last
couple of days, tensions have erupted as a result
of migrants trying to push through the razor wire border
while polish police forces fire back by blasting them with
water cannons and tear gas. The border crisis has
sparked international condemnation as Belarus now faces off with western
countries joining us. Now to discuss is Ali Noorani
President and Ceo of the national Immigration forum and host
of the Only in America podcast. Welcome to the
show. Welcome back to the show. I should
say, Ali, thank you again for joining us
. It looks like many of the camps at the
border have been moved. What led to that decision
to shelter those migrants. And does this signal the
tensions possibly maybe easing here? Well, I think
that the Belarus president, alexander lukashenko has realized that
he's created a problem. He cannot solve. He
manufactured this crisis by recruiting or enticing migrants from Iraq
Afghanistan Syria to come to Belarus to try to enter
the european union and the EU led by Poland in
this case said no. Now, over the course
of today, we saw many of these camps being
cleared uh and people being returned to Belarus. There
was about 500 people more or less on a plane
back to Iraq. Now, the big question is
what is going to happen to folks who are in
Belarus who came from these countries is Lukashenko going to
provide them asylum and protection in Belarus or are they
going to continue to be political ponds in a geopolitical
battle. And I think that's what's being lost here
is the fact that real people's lives are being put
at great risk. Belarus has been accused of orchestrating
this current crisis. Is that so how did we
even get to this point? Because I think a
lot of us are reading the headlines but don't really
know what actually happened or is going on. Well
, Lukashenko is an authoritarian uh president. He claims
to have one of the most recent election by 80%
and there is no liberal democracy in the world that
has said that that is a fact. But so
what Lukashenko has done over the summer is that he
started to crack down on the press in within the
country. But then also over the summer there was
a Ryanair flight uh in essence, traversing belarus airspace
and Lukashenko had that flight grounded and then detained a
journalist who was critical of his administration that then led
to sanctions, economic sanctions from the european union.
And what Lukashenko is doing through the, through by
using migrants as ponds is pushing is in essence kind
of trying to force the EU to lift those sanctions
. That doesn't seem to be working yet. But
again, what is happening here is that people's lives
are being put into the middle of a geopolitical battle
. The polish and Lithuanian authorities have reportedly abused migrants
essentially forcing them back into belarus, Why the sentiment
of anti immigrant and where did they come from?
Where is all this hatred coming from? Well,
it's really interesting because I actually wrote about this in
a book that's coming out next spring. It's called
Crossing Borders the reconciliation of a nation of immigrants and
in the book, what I did is I actually
went back to the Syrian refugee crisis and when we
first saw millions of Syrians flee and try to seek
protection in europe, What happened then is that Viktor
Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary in essence,
clamped down on the border and then forced the european
Union to really shut down a very meager asylum system
that existed then. The problem here is that since
that crisis, the Syrian refugee crisis, the european
Union has really not put together a functioning immigration system
. Therefore, Poland and Lithuania are able to push
back migrants were seeking protection the european Union. Um
, and really treat people really quite cruelly. And
as we see here firing water cannons that families in
the middle of at the beginning of a very,
very harsh winter. I mean, these are folks
who really have nothing more than the bags that they're
holding. I do want to ask you many of
the Middle Eastern migrants don't appear to be refugees.
Do you think they will eventually be able to qualify
as refugees? That's a great question because what's happening
here is that the folks who have made it to
Belarus actually had the resources to pay for that trip
. So they merged a home, they sold a
car, they had the resources to make the move
. These are economic migrants, technically they would not
be eligible for refugee status unless they were victims of
persecution in one way or another. So this is
what Lukashenko is now faced with. Is that what
is he going to do with these thousands of people
that he is enticed to belarus? And that now
the european union is saying that they cannot enter.
They are not refugees. They're economic migrants. But
at the end, I'm going to say this again
, There are people, there are families who put
everything at risk to try to find a better life
in europe. How well, no, you know
what I should ask first, Are there any groups
or countries that are willing to take them out in
ali Well, this is the biggest challenge. And
I think we're going to see this over and over
and over again really around the world where authoritarian rulers
are going to use migrants as political leverage over economically
successful nations. Uh and right now, I have
not seen any country stepped forward to say, okay
, well, it will take people, you know
, Angela Merkel of Germany did reach out to lukashenko
trying to negotiate some sort of a way out of
this. But it's not clear where these individuals will
go. I mean, I saw earlier this week
that the taliban in Afghanistan said unless the billions of
dollars that the US has frozen are released, that
they will in essence create a human surge of migrants
across the region. So this is what's going to
happen. And this is why I think that liberal
democracies, the western world needs to come together and
manage migration in a much more humane and thoughtful way
you can build a fence out of this problem.
Well, looking at the video, there was nothing
humane about that. So thank you for mentioning that
I have less than a minute with you. But
I have to get this question and I do want
to talk about john bolton, of course, the
former national security adviser trump. He says the solution
is for the US to figure out how to get
rid of alexander lukashenko. And what is your response
to that? Do you think that is true or
is possible? Well, lukashenko right now is closest
to Putin. So if the U. S.
Tries to undermine or remove lukashenko, what kind of
tension does that create with Russia? What kind of
tension does that create with china? There is a
school of thought here that when you look around the
world, it is the authoritarians that are bound are
banding together to exert political leverage on liberal democracies and
more and more they're using migrants as leverage and that
is only putting poor people and economic migrants in harm's
way. Well, it's always a pleasure talking to
you. Thank you for keeping that answer. So
concise. Because I know it's a tough one.
Ali Iranian, president and Ceo of the National Immigration
Forum and host of great podcast. I'm asking all
our viewers to listen to it only in America.
Thank you so much, ali.