Speaker 1: We've seen the images on TV about people fleeing conflict
Speaker 1: in the Middle East, specifically Syria, trying to make their
Speaker 1: way to a better life. What happens to refugees after
Speaker 1: they get here? How do they pay their rent and
Speaker 1: get a job? The biggest problems facing refugees being resettled
Speaker 1: in the US is economic, and help is coming from
Speaker 1: what might be considered an unlikely place, Wall Street. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Benchmark, a podcast about the global economy. I'm Daniel Moss,
Speaker 1: a columnist for Bloomberg View in New York, and I'm
Speaker 1: Scott Landman and economics editor with Bloomberg in Washington. A
Speaker 1: couple of financial market insiders have started a foundation interfaith
Speaker 1: Refugee project that raises money from some of the biggest
Speaker 1: names in the business pinco, JP, Morgan Goldman, Sachs, Morgan
Speaker 1: Stanley in a few others along the way. They're trying
Speaker 1: to re engineer refugee resettlement with a distinctly economic edge.
Speaker 1: Welcome to our guests, Greg Sharon Now and Michelle Brohart.
Speaker 1: Thank you before we dive too deeply into this. Our
Speaker 1: story here isn't just some technocratic exercise in a profit
Speaker 1: and loss spreadsheet. It's also deeply personal. Tell us about
Speaker 1: what you do in the finance industry and a little
Speaker 1: bit about your background. Sure, I'm a portfolio manager PIMPCO.
Speaker 1: I manage our commodity mutual fund and absolute term products,
Speaker 1: and I contribute to the rest of the back of
Speaker 1: thought process regarding energy and portrollum in particular. My background
Speaker 1: is that I am in relationship to the work I'm
Speaker 1: doing refugees outside of office hours, is that I'm a
Speaker 1: grandchild of refugees. And tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: your grandparents refugee experience. Yes, and my grandparents were fortunate
Speaker 1: to get out of Germany in the late nineties and
Speaker 1: be resettled into Panama. It was good fortune because my
Speaker 1: grandmother was able to use a relationship her family had
Speaker 1: had previously with the Panamanian ambassador Germany to get herself out.
Speaker 1: That shows how lucky and fortunate she was. And then
Speaker 1: I got to be a product of the experience of
Speaker 1: her and my grandfather re integrating into a new country
Speaker 1: where they did not speak the language. Her education was
Speaker 1: taken from her because she was still a teenager at
Speaker 1: that time, so they did not have the normal skills
Speaker 1: that you would have to be successfully integrated to an economy,
Speaker 1: and they did not have family and natural connections. And
Speaker 1: when I go through my family's history, it really is
Speaker 1: emblematic of what the refugee experiences. Michelle, My experience is
Speaker 1: a little different with the refugees. I am born and
Speaker 1: raised in Kansas with parents and grandparents and great grandparents
Speaker 1: who have all been American, and we haven't really experienced
Speaker 1: a refugee crisis in Kansas. We have any of things
Speaker 1: the matter with Kansas that's there. There are wonderful things
Speaker 1: about Kansas, and there are wonderful things that need to
Speaker 1: change about Kansas. That's for sure. Kansas is one of
Speaker 1: the states that has chosen to not take refugees. That
Speaker 1: wasn't really the catalyst that pushed me um. It was
Speaker 1: the conversations that we had with the It was what
Speaker 1: you would see in the news, and also just being
Speaker 1: in the oil industry, you read a lot about Libya
Speaker 1: and the fleeing of people, and you read about these
Speaker 1: humanitarian crisis that of course impact the oil market, but
Speaker 1: also impact humanitarian aid in Europe and what it's doing
Speaker 1: even to like the nearby countries. So my interaction with
Speaker 1: refugees was I. I left the US for a week
Speaker 1: or two, maybe two weeks, and went to Jordan to
Speaker 1: visit a refugee camp and to visit some of some
Speaker 1: internally displaced people inside of Jordan's um, and I met
Speaker 1: refugees who had been fleeing from Syria as well as Iraq.
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing I think about the my interaction
Speaker 1: with some of the refugees from Iraq was that it
Speaker 1: must have been six months, no, maybe maybe eighteen months
Speaker 1: before I had gone there, Ices had attacked Mosl. And
Speaker 1: when Isis attacked Mosle, those those people fled from there.
Speaker 1: But the impact that it had on the oil market
Speaker 1: was significant. Even though Mosa was nowhere near oil's oil supply,
Speaker 1: it's still impacted the market. I met a lot of
Speaker 1: those refugees from that, and so my relationship with Mosle
Speaker 1: and the refugees all got tied together at that point.
Speaker 1: And what do you do in the oil industry? I
Speaker 1: trade oil and oil products. Now, how did you get
Speaker 1: the broader financial services seen interested in the work that
Speaker 1: you're doing. Now? Many people in finance give a lot
Speaker 1: back some of the country's biggest philanthropists from the street,
Speaker 1: But was this a particular area that you found was underserved.
Speaker 1: So I think what was evident to me and Michelle
Speaker 1: and Who's saying, is that we work in very global communities,
Speaker 1: we work in very current communities. But how do people
Speaker 1: get engaged with donating and how do people getting age
Speaker 1: are called They need someone to help them get over
Speaker 1: the finish line, something to connect with, and at that
Speaker 1: time there wasn't that obvious connection happening among our community.
Speaker 1: I am fortunate that my wife, Julie Gersnie is one
Speaker 1: of our founders, worked in international human rights and nonprofits
Speaker 1: for her career. And when I went home two years ago,
Speaker 1: and this was after the pictures of the Turkish of
Speaker 1: the boy washing up on the Turkish shores, you know,
Speaker 1: we were able to use our connections through her work
Speaker 1: to engage in this. And then I looked around and said, well,
Speaker 1: I wonder if we had the same pathway for everyone
Speaker 1: else who who I work with, the new Michelle works with,
Speaker 1: to become engaged in the subject. Couldn't we really start
Speaker 1: moving the needle, both raising dollars to help address refugees,
Speaker 1: but more important, raising advocacy efforts and building community to
Speaker 1: address some of the greater. You know ills that the
Speaker 1: refugees were facing, and how do you make the maximum
Speaker 1: economic impact with the dollars that you raise. You know,
Speaker 1: what do you target and what are the basic economic needs?
Speaker 1: Are the most basic economic needs that you are seeking
Speaker 1: to rectify. So we took a life cycleolistic approach. Um.
Speaker 1: For one, we started from no infrastructure, so we had
Speaker 1: a physical sponsor model which allows us to then take
Speaker 1: whatever money we receive and distributed to our partners. But
Speaker 1: we don't have the ability to run overhead, so all
Speaker 1: of that is paid for out of pocket by the founders.
Speaker 1: And what we did is we decided we were also
Speaker 1: not experienced enough to drive programming that we wanted to
Speaker 1: support organizations that we're doing critical work from whether or
Speaker 1: not they're helping like World Vision and Islamic Relief does
Speaker 1: in the camps helping people literally to sustain their lives
Speaker 1: at a point where the greatest vulnerability to using. The
Speaker 1: International Refugee Assistance Project, which helps the legal services of
Speaker 1: refugees who need help to gain resettlement and then highest
Speaker 1: on the United States Fund, is one of the nine organizations,
Speaker 1: most seven of which are faith based, that actually do
Speaker 1: the actual act resettling in the United States. So our
Speaker 1: project decided to take the life cycle approach support organizations.
Speaker 1: We thought we're doing valuable work at all different portions
Speaker 1: of the refugee life cycle. You know, at PIMCO, we've
Speaker 1: actually done an additional step that I was involved with
Speaker 1: where we signed up for the previous White Houses call
Speaker 1: for public private partnership. And what PIMCO decided to do,
Speaker 1: and we certainly think this is a great idea, is
Speaker 1: they raised money to pay for housing for refugees in
Speaker 1: our Orange County community. And why we determined to do
Speaker 1: this is that if you look at a refugee comes
Speaker 1: to United States, the US government only gives a few
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to one of these resettlement agencies that are
Speaker 1: supposed to give them a couple of months of running
Speaker 1: start and in their integrating up and then they are
Speaker 1: able to get some social services from other parts of
Speaker 1: the federal support system. But effectively it is not enough.
Speaker 1: And if you look at the needs of the refugees,
Speaker 1: they spend in an ordinate amount of time simply trying
Speaker 1: to raise money to pay their rent when what they
Speaker 1: really need to be doing. A lot of them needs
Speaker 1: needs to be learning how to speak language, gain training
Speaker 1: creates stability in their home. If you have your home
Speaker 1: and you're moving seven times in a year because you're
Speaker 1: struggling to meet your rent, your kids are not in
Speaker 1: the school in a stable environment, and you end up
Speaker 1: creating a cycle of poverty that it becomes harder to escape.
Speaker 1: And then you're falling into this cliche eye view of
Speaker 1: what a refugee really is that they're draining on society
Speaker 1: at ctera, etcetera. Yes, when in fact, if you look
Speaker 1: at refugees as a whole, they tend relative to other
Speaker 1: immigrants by a higher incidents of home ownership. Eventually higher
Speaker 1: instances are becoming that citizen. They tend to be very
Speaker 1: interested because in the country that they've allowed to come
Speaker 1: to is the one who saved their lives and has
Speaker 1: given them a future. And you know, in some respects
Speaker 1: we feel like it's important to support refugees here to
Speaker 1: gain that success. And you know, we also think it's
Speaker 1: very important and we've supported to organizations that are very
Speaker 1: active in advocacy because we do think it's important that
Speaker 1: we need to rally Congress, we need to rally our
Speaker 1: support for continue doing not only to allow refugees to resettle,
Speaker 1: but to ensure that when they get here that they
Speaker 1: have a chance for success. Talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: this cycle of poverty that you say some people fall into.
Speaker 1: Is there too much attention on that in resettlement programs
Speaker 1: and not enough on getting people into a role where
Speaker 1: they can participate in the economy. And what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here is sort of how we think about refugees
Speaker 1: in a popular sense. You know, where it's impacting our
Speaker 1: election cycles. Where it's impopping our dialogue on a national level,
Speaker 1: is that we are focusing on the challenges to both
Speaker 1: the physical budget and the drain on society. And you
Speaker 1: know whether or not there is someone who is losing
Speaker 1: out because we're helping refugees come in, meaning like there's
Speaker 1: an American that could have gotten that social services that
Speaker 1: were subsequent to prize. But when you look at over
Speaker 1: the life cycle of the refugee, these refugees are within
Speaker 1: eight to nine years. There's a study done and and
Speaker 1: we are working paper published by two professors and a
Speaker 1: Notre dame that highlight by year eight or nine, they're
Speaker 1: positively contributing to the fiscal balance, positively contributing to the
Speaker 1: economy and by your twenty they've returned twent of investment.
Speaker 1: And if you leok just so folksiclear when you say
Speaker 1: the n B you're talking about the National Bureau of
Speaker 1: Economic Research, the group which did a calls recessions and
Speaker 1: recoveries one of our favorite topics. And if you look
Speaker 1: at it, there was a Department of Human and Health
Speaker 1: Services published or they didn't publish, they weren't allowed to,
Speaker 1: but it was leaked that refugees contribute sixties three billion
Speaker 1: dollars to the economy over ten years. So I think
Speaker 1: when you think about how much they are contributing already,
Speaker 1: imagine how much more they could contribute if we really
Speaker 1: gave them the tools to success and we really built
Speaker 1: their foundation for them to be successful. Let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the economic angle and the political
Speaker 1: issues here. I mean, you have too trends happening in
Speaker 1: the world right now. You have a big increase in
Speaker 1: refugees thanks to especially to war in Syria, mainly going
Speaker 1: towards Europe. And you have a change in the administration
Speaker 1: here in the United States that offers a view that's
Speaker 1: very much opposed to um having an open door towards refugees,
Speaker 1: even though they just I think in recent days relaxed
Speaker 1: the policy somewhat. How has that affected what you do?
Speaker 1: Do you feel that you have to work twice as
Speaker 1: hard to reach your goals? Or more people open up
Speaker 1: their wallets as a result of these kinds of events.
Speaker 1: How would you sum up what's going on? So that's
Speaker 1: a that's a really great question. We've actually seen because
Speaker 1: of the political rhetoric, we've actually seen a lot more
Speaker 1: people interested in contributing to to to assisting in the
Speaker 1: refugee crisis, whether it's resettlement, whether it's advocacy, whether it's
Speaker 1: donating money, whether it's just holding holding small functions to
Speaker 1: help spread the word on on just educating the public
Speaker 1: on what a refugee is and how refugees contribute to
Speaker 1: our our society. So we've actually seen because of the
Speaker 1: because of the reddick, we've actually seen a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot more people step up and say what can
Speaker 1: I do? How can I be a part? How can
Speaker 1: I help? I would say, on a personal level, one
Speaker 1: of the hardest things for me to do is to
Speaker 1: ask people to get involved, and it's amazing how often
Speaker 1: they come back and say no, thank you for asking us,
Speaker 1: and you realize how much people are yearning for community.
Speaker 1: And part of what we're doing is not just raising money,
Speaker 1: are advocating of the average, but we are trying to
Speaker 1: build bridges across different faiths and different and people of
Speaker 1: all sorts of backgrounds, because we think one of the
Speaker 1: reasons we have struggled to meet the needs of refugees
Speaker 1: is that we don't see them as equals. Now, you've
Speaker 1: mentioned greg that most refugees being resettled a children. Now
Speaker 1: that must present a very unique economic challenge. It's not
Speaker 1: just a question of getting them into the workforce, it's
Speaker 1: a question of getting them the life skills so they
Speaker 1: have the potential to contribute the workforce. How do you
Speaker 1: do that and is there enough attention focused on that.
Speaker 1: There's been academic studies that have shown that if you
Speaker 1: bring children in under fourteen, they show same level graduation
Speaker 1: rates of the US citizens have and they go on
Speaker 1: to achieve higher UM education and dissimilar rate and they
Speaker 1: end up having fairly high success rates professionally. UM. There
Speaker 1: is an area, though, as you start getting closer to
Speaker 1: high school age and older, where there are structural challenges
Speaker 1: such as English as a second language that have made
Speaker 1: it harder for those young people those dependents to be successful.
Speaker 1: In addition, there are challenges around the fact that if
Speaker 1: a child is coming without a parent or without two parents,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of social challenges that come up with
Speaker 1: that that needs support. UM So we through our support
Speaker 1: of our partners, we some of the money does go
Speaker 1: to helping these individuals overcome those challenges, and I think
Speaker 1: we need to help them do so so that they
Speaker 1: could become productive and have the ability to be success
Speaker 1: Sulder integration. One of the interesting things that I have
Speaker 1: learned is that less than one percent of refugees actually
Speaker 1: get resettled, and so even though the children that do
Speaker 1: get resettled do make it through the resettlement process, there
Speaker 1: is an entire generation of children that are not being resettled,
Speaker 1: that are not receiving formal education, that are not in
Speaker 1: child friendly zones, and that that is an entire generation
Speaker 1: that is going to be lost. And there are a
Speaker 1: lot of NGOs that are calling that generation of children
Speaker 1: the lost generation. One last question, You guys both have
Speaker 1: pretty consuming day jobs, and you're you're doing all this
Speaker 1: work with refugees in your spare time. Has the work
Speaker 1: you've done with refugees given you any specific insights that
Speaker 1: help you do your day jobs? You know, I don't
Speaker 1: think that there's anything that I'm doing in the work
Speaker 1: that really overlaps, except for obviously the refugee crisis are
Speaker 1: in the countries where oil production is, and so maybe
Speaker 1: there's a tiny bit of overlap. I think what it's
Speaker 1: done is just me overall a more alert and aware person,
Speaker 1: and it's given me an extra dose of compassion. So
Speaker 1: I think it's helped us understand a little bit of
Speaker 1: the political dynamics developing, which at times can leave one
Speaker 1: feeling very distressed and sad, but also quite aware of them.
Speaker 1: And at the same token, though, when we're following what
Speaker 1: is going on in the political dynamics, because of where
Speaker 1: we sit, we also seeing the dynamics and the pendulum
Speaker 1: swinging the other way. You know, we're getting activists who
Speaker 1: were getting people who are passionate about these issues, who
Speaker 1: are going to show up and potentially lead to different
Speaker 1: political outcomes in the future. So I guess I kind
Speaker 1: of think that I'm a little maybe we're going to
Speaker 1: be a little bit too into what they the opposing sees,
Speaker 1: and to either of you, there is a Mike Pants
Speaker 1: connection in this story. What you're referencing here is the
Speaker 1: story of the family that was not allowed to resettle
Speaker 1: in Indiana and was subsequently successfully resettled in Connecticut. I
Speaker 1: think what that points to me is it's the fear
Speaker 1: that is going in about refugees and not an understanding
Speaker 1: of how well vetted these people are, and how they
Speaker 1: are the most vetted of anyone who's coming to unite
Speaker 1: to days. I think most people don't realize that that's
Speaker 1: lost in the public narrative. For sure. You know, that's
Speaker 1: several years of vetting before they're allowed end one. We
Speaker 1: think of that as a last opportunity for the state
Speaker 1: of Indiana and one game for Connecticut. But the bigger
Speaker 1: issue is that as the states pull back and are
Speaker 1: less willing to work to support refugees, it increases the
Speaker 1: onus of the work we're doing, which is to support
Speaker 1: from a civil society standpoint to step in. Thank you both,
Speaker 1: and good luck to you. Thank you, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week and until then you can
Speaker 1: find us on the Bloomberg terminal Bloomberg dot com. Our
Speaker 1: Bloomberg app, as well as Apple Podcasts, pocket Casts, and Stitcher.
Speaker 1: While you're there, take a minute, rate and review the
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Speaker 1: know what you thought. You can follow me at Twitter,
Speaker 1: at Moss Underscore Eco Scott I'm at scott Landman. Benchmark
Speaker 1: is produced by Sarah Pattison. Head of Bloomberg Podcast is
Speaker 1: Francesco Levie. Thanks for listening, See you next time.