Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/6/24: Krystal And Saagar GO TO WAR Over Border Crisis Bill

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Krystal and Saagar fiercely debate the Congressional border crisis bill.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Let's go ahead and get to the major news here in Washington. The border bill arrived and seemingly died upon arrival. It was negotiated by Senator James Lankford, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, and Senator Chris Murphy as well from the Democratic side. Kyrsten Sinema, I guess, from the independent side. Should we call it that, Crystal? And then we have Senator Lankford being from the state of Oklahoma. So Senator Langford appeared on Fox and Friends yesterday morning to make his case for the bill and to rebut some of his GOP colleagues who preemptively were rejecting some of the details. Here's what he had to say.

He said no self-respecting center should agree to vote on a 370 page bill this week. Any 41 centers can prevent the bill from proceeding. If you agree that senators should have this bill for at least a few weeks and certainly more than a few days before voting on it, say so. You understand where he's coming from, right? Don't you guys have a procedural vote this week? Are you going to vote on the bill by the end of the week? So we actually have this bill came out yesterday, Sunday. The first procedural vote is Wednesday, and that procedural vote is literally just open it up to be able to go through it and to be able to say, are we going to debate it this week?

That's what Senator Lee is actually talking about. It's interesting that he said he's already opposed to it. He needs three weeks to be able to read it, but he's already opposed to it. So, again, people have got to be able to read it, go through it themselves. Don't just go off a Facebook post somewhere what the bill says. This dramatically changes asylum. It dramatically changes deportations. We no longer have a 10-year backlog. It builds more wall. Those are the key things that it actually does. But read it for yourselves. Don't just believe what's online. Read it for yourselves. And many Republicans did

and still have ended up rejecting it. We will get to that. But there's actually a good summary of this deal from Bill Malugan. Some of you guys may be familiar with him. He's the Fox News reporter who covers the border. He's very critical of the immigration situation of Biden. So I think his overall summary, I think you could take from the most skeptical point of view. We can go and put this up there on the screen and I'll read from some of it. So he says, quote, knew my initial highlights from the border deal. There's no amnesty and legalization of anyone already who is in the U.S. illegally. It funds an increase for ICE detention capacity from 50,000 to the current 34,000. There's a seven-day,

this is the most controversial part, so please pay attention to this. At a seven-day rolling average of 5,000 encounters per day or 8,500 encounters in a single day, the Department of Homeland Security, quote, would be required to shut the border down and turn away anyone who crosses. No new asylum claims would be allowed. Anyone crossing would be removed. It would end the idea of, quote, I made it to U.S. soil and you have to process me. That would be over. Border Patrol would not process an illegal crosser and they would be removed. No asylum claim permitted unless it was made at a port of entry. Pay attention to that because it's important. They then go on and they say this does not mean that quote for quote 5,000 are allowed in.

Before the authority kicks in, single adults would be detained. Families would be released via alternative to detention. Asylum cases would be fast-tracked to months rather than years under a new rapid expansion system. Those who fail would be quickly removed from the U.S. The initial pass would be reviewed from work authorization claims and 90-day supervision until final asylum claim is determined. Shutdown authority doesn't drop until the crossings decrease significantly in the days following that. Significantly, there are tougher asylum requirements and a highly credible fear standard, including the three bars to eligibility, criminal history, could they have resettled in another country on the way to the US called a safe third country, and quote, could they have resettled

somewhere else in their own country? Just saying that you're scared to return home no longer is enough to be required in the initial interview. It appears that that legislation would then move asylum claim decisions away from immigration judges and have them be handled by USCIS, which is the U.S. immigration system. Next, they talk here about some of the increases to FEMA, humanitarian aid, increase in the number of new visas that will be granted over the last five years to 50,000. Funding, and this is another important part I want to pay attention to, funding to hire hundreds more ICE deportation officers, border patrol agents, and USCIS asylum officers. It says no unaccompanied minor could be removed, and some of these minors

would receive attorneys pro bono and are taxpayer funded. DHS would take 90 days to have this new system before it goes into place. And the context that he adds at the end is that the border has seen at least 5,000 encounters almost every single day of the last couple of years under Biden. So if the bill were signed into law, the border would likely be shut down on the first day that it takes effect. So Crystal, with all of that and with that skeptical summary, I think here by the Fox News reporter, it does seem to still mean that almost all Republicans have rejected it out of hand. The House of Representatives say it's a non-starter and that it's not going to happen. Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty clear there. This is a bill that is very, pretty far in the restrictionist direction. It is not something the Democrats ever would

have agreed to under Donald Trump or would agree to next time under Donald Trump. Historically, any sort of increased enforcement mechanisms have been tied in a quote unquote comprehensive immigration bill with some sort of path to legalization. There is absolutely none of that there. There's a real, so I do wanna say there are pieces of this bill that I would actually support, including as we've discussed, I mean, one of the biggest problems is you have this massive asylum case backlog, millions of cases. So it takes years for these cases to be adjudicated. There are provisions in here that would help to expedite

that and also would flood the zone with resources to help get rid of that backlog. I think that part is important. But there's also a sort of direct attack on asylum itself, making it much more difficult to claim asylum. It's already extremely difficult to be granted asylum. The bar is already extremely high. And then there's also, as we discussed before, this quote unquote shut down the border, which is a little bit misleading how this is labeled. I could not agree. But basically the idea is once you get to over 5,000 on average on a daily basis, and there are some provisions in there like the president could change that authority, which is the other piece is like you are giving the president, whether it's Biden or Trump, massive new powers under this bill. But the idea is once you get to

that 5,000, you basically sort of like end due process and say, screw it, to asylum whatsoever. So let me just talk about the politics, because in some ways what's in the bill isn't all that important, given that it doesn't have a chance in hell of passing. The politics here are that Trump basically came out and said, I don't want you guys to support this bill. And the Republican Party was like, OK, we won't. And so someone like James Lankford, who, you know, took at face value the idea that the Republicans actually wanted a deal that combined border funding with Ukraine funding, with Israel funding, which was what Republicans were pushing for at the beginning of this process. Someone like him who really tried to negotiate in good faith and really tried to give Republicans the restrictionist ideas that he wanted under the context of a Democratic administration, he's left holding the bag like, hey, guys, I thought this is what y'all wanted.

But the politics at the end of the day rules the day. One more thing on the politics, because I think this is important. There is a lot of Democratic glee about, oh, Biden, he's so clever. Look at how he called their bluff. And now he's flipped the script on immigration. And now Republicans look bad on this and they're exposed as not really wanting to be serious about this problem. I don't buy that analysis at all. I totally agree. I do not buy that analysis at all. I totally agree. I do not buy that analysis at all. Number one, the border, whatever's happening there is still happening on your watch. And whatever I think of it, there are many Americans who find the chaos, and I think that's fair, who want to see an orderly border process. And that does not exist

right now. That is still going to be the case. It is still going to be under a Biden administration, and so that's a problem. Number two, in the last election, Biden versus Trump, we had that prior to that election, we had the whole child separation policy, which Americans were genuinely horrified by. I mean, it was terrible. These kids who were orphaned by the United States government, you know, the audio that was leaked of the border patrol agents mocking them and all of that was horrifying. And Biden, in part to win a Democratic primary, he really positioned himself as being much more compassionate of having this inclusive message about immigration, saying he would be a clean break from Donald Trump. And that ended up being a winning message. I mean, I'm not going to say that was like the number one reason why he got elected, but that was part of the appeal is it would be a break from the cruelty and the chaos of a Donald

Trump administration. What Biden and the Democrats have effectively done here is just embraced all of the Republican arguments on immigration, just completely caved and effectively said like, you're right about immigration and your model is the right model. And guess what? If you want a border hawk, you are not going to defeat Donald Trump on those grounds. Like why would you compete on who can be the biggest asshole at the border? You are not going to win that competition. So one of the basics of politics is to try to fight the fight that you want to fight on the grounds that you want to engage where your strengths are.

No, don't go to the place where he's the strongest, where if it's a competition of like who's gonna be the most cruel and the most restrictionist at the border. There's no doubt that Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are gonna win that all day long. So I think all of this celebration, Biden's so clever, Biden's so smart, this was such a great ploy is insane. I think it's cope, I think it's ridiculous, and I think it's foolish. I totally agree on the politics, Disagree a bit on the policy. People can go watch some of our debates on that in the past. But yeah, I mean, listen, no matter what, I'm a pretty strong

immigration voter. I would say it's one of the main, if anything still ties me to the main Republican Party, it would be immigration. Why would I ever vote for Biden? It's like one of those where if this is a policy where it's one of my number one issues, and why would I vote for somebody who consistently undermined the immigration policy over the first three years, got dragged here kicking and screaming and is trying to do this for a political ploy, which as you said, is not going to work. Now, I'll take myself out of it and just say, who are people who are voting on the border? If you are voting on the border, you're a Republican. I just want to break it to you. You are. You are the number one issue in the Republican Party today amongst the GOP primary electorate is immigration.

Also, something else that has become very clear on the politics here, I'm curious what you think of this, is that in the past, excuse me, is that in the past is that there was a major split on immigration in the Republican Party. Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, the Gang of Eight, by and large embraced in 2013 the idea of comprehensive immigration reform paired with some future border enforcement. Now with basically the shutdown and the collapse of GOP support for even a bill like this, it basically means Trump has won the argument within the party. Even in this, it is over. The starting point for the Republican Party

now is zero, zero illegal immigration. Asylum itself, over. I support that, by the way, just so everybody knows, in terms of revamping our asylum process. But my point is, is that this view was a minority view within the establishment Republican Party. And the way that you know this, Crystal, is that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed this bill. It doesn't matter at all. You know, why did they endorse it? Well, because they like cheap labor, but that's a secondary part. My point is just that the establishment centers of power, the big business groups and others, which combined with the Koch parties had, I wouldn't say they had won the argument with voters,

but they certainly had won with the establishment. To have a guy like Lankford who comes from that wing of the party, who did, even he tried to negotiate something like this, and they'd just be nuked outright. I think that demonstrates a major shift in immigration politics, period. I also agree with you on the Democratic side, which is, and this is where I actually want to know what you think, because for me, under Trump, it was easy to scream about child separation, even though Obama did it too, and all of this, and then everyone just conveniently forgets that whenever it happens. But to me, the asylum and the images of the border under Biden just became so untenable within the system that they're trying to use past frameworks for the current problem where you have

six to eight million people that cross under the Biden administration. It just seems to have collapsed within its own logic. Well, I mean, the collapse is a long time coming and predates Joe Biden. Because basically, I mean, to go back in some of the history of our immigration system, for a long time, the overwhelming number of people who were coming to America were single Mexican males who were coming for work. And there started to be a shift, largely driven, by the way, by our totally messed up foreign policy vis-a-vis Guatemala, El Salvador in particular, where these countries became incredibly violent and it was incredibly

dangerous. And the number of people coming from those Northern Triangle countries spiked. We have not had a major overhaul of our immigration system since the early 90s. Yeah, so we haven't updated asylum losses since the 90s. So we have a system that even when it was sort of reflective of the predominant type of migrant that was coming, it's not like it was working that well then either. And it's never been updated to be able to process the number of asylum claims that are coming in. There's always been this tension over, okay, who actually merits asylum? There's been a massive amount of discrimination between the types of migrants that will be granted asylum. For example, if you're from Cuba, probably granted asylum. If you're from Guatemala,

you're not going to be granted asylum. If you're from Haiti, you're not going to be granted asylum. If you're from El Salvador, you're not going to be granted asylum. If you're from like a former communist country, you know, escaping persecuted Venezuela, for example, you will be granted asylum. So it's always been very selective, very political, and largely broken and the resources inadequate to deal with the number of people who come now claiming asylum. And that really is the core of the issue. Now, the other piece of the issue is, of course, just a question of like, okay, but how many people do you want to come? How many people is appropriate for, you know, how many people I think there's a practical consideration of how many people can be absorbed in a nation at a time, given the amount of resources, etc.

My number for that is much higher than your number for that. You know, I mean, that's where we just like wildly differ. I think we can agree on the need for the additional resources to process the claims. But when it comes to how many people should come into the country, you know, I think we feel very differently about that. But with Joe Biden, what do I think happened that brought him to this place? First of all, I do think he had this idea of like, oh, I'm going to call their bluff. And it's an instinct that we have seen reflected in a bunch of European nations as well among these sort of like center left neolibs where it's like, oh, the right is beating me up on immigration. So let me pretend like I'm on the right. And I was telling you there was a study that the

Guardian wrote up recently that looked at whether or not that worked electorally. And they were like, no, it doesn't work. Because if people want an immigration asshole, sorry, then they're going to vote for the most, you know, for the right wing party. At the same time, you're demoralizing your own base. Biden, as we know, because of Israel and other issues, but in particular because of Israel, his base is already demoralized. This only further is like another thumb in their eye of I'm going to be even harsher on immigration than Donald Trump was. And I'm going to completely flip from the messaging that I ran on back in 2020. So I think electorally it's foolish. I think the other thing

that happened, Sagar, is because you did have these, like I think the project of busing migrants into cities. It was genius. I think that that was very effective because it is true that, you know, especially like a city like New York. Now, I think it's preposterous the idea that a gigantic city like New York, a city that in a very short period of time in the last century gained 30% of its population and is a city of immigrants, can't handle absorbing 100,000 plus immigrants. I think that's preposterous. But if people are coming with zero resources all at once and no work permits even to be able to provide for themselves, well, yeah, that is a drain on resources. That's a difficult thing to deal with. That's the main thing. And they have the right to shelter.

And so Eric Adams is going like, you know, I need help. What are we going to do? And Kathy Hochul is the same thing. And Chicago mayor, same thing. And so I do think that that also impacted some of the politics here of how we ended up in this place. No question. I totally agree. I actually think that's probably the single most impactful thing. One of the reasons, again, why I think it collapsed on its own logic is Europe is a good example. So back in 2015, if people will remember, there was the great Syrian

Afghan migrant wave across Europe, some of which they're still dealing with today. They had the same level of asylum law that they had to grapple with, which is like, how much of this is real? Most of these guys are military age men. What exactly does this all mean? Are they trying to stay here? Are they really fleeing for their lives? Well, also, they're from a war-torn country. Can we send them back? Like, what do we do? And that led to, I mean, the rise of places like Viktor Orban, Hungarian politics. I was just in Vienna and in Budapest. Both of them told me that the migrant crisis was the single biggest sea change in all of politics. It led to the first breakdown of the Schengen since the 1990s. It really undermined a lot of the internal logic of the European Union.

Even today, there's some massive battles about it. And Rishi Sunak, for example, he is under massive pressure from his right because of the asylum thing. Arguably, Brexit would not have happened if the German asylum invitee thing had not. So the politics of it, I think, really comes down to the fact that the law from the 90s was just not prepared for what the situation was going to be. I think we can genuinely agree. In terms of the policy and all of that now here, as I said, it has now been and shifted dramatically to the right for the Republican Party now, depending on where you stand. I think that's a good thing personally, but you know, it's an overton window shift nonetheless. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Can we put this please up on the screen? It's the actual whiplist, which is the opposition right now to the Senate border deal. What we see here in the opposition right now, Crystal, is that you have two no votes, Bob Menendez, Alex Padilla. Actually, I believe Bernie Sanders has been added to that as well. I think Markey and there's one more that I think there's five Democratic or Bernie's and independent no votes. A lot of this is moving quickly, so we're chewing our best. A lot of this is moving quickly. So we're chewing our best. The reason why this is important is that right now it is going to be very difficult for this to even get to 60 votes. The reason why that would matter is that if it's at 60,

then it can't even, if it doesn't get 60 votes, it will not even be able to get cloture. The secondary thing that is very important to understand here, if we could put A3, please, up on the screen, is that the House of Representatives has already declared, this is a joint statement from Speaker Johnson, Steve Scalise, who's the House Majority Whip, and Elise Stefanik, have all a statement that they've put out and say that the Senate supplemental says any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time. It is dead, capital D, on arrival in the House. We encourage the U.S. Senate to reject it. That, as I understand it, Crystal, is actually

playing a huge part in undermining many of the votes in the Senate because many Republicans do not want to take a risky vote on immigration if they know that it's not. I mean, it makes sense, obviously. You don't want to take a bill. Already, Senator Lankford, by the way, is under massive fire amongst the GOP faithful from what I've seen. Trump basically disavowed him yesterday, even though, plot twist, he endorsed him. Also, many DeSantis voters are passing this around. In his endorsement of Senator Lankford, he said he's strong on the border. He can't even make it up. I mean, but this bill is strong on the, like this bill. Well, it depends on your perspective. No, this compared to the status quo, if you're in favor of restrictionist immigration

policies, this makes it much more stringent. It makes it, you know, much more towards the Republican vision. And I have to say, for me, what this reminds me of is, I don't know if you guys remember, I know you remember back in the Obama days when there was all this grand bargain, we're gonna try to get a grand bargain, which meant cutting Social Security and Medicare, basically. And Obama came to the table with a deal like, here, Tea Party, I'm gonna cave to your wishes, and I'm gonna put cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the table. And because they, I think it was probably some of the same logic if they didn't wanna, quote unquote, give Obama a win. But know, I think it was probably some of the same logic of they didn't want to quote unquote give Obama a win. But also, you know, the stated reason was like, oh, this

doesn't go far enough and this doesn't do enough. So the Tea Party did, you know, the work of people like me who don't want to see those programs cut and killed that initiative. And guess what? That never came around again. And so, you know, I think, first of all, it's very uncertain whether Donald Trump is going to end up in the White House. I think it's a 50-50 prospect. That's number one. There's no way he's going to have a filibuster-proof majority and control of the House and be able to just do whatever he wants on the border. Now, he can do what he wants to do with executive action, but that's always limited. Yeah, it's difficult. Both in what you can do and also in the duration of how

long that lasts. So if you actually want to quote unquote close the border and limit asylum and all of these things, this is probably your best chance under a Democratic president. Democrats, like I said, would never agree to something that was so enforcement heavy under Trump or under a Republican president. So I think this probably is their best chance if they actually care about the restrictionist policies they claim to care about. Just to give you one example, this bill would more than double the budget of ICE. Yes. It would give the DHS secretary unilateral powers to deport as many people as he or she wants to deport. These are powers that this is, again, from the Democratic perspective, I think this is insane.

Like, yes, you're giving these powers right now to Joe Biden and Joe Biden's administration. But if Trump wins, you're giving those powers to Trump and his administration. Are you really comfortable with that and the way that they would use those powers? So again, I think if you actually, you know, back the way that they would use those powers. So again, I think if you actually back the rhetoric that they back and believe in a restrictionist policy, this is probably the best deal you're going to get. And I am incredibly delighted, especially when you pair it with Ukraine and Israel aid. Well, yeah, there we go. That they want to, well, and there we can agree. Yeah.

That they want to kill this thing and that it's quote unquote dead on arrival in the house. I'll give you the case that I've heard, which is McConnell's an old man. He's either going to die or he's not going to be there very soon. And he's the only person who was standing. Trump actually encouraged him to nuke the filibuster in the case for a border enforcement deal, if we remember, for the border wall. HR2 already passed the House of Representatives. HR2 goes much farther than this. I'm a very strong supporter of HR2.

I think it's a great bill on immigration. It completely reforms asylum in a very different policy, endorsed also by the Border Patrol Union. By the way, this bill is endorsed by the Border Patrol Union. Actually, that's why I wanted to talk about this. So I did some digging. I asked some of my immigration friends, I go, what the hell are these doing? Because I was like, this can't be real. Brandon Judd, who I know, by the way, Brandon was the head of the Border Patrol Union. I used to work with him quite a bit in the past. So Crystal, one of the reasons the Border Patrol unit supports this is because it dramatically increases their pay. It's not just over asylum, but that's- Yeah, but they, I mean, what they wrote in their endorsement is this gives us like the strongest set of tools

that we've ever had. That's true. Yeah, absolutely. No question. But again, my case, the case that I have heard from those who say is, look, Mitch is going to be gone. We already have the House. We've won the argument. Now the senators are going to vote the way that we tell them to. If we nuke the filibuster for – many Republicans who are not named Mitch McConnell are very open to nuking the filibuster. And they're like, we'll just pass our immigration bill. I know you're against the filibuster too. Maybe.

But there's no reason why you couldn't do that. You couldn't pass this bill and then still do that down the road. I think that doesn't foreclose the possibility to completely kill asylum down the road. You name, for example, the DHS secretary, you know, gets unilateral authority. Well, Republicans don't trust. They're impeaching him right now because they say that he's not following the law. For them, it's actually one of the reasons not to give the power to Mayorkas or to the president. I mean, but that, no, it gives him unilateral authority to deport as many people as he wants

to deport. So that's not like, it's not like unilateral authority to give them amnesty. It just goes in one direction. So your worst case scenario is, you know, the status quo. Well, if you give somebody a work permit and you don't deport them, that basically is amnesty because when the hell are they going to leave? I mean, that's kind of the, but here's the thing, just on a substantive level that I genuinely don't understand, and I want to hear your analysis of. Republicans, we've covered this on the show a bunch of times, talk about, you know, all these people who are leaving New York, going to Texas, going to Florida. And that scene is like that internal migration is seen as like,

I think justifiably so, terrible for New York and terrible for California and fantastic for Texas and fantastic for Florida. But suddenly when it's people who are coming from outside the country, even though they're also just human beings, and by the way, immigrants, like some of the clearly like hardest working and oftentimes most patriotic people you can possibly meet, suddenly when they're coming from out of the country, when they come to New York, it's like, oh my God, this is terrible for New York. So how is it that people leaving is bad, but also people coming is bad? It's a philosophical difference, Crystal, which is that the first part of your people are lawful permanent residents and they're American citizens. And the people who are coming here

are not. And in most cases- But they could be? Maybe, but they don't pay taxes. Most of them don't speak English. They don't have any skills. But that would be an argument for a pathway to citizenship, to legalizing them, bringing them out of the shadows. Because, yeah, the problem, and this is one of the arguments about like, oh, it depresses the wages. What depresses wages is when you have people who are not legalized, who are in the shadows, who are being paid under the table, oftentimes like less than minimum wage and not having to abide by labor regulations. What you're making is an argument for legalizing immigrants, for allowing in more legal immigrants versus having this massive shadow economy. I actually don't support legalizing immigrants, and I don't support pathway decisionship for the vast majority of people here,

and I'll tell you why, which is that fundamentally is a fairness issue. People like my parents spent years and tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers trying to get visas. They had PhDs and master's degrees. It's not that easy for people to get a visa to this country. You can ask anybody who's like me. I think it's bullshit, frankly, that you can just cross the border, just say, I fear for my life because El Salvador sucks, and you get to stay here. And you get to work for five, 10 years, liably never leave. The other case, and this is, look, you can call me racist if you want. The vast majority of people arriving here have no skills.

We're lucky if they have a fifth grade reading level in Spanish, let alone in English. They're not educated in terms of the jobs that they're going to take. I mean, is it really fair to depress, like, wages for the lower class Americans? It doesn't, though. No, absolutely not. I mean, the research. I mean, it's a supply and demand issue. It's basic.

Your assumption is that there's some set number of jobs in the economy and that's it. End of story. It doesn't shift. So again, it comes back to, okay, then why is it a great thing for New Yorkers to be moving to Texas? Why is that great for Texas? Why isn't that them taking their jobs and depressing their wages and ruining their community, et cetera, et cetera?

Many people in my home state of Texas would say it's ruining their community and it is driving prices up because of the supply and demand issue. Yeah, but they brag about, oh, all the moving vans coming here to Florida and to Texas. But when it's, you know, American citizens coming from New York, then it's amazing and it's great for the economy, et cetera, et cetera. But somehow, even though it's just also people, they just happen to be coming from outside the country, then suddenly it's terrible. It doesn't make sense.

I just think there's a fundamental difference between a guy who makes $250,000 from New York and moves to Austin, who's paying taxes and can buy a house, than somebody who comes here with literally zero dollars. I think that's so classist. Because, I mean, again- No, he's not classist. First of all, they're not from here, so they don't deserve anything. But hold on, Sagar. Think about, okay, put aside who deserves what, et cetera, et cetera. Just think about the best interests of the country. It's very clear that some level of immigration, and you can see it again when we're talking about internal migration,

is very good for local economies. And you know what? What we have seen as a nation of immigrants is that in these subsequent waves of immigration, some of the hardest working people, most family-oriented people, et cetera, and more more law abiding, by the way, are immigrants. Depends on the type, but yes. Nope, not true. If you look overall, immigrant populations, more law abiding than native born citizens, not to mention. Yes, when they first come and they're learning the language and they're new, et cetera, and

they're bringing their cultures. We all know what the next generation looks like. They just look like Americans. Their kids are going to speak English. They're going to be 100% American. Well, it depends. Look, George Borjas, who works over at Harvard University, has done a 2017 fantastic study which shows that mass illegal immigration largely depresses wages for lower class Americans.

So that's number one. I would say the empirical data is pretty set on this in terms of the laws of supply and demand. But number two, again, is a deep philosophical difference. I think that the net migration level that we should have over the next 30 years should be zero. And this is my case, again, this against – and look, people will be like, how can a guy, son of Indian immigrants – by the way, my mom vehemently disagrees with me if anybody wants to know. And she also votes, so she can vote the way that she wants if people want to know. I'll tell you, which is that in the 1919s and the teens, we had a hyphenated American crisis, very similar to the one that we have here.

Mass internal strife, complete differences of opinion. People speak in German. People speak in Italian. They had dual loyalty to their old countries, as we saw during the First World War. It was a huge problem. We had a massive foreign-born population equivalent only to today. Internal strife was solved one way. We dramatically lowered the level of immigration. We let people assimilate into the country. And for the next 40 to 50 years, we had very, very little immigration. Now, that is my case for us becoming a cohesive nation, which can have a true national identity and one where the foreign-born population, where it is currently at an all-time high, should not continue to be higher with the orderly process. I will also say many Indians will be pissed off at what I'm saying because I'm also

claiming that legal immigration should go to net zero. And I strongly believe it because I do believe that our current sovereignty in internal politics is so divisive largely because we do not relate to one another whatsoever. And that really has nothing to do with immigration. And importing people from the third world is just not going to work. Even if you look at, like, the political divide has never been actually less racially polarized than it is right now. And, in fact, Republicans are winning. This is the other thing with all this, like, great replacement. Oh, they want to bring in all these immigrants just so they can vote for Democrats. Like that's actually happening less and less. And Republicans love to

brag about how they're winning over this population, but also fear monger about how they could never win this population. So that's another part of the conversation that I think makes absolutely no sense and is utterly ridiculous. The divide in this country, yeah, some are, you know, there are some racial divisions, but increasingly we're actually less polarized among racial lines. And, you know, I would wager, and I think most people would agree, that ultimately the country was much better for those waves of Irish and Italian and Polish and German immigrants. I mean, that's part of what has made this country what it is. And I don't see this new wave of migrants coming from a different part of the world in any different way. So listen, is there a limit to how much we can bring in at one time?

Just again, practically, if you flood the zone with a whole bunch of new people and that creates housing, there's problems. I'm not gonna say that you can just bring in the whole world and it's not going to cause an issue. But I do think that there's something fundamentally broken in a logic that would say, it's very clear when a place like the industrial Midwest empties out and these towns are decaying and people are fleeing, it's very clear that's a bad thing. It's very clear when it's New York and people are leaving New York that that's a bad thing. But then somehow, when it's other people who are coming in, which in a different scenario, if they came from a different country or a different part of the world, you say, this is great, this is wonderful. Somehow that's terrible.

It just doesn't make any sense to me. And I don't think that the studies back up. The studies show that if you have a massive undocumented illegal workforce, that that can be a problem for wages. Actually documented immigrants, the overwhelming majority of studies show it's actually good for, it's neutral on wages, and in general is good for the economy and helps for the thriving of that local area. So that's why, again, I'm not like open borders, just let's have an unlimited number. But I think we can handle a lot more than we have. I think it'd be good for all kinds of people, all kinds of parts of the country.

And I also just think it's fundamentally goes against some core American values, this complete attack on the asylum process and this idea that we don't care if you're being persecuted, we don't care if you fear for your lives, we don't care if you're a Jew trying to escape Nazi Germany or whatever. Well, that's not fair. It is. If you're ending the asylum process, it is. These people are not fleeing a Holocaust, okay? No, but some people, no. They're fleeing gang violence. By the way. But hold on, hold on. But if you end the asylum process, you are telling people who would potentially be fleeing a Holocaust, we don't care. That's too bad. We're full. What we could say is if there's a future Holocaust,

then sure, we on a case by case basis, we can evaluate what's going to happen. And again, I would even say is that, okay, El Salvador, let's currently look, everyone likes to talk about root causes. Well, what just happened? We just had a mass election of a right-wing authoritarian president who threw all the criminals in jail and dramatically lowered their murder rate. That proves they are adults with agency. They can elect leaders who want to deal with their problems and deal with their own problems and stay where they are. El Salvador's problems are El Salvador's. Venezuela's problems are Venezuela's. Has it been exacerbated by US sanctions? Sure. But at the end of the day, it's not our problem.

It's not our fault that your country, if your country sucks, it's your responsibility to fix it. But see, I just look at this totally different. I mean, first of all, we can't exempt ourselves from the foreign policy that we, up till very recently, were screwing over these countries. Or the drug war that is one of the most critical root causes in making many of these places incredibly violent. But even if you put that aside, like I said, I don't see this as a punishment. I think if you look at it through another lens of, typically, it's a great thing when people want to move to a place. When they want to move to Florida, somehow it's a great thing. When they want to move to Texas, somehow it's a great thing when people want to move to a place. When they want to move to Florida, somehow it's a great thing. You know, when they want to move to Texas,

somehow it's a great thing. So I don't see this as like, oh, we're being punished by having to clean up other people's messes. No, I think we should have a process that's orderly. I think we should have enough resources to be able to deal with the number of people that are coming. I think we should have an ability, you know, a system that makes sense, that lets in a certain number, you know, that's not going to overwhelm the entire country. But we should, in general, see it as a good thing that people want to come to the United States of America and still see it as the land of opportunity. You should see it as a land of opportunity. It should be.

It should be a land of opportunity for people who live here and people who are natural born U.S. citizens or a lot of permanent residents. But that's the thing is, like, you see this as a zero-sum game, and it's not. It's not. Well, like I said, there's a lot of data to back it up. Now, in terms of the difference between the Irish and the German is we were a rapidly industrializing economy, which needed cheap labor. I would also say that a lot of people who were natural born hated the Irish and the Germans with some good reason because they were depleting their wages and were willing to work for much less than they were. And they're driving around their overall wages, which led to major labor disputes even within unions at the time. So that played out 100 years ago, but that was 100 years ago and we can

say what it is. Today, we are not a rapidly industrializing economy or rapidly de-industrializing economy. We don't need a lot of cheap labor. The predominant amount of cheap labor that does come here and ends up working in places like home healthcare space. They don't, they end up depressing wages in places like construction and others. And there's also, we have a housing supply issue. I mean, you know, like where are these people going to live? But then look, this is, this is why I don't even like to have an economic argument as much. It's about process and it's about legality. If you don't, if. For example, and you're using the ones about El Salvador. Why is it fair that we invaded Iraq and Iraqis can't just walk here? Don't they have

more right to live here than anyone in El Salvador? I would say, yeah, absolutely. I would let them in too. But it's not fair because they can't walk here across Mexico. We do have special programs for, I think, Iraqis, but definitely Afghan interpreters as well who helped us in our war. Yeah, who helped us. Absolutely. That's the clarity. But not every random Iraqi who happened to live in the country between 2003 and 2020. It's just not a fair process just because you can walk across Mexico or if you're some Chinese or Haitian or whatever, Somali or whatever, you can afford a ticket to there.

That puts you ahead of the line. And the reason that these are all men is because it is based upon a belief that you can come here, you can Western Union your money back. And most of these countries, just so people know, huge portions of their economy come from illegal labor and Western Union transfers from the United States. They're called remittances. There was a huge effort in the Trump years to try and tax remittances, which of course the Republicans quashed, but it's secondary for the conversation right now. My only point is that it has to be orderly. I think we agree. But on the net benefit, I totally disagree that a bunch of people who

cannot even speak English, the vast majority of these people, some of them don't even speak Spanish. I think a lot of people don't understand. This may be controversial on the left. I don't actually have a problem with part of the citizenship process being a requirement to speak English. So make that a requirement. I mean, that's the thing is you can't say- But that's citizenship. I'm talking about living here. But you can't say you have to follow the process, but then there is no process to follow and be like, also, I'm going to make sure that there is no process to follow. I just, you know, I think that's fundamentally unfair. And, you know, the other thing is, like, there's this assumption that everyone in the world

would come to the United States of America. A lot of them would. And that's just not borne out by the data. Even among, you know, there's a lot of focus on the, like, Central and South American migrants who come here. There's far more Venezuelans who have migrated to neighboring countries to Venezuela than there are who have attempted to come here. People typically, if they're under pressure, first of all, most people don't want to leave their homes. And I think anyone out there could relate to, like, you like where you live. You have a certain level of comfort. Like like you want to stay in your home. So already, if you're like, I have to migrate, this is a pretty extraordinary circumstance. Then most people, the overwhelming majority of migrants are looking to go to the countries that are most proximate where, you know,

again, they may have family ties or it just may feel more comfortable for them or whatever. So it's not true that if you open things up that literally everyone in the world would wanna come here. That's just not the way it works. So to your point about like, oh, it's not fair that Iraqis can't come, like, okay, so let's get them plane tickets.

Right, but they can't. That's my point. And look, Gallup survey, 2021, 900 million people would migrate to the West if they could. Sorry, that's just not going to happen. And this is the same thing whenever it comes to asylum. But again, I'm not arguing that we should just let an unlimited number in. I just think the focus only on restrictionism. And here's the other thing that I'll say is there's this assumption that the more

cruel and restrictive you are at the border, number one, the more orderly it's going to be. That's not true because almost definitionally, the more that you're squeezing the number of actual legal migrants, the more you're gonna have illegal migrants because these are not people who are like casually leaving their homes. They have real reasons and are not gonna be, and haven't shown any deterrence based on the cruelty at the border or the restrictionist policies at the border. I'll give you a perfect example. After Trump instituted the child separation policy with these dramatically cruel images, I mean, some of the most like cruel imagery you could possibly imagine coming out, the number of migrants actually went up. There has been no evidence

that the more you crack down at the border, that it actually serves as a deterrent effect and people don't come. That simply has not worked down in history. So even if your goal is like, let's keep people away, the restrictionist direction isn't effective for that. The counter to that is that the reason they started coming back is because Trump caved and he actually went away from family separation. And he basically reverted back to the original policy. The one reason, the one time it worked was during the pandemic when we didn't allow people to cross illegally, period. And you have to stay in Mexico, which I support that policy. But that didn't mean that people weren't coming. It just meant that they were being dealt

with at a different point. Yeah, and that's great. And the remain in Mexico policy I have some issues with. But the general principle of we should have structures and bureaucracy in place so that the whole of the issue isn't being dealt with at the border, I do think actually makes sense. Yeah, I agree. There actually was a Trump policy at the time, which Biden did away with, which encouraged people to apply for asylum in their home country at the US embassy if they wanted to. Unfortunately, that policy was done away with, which I don't support. Also a Biden policy that would use this CBP one app or something like that, that would allow people to apply in their home countries, which also was incredibly effective and which Republicans have, you know, the one of the things that they're citing as a problem here

is that it would enable that program to continue. I am not saying the Republicans have been perfect on this issue. In fact, they've been complicit and in many cases have abetted this because it's good for big business. Let's, you know, in terms of the wage theory. So that's what I would say. I am not a Republican stand here. I'm purely representing the interests, I guess, of Mr. Sager and Jetty. From my, again, I think philosophical difference is that I think mass illegal migration is bad. I think mass illegal migration is bad. I think mass migration net is also bad for the United States. The foreign borne population is far too high. We need a long, long period of assimilation and of a strong social safety net policy. And I firmly believe that overall that this type of unmitigated control and all that

actually does a great disservice to people like my family and others who came to the country legally and it is an unfair policy. You had the ability to. Yeah. And your family had the money. That's right. That's right. And that's not unfair. How is that fair? How is that fair that because you had the resources to do it and you happen to be from a country where there was a possibility of getting in that you're able to. Well, first of all, nobody owes anybody. So in terms of policy, it makes sense that you probably want people who are higher skilled, who already speak English and who are well-educated so they can more firmly and easily fit into the overall economy. I don't really accept that. Well, but that's a difference. And then I don't think anybody has a right to come here. And in fact, my net is that nobody has a right. Here's what I would say. Yeah. I do think

mass illegal migration is a problem. Yes. Not knowing who's coming in, having chaos at the border, having people who are being paid under the table and who could, you know, because they're working in the shadows, that can depress wages, no doubt. That is for sure an issue. Having a, you know, significant level of legal migration where people have a path where you can put the requirement, okay, they have to speak English or whatever. I think that is net and throughout history has shown to be net beneficial to America. I think it's a core part of why America has been as economically successful and as vibrant and thriving and innovative as it has been throughout history. So I just, you know, and there isn't evidence that legal immigrants negatively impact wages

for anyone, as I said before. So as a population, they tend to be overall more law abiding. That's what the numbers show. T tend to be some of the hardest working people in the entire country, and actually, you know, oftentimes tend to have a lot of conservative values that Republicans are excited to, you know, crow about and try to win over when it's convenient for them politically. No question, you're right. I think immigration has obviously been a net positive to America, wouldn't be here without it throughout the past. But I would also, again, I would say that periods of great migration were also followed by periods of great shutdowns. And I think there was deep

wisdom in that because it allowed for assimilation. It allowed for the benefit of that industrialization before we had overall changes to our laws, the Immigration Naturalization Act of 1965, which by and large has not changed and I think dramatically should change. We currently have a chain migration-based system where if you happen to have a relative here, it's easier to migrate, which is nuts because it all should be merit-based, which is what I support. I don't think that's nuts. I think it makes sense that if you have, I mean, this is again like a tradition in America is if, you know, people who are in your family come and then they sort of set up and then you have some, a support system that you can come and tie into. Just because it exists doesn't mean it's good. No, but I think, I mean, to me, it makes some sense. Sure. I mean, look, it has its proponents.

That's why it's been the law of the land for the last 50 years. What I would say is I think we should move like Australia, Canada, and many other Western developed countries to a dramatically merit-based immigration system with a point based in terms of the criteria we've talked about, being able to speak English, et cetera. But that belies the fact that it's not going to be fair. It's not fair because immigration shouldn't be fair. Not everybody should have an equal right to immigrate or go anywhere. And I don't have an equal right to set foot in any country. Whenever I go through passport control, any country in the world can deny me if they want to. I don't have a problem with that.

You know, the reality is because we are relatively well off and American, we pretty much can go wherever we want. We pretty much can go wherever we want. Mostly, yes. We pretty much can go wherever we want. So what you're advocating for is a policy where basically rich people can come and poor people can't. And even outside of the fair and square, I don't actually think that that is the ideal migration system because, again, I think it's classist. I think it ignores the skills and the abilities that people who happen to have been born in the wrong country and to the wrong set of parents that they can bring to the table.

And I think that's demonstrated by the strength of America through migration throughout our history. My care for the poor and the lower class extends to the borders of the United States. For everybody beyond that, I hope for the best for you, but it's not my problem. And that can sound harsh if you want, but I've seen enough of the world to know that there is so much suffering that is out there that there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. My parents are from India. I feel no obligation to street urchins in India. I think that's the Indian government's problem. I think it's really sad. I've seen a lot of them in horrible sanitary conditions, but I believe that the number is so vast and so grand that there's Indian government's problem. I think it's really sad. I've seen a lot of them in horrible,

sanitary conditions, but I believe that the number is so vast and so grand that there's a certain hubris to the extent that we can think that we can extend those rights and benefits to everybody. And that's where you and I are just fundamentally different because the fact that we can't solve every problem for every person in the world does not harden my heart to being able to do what we can within the bounds of things that, again, are actually good for our country and have been shown to be good for our country over time. And the last thing I'll just go back to, it doesn't make any sense to me that when New Yorkers are fleeing to Texas, oh my God, this is terrible for New York. But when migrants who, again, over time, law abiding, more law abiding than the native born population, hardworking, have gone through hell in order to get here, are gonna probably be way more patriotic than your average American. But when they come,

suddenly it's a disaster and it's terrible for the state. It just doesn't make sense to me. Well, public opinion doesn't agree with you. I can at least say that. I don't know about that. I think there are a lot of Americans who are very committed to the basic concept of America as a nation of immigrants who, I mean, this is, again, Biden ran on this last time around and he won the presidency. And I think it's foolish for him to completely abandon the more inclusive messaging, not any sort of radical open borders thing, but to the more inclusive messaging, values-based messaging that helped him win the White House. I think it's a dramatic political mistake. We'll see. We've been going for an hour, I believe. So if people want

to leave a comment and let us know, I hope that it was worth the time. I think it was valuable. I think people should be able to hear these different perspectives. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband.

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