| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
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We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
| In several recent episodes of Book Notes Plus, we have featured books from the World War II era. | ||
| An important figure from that time has been mentioned, but not discussed during any of those interviews. | ||
| Her name is Elizabeth Bentley. | ||
| She was the first person to reveal to the FBI and the Congress the names of people living in the United States and spying for the Soviets, both American and foreign-born operatives. | ||
| In order to better understand this former communist spy, turned informant, we asked Catherine Olmsted, author of Red Spy Queen, a biography of Elizabeth Bentley, to tell us the late spy story. | ||
|
unidentified
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Author Catherine Olmsted with her book Red Spy Queen on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| He's a vice president at the Cato Institute, a think tank that according to its website promotes libertarian ideas and policy discussions. | ||
| So Alex Narasta, in the issue of illegal immigration in this country, in general, what's the libertarian approach to this policy discussion? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the libertarian approach is to recognize that illegal immigration primarily exists because the government makes it so difficult to come to this country legally in the first place. | |
| American employers, American sellers, Americans here demand to interact with foreigners in the economy and primarily through employment and by buying goods and services from them. | ||
| However, the government gets in the way and makes it very difficult for people to come here lawfully. | ||
| The second most complicated portion of American law after the income tax is the immigration system. | ||
| The wait times for some categories of visas to come here is literally over 100 years, which is a joke. | ||
| You have to use actuarial tables to see people's lifespans and see how long it takes for them to come in. | ||
| And so as a result of that, we have a large problem with illegal immigration, the vast majority of whom are not violent or property criminals, but are merely people who are seeking to work and live here. | ||
| And we should make it easier for them to do so and legalize those who are not a threat to public order and justice. | ||
| The majority are not violent and property criminals, you say. | ||
| What are the rates when it comes to illegal immigrants committing crimes compared to citizens in this country? | ||
| What should we know in this debate when the term criminal and illegal alien gets put together almost all the time by the Trump administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we don't have the best data on this possible, but research that we've done show that nationwide, illegal immigrants have a criminal incarceration rate, that is those incarcerated in prison, about half that of native-born Americans. | |
| Now, a few states do track illegal immigration and crime. | ||
| The state of Texas is one of those. | ||
| And in Texas, which is a great state to study for this issue, it has the second highest illegal immigrant population of any state. | ||
| We find that illegal immigrants have a criminal conviction rate half that of native-born Americans. | ||
| And then when you drill down into specific crimes like homicide, it's about 40% less than native-born Americans. | ||
| And there's data from the states of Oklahoma, from Georgia, and other states that confirm that. | ||
| So all the evidence that we have shows that illegal immigrants are less likely to be criminals than native-born Americans. | ||
| Most of the time, though, when we talk about illegal immigration and crime, and they talk about criminals like that, most of them are actually immigration offenders. | ||
| They commit an immigration offense, immigration crime, like illegal reentry. | ||
| And that's who most of the criminals are who are incarcerated or detained in immigration enforcement. | ||
| They haven't committed a violent or property crime. | ||
| What they have done, though, is they have committed an immigration offense. | ||
| When was the last time in American history that there was an immigration, illegal immigration crackdown like we are seeing now? | ||
| What would you compare it to? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the last time would be either the mid-1950s or the 1930s. | |
| So in the mid-1950s, there was a program under President Eisenhower. | ||
| It was a politically incorrect name at the time. | ||
| It was called Operation Wetback, not my term, but their term. | ||
| And they targeted about a million people for deportation during that time, but it was different. | ||
| What they would do is they would drive them down to the border, make them take one step over the border into Mexico, and come back into the U.S. legally on a work permit and then drive them back to their farms. | ||
| So it was a little different than what they're doing today. | ||
| And in the 1930s, Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt deported about a million illegal immigrants, primarily from places like Los Angeles, Michigan, and from Chicago area, many of them who were actually native-born Americans who were moved out with their families. | ||
| About how many immigrants have been deported at this point under the Trump administration policy since he's taken office, what do we know about the numbers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We don't have actually great evidence on the numbers. | |
| We have sort of inconsistent evidence released by leaks inside of the administration. | ||
| The evidence I've seen for the fiscal year 2024, which began in October and runs to now, is about 180,000 people have been deported from the United States. | ||
| About one-third of those criminals, and most of those criminals either trafficked, nonviolent, or immigration offenders. | ||
| Do you think we'll get to the millions numbers like you were talking about in the 50s and 30s? | ||
| And how long would it take to get to a million deportations? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A million deportations in a year, I think, is unreachable for this administration. | |
| That is why Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, called all the ICE agents and ICE supervisors into a room last month and yelled at them. | ||
| He said, you need to do 3,000 a day in terms of arrest. | ||
| That's a very hard thing to do. | ||
| They might be able to arrest 3,000 a day, but moving them through the justice system, moving them through the courts, moving them through detention and out of the United States is quite a heavy burden. | ||
| I think the Trump administration will deport more than a million people over the course of its second term, but it will not get to a million people a year or anywhere close to it. | ||
| What would be the economic impact of deporting a million people from this country? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It would be devastating. | |
| Illegal immigrants are much more likely to work than native-born Americans, and they work in particular regions of the country, a lot of them in the southwest and states like Florida, Texas, California, Arizona. | ||
| They also work in particular industries. | ||
| So they're heavily concentrated in the industries of like food production, Son Cross, but also in construction, in services, in manufacturing, in all levels of food production, including like meat packing plants. | ||
| So it would be devastating for some industries more than others and some regions more than others, but it'd be very bad. | ||
| And then on the other side, you would diminish demand for goods and service produced by other American workers. | ||
| So it'd be very bad across the board. | ||
| So square that. | ||
| You said the economic impact would be devastating with this report that came out in the beginning of June from the Congressional Budget Office, the headline, the effects of the surge in immigration on state and local budgets in 2023. | ||
| This is just the top line numbers from, again, this is the Congressional Budget Office that nonpartisan scorekeeper in Congress. | ||
| They write, the surge in 2023 led to a direct increase in revenues of $10.1 billion, primarily from sales taxes and a direct increase in spending of $19.3 billion, chiefly from public elementary and secondary education, shelter and related services, and border security costs. | ||
| The result was a direct net cost to this country of $9.2 billion in the year 2023. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So yeah, that's the tax side of things. | |
| So the fiscal side of things, you know, taxes and benefits is different from, you know, the rest of the private economy. | ||
| Ideally, we'd want them to pay more in taxes than they consume in benefits. | ||
| However, I know that report and other reports done by the CBO, which is a wonderful organization, by the way, that tracks these things, shows that over the next 10 years, the surge of unlawful immigrants would pay about $900 billion more in taxes than they would consume in benefits. | ||
| But I think some of those problems that you addressed there, a lot of them are on the state and local level, especially education, people who are younger. | ||
| And what happens is when they get older with their educations, they work and contribute more. | ||
| And the same way that you and I, when we were in school, we weren't paying much in taxes either, right? | ||
| We were consuming more in benefits. | ||
| So in the long run, that will even out. | ||
| It will be positive. | ||
| But I think there are some positive reforms they can do on the local and state level to make that even better. | ||
| Alex Narasta, our guest here, to take your questions on immigration, border policy, costs of these different programs and issues. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats to call in. | ||
| 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| 202-748-8002 is the number for independents. | ||
| Alex Narasta, as folks are calling in, how did you get into this line of work? | ||
| How did you get interested in this topic? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow, so that's really plumbing the depths of my memory. | |
| So I have an undergraduate degree in economics, a background in economics. | ||
| I had this silly idea I wanted to become a lawyer for a while. | ||
| And in the meantime, I decided to intern at an organization called the Competitive Enterprise Institute. | ||
| And they needed somebody to work on immigration. | ||
| I thought immigration was a fascinating issue. | ||
| It allows me to study social science, study economics, study American history. | ||
| And there was nobody else doing it at the time. | ||
| And lo and behold, 20 years later, I never thought it would be the big issue that it is, but here I am. | ||
| How you said that immigration law is the second most complicated law in the books. | ||
| How did it get that way? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it's a combination of statutes applied on top of each other over time. | |
| Until 1875, the U.S. had literal open borders. | ||
| If you came to the United States, the federal government did not do anything. | ||
| It didn't filter you at all. | ||
| It was up to state and local governments to do that. | ||
| Beginning in 1875, they passed some laws, some good laws, in my opinion, to keep out criminals, people who were diseased, et cetera. | ||
| And then in 1882, they started to target Chinese immigrants with the Chinese Exclusion Act, a very bad law in my opinion. | ||
| They tried to keep out workers who were coming to compete with unions. | ||
| Fast forward to the 1920s, they kept out Europeans, Southern Eastern Europeans, the rest of Asians, the rest of Africa. | ||
| And it sort of just built on top of each other, sort of like the rest of American law. | ||
| It got more and more complicated. | ||
| You had a particular crisis in a particular period of time, maybe in the 1920s where there were some communists coming in blowing things up. | ||
| So they put in a bunch of restrictions to keep out Italian anarchists and communists. | ||
| And lo and behold, we still have to deal with those regulations today, even though there really is no threat from Italian communist terrorists in the United States. | ||
| Alex Narasta with us this morning, taking your phone calls up first. | ||
| Dave is in California, Republican. | ||
| Dave, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I'm actually a Trump again. | ||
| I'm not a Republican. | ||
| I'm like Leo Terrell says, a Trump again. | ||
| But I have a couple things I want to say, so hopefully I get a chance to say it. | ||
| First thing is, there's a reason why these deportations are happening right now. | ||
| A lot of people don't understand this, but there's what we call consequences and punishments. | ||
| And because the border was left open for four straight years, now the consequences and punishments are happening. | ||
| We have to get rid of these illegal aliens. | ||
| They're not migrants. | ||
| They're illegal aliens. | ||
| And another thing that is happening is the changing of words, making us trying to make us believe one thing when it's not. | ||
| Again, calling somebody a migrant when really they're an illegal alien. | ||
| And I don't know what else to say, but that. | ||
| I'm going to say, I'm going to repeat myself one more time. | ||
| Dave, I think we got it. | ||
| Alex Narasta, how would you respond? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So illegal immigrants is a term that most Americans use when they talk about it. | |
| It's a term that also exists in American law in the most places. | ||
| You're right that in other portions of American law it says illegal alien. | ||
| American law also says unauthorized immigrant at different times. | ||
| Sometimes it even says undocumented, although that's very rare. | ||
| So I use the term illegal immigrant because that's what most people understand it to be. | ||
| I don't like to play word games. | ||
| I just like to be able to communicate. | ||
| If most people understood illegal aliens, which they don't, they think of science fiction when you use that term, then I would use that term. | ||
| In terms of consequences, when it comes to this, you know, you are right. | ||
| Illegal immigrants did break American immigration law. | ||
| And the consequences of doing that in a lot of cases is removal from the United States. | ||
| But you also need to recognize that the costs to American liberty, the cost to the economy, the cost to our freedoms are very, very high. | ||
| We are having a debate in this country right now about the application of due process. | ||
| And that is sparked by the Trump administration removing from the United States without due process illegal immigrants like Kilmar Obrego Garcia to El Salvador Supermax prison for lifelong incarceration without any due process. | ||
| And I don't think that that is a consequence that is appropriate to the punishment for either him nor to the United States. | ||
| And furthermore, I want to change the laws to make it so that these people can come to this country lawfully, so that they can work lawfully, so that they can be above board, and so that we can weed out the actual criminals who mean to do us harm, and we don't waste our time trying to separate workers from willing employers. | ||
| What would be the single most effective change to immigration law that would help the situation right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The single most effective change would be to allow people who are low-skilled and mid-skilled to come into this country legally for a term of years to be able to work legally above board, and then when they're done, return home with a minimum of regulations, a minimum of labor market checks, and to allow American employers to contract. | |
| What makes you think they would return home when there are so many visa overstays that is one of the biggest causes of people becoming illegal immigrants? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a great question. | |
| The reason why there are so many visa overstays is because they can't come back and they can't stay to work. | ||
| So most of the visa overstays aren't tourist visas. | ||
| They come in on a tourist visa, but their real intent is to be able to work. | ||
| If they could come in on a work visa, they would do that and they go back and forth. | ||
| We saw this actually in the 1950s. | ||
| There was a big increase in illegal immigration in the early 1950s. | ||
| The government responded by creating a work visa program called the Precero Program. | ||
| The government said to employers, hire as many as you want. | ||
| They can come in legally. | ||
| And it said to the immigrants, you can get it as many years in a row as you want as long as you follow the rules. | ||
| It incentivized rule following for the employers and for the migrants. | ||
| And we got a much better system. | ||
| I mean, I think it's much better to be able to regulate a legal market than it is to have a black market that we can't regulate. | ||
| And I think this is how we get there. | ||
| President Trump, his truth social page often talks about illegal immigration, said just last night that he's hoping to create the largest deportation, mass deportation in U.S. history. | ||
| His true social post from 12 hours ago, a couple of about a week ago amid the unfurling protests in LA, he talked about shielding migrant farm workers from ICE raids. | ||
| How did you, what was your reaction to that amid what we saw out in California? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it's very difficult to take the president's words at face value because he takes basically every side of every issue at different times, right? | |
| And so he's a politician. | ||
| This is what we expect from him. | ||
| He's probably worse than most on this. | ||
| But I think what we saw was a reaction last week to the raids in Los Angeles, where he got a lot of pressure from people in the business community. | ||
| So he toned it down. | ||
| And then this morning, he basically does the opposite, right? | ||
| So I don't take his words on this seriously. | ||
| But what I was, I was, though, disturbed by what happened in Los Angeles. | ||
| I'm from Los Angeles myself originally. | ||
| I'm a Southern California native. | ||
| I think that there is no excuse for rioting under any circumstances. | ||
| And the people who rioted, whether they are sort of progressive activists, whether they are illegal immigrants, whoever they are, should be arrested, charged, and if convicted, removed from the United States if they're illegal immigrants. | ||
| However, I think what we also learned is that waving troops around, being very aggressive in police tactics, going to home depots to arrest people who are not violent and property criminals, but who in some cases are just looking to feed their families and work is also too aggressive in action. | ||
| So I would like to see both sides pull back, but also a concerted law enforcement effort to go after rioters and punish them severely. | ||
| Like I grew up watching the 92 riots on television. | ||
| You just can't have that kind of disorder go unpunished. | ||
| Back to the phones. | ||
| This is Paul in New Albany, Indiana. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning to you. | |
| I'm calling about the undocumented alien problem. | ||
| And before we talk about illegalities, we kind of stole the whole Southwest because Mike Bates right. | ||
| We were at war with Mexico. | ||
| And the reason we took that part of the land is because a group of people in Texas wanted to expand slavery to the whole Southwest. | ||
| And it took the Civil War to say no to that notion. | ||
| So, Paul, bring me up to 2025. | ||
| What's your question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my question is: is there a pathway to citizenship? | |
| Because many of those people are seeking asylum. | ||
| And, you know, we have a statue of liberty with a plaque on it. | ||
| That's what's made us a strong country is immigration. | ||
| Paul, we'll take the question. | ||
| Asylum seekers seems to be the focus he wanted to get to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think asylum seekers and then why can't they get legal? | |
| And, you know, unfortunately, American immigration law does not allow these people, except under very weird and exceptional circumstances that are uncommon, to legalize and to become citizens. | ||
| So this is a problem that can be fixed in the law. | ||
| A lot of other countries do have this fix where they allow, like if you've lived here for 10 years, unauthorized, you haven't committed any types of crimes or offenses, or if you came as a child, then once you become the age of maturity and after a period of years, you can legalize. | ||
| And I think that's a wise reform that we should do in the United States. | ||
| Does that incentivize people to come in illegally and then not get caught for 10 years? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it probably does in some circumstances, right? | |
| Especially because the benefits of being here are so high. | ||
| But what we also see is so many people coming in illegally anyway to that because there's really a big poll in the U.S. | ||
| I mean, the big poll to the U.S. is the labor market. | ||
| People want to work here, they want to live. | ||
| I think on the asylum point, though, it is difficult to claim asylum in the United States. | ||
| The Trump administration and the Biden administration also restricted asylum seekers along the border, and that's worrisome in some ways because some people are fleeing political violence. | ||
| But on the other hand, there is a big incentive to come here and claim asylum because that gets you in for a period of time. | ||
| Now, I think the way to fix that is not to restrict asylum. | ||
| The way to fix that is to make it easier for workers to come in legally so that they can be pushed away from the asylum system so that they don't have to commit that kind of asylum fraud. | ||
| And then we can preserve that system for the people who are actually fleeing political violence. | ||
| If the big magnet is an economic magnet, people trying to make enough money to feed their family. | ||
| What's your view on E-Verify? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, E-Verify is a system that is used to check workers when they come in and they apply for a job. | |
| And it's used against all workers, legal native-born Americans like you and me, but also other workers to try to prevent illegal immigrants from working. | ||
| And it sounds like a great system. | ||
| However, what we've learned from experience is that it does not work very well. | ||
| It is very easy to fool. | ||
| So, for instance, to give you an example, what it does is it checks your paperwork when you get a job. | ||
| Let's say I'm an illegal immigrant and you're a native-born American. | ||
| If I take your paperwork and give it to a boss and E-Verify checks it, it will approve me to work because it approves just the paperwork. | ||
| So, what it actually does, E-Verify incentivizes identity theft and then incentivizes illegal immigrants to use other people's identities to work. | ||
| And so, it doesn't work very well. | ||
| I oppose it. | ||
| And then, I also oppose it just on a principled stance. | ||
| I don't think you should have to ask the government for permission to get a job. | ||
| And I am also worried that E-Verify, if it becomes nationwide, if it goes into effect nationwide, people are going to realize it doesn't work. | ||
| And then the next step is to create a national biometric identity card, which is what a lot of E-Verify supporters support. | ||
| They've said this multiple times. | ||
| So, I'm worried about that for lots of reasons. | ||
| Jeremy in Madison, Wisconsin, Independent, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, everybody. | ||
| So, sir, please forgive my stupidity and please forgive my ignorance here. | ||
| But I heard you say it was very, very hard to deport a million a year. | ||
| So, I'm under the impression that it would be a fact. | ||
| It'd be a hell of a lot easier to get into the country than to get out of the country, to have individuals taken out of the country. | ||
| So, I also, as well, due to the first segment, I'm wondering if pointing out such an obvious, base, crude fact is base, crude, and violent. | ||
| I'm wondering. | ||
| I'm having a hard time here. | ||
| And I appreciate your answer. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Alex Naraso. | ||
| So, I think it's absolutely true that it is easier to come into the country illegally than it is to get deported. | ||
| That's why we have such a large illegal immigrant population over the decades. | ||
| You know, I estimate in my work somewhere around 14 to 15 million total. | ||
| Others estimate a little higher, others a little bit lower. | ||
| But I think that that simple mathematical fact shows that it is far more difficult to remove people from the U.S. than it is for them to enter legally. | ||
| And that's because in this country we have due process, we have civil liberties. | ||
| The Constitution, our constitutional rights, which I always carry this around me, a Constitution, Cato Institute, Constitution, it applies to all persons who are in the United States. | ||
| So, as a result of that, it's just going to be very difficult for the government to do it. | ||
| I don't think it's violent to point out facts about that at all. | ||
| I don't think that speech or words are violence in any way. | ||
| I think violence is violence, not words and not pointing out facts. | ||
| The government, what this administration is also looking for is self-deportation as well. | ||
| So there's a headline in today's Washington Post. | ||
| More migrants may exit than enter the United States. | ||
| U.S. policies could drive a reversal the first in 50 years in the year 2025. | ||
| And a lot of that is not just deportations, but self-deportation, people leaving the country, immigrants leaving the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, there's always a steady stream of people who are coming in and who are leaving the United States. | |
| And what's happened is in the last year, the massive decline in illegal immigrant border crossers, you know, largely due to Trump administration policies. | ||
| It was going down before, but when he came in, it really cratered because of the policies to put into effect. | ||
| But also the decline in legal immigration that is happening. | ||
| So he basically put a pause on all student visas coming in and a pause on other J-1 visas, which includes O-Pairs. | ||
| And then we have a decrease in other types of visas coming into the United States currently as a result of this. | ||
| So, and that's the result because the president actually has more control over the legal system than the illegal system, than the illegal system. | ||
| Well, there is no illegal system. | ||
| But my friends who put that report together, Tara Watson and San Voyger, Tara's at Brookings and Santa's at the American Enterprise Institute. | ||
| It's a very great analysis. | ||
| It's a good report. | ||
| They know what they're talking about. | ||
| But this is the first time that we've seen this reversal of more people likely leaving the United States this year than coming in. | ||
| And it's going to do a number in our economy in the long term. | ||
| What do they estimate? | ||
| What do you estimate that number is? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it's, you know, their number is, I think it's on the net of a few hundred thousand negative leaving the United States on net. | |
| I think that probably makes a lot of sense. | ||
| The labor market is also slowing down in the United States. | ||
| So there's just less demand for people to come in to work. | ||
| And that combined with the extra border security and the restrictions on legal immigration that the president has put into effect are sort of this classic situation, a perfect storm of reducing the population at a time when birth rates are falling and way below replacement. | ||
| So we're not going to see the population of the United States fall this year, but we're probably going to see the lowest population growth on record in American history this year. | ||
| About 15 minutes left with Alex Norasa. | ||
| It's 8:30 on the East Coast. | ||
| By the way, it's Cato.org. | ||
| If you want to see some of his work on this topic, it's all available on their website. | ||
| And you can also call in and ask him your questions, like Richard did out of Vail, Arizona. | ||
| Republican, Richard, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Good morning, gentlemen. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| A little background on me. | ||
| I did 34 years in the Border Patrol. | ||
| I've been retired probably eight years now. | ||
| Time flies. | ||
| And I've got a son in the Board of Patrol, and I've got a son that works in OFO, which is Office of Field Operations. | ||
| He works at a port of entry. | ||
| And my son, that's an agent in the field in the Border Patrol, can tell you that the apps are down significantly than what they were. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And also, the thing that kind of surprised me is talking to my other son who works at the port of entry. | |
| And maybe Alex can confirm on this. | ||
| The number of H-1 visa holders or agricultural workers who legally come through the port of entry and are processed. | ||
| And then they are bused all over the country to work in certain agricultural aspects. | ||
| Some go to Kentucky, some go to Washington State, some go to Montana, what have you. | ||
| Very interesting. | ||
| And the Bracero program was a very good idea. | ||
| Plan, it did work. | ||
| I think there has to be better controls on it, though. | ||
| Not so much on the U.S. side of the coin, but on the Mexican side. | ||
| If Alex researches it, he'll find that the monies were paid back to the workers that did work in the Bracero program. | ||
| When they went back to Mexico, the Mexican government stole their money, and there were lawsuits continuously about trying to get their money back. | ||
| So if they worked on a better program for that, I think it would be much better. | ||
| What does Alex think about that? | ||
| And Richard, stay on the line, I have a question for you when Alex Narasa is done. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so it's the H-2 visa program that I believe that your son references for the agricultural workers. | |
| It's a wonderful program. | ||
| It's still too complicated. | ||
| Workers on that need to get permission to come into the U.S. to work from four different agencies. | ||
| At most, it should be one. | ||
| It's got a very low visa overstay rate, that visa. | ||
| It's primarily from Mexicans going back and forth, and it has done quite a lot to reduce illegal immigrant border flows by channeling these workers into the legal market. | ||
| I've done a lot of work on the Bracero program, so thank you for raising some of those concerns with it. | ||
| Ironically, it's because the U.S. government worked too closely with the Mexican government at that time. | ||
| It was sort of this government-to-government labor migration agreement where a lot of the money was paid to the Mexican government or through the Mexican government to the workers, which exposed a lot of them to wage theft from the Mexican government. | ||
| I think the way that it's done now, which is you pay the workers directly, it's in their bank accounts, the money is distributed like that, you know, in the same way that you and I would be paid as employees is a much better way to go is treating these workers as individuals rather than as arms of the Mexican state. | ||
| Richard, I know Vail is down there by Tucson in Arizona, so close to the border. | ||
| But how did you get into the job and stay for decades? | ||
| And what did you think about your children getting into this career? | ||
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unidentified
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I was kind of surprised that they chose this career. | |
| I'm happy for both of them. | ||
| It sometimes can, I can't speak to the people that work at the port of entry, but I can speak to my older son. | ||
| It sometimes can be a thankless job. | ||
| As to me, I came into the patrol after military service in college. | ||
| I grew up in Southern California, and it's just something that I wanted to do, and I stayed with it for a long time. | ||
| I worked a variety of programs in the agency. | ||
| The one that I had the most fun in was employer sanctions. | ||
| That was actually taken away from the Border Patrol because we were too successful in it versus at that time the INS and their office that had employer sanctions also. | ||
| But that's the key thing with if you want to put an end to workers coming over here to work, I think, is employer sanctions. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| I was saying we talked a little bit about that with e-Verify. | ||
| I wanted to ask on the thankless job aspect. | ||
| Do you think there's more of a feeling today that it's a thankless job? | ||
| Or were there other times in your career for the decades that you've been in the Border Patrol that people appreciated the job that you did more perhaps than they do today? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, I'll say I try to be apolitical on the whole affair, but I will say because my son was in during the time, or is in, but he had started just at the very beginning of the Biden administration. | |
| So he was kind of new to it and didn't know any better, didn't know what to expect. | ||
| But I stay in touch with a lot of friends who are still in the Border Patrol who are still working or have retired. | ||
| And it did cause a large influx of people to retire from the agency as soon as possible. | ||
| Or people that couldn't retire, they transferred off to a different agency. | ||
| They went to the ATF or the DEA or U.S. Marshal Service or what have you. | ||
| But the morale is much better now than it was under the Biden administration. | ||
| As far as the port of entry, my son's only been in for a little while, and he did at the very end of the Biden administration. | ||
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unidentified
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And he would go to work and they would see hundreds of people lined up at the port of entry coming in through filing an asylum claim or some other instance, and they'd have to be processed. | |
| Richard, that's terminated. | ||
| That doesn't go. | ||
| Go ahead, sir. | ||
| No, I was going to let you finish. | ||
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unidentified
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Oh, so something's got to be done about it. | |
| We'll see what happens over the next couple of years. | ||
| I guess if there's any Supreme Court cases that come down or if Congress can pass any more laws, I don't know. | ||
| I think there are enough laws on the books that can be enforced already as it is. | ||
| I don't think they have to create any more. | ||
| There's plenty of them out there. | ||
| I don't think they have to use the law from the 1800s, the there's plenty of teeth from the 1996 immigration law. | ||
| And I might remind you that in the mid-90s during the Clinton administration, they had a large influx of Central Americans that were coming up into the United States. | ||
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unidentified
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Most of them were coming in through Brownsville and Rio Grande Valley area. | |
| And the Clinton administration clamped down really hard on that. | ||
| They set up tent cities. | ||
| They brought in immigration judges under the Executive Office of Immigration Reform, which is known as EOIR. | ||
| And those people that came in and said, we want asylum, they had their asylum claims held immediately within a day of being apprehended on the border by the border patrol agents. | ||
| Well, Richard, let me let Alex Arasa jump in on that history there. | ||
| But before you go, thank you for sharing your family's story and what your sons do. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, thank you. | |
| Yeah, so that history was at that processing of visas at that time of those asylum claims was at a time when there really was no backlog in the immigration courts. | ||
| Now the backlog is over a million per year. | ||
| So over a million, and that will take years and years to clear. | ||
| So, you know, we can learn a lot from history on this, but also the differences are dramatic. | ||
| When he says if the Supreme Court steps in, things could change. | ||
| Is there a specific case that's moving through right now that you think could have a big impact on immigration law, something you're watching? | ||
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unidentified
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No. | |
| Not huge cases. | ||
| I mean, some of the cases that I'm really looking at are those involving like the Alien Enemies Act, as well as some of the deportations of individuals like Ms. Oz Turk, who is a Turkish student at Tufts University. | ||
| He wrote an op-ed, who was detained and is going through deportation proceedings right now, as well as Mahmoud Khalil, who is a Columbia student, green card, green card holder, who is also being deported because of his speech and a bunch of anti-Israeli protests at Columbia University. | ||
| So I'm more interested in those. | ||
| And also, there's an immigration angle, of course, but also a First Amendment angle. | ||
| What is your feeling on those who have participated in protests on college campuses and the crackdown by certain colleges and the reaction from the Trump administration? | ||
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unidentified
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So if somebody is just engaged in speech, I think that there is nothing to do in terms of immigration law or criminal law in the United States. | |
| I mean, the First Amendment is very clear on this. | ||
| It applies to persons who are here in the United States. | ||
| And I think that non-citizens who are here have the same rights that you and I and other people do in the United States, that native-born Americans do. | ||
| So that is, I think, an illegitimate application of American law. | ||
| However, if somebody has engaged in a violent or property crime, such as rioting or destroying property or attacking somebody in these situations, then I think it is totally fair if they are a non-citizen to go after them. | ||
| And indeed, they should be prosecuted for those crimes. | ||
| And if convicted, serve their sentences, and then afterwards be removed from the United States. | ||
| Let me follow up. | ||
| You said immigrants have the same rights as we do as citizens. | ||
| They have the exact same rights. | ||
| There's no rights that we have as citizens of this country that immigrants don't have. | ||
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unidentified
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So, in the Bill of Rights, so not voting. | |
| They don't have the same rights to vote. | ||
| They don't have the same rights to sit on a jury. | ||
| And there are good reasons, I think, for that. | ||
| You want people to be integrated and assimilated and have a stake in the United States for that. | ||
| But in terms of their First Amendment rights, in terms of their Fourth Amendment rights, their Fifth Amendment rights, their rights to a jury trial, the right to say what they want, then they have those same rights that we have. | ||
| Second Amendment rights? | ||
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unidentified
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So there's a lot of court cases going forward on that. | |
| It's a controversial issue. | ||
| There are limitations in American law on the ownership and carrying of firearms. | ||
| I think that it's pretty clear if you read the Second Amendment and the jurisprudence, we are moving toward a space where non-citizens have Second Amendment rights as well, which I think is appropriate. | ||
| But that is not where we are right now in American law. | ||
| Appropriate? | ||
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unidentified
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Why? | |
| Probably because I think the language of the Constitution and the language of the Second Amendment and the language of how we understand how these inalienable rights affect everybody who are here, how they apply to everybody who are here. | ||
| The idea is that our rights precede the creation of the government and that we create a government to protect these rights. | ||
| And that even somebody who is here who is not a citizen also has at least some rights in regard to firearms that Native-born Americans do too. | ||
| A few minutes left with Alex Narasta, and Percy is in Lake Worth, Florida, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| How are you guys doing today? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good. | |
| Yeah, a little bit about me. | ||
| I'm a recruiter, and I actually was, and I agree with Alex that the E-Verified is very ineffective because I was hands-on in the Asylum Seekers Project in New York staffing that and saw the fraud that he discussed. | ||
| I do disagree that it could be better. | ||
| It could be an effective way. | ||
| I have a love-hate thing with immigration, but what people don't realize is that there's a huge part of, it's not really, it should be called immigration. | ||
| It should really, it's more like global movability or business work visa. | ||
| And there's tons and there's thousands of different visas that you could use. | ||
| You come in and work, and you could essentially, after years of working and you get your family to come over with you, you can get legally citizenship or permanent residency. | ||
| That being said, people don't also realize without it in the 1950s, I believe it was, we still have a shortage of nursing. | ||
| But in the 1950s, we had a really bad one. | ||
| And thanks to India, we had an influx, and that saved us. | ||
| So, I mean, I'm all for business immigration or work visas. | ||
| And I agree with the same thing he made before where the in-and-out thing is not allowed anymore where it should be. | ||
| I actually had a good friend who was from Sicily, and we became friends. | ||
| He was going back for the summer, was going to come back, and he was not allowed back in upon reentry. | ||
| For what reasons, I don't know. | ||
| So, I mean, I have a love-hate thing with it, but I just want people to realize that if you look at the DOL and the USCIS, there are thousands of different visa applications, petitions, and otherwise that you can utilize to your advantage. | ||
| And there's good money to be made. | ||
| I benefit from it as an American. | ||
| Percy, thanks for the call. | ||
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unidentified
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There are a large number of visas. | |
| I think thousands may be a bit of an exaggeration, but there are large numbers of visas, basically one for each letter of the alphabet, and usually many subcomponents. | ||
| However, what we're really missing are a large number of visas for low and mid-skilled workers to come to the U.S. temporarily to work in occupations that are year-round. | ||
| I mean, there is no year-round visa for low-skilled workers to come to the United States to work. | ||
| There are seasonal ones for agriculture, but those are maximum 10 months. | ||
| There are seasonal ones for the H-2B visa, which is for seasonal non-agricultural workers, primarily in tourism, but also in a lot of landscaping and lumber occupations. | ||
| And we just need more lawful visas for more workers from more countries in the world who are allowed legally to work in different occupations. | ||
| If we had that visa going back decades, we wouldn't be talking about this illegal immigration problem in the United States. | ||
| We'd be talking more about the legal migrants who are coming in and helping us grow our economy. | ||
| Time for maybe one more call. | ||
| This is Nisi in Michigan. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| What I'm calling for is that how do we grow with the people that are trying to help us as a country? | ||
| I don't understand what made America great is that we had many people from other cultures to make this country beautiful. | ||
| And I'm going to tell you something: what's on the Statue of Liberty is in the Bible. | ||
| And people don't know that. | ||
| And they don't look at it like that. | ||
| But the immigrants, Latino immigrants, Spanish-speaking, let me say it like that, they appreciate America because they can grow as a people. | ||
| And that's what America is about. | ||
| That's Nisi, Alex Narasta. | ||
|
unidentified
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The United States is a wealthy and successful country because we followed a few principles of our time: rule of law, individual liberty, free markets, peace. | |
| And immigrants are attracted to that because it grows the economy and makes us a successful place. | ||
| And immigrants, in turn, help grow the economy and make us freer. | ||
| I think that we are really turning against our traditions. | ||
| We are turning against our values as Americans by closing the border and restricting legal immigration and by cracking down and trying to remove illegal immigrants who are no threat to anybody else. | ||
| So I really hope we go back to the principles that helped this country grow and that welcomed tens of millions of people here lawfully to make us a better country. |