Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 300 | Trump vs. Biden 2020: Immigration

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

There are only 50 days until the 2020 election, and Republicans and Democrats are providing two starkly different approaches to the critical issue of immigration. The Democrats have fueled their 2020 message by rewriting American history and condemning our generous immigration policy. The fact is, we welcome far more immigrants than ungrateful Marxists will acknowledge because we are the land of opportunity and the American dream. Today's Sponsor: Hydrant creates flavored electrolyte packets you mix directly into your water to make hydrating your body easy and delicious. Go to https://DrinkHydrant.com/ALLIE and enter promo code ALLIE. Today's Links: Households by Annual Income Brackets India https://www.statista.com/statistics/482584/india-households-by-annual-income/ Indian Immigrants in the United States https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/indian-immigrants-united-states-2015#Income_Poverty Labor Force Statistics From the Current Population Survey https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpsee_e16.htm Key Facts About Refugees to the U.S. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/07/key-facts-about-refugees-to-the-u-s/ Key Findings About U.S. Immigrants https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/ Remarks by President Trump During Border Wall Construction and Operational Update | Yuma, AZ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-border-wall-construction-operational-update-yuma-az/ ------ Buy Allie's book, "You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love": https://alliebethstuckey.com/book "Relatable" merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. I hope everyone had a great weekend. Today we are continuing our election series and we are talking about immigration.

We took a break last week for Labor Day and we did a replay, why feminism will fail you so you can go back and listen to that if you'd like. But this is our election series. We've talked about abortion. We have talked about religious liberty. And now we are talking about immigration. Immigration actually hasn't really been in the news a lot lately, but it has been within Trump's term. And there are a lot of you who have friends who have said the reason why I am not voting for Donald Trump is because of his immigration policy that they think is cruel. They think it's not Christian, they believe is not pro-life. There was a New York Times article a couple of years ago that I covered at the time, and it was interviewing two women, I think actually out of Texas,

who are evangelical Christians, who had voted a Republican, their entire adult lives, and decided that they could no longer do so because they believed that Trump's border policy was not what they called a pro-all life, or what a lot of people. call pro all life. And what they mean by that is that, okay, pro life is not just being anti-abortion. It is being pro-life in all stages of life in all different segments of policy. Now, I don't like that redefinition. Pro-life is pro-life. It is anti-abortion. That doesn't mean that you can't also advocate for other policies that you think support life, but it doesn't simply mean being pro-all-liberal policies. And that's what a lot of people on the left have tried to do. They have tried to say,

well, if you're really pro-life, then you're going to be for all these liberal programs and policies that support, for example, unconditional welfare and open borders and things like that. And I just am not going to acquiesce to the redefinition of a term, which has a clear definition. And that is being against the murder of unborn children. Again, you can be for other policies that you believe support life. But you don't have to. to be for all the liberal policies that they say support life that conservatives don't actually believe are helpful or productive or good. So resist that redefinition. You can say that we need strong borders and we need good border policy and we believe in legal immigration, not illegal

immigration and still be pro life. Do not give in to the pressure that says, no, no, no, no, you have to believe in open borders. You can't believe in the construction of a wall and still call yourself pro-life. Well, I'm sorry, the people who believe in the dismemberment of babies in the womb don't get to tell me what is pro-life and what is not. So again, resist the redefinition of that term. We have to be able to talk about subjects as they come, and we have to be able to do so from a biblical worldview. Immigration is a subject on which Christians are going to disagree in good faith, and that is okay. So whereas abortion, I really don't think. a biblical Christian, as if there is any other kind of Christian, but a true Christian who is

following Christ and is seeking to align their worldview to the Word of God, I do not believe that you can have a nuanced view on abortion. I don't believe that you can be pro-abortion or pro the legalization of the murder of babies and have a biblical worldview. I am not questioning your salvation. Maybe you're at a certain point in your sanctification. We all learn. and grow, I certainly have, even in that particular subject. But a biblical worldview says that the murder of babies is wrong, period. End of story. Now, with immigration, there are so many complexities. There are so many intricacies when it comes to border policy and immigration policy that Bible believing Christians, again, there is no other kinds, but just to clarify, since they're nominal

Christians, Christians in name only, and Christians who actually believe in abide by the Bible, I qualify that Bible-believing Christians who are going to disagree on this, and that is okay, that doesn't make one side any more or less Christian. It might make one side more wrong, but that doesn't mean that they are less genuine in their faith. But it is important for us to get this right. Now, as I say, pretty much at the front of all of these election episodes, we're not going to be able to get into every, every single nook and cranny of immigration and immigration policy in the United States. I actually did a podcast episode a year ago last summer, a little over a year ago, called Immigration. That's what it's, that's titled. You can just type that into YouTube.

You can type it into wherever you listen to your podcast. So on the podcast app, you can type in relatable immigration. It should come up. And I did go into more detail than I will today about what. the United States immigration system looks like? What are some of the problems? Why Republicans and Democrats have failed on this, the different Republican and Democrat positions. And we will go into some of that today, but we don't have time to go into all of it because I have to compare the two tickets. And as I've also said on some other election episodes, it's not just the two tickets or it's not even mainly the two tickets that I'm looking at. It is the two parties that I'm looking at because remember, we are voting not, not mostly for a person. We are voting for a party. We are voting for an

administration. We are voting for an entire platform. And most of all, we are voting for a world view. So first, I want to talk through some facts about immigration in the United States. Before I do that, I just want to remind you guys about my book, you're not enough. And that's okay. Escaping the toxic culture of self-love. We do talk about politics, actually, a little bit in this book. We talk about social justice versus real justice. We talk about cancel culture. We talk about socialism versus capitalism, the importance of hard work. But this book is about a worldview, a worldview that is centered on yourself and why it is going to fail you and why believing these messages that sound good and that feel good, these messages of self-love actually leads you to a faulty worldview that will not only

make you miserable, but will break down society if we all buy into it. So I encourage you to pick up the book if you haven't already, you can go to Alliebethstucky.com slash book. Join my book club on Facebook where we discussed this and all the books that we read together. It's Women's Book Club with Allie Stucky. We're reading a book by Thomas Soul right now, discrimination and disparities. If you are a woman who wants to join, would love for you to do that. But again, go to Alliebethsky.com slash book to pick up my book if you have not already. Okay.

Some facts about immigration in the United States. Number one, according to Pew Research, by a wide margin. America has more immigrants than any other nation on earth. The estimate is that 44.8 million people in the United States are immigrants, illegal or legal. That was the number in 2018, which was a record high. The vast majority, about 77% are here legally, but we have about 11 million illegal immigrants in the country. We also, number two, point, we accept more legal immigrants every year. year than any other country by far, accepting over one million annually. So America accepts

the most immigrants every year. One fifth of all the world's migrants reside in the United States. Immigrants make up 13.7% of the United States population. So a huge portion of the United States is made up of immigrants. Most of America's immigrants come from Mexico. The second most come from China, then third India. We have very few Americans that leave our country to emigrate elsewhere to go live into another, to go live in another country. So this is going to take me down a little rabbit hole, which I know that I harp on this a lot, but it's so important because of the presiding narrative that I believe is tearing apart a large portion of our country and burning our cities down. I just want to use these statistics to push back against the anti-American narrative

that is so prevalent right now. The idea that America is this evil caste system, that it is systemically unjust against people who are not white, that it pushes down the poor, it doesn't allow for equal opportunity and equal justice. That message, that idea has not been effectively relayed to the millions and millions of people who come here every year. year over any other country in the world. We keep hearing how unjust and unfair America is. And as I've said before, you don't have to tell me that America has injustices, that America has unfairness. Again, America slaughters hundreds of thousands of babies in the womb every year in this country. There are unfortunately problems with our justice system that disproportionately affect the poor. There are unjust

parts of our system, but we keep hearing that America is endemically, systemically unjust, that there is no part of our country that is redeemable or good or that has offered equal opportunity, equal liberty, and equal justice for all. But if that is the case, then why do we have millions of people coming here? Why do we have over a million immigrants coming here every year? If socialism, for example, is so much better than capitalism. And that is what we're hearing from the AOC wing of the Democratic Party from the people that are tearing down our cities from organizations like BLM and Antifa that capitalism is bad, that capitalism oppresses. Why don't people ever leave capitalist countries to go to socialist ones? Why is it always people coming

from socialist countries to capitalist ones? If capitalism is so bad and America and America is so bad and socialism is so good, why are people fleeing socialist, totalitarian countries to come to capitalist countries. You're going to have to riddle me that before you tell me that we need to tear down our country and rebuild a country in the way of communism and socialism. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives

and we don't offer false comfort, we ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos.

If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

All the people saying that America is a caste system. Tell that to the millions of Indian immigrants who escaped an actual caste system to come here for opportunity. The middle class in India makes anywhere from $7,700 to $15,400 US dollars per year in India. Most people in India, as most of you know, are very poor. It is impossible in India to become rich just by entrepreneurism, by merit, and by hard work, and by opportunity. You are usually, the vast majority of the time, if not all the time, stuck in your lot in life if you stay there in India.

That is a caste system. It is based on your ethnicity. It is based on the station in which you are born, the family that you were born to, not your talent, not your hard work, not your grit or your ambition. In America, households headed by Indian immigrants have a median income, according to Migrant Policy.org,

of over $107,000. A median income, Indian Americans, Indian immigrants, in America, a median income of $107,000. The median income for Native-born Americans is $56,000. This is a quote from the website. Just 7% of Indian immigrants lived in poverty in the United States in 2015, a much lower rate than the foreign-born population overall, and the U.S. born, 17% and 14% respectively. So you want to talk about a caste system.

Why don't you talk to an Indian immigrant? He was coming from a place where the middle class makes anywhere from $7,000 to $15,000 in U.S. dollars a year in India, and they are stuck in that law in life forever. And compare that, ask them to compare and contrast that to living here, where the median income for Indian immigrants is $107,000, $50,000 more than U.S.-born people. In India, at least 44% of the country live in severe poverty. In America, only 7% of Indians live in poverty and our poverty in the U.S. United States is nothing like the poverty in India. The poor here are rich compared to the poor

in India and rich compared to the poor in virtually every other country in the world. So again, for all this talk about the American dream being a mirage, about it not being real, being just a myth, America not being in the land of opportunity, operating in a white supremacist caste system, it is just not true. It's not factual. The group with the highest median income in America is not white Americans. It is. Asian Americans, $87,000 earned median income versus $87,000 earned versus about $65,000 earned for white Americans. So I ask you, would it be possible for a systemically racist country? We're talking systemically.

So that means everything. All of the systems and institutions in America are racist. That is the argument that is being made by many on the left right now. that is a systemically racist, America is towards non-white people. Would it be set up so that brown immigrants and non-white non-immigrants can become wildly financially successful, more successful than our native-born populations, more successful, on average than our white populations? Now, I am not using that to say that racism does not exist again or that injustice doesn't

exist in America, but it is hard to make the argument that the American system is, set up by and for white supremacy when, in fact, white people are not supreme, even in the aspect of financial success. According to the National Center for Education Studies, Asian Americans have the highest high school graduation rates and college graduation rates among all ethnicities in America. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Asian Americans have the lowest unemployment rate. It's interesting to note that Asian Americans also have the highest rate of two-parent homes, which I believe has a lot to do with the rest of their general success. Now, not all of those that I am talking about in all of those statistics are immigrants, not all of those

Asian-Americans that I'm talking about. But that is not my point. My point is that it's easy to see why people come here. Because there is no other country on earth where an ethnic minority group could go and be more successful across a variety of categories than the ethnic majority group that just doesn't happen in other places on earth. Think about the fact. Think about this. A Somali immigrant, Ilhan Omar, has become a congresswoman and has become one of the most prominent figures on the left by calling for the complete transformation of capitalism, or really the destruction of capitalism and a transformation of the American economy, a destruction and transformation of the American rule of law. She has become famous by

accused in America of being a place of injustice and evil. This is a woman who has laughed about the threat of the terrorist regime Hamas described 9-11 as, quote, some people did something and who advanced or who advocated on behalf of ISIS terrorists in her district when she was a state representative in Minnesota. This woman, this immigrant, has become famous because of and in spite of these things that she has done and said. She has made it her mission in life and in her career to stand against all. that has made America both good and great, and she is prominent, praised, and gracing the covers of magazines. And you want to tell me, there are people who want to tell me that America won't accept or elevate anyone, no matter where they come from, no matter what they look like, no matter what their beliefs are. Is there another country on earth, maybe Britain, who would allow and glorify this? Do you think that any white person could immigrate to a non-white country and build a career off of saying how awful the country and their leadership is, it just wouldn't happen. It could not happen.

America went from segregation, horrible, horrible thing. Segregation to having a black president win in a landslide twice in a row in less than 50 years, to having a black Supreme Court justice and black attorneys general and black secretaries of state, black billionaires. Let's not act like America has not made tremendous strides. in the area of liberty and justice for all and equality through peaceful and democratic means. So for all the people saying America doesn't listen to peace, America is this terrible place, we have to be violent, we have to riot, we have to elude, what are you talking about?

If you think that America is even remotely close to where we were in the 1960s, you are naive, you just don't know. We were moving in the right direction until the onslaught of identity, politics, and intersectionality and critical theory largely, thanks to the rhetoric of the Obama administration and the cancer that has infiltrated our academia, all of that has accomplished exactly what those philosophies aim to accomplish, which is dividing and building resentment. All we had to do was keep going in the direction that we were going, better manifesting our founding ideals of liberty and justice for all, and we were doing well, but now we are going backward. A colleges and organization,

talking about segregating white and black students for safe spaces. America has not become more racist, but talking about racism has become more lucrative. Talking about critical theory and intersectionality has become trendy. In some cases, victimhood, perpetual victimhood, grievance studies have become more lucrative and more trendy. And so we are in a place that is more divided and more resentful than we have been in decades. So instead of being able to say here is where real injustice exists, we have gone off the rails into the realm of calling everything injustice. We look at disparities and point

to discrimination without looking at all the factors that play into disparities. The cultural movement from the left has become cancerous for our society because it denies the good parts of America, the great parts of our system. And shreds our shared identity as people who want a more just, more equal society based on our founding values. America is unique in our founding values. We are good. And the immigrants around the world, the millions and millions who have come here for a better life,

they know this. There is no other country on earth where you can come here as an ethnic minority and be considered a new nationality. Ronald Reagan says something like this, and I'm paraphrasing, you can never move to France and become French. You can't move to Russia or Russia. Ghana or Mexico or Sweden and become Russian or Ghana or Mexican or Swedish. It just won't happen.

You will always be a foreign national or you will always be a foreigner in a new place, even if you become a citizen. You won't become French or become Russian. But you can move to America from anywhere on earth, become a citizen, and you are an American just as much as someone whose ancestors have been here since the Mayflower. Let's not deny that that's an amazing miracle that has never been the case in any country in all of history. That is part of what makes America the greatest country on earth. We are unique. We are uniquely welcoming, uniquely multicultural, uniquely fair. Again, that doesn't mean that we haven't ever been unwellcoming or ever been xenophobic or ever been unfair. Every country on earth has, every single one. Far more and far greater

than America has, by the way, and far longer than America has. Every society. has had slavery. Every society has, quote, stolen land, by the way. People say America is on stolen land. Well, the Native Americans were also stealing land from each other. Every country on earth is on some kind of conquered or, quote, stolen land. That is the history of the world, unfortunately. We don't have to like it. We don't have to condone it. We don't have to glorify it. But that's the case. America is not unique in that. Every society has had slavery. Every ethnic group, black, brown, white has enslaved either their own ethnic groups or other ethnic groups. Africans owned and sold Africans into slavery. Africans owned and sold Europeans. Europeans owned and

sold Africans. American Indians owned African Americans owned African slaves in America. Every group on earth has at one point been an oppressor. And every group on earth has at one point been oppressed. That is the truth about history that those who say, America is uniquely evil and racism and slavery are unique to white people simply do not want to face. Critical race theory won't allow that kind of humble admission. People cannot be neatly categorized into oppression groups based on their skin color, nationality, or ancestry. We should, therefore, not assign guilt or innocent sympathy or malice to people according to their race. The fact is, America has fought wars against slavery, against fascism,

against communism, against terrorism, and while we are far from perfect, no other nation holds a candle to our fight for equal liberty and justice for all, both here and abroad. And yet, the movement from the left right now is based on the false premise that America has never been free or fair, that all white people are complicit in racism or actively racist, that America is a white supremacist country, built on white supremacy, and that it must be taken down to the ground, completely destroyed and transformed into a system in which white people are robbed of power and capital so it can be distributed to non-white people that white people have allegedly oppressed. But that is simply not true.

As we have said over and over, America is built on good founding principles that have been implemented imperfectly throughout our history and every good step forward that we have taken has been closer, a step closer to those founding principles, not away from them. It is in better understanding and better manifesting our founding principles that we progress, not in tearing them down. Now, I know it seems like maybe that doesn't have anything to do with immigration, but it actually does.

We have to start with a truthful premise here. And all of these reasons that I have listed are why immigrants come here. They come here for these ideals that I've described. They come here because they know, despite what the ungrateful Marxists in this country, say America is the land of opportunity. It is the land of the refugee and the asylum seeker. It is the land that allows a person who starts at the bottom to work their way to the top, no matter who their parents were, no matter what they look like. That is why immigrants come to America more than any other country on earth. Because even though politicians

talk about the poor and talk about the impoverished in this country, what they're actually talking about is not a fixed category of people. Only 8% of people who are in the lowest economic bracket in society will actually stay poor. The vast majority of people in America who are in the lowest economic bracket, according to Thomas Sol, he talks about this a lot, move up in society. That is why people come here. And I know that it seems like we have gone down a subject that is away from immigration. But I just want to reiterate, for any liberal who is listening to this, the narrative that you have perhaps come to believe about America. is a lie. We are not perfect. We've had injustices, discrimination, prejudice, no doubt,

but America is not a systemically racist country today in 2020. We are not set up for the supremacy of white people. And that is why more immigrants come here every year than to any other country by far. I have suggested many times I would trade all of the communists in America for any freedom-loving immigrant from any country in the world. I would buy their tickets tomorrow. I'm sure that if I started to go fund me for the communist exchange program, the communist slash liberty lovers exchange program that I could raise millions and millions of dollars. So don't tell me that conservatives are anti-immigrant. I know every conservative that I know would be on board with something like that.

So it is a myth that conservatives are anti-immigration or anti-immigrant. We are pro-America. We are pro-Liberty. we are pro law in order, which means that we are anti-illegal immigration because there are immigrants who have been waiting in line for years to go through this process correctly and they deserve to be honored by safeguarding the integrity of the process as much as we can. It is a matter of safety to protect the border, not just for our citizens, but for the thousands of women and children being trafficked at the southern border each year, a problem

exacerbated by weak borders and weak border policy, conservatives believe in the sovereignty of nations. So that means that every nation, again, has the right and responsibility to have clear defined borders, to protect those borders by enforcing the law on those borders and to deport people who have broken the law by coming into the country illegally or overstaying their visa illegally. We believe every nation has the right to decide who can and cannot come into their country. In an America, we believe that the standard of who cannot come into the country should be both fair and compassionate. What that means is that we believe immigration should be a merit-based, B, for the reunification of immediate family members, and or C, for true

refugees and asylum seekers. Right now, America has something called the Visa Lottery Program, which means we have to meet certain quotas of immigrants from particular countries. I believe this started under George H.W. Bush. And we also have chain migration, which means that family members of U.S. residents, either citizens or green card holders, are prioritized. But these are not usually immediate family members. This is a distant relative. So this creates something called a chain of migration that is based not on merits,

but even on distant familial connection, which means that there will be a, limit on those who come here based on their own merits. And I would say that that is unfair. So we believe the United States has the right and responsibility to choose immigrants that are most likely to work, that are most likely to provide for their family, who are most likely to be law-abiding citizens. There is no religious or political ideology test, but we do believe that the people who come here should share our values of liberty, justice, hard work, personal responsibility. and that they should be able to demonstrate those things before becoming legal citizens. But most conservatives also believe in prioritizing people who are reuniting with immediate family members,

so parents to their children or children to their parents. We also believe in the importance of accepting a certain number of refugees and asylum seekers every year. Refugees, according to the United States, are, quote, admitted to the United States based upon an inability to return to their home countries because of a well-founded fear of persecution due to their race, membership in a particular social group, political opinion, religion, or national origin. Refugees must apply for status outside of the U.S. in what would be considered a, quote, transition country. So a neighboring country where a credible democracy is established. Admission for refugees is based off various factors from the

risk they face to the amount of people at risk in their specifically targeted group. The president with consultation from Congress determines the number of refugees per year. Asylum is similar to the refugee status in that the visa status is granted off of fear of harm. However, the biggest difference, the biggest difference says are that, one, they may apply at any port of entry at the time that they seek admission. And two, there is no limit on the number of individuals who may be granted an asylum status. So being granted asylum is not an easy fee. It's a multi-year process that involves likely detainment, multiple interviews, extensive documentation of an immigrant's prior suffering, and less than great odds. So it's not

guaranteed that you will be granted asylum. That's not just in the United States. That's everywhere. and the United States is very generous in granting asylum and refugee status to people who come here. And as difficult as that is, that we cannot accept every single asylum seeker, every single refugee. That is okay. Everyone who leaves their country for America is seeking a better life. That does not make everyone coming to America an asylum seeker or refugee. And it does not mean that America has the unlimited and unconditional capacity to, accept everyone who comes here for a better life. No country on earth does that. You can't do that and

maintain your sovereignty and maintain your national security. You do as much as you can, as much as as is feasible looking at the needs of your country, looking at how efficient and how effective your current process is, and you make your decision based on that as compassionately as you can, both for the citizens of your country and for the people fleeing persecution and violence. It is a balanced decision that is not as easy as just saying, let them all in. America has led the world in refugee resettlement for decades far and away the number one country for refugee acceptance according to Pew Research. So again, this idea that America is this uniquely evil place, again, you're going to have to explain to me why not only we accept more immigrants every

year than any other country, but specifically more refugees every year than any other country. under Reagan, we allowed the most refugees into the country ever under Trump. However, and some people have a problem with this, they did lower the number of refugees that we would accept each year. The thought was behind lowering it to 18,000, which was a big decrease in the cap. That doesn't mean that you have to accept that many refugees per year, but it is the maximum number of refugees that you can accept. And the thought behind it was that we have a very bogged down immigration system, which is true. We need to process the people applying for refugee status now. Those seeking legal entry, we need to pump the brakes on allowing so many refugees in.

That was the thought behind this so we can handle the people trying to come in right now. But understandably, this has caused concern, especially among Christians. We know the Bible is clear about helping the foreigner and helping the strange. Now, some people misuse that verse to say that means we have to have open borders. We don't have any border policy. We don't have any deportation. We don't have any limits or any conditions whatsoever on who can come into the country. Again, all of that would make us effectively not a country.

And that is not something that is advocated by scripture at all. The Bible is very clear that borders are legitimate and that countries are legitimate. Act 1726 says, and he made from one man every nation. of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. Of course, we know that even though America and no country here on earth is a representation is a representation of what ancient Israel was. And so I'm not trying to make that direct comparison, but we can look at God's definitions

of justice for ancient Israel. And we can see that he clearly believed in boundaries. he clearly believed in a nation's sovereignty. He clearly believed in laws and protections and rights and privileges for citizens of a country. And he also believed in extending compassion for the foreigner. But again, that doesn't mean that we simply get rid of all kind of border policy or immigration law at all. That would make not only our own citizens vulnerable. It would mean that no one could come here for actual protection.

because there is no process in which people who should not be here are filtered out. Now, I don't think that lowering the level of refugees that we accept each year should be a top priority. Like I said, the Trump administration cut that drastically. I don't think that that change is, like I said, a top priority or even necessary. I want us to be a country that accepts as many refugees as we feasibly can and as we compassionately can, there is a lot of anger surrounding that and surrounding that issue. Some of it is real. I think some of it is very manufactured, but it is important to me as a Christian that we continue to be a refuge for those who are fleeing violence and who are fleeing persecution. And I think most Christians would

agree with me on that. But again, there is a balance and there has to be a reasonable discussion surrounding that. There's also a lot of frustration manufactured or real about people being detained at the border who are seeking asylum. But again, there must be a process for that. There's a reason why those people are detained. It's not because they are being punished. It's because we have to know who they are, where they're coming from, why they're seeking asylum. If it's legitimate, assign a court date for their hearing, figure out where they will stay. Check to see if the children that are with them are safe or even are their children or if they are being trafficked, there has to be a process. There must be laws. There must be rules. There must be detainment at the

border, at least temporary detainment. For years, we had a catch and release policy. We actually still have that today and I'll get to that in a second. But it says that people who illegally cross the border and are detained must be released in terms. America. You can obviously see why that is a problem. This is still going on under the Trump administration. He has tried to put an into it, especially through the very controversial zero tolerance policy under Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The zero tolerance policy said that all illegal entry into the United States would criminally convict first time offenders rather than just facing civil and administrative proceedings. Prior to this, criminal conviction,

was only for those who crossed the border were removed and then crossed the border again illegally. So this policy in practice led to the separation of children and parents. You probably remember the hubbub about this. Previously, parents and children who crossed the border illegally were detained and released together, but because the Trump administration made crossing the border illegally the first time a felony, which meant that the parents were held in prisons while kids were under the supervision of the DHS, that meant that the parents and the kids were going to be separated. So the point of the zero tolerance policy was to deter illegal crossings and to end catch

and release. The policy itself was not to separate kids from their parents, but that was the consequence of the policy. There was also an aspect of this that had to do with human trafficking. Unfortunately, many children who travel with adults to cross the border or not with their real parents, either they are being trafficked or because of the policy that has said that children cannot be detained for more than 20 days and must be detained and released with their parents. Many illegal immigrants reportedly use children to increase their chances of being

released into the United States. However, Trump did reverse course on the zero tolerance policy after the media uproar, the administration tried enforcing the zero tolerance policy while keeping the families or the purported families together, but it logistically couldn't work with the laws that were on the books. So the zero tolerance policy effectively ended in 2018. So this was very much a problem. I understand the desire to deter illegal crossings. Obviously, I shared that concern and that priority. I think that's necessary.

and honestly, if we had a wall, that would be much easier to do. But the indefinite separation of children from their parents is just not something I can support. It's just not something I can get on board with. Again, I understand the purpose of the zero tolerance policy. I do believe that crossing the border illegally should be a felony to deter people from attempting that. If they need to seek asylum, they can do that at a legal point of entry. however, I cannot support any policy that is going to separate a child from their real parent. I just can't do it.

I understand the arguments from the conservative side that if parents commit a crime that they get put in jail, and they get put in jail, they are going to be separated from their parents. The child is and parents who cross the border are committing a crime. And so that is obviously going to end in separation. And of course, that's true. But these children, it's a little bit of a different situation. These children are very often placed in overcrowded facilities where they cannot be properly looked after or cared for. I don't think that's the fault of DHS necessarily.

I think it's because our system is backlogged and these facilities are overcrowded. But like I said, I cannot support the separation of babies from their moms at the border. I'm just not going to do that. Again, that was not the intention of the policy, but it was a consequence of the policy. And the cause and effects are much more complicated, much more nuanced than the middle. on the left would have us think. This was not happening to asylum seekers, but it was happening in some cases where people were crossing illegally. The president reversed the policy, and now we are still left with the problem of catch and release. And many families and purported families have not been

reunified. So the whole thing is kind of a mess. The whole thing was kind of a lose-lose. There was also the issue of the conditions in which the children were being detained, are being detained at the border. You hear a lot about, quote, kids in cages. There was a picture that was circulating on Twitter. It went viral of kids in these kind of chain-linked enclosures. AOC has called the facilities at the border concentration camps. The fact is these facilities, these cages were built by the Obama administration for the purpose of holding migrant children temporarily. Michelle Obama mentioned kids and cages in her DNC speech, and she actually got fact-checked by a the Associated Press, which is rare. It was her husband who built the cages and first placed the kids

there. And the Obama administration also separated children in some circumstances from the accompanying adults in certain situations. So the facilities built by Obama do indeed look like cages, but many of them, many of the facilities that are there now, don't. Some of these facilities where children and families are detained at the border have schools, they have lots of activities. and more food and shelter than a lot of these people could have ever imagined in their country of origin. I do believe that we should be treating the immigrants, whether they cross illegally or not, as humanely and as compassionately as we possibly can. It's very difficult to do in the situation that we have now because the system is so bogged down

and so many of the facilities, even the temporary holding facilities, are so overcrowded. and there's been such a confusion of policy and things have not been streamlined that unfortunately a lot of people are suffering. And that is a problem that no administration has really been able to fix. It has been exacerbated by both Republican and Democratic politicians and presidents. But for the left to say that Trump put kids in cages and those were Trump's facilities for Michelle Obama to have the audacity to say that when she knows for a fact that it was her husband who built those facilities at the border and placed kids in there. That's amazing. I mean, that's just the trust that most in the media will not push back on you, that Democrats will not

push back on you, and the willingness of the public to believe an anti-Trump lie. The public, obviously, is always eager and willing to believe an anti-Trump lie when the fact of the matter is, again, that that was Obama. That was her husband. Now, the accusation that these are concentration camps at the border, well, the difference is is that these people are coming there voluntarily and they can leave whatever they want to. Whenever they arrive, no one forced them to be there unless they are a child or a woman who is being trafficked. But people are risking their lives and coming there voluntarily and they can leave to go back home

whenever they want to. So that's the slight difference, AOC and what is happening at the border and what is happening in actual concentration camps and place. places like China, where people are kidnapped from their homes and they're taken to these police states and they are forced to live there. It's just a slight difference. So you see that there really are no easy answers here that both Republicans and Democrats have been to blame for a lot of the things that are going on. The fact is we are a sovereign country. We have to enforce and protect our borders. We cannot allow everyone who wants to come here to come here. People don't have a right to go to

any country or to be a citizen of any country just because they want to. Countries do have a right to say who can and cannot come in. And in America, we have had a very liberal and very generous, albeit complicated and inefficient immigration system and immigration policy. President Trump ran on fixing it and he has tried and there have been some improvements, but but he has not fixed it. It's too much to fix in its entirety, maybe ever, but certainly in one presidential term. It's going to take a very long time and a lot of effort

and there's just not enough sustained political momentum. I don't think to do that. That is why, in my opinion, a wall is a very popular idea among a lot of people because it would deter and prevent illegal border crossings in the southern border at the southern border and allow us to focus. on processing asylum seekers instead, hopefully being able to house them in better conditions that aren't overcrowded, making the process lighter, more efficient. It would also make drug and human trafficking a lot more difficult. And some of the wall has been constructed under President

Trump, which I think is a good thing. The acting commissioner of Customs and Border Patrol said this a couple weeks ago at an event in Arizona with the president. He says, every single bit of concrete and steel that goes into the ground, the operational capacity of the men and women you're seeing right here goes exponentially higher to stop dangerous things and people from coming into this country. Drugs, what this wall does is helps us shape the behavior of the cartels. It puts us in an offensive position. This year, we have seized over a million pounds of drugs. Think about that.

This year today, a million pounds of drugs. And this wall is helping shape the behavior so that we can get better at doing that. We apprehend thousands of criminals every year. Because of this wall, we're able to apprehend and stop these criminals from coming into this country to repeat their offenses. So we have fewer victims of United States citizens because of the wall, because of what this president has provided us. Let's talk about gangs. Every single year, we stop hundreds and hundreds of gangs from pouring into this country, like MS-13, whose motto is rape, kill, and control. Just recently, they use machetes to hack up their victims and they actually leave them decapitated.

That's what we're talking about when we're talking about what this tool, the wall provides us. And then illegal immigration, even during the height of a global pandemic, legal immigration continues. And they allow themselves to be put in stash houses that are unsanitary, unsafe. They're put in tractor trailers for days. I mean, there's COVID. There's COVID, but that's like a COVID petri dish. But yet, they're coming across. But because of the tools that we have like this wall, we are able to stop the illegal entry of individuals that have.

COVID to protect our citizens of this country. So the wall is not evil. It is not xenophobic. It is something that is helpful, not just for the citizens of this country, but all legal residents of this country, people who are being trafficked. It is safer for the people who live at the border in Texas and who live at the border in various states in this country. It is for the protection of the country and that is a compassionate and a good thing. That is what the government of this country is tasked to do to protect the well-being and the safety of its citizens. That doesn't mean we can't also be compassionate in who we allow in, who we accept as asylum seekers and refugees. Of course we can. That doesn't mean that we don't have a border policy. That doesn't mean that we should

decriminalize border crossings. That doesn't mean that we should accept everyone in. No sovereign nation can do that and maintain their sovereignty and therefore the protection of their citizens. Now, what about illegal immigrants in the country? How has Trump dealt with them? Obama, he created DACA. You've probably heard of that. Deferred action for childhood arrivals. Obama did this unconstitutionally. He created immigration policy via executive order, which you are not supposed to be allowed to do without the approval of Congress to temporarily defer the deportation of illegal immigrants who came as children or disqual. as minors, not necessarily children. He did not create for them a permanent fix or a legislative fix. He

bypassed Congress to make a temporary measure for these people, which actually made them even more vulnerable. Many of the 800,000 people covered by DACA became citizens, but many did not. President Trump called for the phasing out of DACA, which eventually had to happen. Remember, it is called deferred action for childhood arrivals, not permanently banning action. for childhood arrivals. So the point of it, according to Obama, was to just give them time to apply for citizenship and many of them did. Trump said, okay, you've got a few months now where you've got a certain period of time to apply for citizenship. And if you apply for citizenship, we will allow you to stay here. But if not, we're going to have to end this deferred action for childhood arrivals, which was implemented unconstitutionally and was a temporary measure. Anyway, so the administration, he gave them an opportunity. They could take the opportunity. They could take the

opportunity if they wanted to. But of course, the media Democrats, they freaked out about this. And SCOTUS actually ruled this year that Trump could not cancel the order. So so much for that. As far as deportations go, around 337,000 immigrants were deported from the U.S. in fiscal year 2018. That was up since 2017. But overall, the Obama administration deported about three million immigrants between 2009 and 2016. This is, according to Pew Research, a significantly higher number than the two million immigrants deported by the Bush administration between 2001 and 2008 and 2017. The Trump administration deported 295,000 immigrants the lowest total since 2006. And so that was a lower number of deportations under Trump than Obama had ever done in any year during

his administration. So all this to say, immigration, is complicated. Democrats and Republicans, it's recently as 2019 or 2013, sorry, were united in curbing illegal immigration. Like I said, Obama and his administration were big on deportations bigger than the Trump administration. Both parties have said we need to stop illegal immigration. We have to secure the borders. But recently, the Democratic Party has shifted far to the left. I think they realized that this is a winning issue for some people and that they win. will eventually be able to get the vote of illegal immigrants. Many now claim to be against deportation of any kind.

They claim to be for the decriminalization of border crossings, meaning that anyone can cross the border and come in and live here as they see fit. Many are for granting voting rights to non-citizens. So this would make us effectively, as I've said, not a country. There is no standard of citizenship, no enforcement of border policy, no privileges or rights granted to citizens, that means to be an American, it would be obsolete. Every country has a right and responsibility to their citizens to make citizenship matter and to protect their citizens. And to make citizenship moot is to stymie America's right and responsibility

to their citizens. The Biden administration is promising to move far to the left on immigration. he plans to do this to pause deportation for 100 days to transform ICE and Border Patrol policies, whatever that means. Now, people like AOC and Ilhan Omar, Bernie Sanders, who is on the task force for Joe Biden and creating a lot of his policies have said that we need to abolish ice. We need to get rid of ice and possibly Border Patrol. Now, these are the two biggest agencies, two of the biggest agencies that help stop gang violence in this country and also help and fight. against human trafficking. And so it would be disastrous at this point to end to those agencies, but AOC would like to do that. And so we don't know the transformation of those policies would look like under Biden, but he wants to take a pause on deportations for 100 days to take a look at what

those policies would be. The guess is that he would slow deportation. So he would reverse a lot of the policies that not just that not Trump has made as far as deportations go, but that Obama made as far as deportations went, and he would be a lot more lenient towards people who want to stay who are here illegally. Biden says he will reverse Trump's decision to end DACA and strengthen protections for who are called Dreamers. He would make them eligible for federal student aid for college. So that means your taxpayer dollars would be paying for the college for illegal immigrants. Again, it was Obama who made DACA temporary. He is the one who bypassed Congress. He could have advocated for a legislative fix for these dreamers, but he chose not to do that.

He promises to stop the construction of the wall. And so we heard from the acting commissioner for border patrol who said that the wall is helping them stop drug trafficking and human trafficking and gang violence. Well, Biden would make sure that we stop the construction of the wall. He says he would end the prosecution of border crossings for parents. Now, Hulian Castro, he says, decriminalize all. border crossings. There are a variety of progressive Democrats who believe that. Again, that means you can just come in however you see fit and go ahead and stay. Trump also enacted a travel ban from seven Muslim majority countries, but these were countries that were on Obama's list of dangerous

countries that posed a national security threat. And there were many Muslim majority countries that were not included on that list. And so the whole Muslim ban accusation just isn't quite accurate, but Biden says he would make sure that that doesn't happen again. Biden's plan would fast-track the citizenship process for agricultural workers. It would expand the so-called high-skilled work visa program and make changes to prevent exploitation of foreign workers and displacement of American workers. It would eliminate limits on employment-based green cards by country, which have caused decades-long backlogs for applicants from India in particular. None of this is good for the American worker, see what's happening at AT&T. Now, I am for people coming in to work here legally.

I think that that's a wonderful process and very good. I think it's good for the agricultural industry. So not all of this is bad. But lifting those limits and making sure that we can have even more foreign workers than we have now is not good necessarily for the American worker. If you look at what's going on somewhere like AT&T, unfortunately, employers. know that they can pay foreign-born workers a lot less than they can, native-born workers. And so a lot of these native-born workers, unfortunately, get replaced. Trump, in short, we've kind of already talked about this. He's going to continue to try to curb illegal immigration and force border policy. He is going to probably try to stop catch and release while keeping families, true families,

together. He is going to continue the construction of the border wall. So this is a very complicated topic, very complicated. And as I've said, Republicans and Democrats have failed for decades and decades to do anything substantive. President Trump ran on this, ran on fixing this problem, ran on stopping illegal immigration. And I think that he has helped by empowering Border Patrol for sure. It is not gone all that smoothly. And like I said, Democrats have gone far to the left on this. This used to be a unifying subject for a lot of people that, hey, we're pro. legal immigration, but we have to be against illegal immigration if we care about our country at all, if we care about citizenship and sovereignty, which I just think a lot of people on the left

truly don't. They go on this crazy theory that America is uniquely on stolen land, therefore we're not a legitimate country. And they truly believe that America needs to be burned to the ground, which means making our borders obsolete. I mean, that is disastrous for immigrants and non-immigrants in the country. You have to maintain your borders. You have to enforce immigration policy. You have to protect the safety and the well-being of your citizens while also being compassionate to people who want to come here. So I hope that I offered some clarity to you guys. It's not as with the other things. Like with religious liberty and with abortion, it's pretty cut and dry. It's like, okay, well, one side is obviously against religious liberty. One side

is obviously for abortion and the other side is not. Here very clearly is where Trump is and here is where Biden is. This is a more complicated issue, although I would say that Biden and Trump are very far apart, that Biden wants to prioritize the increase in immigration and the decriminalization in some ways of illegal immigration, or at least lowering the prosecution or lowering the punishment for illegal immigration where President Trump is always going to say, you know, I believe in America first. And we've got our own problems. We've got our own things that we need to deal with. We love legal immigrants and we love legal immigration, but we've got to deal with the problems that we have and make sure that we are taking care of the American worker and the American family. And I believe a good leader does that. A good leader balances, okay, how many people can we take in with we've got to face the problems that we have right now and fix the system in place that we have that is largely inefficient and ineffective and unfair towards those who would be wonderful Americans and have been waving to be productive citizens in this country for still. long but have been prevented from doing so because of illegal immigration and so much of the

inefficiencies that are going on in our system. Okay, so I hope that helped a little bit. I hope that maybe busted some myths and added some clarity for you. If you've got questions, just let me know. I will be back here on Wednesday. Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality.

We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen And wherever you get podcasts, I hope you'll join us.