| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Awesome country. | |
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| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by David Beer. | ||
| He's Immigration Studies Director at the Cato Institute. | ||
| David, welcome back to the program. | ||
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| In light of this weekend's event, I want to focus on Venezuelan immigrants in the United States. | ||
| Can you set the stage for us? | ||
| How many are there in the United States? | ||
| What's their status? | ||
| How many are legal? | ||
| How many are illegal? | ||
| Yeah, so there's about 1.1 million Venezuelan immigrants in the United States. | ||
| And at the start of the year, the vast majority of them had some form of legal status through temporary protected status or parole or even citizenship or legal permanent residence status in the United States. | ||
| Over the course of this year, about three-quarters of a million Venezuelan immigrants have lost their status. | ||
| About 600,000 have lost status through the Temporary Protected Status Program or TPS. | ||
| And then you have another group that had lost status through parole, cancellations, and revocations. | ||
| You have people who still have pending asylum claims in the United States. | ||
| That is not considered a status under this administration. | ||
| WILL STILL SUBJECT THOSE PEOPLE TO ARREST IF THEY ENCOUNTER THEM BY BORDER PATROL OR IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT IN THE INTERIOR. | ||
| AND SO... | ||
| EVEN IF THEY HAVE AN ONGOING CASE? | ||
| Even if they have an ongoing case, they're still being arrested, still being detained pending the outcome of that case. | ||
| In many cases, the administration is actually working with the immigration courts to expedite and remove those cases from the immigration court docket and immediately remove those individuals. | ||
| And is that just for Venezuelans or is that all immigrants? | ||
| That's really across the board. | ||
| Yeah, it's not a specific Venezuelan policy. | ||
| About how many Venezuelans have been deported this past year? | ||
| Yeah, I don't have the specific figures. | ||
| It's going to be in the thousands. | ||
| They've been running a pretty good number of flights and not just to Venezuela, but to other countries as well that have been willing to accept Venezuelans. | ||
| Can you give us an idea of the history of Venezuelan immigration into the United States and kind of how things have happened, not just this past year or in the past administration, but even before that? | ||
| When you're talking about Venezuelan immigrants coming to the United States, how did they come here? | ||
| Well, the vast majority came legally. | ||
| Historically, before the Biden administration, before the Trump administration, this first term, the vast majority came through temporary visas and permanent residence programs. | ||
| Under the Biden administration, a good portion came illegally across the border, but many came under private refugee sponsorship programs, private sponsorship programs through parole, and through legal entry programs at the southwest border that were created by the Biden administration. | ||
| So very significant portion of the population came legally from the start. | ||
| And many of those that came across the border were paroled by the Biden administration, which means you have temporary status. | ||
| What did parole actually mean? | ||
| Yeah, it's a form of temporary humanitarian protection status, if you want to call it that, that allows people to live and work legally in the United States pending the outcome of their case or the outcome of whatever situation has allowed them to gain entry to the United States. | ||
| Now explain TPS, temporary protective status. | ||
| That was not just for Venezuelans, that was for other people. | ||
| And when was that taken away and under what circumstances? | ||
| Yeah, so there were multiple rounds of temporary protected status under the Biden administration. | ||
| The first Trump administration on its way out the door actually gave them a form of temporary protected status as well, deferred departure, sort of a similar type of program, but there was protections in place to prevent their deportation to Venezuela. | ||
| And then under this administration, almost immediately you had revocations of that temporary protected status. | ||
| And now at this point, all of the temporary protected status for Venezuelans is gone. | ||
| And so they're all out of status or pending the outcome of the asylum cases that they have pending. | ||
| So they are all now subject to deportation? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| If you'd like to join our conversation with David Beer of the Cato Institute, you've got a question about immigration in general. | ||
| You can certainly ask that as well. | ||
| The numbers are by party. | ||
| So Democrats are on 202748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Now, yesterday, Christy Noam, the Homeland Security Secretary, was on Fox News, and she addressed that situation with Venezuelans in the U.S. who were previously protected by TPS. | ||
| We'll play what she said and then have you comment. | ||
| Tremendous concern among the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who are here in the U.S. legally through TPS. | ||
| Here is Miami's mayor yesterday. | ||
| She says, the elimination of TPS for Venezuelans earlier this year was reckless, dangerous, and wrong. | ||
| No one should be forced back into chaos and uncertainty. | ||
| I am calling on President Trump to immediately reinstate TPS for Venezuelan residents. | ||
| Madam Secretary, are you going to force these people to return to Venezuela now, even as their government is in complete flux? | ||
| Well, Venezuela today is more free than it was yesterday, and it's going to continue to be that way as long as President Trump is in the White House and is making sure that he's protecting the interests of the American people because that ripple effect will continue to bring that kind of liberty to Venezuela as well. | ||
| These programs, we're bringing integrity back to them. | ||
| The decisions are made in conjunction with the State Department, with the White House, and then we at Homeland Security implement them and make sure that they are followed through. | ||
| So every individual that was under TPS has the opportunity to apply for refugee status, and that evaluation will go forward. | ||
| But we need to make sure that our programs actually mean something. | ||
| And that was Christy Noam, Homeland Security Secretary. | ||
| She said that anybody that was previously on temporary protected status can apply for refugee status. | ||
| Talk about how that works. | ||
| Well, in a very technical sense, anyone can apply for anything. | ||
| It doesn't mean you're going to receive any kind of status. | ||
| Really, I think what she's talking about is asylum. | ||
| For people in the United States, that's what you're eligible to apply for. | ||
| If you're persecuted in your home country, refugee status would be for people who are outside of the United States or have already been deported from the country. | ||
| So if you look at it, asylum is a potential path for Venezuelan immigrants here. | ||
| Many of them have pending asylum claims. | ||
| As I mentioned earlier, they're trying to remove those people as well, detaining them, trying to remove them without giving them the opportunity to be heard, which is what the Alien Enemies Act cases were about, eliminating that due process and hearing that they're entitled to under immigration law. | ||
| The Alien Enemies Act was applied to try to eliminate that opportunity. | ||
| They're also working with the immigration courts to try to eliminate the opportunity for them to seek a hearing through other means through the expedited removal process. | ||
| So I would not expect many of the Venezuelans whose cases are pending to actually receive asylum by this administration because of their anti-asylum stance. | ||
| As you heard the secretary say, they think the country is freer than it's been in a long time as a result of the capture of Maduro. | ||
| And while that might be true, the regime itself is still in place, and many of these people who face persecution there would still face persecution. | ||
| And asylum cases, are they still going through, or is the whole asylum system on hold right now? | ||
| Because I understand that there was a freeze. | ||
| Yes, so there was a freeze, but you're talking about two different tracks. | ||
| The immigration court process, that's still going forward. | ||
| They're still trying to get people to be removed through that process. | ||
| So if you have an immigration court hearing, that is still going to happen, and you would still be either ordered removed or granted asylum under that process. | ||
| But not many people are receiving asylum by this administration. | ||
| And talk more about the refugee system. | ||
| There typically has been a certain number of slots, if you will, for people to apply for refugee status. | ||
| What's going on now under the Trump administration over the past year? | ||
| Yes, so at the start of last fiscal year, under the Biden administration, they set a cap of 125,000 refugees. | ||
| That was allowed to come in legally. | ||
| These are people who are abroad, who are facing persecution in their home country. | ||
| They would be vetted abroad and then allowed to come legally to the United States through the refugee program. | ||
| The Trump administration initially suspended the refugee program entirely. | ||
| The start of this year, they allowed 7,500 slots, again, almost entirely for people from South Africa who are facing persecution there. | ||
| White South Africans. | ||
| White South Africans. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Let's talk to callers now. | ||
| We'll start with Mark Wildwood, Florida, Independent Line. | ||
| Go ahead, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm very aware of the libertarian stance of the Cato Institute, and sometimes it drives me a little crazy. | |
| But anyway, I hope America stays within its hemisphere. | ||
| The UK and the UN and all that hemisphere, they need to do it on their own now. | ||
| It's post-World War II, the 21st century. | ||
| We can't project power like we used to post-World War II. | ||
| UN and NATO, I wish they would move it to, say, the Gaza Strip or China or Russia and just get it out of our country. | ||
| They're a joke, almost along with NATO. | ||
| You know, I hope the best, hope and pray for the best for all the South and Central Americans that are here. | ||
| I'm an American, born and raised. | ||
| I'm a citizen, and we're a country of citizens, not of immigrants. | ||
| But anyway, I hope they can all go home, return to their countries. | ||
| They've had a taste of this great country and go back to make their corrupt societies and countries like America come compete, like the UK and that with the rest of the world. | ||
| All right, Mark. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Well, we'll see how many people decide to go back. | ||
| It is something that many Venezuelans do aspire to: the opportunity to go back to their country once there's an opportunity for freedom and democracy again. | ||
| At this point, we don't really know what the future holds for the government of Venezuela, whether there will be freedom there, whether it will devolve into some kind of civil war. | ||
| We don't know. | ||
| And so I think there are many who are just sitting tight, trying to figure out what's going to happen, just like the rest of us. | ||
| And the caller also said that this is a nation of citizens. | ||
| What's your reaction to that? | ||
| Well, it's both. | ||
| This is a country that has obviously many citizens, that's over 90% of the population. | ||
| But we also have non-citizens who contribute to this country in many ways as well. | ||
| And so if you look at historically, the reason why we're such a great, big, prosperous country is because we've had so many people, both citizens and non-citizens, who've come here, built their lives here, and then their families and descendants have built this great country. | ||
| Robert in Marion, Louisiana, Democrat, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, darling day. | |
| I've been trying to sleep and listen to your program all morning. | ||
| I'm so annoyed by what's going on. | ||
| It really doesn't make no sense. | ||
| Trump rolled over and steal a man. | ||
| And then the people that's over here, he capturing them and putting them in prison camps. | ||
| And now he's liberated the country, so they are cheering for Trump for what he's done. | ||
| But on the other hand, all of it don't make no sense because it's just for the all. | ||
| Because he's not going to help them people over there in Venezuela. | ||
| He just wants the all for his buddies. | ||
| And everybody can see it except the Republicans that supporting Donald Trump. | ||
| You know, what if Russia do what Trump just done? | ||
| What if China do what just what Trump does? | ||
| He done gave them all the green light. | ||
| So all you got to do, girl, then capture. | ||
| It's just like over there in Ukraine. | ||
| That's in their backyard. | ||
| Why they won't just let them have Ukraine? | ||
| Robert, do you have something immigration-related for our guest? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's what I'm saying. | |
| I mean, the immigration thing right here, he got troops in all the United States cities, and he's capturing people. | ||
| He's putting them in camps and cages in Florida. | ||
| But nobody don't want to say nothing about that. | ||
| Yeah, you look at the policy, right? | ||
| We're talking about trying to do all these things to benefit Venezuelan citizens and how much we care about them. | ||
| At the same time, we are pursuing a policy aggressively since the start of this year to deport people back to the socialist country of Venezuela and many other socialist and tyrannical regimes around the world as well. | ||
| And so the concern here is that maybe we aren't motivated by freedom and we're motivated by some other concerns. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I can't read the president's mind. | ||
| I can only go by what he has said. | ||
| He said there are multiple motivations here. | ||
| And one of them might be oil. | ||
| One of them might be the liberation of the Venezuelan people. | ||
| But so far, we haven't seen much liberation happen since the end of the year. | ||
| The president did say that the Maduro government has been intentionally trying to destabilize the United States by sending immigrants into the country. | ||
| He said that they have opened up their prisons and their insane asylums and had them come to the United States. | ||
| Do we have evidence of that? | ||
| No, there's no evidence provided, not in the charging document, that they have charged Maduro with various crimes against the United States. | ||
| He's been charged with drug trafficking and other offenses, firearm offenses, but nothing about the intentional destabilizing of the United States or smuggling of persons to the United States, which would be an immigration offense. | ||
| So nothing about that in any of the evidence that they provided so far. | ||
| Here's Debbie in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Debbie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Good. | ||
| Go right ahead, Debbie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| The Cato Institute, I just have a question. | ||
| Well, I actually have two. | ||
| Do you directly communicate with the White House about immigration and their policies? | ||
| Do you help? | ||
| And what's number two, Debbie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Number two is: are the immigration laws and everything, do they do that to all of the countries, or is it different for each country? | |
| Do you understand that question? | ||
| Could you clarify a little bit more about what you mean by each individual country? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Well, say, for instance, we have a policy or immigration law. | ||
| Are those laws for, say, Venezuela, and then the same laws would apply for Iran or Iraq? | ||
| Are you asking? | ||
| Does he study laws, immigration laws of other countries? | ||
| I think I understand. | ||
| I think I understand. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are they different? | |
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, so when you're looking at, look, the Cato Institute, we're a public policy think tank organization. | ||
| We're not here to lobby, but we do have communications with administration officials and members of Congress. | ||
| We're trying to educate the public about public policy from a libertarian perspective. | ||
| When you look at what the laws as written in the Immigration and Nationality Act are, we're talking about laws that should apply equally to all countries, all nationalities. | ||
| What has happened over the last year, however, is that the Trump administration has changed the law effectively for individual countries. | ||
| So we now have almost 40 countries that are outright banned from immigrating legally to the United States as a result of executive orders by the president. | ||
| We also have these various policies that specifically target Venezuelans, the Alien Enemies Act proclamation, which would deny Venezuelans an opportunity to contest the removal in immigration court. | ||
| That is a country-specific policy. | ||
| So there are country-specific policies within the broad framework of immigration law, largely as a result of the Trump administration's executive orders. | ||
| I want to read you a portion of the Washington Examiner's editorial board about crossings, illegal crossings of the southern border, and have you react. | ||
| So they said this. | ||
| By May, for the first time ever, no migrants arrested on charges of illegally crossing the southern border were released into the U.S. | ||
| The Trump administration has kept the number at zero every month since. | ||
| By itself, this is a huge historic accomplishment, but Trump has done much more. | ||
| According to the Department of Homeland Security, the administration has deported more than 605,000 illegal immigrants since January 20th. | ||
| Another 1.9 million have voluntarily self-deported. | ||
| This means that in just the first year in office, Trump has shrunk the illegal immigrant population by 2.5 million, undoing almost half of the damage Biden caused during his four-year term. | ||
| That is from December 31st in the Washington Examiner's editorial page. | ||
| Yeah, so if you look at what the administration did on its first day in office, it suspended all immigration law at the southwest border. | ||
| Every other administration before the Trump administration, and actually the last Trump administration did the same thing using Title 42, they had to apply immigration law, which includes the right to claim asylum. | ||
| They've banned asylum and the right to seek protection in the United States, even after crossing the border illegally, even though that is what the law states. | ||
| And so they've managed to continue with this policy, even though it on its face looks to be illegal. | ||
| The courts are still wrangling over whether it's going to be struck down or not. | ||
| We'll eventually get a ruling from the Supreme Court one way or the other. | ||
| But that is the basis of the policy that we're seeing. | ||
| But you're saying it's illegal. | ||
| What President Trump has done at the border is illegal. | ||
| If you look at the statute, Immigration Nationality Act, Section 208, provides for the right to claim asylum regardless of how people cross the border. | ||
| People don't like that policy. | ||
| They don't like that law. | ||
| They don't like that rule. | ||
| There have been a lot of debate about it. | ||
| But that is the law that Congress passed in 1980. | ||
| It's been the law ever since, and they've suspended it. | ||
| And that is what's being contested. | ||
| I think it's blatantly illegal, which is the same position of the first Trump administration, the Biden administration. | ||
| Every administration in the past has followed this law except for this one. | ||
| And so, yes, illegal crossings are down in part because of the suspension of immigration law at the border, but they're also down for a lot of other reasons. | ||
| They were trending down under the Biden administration, the last year of the Biden administration. | ||
| You'd already seen a 90% reduction in illegal crossings before the Trump administration came into office. | ||
| That trend has continued under this administration, but I wouldn't say we've gone from a situation of abject chaos under Biden to, you know, the situation that we have today. | ||
| Frank in Birmingham, Alabama, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Frank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I had a stirring question. | ||
| It relates to definitely immigration illegally. | ||
| But I'd like to cap that off by talking about the president himself. | ||
| I just find myself in some kind of situation because this president was convicted. | ||
| This president is convicted. | ||
| So you shouldn't go from being convicted. | ||
| You're supposed to go to jail, not to the presidency. | ||
| And I don't understand how Trump can do the things he's doing with this sentence hanging over him after he's president or what have you. | ||
| But that just speaks bad of America, that we have a president that's indicted and found guilty, but yet he gets to be the president. | ||
| And all these other things he tries to say and stop. | ||
| I think that the part of dealing with immigration and all that, I mean, we need to really get a handle on what he's doing. | ||
| And nobody really talks about it. | ||
| I mean, that's literally what it is. | ||
| I've been arrested before and found convicted and got my sentence. | ||
| I couldn't go and register to vote because I had no rights to vote. | ||
| So that dilemma, I hate to put it on this as you talk about the immigrants in that situation, but I just wanted to say that because nobody acts like that never happened. | ||
| And that is just to my chagrin, and it really hurts because, again, I've done everything since I've got my conviction. | ||
| I try to help get guys out of games. | ||
| I work for the mayor, the city of Birmingham, and all this. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| Until I got a pardon, I could not run for anything. | ||
| So that paradox is just killing me. | ||
| And I'm sorry I could go off on what you're talking about. | ||
| But I'm going to take this quick minute to get it. | ||
| Any comment? | ||
| Well, I would just say, if you look at our immigration laws and how they're enforced, there's much stricter vetting for people entering the country than there is vetting for entering the White House. | ||
| And you're right. | ||
| Immigrants coming to this country would not be eligible to immigrate if they had the number of convictions that the President of the United States has. | ||
| You wrote a piece recently about the most important immigration stories of 2025. | ||
| Give us an idea of what you thought was the most important immigration stories. | ||
| If you look at it, it's the whole agenda, right? | ||
| So the biggest story for me is the cutting off of illegal immigration to the United States. | ||
| Legal immigration. | ||
| Illegal immigration. | ||
| If you look at it, he has banned about a third of all permanent legal immigration to the United States. | ||
| He eliminated almost entirely the refugee program. | ||
| Over 125,000 people entered legally under that program. | ||
| He's banned about 20% of all legal immigrants on a country-by-country basis. | ||
| This includes Cuba and Venezuela and many other countries who are included on this banned list. | ||
| Now about 40 countries are completely banned from immigrating. | ||
| This includes spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents are ineligible to immigrate under this administration's policy from 40 countries around the world. | ||
| This is really the most extreme legal immigration policy that we've ever had in the history of the United States. | ||
| And so I would say that is, to me, the biggest story. | ||
| And right alongside that story of legal immigration is the cancellation of legal status for people already in the United States. | ||
| We talked about temporary protected status going away for Venezuelans, but it's not just Venezuelans. | ||
| It's a huge number of other countries as well. | ||
| Over 1 million individuals have now lost their temporary protected status. | ||
| They had it at the beginning of the year. | ||
| They were here legally. | ||
| The administration eliminated that status. | ||
| You add that with the elimination of parole status. | ||
| You're over 2 million people have now lost their legal status in the United States. | ||
| That's totally unprecedented. | ||
| We never had an administration who wanted to prioritize for deportation people who were here legally, who have been vetted, and have that legal status and working here legally. | ||
| That is totally unprecedented in the history of the United States as well. | ||
| So I would say those are the two biggest stories. | ||
| The crackdown on the population who are here illegally, as well as what we're seeing in the streets in terms of racial profiling, demographic profiling that the Border Patrol, immigration and customs enforcement are doing. | ||
| That is also a major story for 2025. | ||
| And going forward, as the number of agents increase, we're going to see even more of that type of behavior, people being stopped because they're a Hispanic construction worker. | ||
| That is exactly what the policy is going forward. | ||
| And as more agents come on board, we're going to see that happening in more and more cities across the United States. | ||
| Rick in West Hope, North Dakota, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Rick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning and happy new year, folks. | |
| I would like to see what the speaker has regarding the failure of the Congress and the government of the United States to take the recommendations of the Jordan Commission on Immigrant Immigration Reform to implement it. | ||
| I mean, it was endorsed by Congress, endorsed by Clinton, and then it was dropped. | ||
| Just in the last 30 years, look what we've got. | ||
| We've got a mess, right? | ||
| So what are your comments and thoughts on that? | ||
| Can you remind us about the Jordan Commission? | ||
| Yeah, the Jordan Commission was a commission set up by Congress to study the issue of immigration, make recommendations to Congress about how to pursue immigration reform during the Clinton administration in the 1990s. | ||
| You know, it proposed a reshuffling of immigration, legal immigration away from family sponsorship, a crackdown on employers who hire illegal immigrants, as well as a path to legal status. | ||
| for people who are in the country illegally. | ||
| This is largely the program and the platform that has been pursued by the various Congresses and administrations since. | ||
| It's not something that Congress has ever acted on. | ||
| So I understand the frustration of the callers talking about, you know, why has Congress not act? | ||
| They've done these studies, they've had these commissions, they haven't done anything to change policy. | ||
| And so why is it now that the president can come in and just decide what the policy will be even without Congress acting? | ||
| Here's Fred in Jessup, Maryland, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Fred. | ||
|
unidentified
|
See, is the rule of law being handed out? | |
| We're a nation of laws, and what I see is, you know, bringing in these illegal aliens, most of them are illegal. | ||
| They're just bringing them in for the census just to count them as another Democrat vote. | ||
| Well, actually, everybody's backfiring on the Democrats. | ||
| Everything they've done is backfiring right in their faces. | ||
| And they're doubling down on them. | ||
| When they come over across that border, they were teaching these people what to say about the asylum, how to get through, to bypass our laws. | ||
| Not one of them was learning English. | ||
| You look in the cars they're driving. | ||
| They still got their country's flags flying in their cars. | ||
| They're not assimilating. | ||
| This is totally backwards. | ||
| How come I live in Maryland? | ||
| We had a senator go to Venezuela over, they called the illegal guy, he was a human trafficker and a gang member. | ||
| They called him the Maryland dad. | ||
| They tried to portray it as, you know, you or I. I'm here, Leader. | ||
| This is Garcia. | ||
| Kilmer Obrego Garcia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Go ahead, Fred. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| They went down and made it look like he was a legal citizen that had due process rights. | ||
| They have no rights. | ||
| I have a right as a taxpayer. | ||
| I'm tired of seeing my money being wasted. | ||
| And this is the crackdown on. | ||
| Democrats did this to themselves. | ||
| They ruined everything. | ||
| Medicaid, every social program, they ruined it. | ||
| Okay, Fred, let's get a response on the immigration part. | ||
| Yeah, so immigration law should protect the rights of citizens. | ||
| And I agree with that completely. | ||
| One of our rights should be the freedom to associate with people who are born in other countries. | ||
| Legal immigration law should respect our rights. | ||
| You look at what the Trump administration has done with banning even spouses of U.S. citizens from immigrating legally to this country. | ||
| This is not a policy that is respectful of the rule of law, respectful of our rights to associate legally with people who want to come here and live here legally. | ||
| So I don't agree with the idea that this administration is focused on restoring the rule of law. | ||
| They're really undermining many of our immigration laws, including the right to seek asylum in the United States. | ||
| That's part of our laws as well. | ||
| But when you look at the legal immigration picture in totality, this administration has pursued a lot of things that would be contrary to the rule of law and undermine our rights, including the enforcement operations that we're seeing that are resulting in the harassment, detention, and arrest of U.S. citizens who are minding their own business, going about their life, being detained because of what they look like. | ||
| They look like illegal immigrants to the Border Patrol, so they stop them and question them about their place of birth, where they're from, demand identification. | ||
| We actually have an individual who our friends at the Institute of Justice, Institute for Justice, are pursuing a case who's been detained multiple times, who's a U.S. citizen. | ||
| So I don't agree that these policies are protecting citizens' rights. | ||
| And what about jobs? | ||
| I mean, given all these people being deported, those jobs that they might have had have opened up. | ||
| So are Americans filling those jobs? | ||
| If you look at the unemployment rate for the U.S.-born population, it's actually higher than it was last year. | ||
| And the reason why you don't automatically have an increase in employment for the U.S.-born population when you deport someone is because you're not just subtracting a worker. | ||
| You're also subtracting demand for workers. | ||
| So that worker isn't just sitting around doing nothing. | ||
| He's also purchasing things. | ||
| He's buying things from the store. | ||
| The company that hired them is also employing more capital. | ||
| They're purchasing trucks and other vehicles and other things that the worker needs. | ||
| That's resulting in increased employment opportunities for Americans elsewhere. | ||
| So subtracting workers doesn't mean lower unemployment rates for the U.S.-born population. | ||
| Here's Chris in San Antonio, Texas, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Chris. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, hi. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| But the gentleman, he just doesn't know. | ||
| And I hate to call him out, but he should have come down to San Antonio, Texas when the Biden administration was running all the Venezuelan illegals through here. | ||
| First, a lot of them got killed and murdered and raped. | ||
| And also, they all had to pay $10,000, each one of them, to the cartel. | ||
| If they didn't pay the money to the cartel, then they weren't allowed in. | ||
| If they got in without paying the cartel, Catholic charities would not take them in. | ||
| They would not get all the benefits that Joe Biden was paying out. | ||
| They brought a gang right up on San Pedro, right up in an apartment complex. | ||
| They killed people here. | ||
| The police have put it under the carpet. | ||
| A lot of policemen and other people in the city of San Antonio got paid extra hundreds of thousands to help move them through. | ||
| It was not humanitarian what Joe Biden did. | ||
| Yeah, so I don't support illegal immigration. | ||
| I want people to be able to have the opportunity to apply legally. | ||
| People should come in a legal and orderly way. | ||
| The Biden administration did a little of that, not nearly enough. | ||
| And what it did do, it did very late in its term after a lot of the chaos at the border that we saw during the first two years from 2021, 2022, 2023. | ||
| It wasn't until the end of the administration that we had a big increase in legal immigration that allowed more people to enter legally. | ||
| That's the policy that I would support. | ||
| I don't support the idea that people should just come across the border illegally. | ||
| The administration's policies when it comes to legal immigration are the biggest concern for me is because you want to create the incentives for people to come to this country in a legal way that enables them to be vetted, to be screened by our law enforcement. | ||
| And then when they get here, they have the ability to set up housing, work, jobs, a place to live. | ||
| So there isn't chaos that we saw. | ||
| We definitely saw during the Biden administration. | ||
| Here's Tim, Democrat, Fayetteville, Arkansas. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I just want to take a look at the big picture historically with Trump invading Venezuela, a sovereign nation. | ||
| My father was a World War II ballter and gunner. | ||
| He flew many missions over Nazi Germany to save Nick nations from Hitler and the Nazis. | ||
| It seems like Trump is doing the same thing that Hitler was doing and my father fought against. | ||
| And I'm just wondering what has happened to the United States of America that we are now doing a 180, it seems like. | ||
| Here we are invading a sovereign nation. | ||
| And Tim, do you have something immigration-related for our guest? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, immigration-related as far as Trump tying this to immigration, I guess. | |
| He's using immigration, he's using drugs, he's using all these excuses to invade a sovereign nation to seize oil fields. | ||
| That's what this is about. | ||
| Last comment, David. | ||
| Yeah, so if you look at President Trump, what President Trump's statements are about the Venezuelan situation, he has repeatedly brought up the idea that Venezuela has invaded the United States already simply because so many of its citizens were displaced by the socialist policies of Maduro. | ||
| So they've come to the United States seeking safety, seeking asylum here, seeking the right to work. | ||
| And he's called that an invasion. | ||
| I think there's a pretty big distinction between a bunch of people coming to work and live here versus coming to take over our territory or to take over our government or to arrest our leader. | ||
| That's an invasion. | ||
| People coming here to work and seek liberty and opportunity here is not an invasion. | ||
| That's really a rhetorical metaphor that's gone far off the tracks. | ||
| That's David Beer, Immigration Studies Director at the Cato Institute. | ||
| His work is at Cato.org. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us. | ||
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| It's good C-SPAN still funded by the government. | ||
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unidentified
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Well, I thought you didn't get any money from the government at all. | |
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unidentified
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| Welcome to today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We're glad you're with us. | ||
| Let's start with the New York Times. | ||
| This is the headline: Seeming to pivot. | ||
| Rubio says U.S. will not run Venezuela. | ||
| Oil quarantine will keep grip on Caracas. |