Today, Explained - Immigration lemonade

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

When it comes to immigration solutions, the federal government is handing out lemons. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston is making lemonade. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette..., fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by David Herman and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Immigration is one of the biggest issues this election. And as we get closer to the showdown between old and older, there's less and less daylight between their immigration proposals. The former president wants to shut down the border. It's never, ever been worse than it is now. And now the sitting president does too. We must face the simple truth. To protect America as a land that welcomes immigrants,
Starting point is 00:00:23 we must first secure the border and secure it now. The convicted felon wants to reject asylum seekers. Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons, we know they come from mental institutions, insane asylums, we know they're terrorists. And guess who's following in his footsteps. Today I'm announcing actions to bar migrants
Starting point is 00:00:43 who cross our southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum. It turns out a lot of the big ideating on this issue is happening locally. So on Today Explained, we're heading to the Mile-hitting action with FanDuel, North America's number one sportsbook. You can bet on anything from money lines to spreads and player props, or combine your bets in a same-game parlay for a shot at an even bigger payout. Plus, with super-simple live betting, lightning-fast bet settlement, and instant withdrawals, FanDuel makes betting on the NFL easier than ever before. So make the most of this football season and download FanDuel today.
Starting point is 00:01:23 19-plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. When you hear about American cities that are dealing with a migrant crisis, you usually hear about New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver. Denver's seeing more migrants showing up per capita than any other American city. Over 40,000 migrants have shown up so far. That's close to a 7% increase in the city's population, except without shelter or food.
Starting point is 00:02:01 But if you talk to the mayor of Denver, a Democrat named Mike Johnston, it sounds like he didn't get the memo about his crisis. We think this is, for us, been a real example that what appears as a crisis is actually an opportunity. You know, the only crisis we have is we have folks who arrive in our city every day and say, Mr. Mayor, all I want is a job. Can I please work? And I have CEOs who call me every day and say, Mike, I got 50 open jobs in my company. Why can't I please hire those folks that just got here? And our only challenge is we have a federal government that stands in the middle and doesn't allow those employees to work for employers who want to hire them. But we feel like we've been able to find solutions to all of those problems.
Starting point is 00:02:34 And we're going to turn this crisis into an opportunity for Denver. The work thing is the biggest thing. Everyone from former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg to sitting Topeka Mayor Mike Padilla to the mayor of Denver, Mike Johnston, wants to let migrants do what they came here to do, make money. When I first took this job nine months ago, we sat down with Secretary Mayorkas, Governor Polis, and I, and we really asked him quite directly what we really need is just work authorization. Folks just need the ability to work. Hundreds of thousands of people who came to the U.S. from Venezuela will receive legal status as the number of people fleeing that country rapidly grows. The Biden administration will grant temporary work permits for people who arrived in the U.S. before July 31st. That was a game changer for us. Republicans, of course, then tried to impeach him for that. The American
Starting point is 00:03:17 people are fed up. We have an invasion at the southern border and Americans are dying every single day. And people want Mayorkas impeached. They want accountability. After that what we found was more and more of the folks that arrived to us did not have temporary protective status. This is a policy that was created by Congress to offer a temporary safe haven to migrants from countries facing a humanitarian crisis like Venezuela is right now. And did not also have what's called Customs and Border Protection One, which is an app you can use on your phone to set up an appointment at Customs and Border Protection. If you set up an appointment, you can also get a work authorization within 30
Starting point is 00:03:53 days. So there was a wave of folks that came with that. Either of those populations, we could help get into work in about a month, and we created an infrastructure to do that. We had one of the largest legal authorization, work authorization clinics in the country to move about 2,000 people through work authorization, get them up and on their feet. During these clinics, local nonprofits, volunteers, and city staff help newcomers file the necessary paperwork to receive federal work permits. The challenge for us when the third wave came this year in 2024, it's now almost all people who are what we call asylum seekers. They don't have temporary protective status. They don't have customs and border protection. They don't really have any path to work
Starting point is 00:04:27 authorization. And because of the backlog in the asylum courts, their asylum court dates are set for the year 2030 or 2031. So they have a six or seven year wait and they can't work in the interim. And so that was where we saw the biggest challenge, what many cities were facing. But the solution we've built now, the asylum seeker program we've've launched, is designed to show that even this most difficult situation is actually solvable here at the local level. Through Denver's Asylum Seeker Program, migrants will get legal help for each asylum application. What we've done is set up an infrastructure. We will actually proactively apply for all those people for asylum up front. The program will also include job training, food assistance through a
Starting point is 00:05:05 monthly debit card, and rental assistance for six months. While the courts may still take seven years to resolve the case, it means now they could get access to work authorization within six months. And so instead of seeing that as a risk, we see it as an opportunity, which is what kind of workforce training do we want to give people for those six months. That will include English language skills, will include financial literacy, digital literacy, it will include certifications in any relevant field they want to enter, and it will include on-the-site workforce training that was unpaid internship-type experiences in the career industry of their choice. So by the time they reach that six-month mark, they have English language skills, they have digital skills,
Starting point is 00:05:40 financial skills, they have relevant certifications, and they have on-the-job experience in the profession they want to enter. And now we've taken this crisis and made it into an actually incredibly important and useful workforce pipeline into our highest need professions here in the city, and we're really excited to get that launched. It sounds like you're having a really positive experience here, positive for the city, positive for these migrants, but certainly this is placing various stresses on the city's resources, on your budgets. Can you talk a bit about that? Yeah, it has definitely not been easy.
Starting point is 00:06:12 We've worked very hard to get to this place. There were a lot of failures that went into it before we get to some of the solutions that we found that have worked. And you're right, to provide these services will cost money. So this will cost us about $90 million this year to lead this effort all in. Here's where the money would come from exactly. You've got nearly $46 million from budget cuts and other tweaks. The city says that most comes from the vacancy savings category you see there. That basically means that they're open positions, open jobs that will not be filled.
Starting point is 00:06:40 So that is a big investment we were not planning on making a year ago. And so it certainly has been without difficulties. We've had city workers who had to be reassigned from regular jobs at Department of Human Services into being intake and case their basements or taking on families to help pay their down payments to get them into apartment units. So it has certainly challenged the city, but the city has shown up in incredible ways where it's not a day that goes by. I don't meet someone who says, oh, thanks so much, Mr. Mayor. I actually have a family of Venezuelans myself that I helped get housed last week, or I just provided food for, I just provided a backpack for a classmate of my son, who's a brand new newcomer from Venezuela. So I think the city has risen to the occasion in wonderful ways. And for me, is a real proof point for a very different way the country can look at this challenge, which is really not a crisis, but an opportunity. And in most cities, I find that to be true. When I talk
Starting point is 00:07:37 to a lot of Midwestern cities, cities that have dying populations, they are desperate for new workers and for new residents. They would love to have folks arrive if those individuals come with work authorization. If they can work to support themselves, they're an asset to your community. If they can't and they have to rely on public services, they're a cost to your community. So this is, we think, what we're trying to shift is how do we move people from being cost to being what they want to be, which is assets to help the community. And if they can work, they can do that. You know, hearing you talk about this quote-unquote crisis, it hardly even sounds like a crisis the way you talk about it. You sound like the, you know, glasses half full version of this crisis compared to, I mean, especially New York,
Starting point is 00:08:16 where I believe the mayor said that this crisis could destroy New York City, destroy New York City. Destroy New York City. We're getting 10,000 migrants a month. What do you think sets your administration, your city, apart from the other experiences that are being had across this country? The challenges are not simple. I do not want to in any way communicate that. We have heroic city employees who've worked around the clock to insist on finding new solutions. And it's been hard without the federal support we wanted when that bill died. The Republicans simply cannot vote for the bill in good conscience. We said we wanted three things, either more work authorization, more federal dollars to help support us, or an actual coordinated entry system to send people to cities where we had capacity based on what we knew about those cities the way we do for other asylum seekers. When folks arrive from Ukraine
Starting point is 00:09:07 or Afghanistan, we don't let the governor of New York decide where to send them all because they land at JFK. There's actually a coordinated plan to send them to cities where there are available jobs. They come with work authorization. They come with federal resources, and they've succeeded. So I don't have a partisan solution here. We have solutions that work and those that don't. This is one that works. And I would say the most conservative members of my community will come to me and say, Mike, this is crazy. Those folks, when they arrive here, should have to work. And then the most progressive groups will say, Mike, this is unfair. Our immigrants who are here should be able to work.
Starting point is 00:09:37 There's actually quite clear alignment on this idea. It's not complicated. Mayor Mike Johnston, Denver, Colorado, how the United States can put migrants to work when we're back on Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew
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Starting point is 00:11:23 Terms and conditions do apply. Support for today explained comes from Ramp. If you're a finance manager, you're probably used to having to toggle between multiple disjointed tools just to keep track of everything. And sometimes that means there's limited visibility on business spend. I don't know what any of that means, but Ramp might be able to help. Ramp is a corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your back pocket. Ramp's accounting software automatically collects receipts, categorizes your expenses in real time. You can say goodbye to manual expense reports. You will never have to chase down a receipt again. You can customize spending limits and expense reports. You will never have to chase down a receipt again.
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Starting point is 00:12:39 Explain-da. Explain-da. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston thinks he's got a solution to his migrant crisis. Let people work. And that's not just a Democrat idea. David J. Beer, I'm the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. And we are known as the libertarians in D.C. David J. Beer and some of his libertarian-leaning colleagues at Cato recently got together and proposed a whole slew of ideas
Starting point is 00:13:06 that could help get this country out of its immigration crisis. His contribution? State-sponsored visas. So this idea is to have state governments be able to sponsor someone for a visa in the same way that employers under the current system can sponsor some people, family members can sponsor their relatives, states could basically sponsor whoever they want. Target certain industries.
Starting point is 00:13:41 There's no year-round temporary work visa for non-seasonal, low-skilled jobs in this country. So think meatpacking plants. A lot of places have a desperate need for workers who are willing to go out on natural resource intensive jobs, mining and oil rigs and so forth. These are jobs where there's huge demand and not many workers willing to do them. And there's nothing for the legal immigration system right now. So the idea would be let states figure it out. Has anyone ever tried something like this before? Obviously, we haven't. Yes. So actually, Canada. Canada. Ever since I left the city. Yeah. Canada actually has a much stronger version of federalism than the United States does in many ways, where their provinces historically had a very strong role to play in immigration. And that has continued on through their provincial nominee program.
Starting point is 00:14:36 The provinces can nominate someone for permanent residence in Canada, and they're granted permanent residence based on the state's go-ahead. And it's one of the more popular programs because it is responsive to the state in which the person is being sponsored. And so that lends itself to having a little bit more political support for it as well. Christy DePena focuses on immigration policy at Niskanen Center. Named after William Niskanen, economic advisor to Ronald Reagan, notable Republican, Christy also wants to see migrants working in the United States. There are businesses across America that are desperate for more workers, and it's really impacting negatively the economic productivity in lots of these places.
Starting point is 00:15:30 And you see places like Utah, like Indiana, trying to come up with ways that they can get more meaningfully involved in encouraging folks to come here and controlling migration to some of their states. As in Utah and Indiana, red states have been begging the federal government to let them do this, to let them put migrants to work. Utah in 2010 actually passed a bill requiring the governor to lobby the federal government for the right to sponsor people for work visas so that they could resolve some of these immigration issues at the state level. You know, the Indiana governor, the current Utah governor have put out an op-ed saying we would like this authority, let states lead the way on immigration reform. We do need more immigrants in our country. We have so many job openings right now in the state of Utah and in other places that cannot be filled. It's actually hurting our economy that we can't have good people that want to live here come in here. And, you know, other states have passed resolutions in Georgia and elsewhere saying,
Starting point is 00:16:49 look, we want some of this power to deal with these issues. Topeka, Kansas right now is so desperate for new people that it just launched the Choose Topeka, Kansas right now is so desperate for new people that it just launched the Choose Topeka program. Topeka, Kansas has about 7,000 open jobs right now. They also have, believe it or not, a growing Hispanic community. So in the last couple of years, Topeka, Kansas decided why not sort of merge the two, use that growing community as a solution to all of those open jobs. They recently started doing all of their marketing in both English and in Spanish. It provides people with $15,000
Starting point is 00:17:32 if they are willing to rent or buy homes in the city and are employed by a local business that is partnering with that program. So I don't know that it's a destination city, but it is certainly a place that has some of the indicators that, you know, they have a lot of jobs, they have affordable housing. So it's specifically tailored towards people that already have work authorization. They are obviously creating programs that are trying to entice new people to come there because they need more people. And they are not alone. There are many cities and localities that are looking at programs that are going to incentivize new arrivals, especially in these places that have really high levels of kind of declining economic productivity
Starting point is 00:18:17 for, you know, any number of reasons. Topeka proves that putting people to work isn't that far out of the realm of possibility. And we already kind of do stuff like this at the federal level. So the program that comes to mind is the Conrad 30 Waiver Program. It's also been around for decades. It allows foreign medical graduates to waive the requirement that they return to their home country for two years after they finish medical school in the U.S. Your interns, grunts, nobodies, bottom of the surgical food chain. Run labs, write orders, work every second night until you drop, and don't complain. They are allowed to waive it if they are willing to go to a rural or a medically underserved area.
Starting point is 00:18:56 Aha. Since 2001, that program has allowed more than 21,000 physicians to treat about 44 million Americans. Wow. Each state gets 30 visas, but we're finding that some states don't choose to use any or all of them. There is a new bipartisan bill that is led by Republicans who you might not otherwise think is being very pro-immigrant, but it would allow states to compete for the unused visas, which can sometimes reach into the hundreds. I traveled my state in the month of August from the city of Chicago down to the most rural areas of Illinois.
Starting point is 00:19:32 The message was consistently the same. They are facing a dramatic shortage in nurses, dramatic shortage in doctors. And what we're trying to do here is to try to find a solution to this. But as long as we're stuck on the issue of law enforcement, we can't even address this. Now, there's a difference between work visas and work permits. But what they have in common is that the federal government can issue them. And some people in Congress are trying. Work permits were a part of the bipartisan immigration reforms that failed earlier this year. The bill expands work authorizations for illegal aliens, threatens American workers' wages, and also acts as another magnet for illegal immigration.
Starting point is 00:20:13 It's a pull factor. That's not the message that is helpful to send around the world. But work visas are far from the only thing the federal government could do to help cities and states in crisis. Aaron Reikland-Melnick is the policy director at the American Immigration Council, and he's been brave enough to be out here saying it's time to grow the federal government to better deal with immigration. He wants a whole new department. He'd call it the Center for Migrant Coordination. So when we're talking about the Center for Migrant Coordination,
Starting point is 00:20:42 we are talking about a federal center located within the Department of Homeland Security. In particular, we're talking about a agency or component within the Department of Homeland Security that has its primary role of establishing federal leadership in migrant response. Some of this could be done at an executive level without changes from Congress, and some of this would require Congress to set up and fund this new center within the Department of Homeland Security. This is obviously a boatload of work, but it's not like this work's not being done. It's just that everyone else is having to pick up the slack. The people who are picking up the slack are cities, state governments and local nonprofits themselves. For example, there are nonprofits in Texas who are in contact with New York City employees and letting them know we've got buses coming your way. New York City is a self-declared sanctuary city. And so why he's ever complaining for one moment about these people being bused into a city goes against his own self-declaration
Starting point is 00:21:51 of being a sanctuary city. You know, at first, you know, when Greg Abbott started sending buses to New York, they weren't telling New York that the buses were on their way. And the only way cities like New York were finding out is because nonprofits on the ground in Texas were letting them know. I'm announcing an executive order requiring charter buses,
Starting point is 00:22:09 transporting migrants, those often contracted by the state of Texas, to provide 32-hour notice in advance of their arrival into New York City. At the same time, there has also been a growth of coordination and coalition building, both within the nonprofit movement and also at the city and state level for receiving communities. They're talking to each other more, they're getting together, they're strategizing on best practices,
Starting point is 00:22:39 but all of this work has been happening without the federal government, which has the most information, the most resources, and arguably the greatest responsibility to actually play a role. I think they have to because it's our only option. Melanie Nezer is with the Women's Refugee Commission in New York City.
Starting point is 00:22:59 We can't wait for the federal government to act. Ideally, they would. Ideally, we would have common sense immigration reform that meets our labor needs, our economic needs, our security needs, that allows for persecuted people to continue to find refuge in this country. But I think, you know, we have to move forward in the world that we are living in. And so right now, all the action is at the state and local level. That's where the energy is. That's where people are seeing
Starting point is 00:23:32 the direct effects of people coming. Cities have to act. The federal government, as we know, we've seen for decades, does not have to act. There are no real consequences for that, at least that we can see, you know, electorally. So, you know, so punting on immigration seems to be a winning strategy. I don't know. It's terrible for the country, but that's where we are. And so the states and
Starting point is 00:24:01 local communities have to lead the way. And that comes down to community-based organizations that are trusted. That's the only way forward. Americans increasingly see immigration as our biggest problem. That likely won't last. But what will is that people will always want to come to this country, irrespective of who's in charge, because a whole lot of people still believe that... That America is the greatest nation on earth. So we're gonna have to figure out
Starting point is 00:24:31 what to do about immigration. And we haven't made much progress at the federal level in 30 years, and we might not in the next few, but if you wanna feel hopeful, you can look local. Having the states be these laboratories of democracy, they call them, where they can test out different ideas and figure out what's working and what's not, and solve some local problems where we don't end up in a situation where the situation just gets worse and worse,
Starting point is 00:25:03 and you end up with more and more problems and it builds from the local level, from the state level, into a national crisis. That was David J. Beer from the Cato Institute. You also heard from Christy DePena from Niskanen Center. Aaron Reikland-Melnick from the American Immigration Council. And Melanie Nezer from the Women's Refugee Commission. Our program today was produced by Hadi Mawagdi with help from Matthew Collette,
Starting point is 00:25:36 Laura Bullard, David Herman, Andrea Christen's daughter, Jolie Myers, and me. I'm Sean Ramos for them. This is Today Explained.

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