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Profs & Pints: Understanding Refugee Law

Profs and Pints presents: Understanding Refugee Law, with Paul Grussendorf, former director of the Immigration and Asylum Law Clinic at George Washington University and author of My Trials: Inside America's Deportation Factories.

Never in our nations history has the debate over immigration and the protection of asylum seekers escalated to the fever pitch we see now. President Trumps advisors continue to urge increasingly drastic anti-immigrant policies, recently calling for a virtual end to access to the asylum process for migrants arriving at the southern border. From an annual refugee ceiling of 110,000 to be resettled under Obama, the numbers have been reduced to 30,000 for this fiscal year, with a proposal being floated to totally eliminate refugee admissions to the United States.

The United States was once a leader in refugee resettlement. Now the pendulum has swung so far the other way many here ask: Is our nation dealing with refugees in a way that violates international law?

Paul Grussendorf, a leading expert on refugee law, has agreed to take the Profs and Pints stage to offer a primer on the basics of U.S. and international law dealing with our nation's conduct in such matters. He'll discuss the development and language of the UN Refugee Convention and the United States' adoption of the UN refugee standard into American law. He'll also cover relevant issues pertaining to immigrationboth legal and illegaland the challenges posed by surging numbers at our southern border.

Along with previously heading up the George Washington University law clinic dealing with such matters, Grussendorf was an immigration law judge from 1997 to 2004, later writing about his experiences in a critically acclaimed memoir. He also has worked for UN Refugee Agency in South Korea and the U.S. governments refugee resettlement agency, most recently as a Supervisory Asylum Officer who saw action on our southern border. (Advance tickets: $12. Doors: $15. Save $2 with student ID. Time listed is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later. Please arrive in plenty of time to place any order and be seated and settled before the talk begins.)