Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

Jan. 3, 2025 - The Culture War - Tim Pool

02:05:36

Should America END The H1-B Visa Program? MAGA SPLITS Over H1-B

Guest host Lisa is joined by David, Bier, Daniel Di Martino, & Caroline Downey to discuss the issue with America's immigration system. Host: Lisa @LisaElizabeth (X) Guests: David Bier Daniel Di Martino Caroline Downey Producer: Kellen @KellenPDL (X)

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Show episode speakers

Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Hey everybody.
		So sparks were flying on X last week between Elon Musk and the MAGA base over H-1B visas.
		The debate also divided Trump's officials.
		We had Elon and Vivek versus Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon.
		Everyone seemed to be weighing in.
		Really hot topic.
		We had people, even Bernie, saying Bernie's right with his comments on the H-1B nightmare yesterday.
		So today, I'm filling in for Tim.
		He's not here, but he will be here next week.
		We brought in a panel of experts to go over everything H-1B. So we should probably just jump into the big debate.
		So I'll go around the room and everybody can introduce yourself.
		David?
		I'm David Beer, Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute.
		The Cato Institute is a nonpartisan public policy research organization in Washington, D.C., and for the last 40 years, or almost 50 years now, we've been producing original research on immigration and many other topics, and most of the people who work there are libertarians, including myself.
		I'm Daniel DiMartino, and I'm a fellow at the Manhattan Institute focused on immigration.
		And so I do research on that.
		I'm finished on my PhD in economics at Columbia University.
		And I run an organization called the Visiting Project, where we send immigrants who escaped tyrannical countries to speak at high schools, tell our stories, and educate children here about really the amazing thing that America is and how blessed we are to live here.
		And I'm Caroline Downey.
		I'm a staff writer at National Review, the flagship conservative magazine in America.
		Influence still going strong and we host a whole number of op-eds and interesting scholarly articles and have for many decades on the immigration issue from Experts like Mark Krikorian at the Center for Immigration Studies, Peter Skerry.
		He's a professor at Boston College who I actually had at Boston College when I did a political science and economics double major.
		And yeah, thrilled to be here.
		Happy to have you.
		And I'm Brian Kachanek.
		I'm the guest services lead here at TimCast, former Air Force, former defense contractor.
		I worked alongside H-1B visa holders before in the defense contracting industry.
		And I'm just here to gain some insight on what people view or how people view H-1B visa holders and if there is a way forward to potentially reform the application system, things of that nature.
		So I'm looking forward to this conversation.
		We have a great panel here to discuss that.
		And we got Kellan pushing the buttons.
		Yep, I'm in the corner here.
		It's good to have Brian on.
		I'm interested.
		It should be a fun conversation, especially because it's in the news right now.
		So let's get started.
		Alright, so Trump's kind of finding himself at a crossroads right now.
		We have him, you know, he had to build a coalition basically to get elected.
		But, you know, a new Rasmussen poll says about 60% of voters don't want H-1B workers.
		So, first of all, I don't think that most people even really know what H-1B workers are or what the process is like.
		So why don't we jump into exactly what that is, what type of visas there are for workers, if they're specialty workers or not, and kind of go from there.
		Does anybody want to kick us off?
		Sure.
		Well, the H-1B visa is just one of the many visas that the U.S. government has for people who are abroad, who want to come here to work specifically.
		In order to get an H-1B, you need an employer to file an application on the behalf of the immigrant.
		It's a multi-department process.
		You need an application with the Department of Labor.
		After that's approved, you need an application with USCIS. If you're a for-profit company, this is most of the U.S. sector, you need to go through a lottery.
		There's only 85,000 of these visas, unless you're a cap-exempt organization.
		We can talk about that.
		And anyway, because there's so much more demand and supply for these individuals, usually there's like a 20% selection rate, meaning 80% just don't get it.
		And you need a college degree to get this visa.
		You need to at least affirm that you're paying a wage that is similar to those of employees doing the same job with the same experience in that field.
		And anyway, this is the main visa in which people can come to the U.S. for work purposes and then become...
		Permanent residence.
		It's a dual-intent visa, meaning you're allowed to do that.
		And it's a visa in which many important people have come, but also a visa that's been abused through third-party organizations that we can talk about.
		Certainly being abused.
		So I think it's 73% to 75% all come from India, right?
		And about 12% come from China, if I have that correct.
		I can say something about that.
		It's...
		73% of the current visa holders are from India, but actually of the new visas, it's only 50. And the reason is that Indians cannot adjust to a green card, so they all remain on H-1Bs while the Europeans, the Africans, the Latin Americans all leave the H-1Bs.
		Right, because as soon as you have your H-1B, do you have to wait the three years?
	Or I'm pretty sure that you have to wait the three years and then you can apply for your green card.
	No, you can apply just while you're here, right?
	Right.
	Well, you can't initiate it yourself.
	Your employer has to initiate the process for you to even start.
	Correct, yeah.
	So it's not really your option.
	It's kind of their option for when they want to do it.
	And even if they do start it right away, the process to go through the green card process is going to take probably about three years for them to get through it.
	So even though it's a three-year and then you can renew it once...
	You know, you're stuck in that scenario of at least three years of being on the H-1B once you get here, regardless.
	So the big problem is that Americans are saying, well, this hurts American workers.
	The people that are coming in on these H-1B visas, they're getting paid lower wages, and it's competing for American jobs, and that it's not the best and the brightest, that it's being abused.
	So, I guess what we really want to know is what are the merits of this?
	Is that true?
	Are they competing for American jobs?
	And how do we solve this dilemma that the people clearly on X are seeing?
	Well, I don't think it's just that group, right?
	I mean, you have the—I would call them the Stone Age conservatives who want to make everything themselves because that's what we did in the Stone Age or because they don't understand economics.
	But you also have this other group, I would call them the Snowflake conservatives, who are just offended at the idea of ethnic and religious and cultural diversity in the United States.
	So I think there are more than just— I don't think that's a big part of it.
	I want to push back on that.
	I get that all the time on X and Twitter.
	You get that from the left, but that's not how those people actually are.
	I do think it's a fallacy to just call these people racist and bigots.
	Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa.
	I didn't say they were racist and bigots.
	I just said they were offended by the presence of people who have ethnic and religious and cultural...
	This is what they are saying.
	They're saying, I don't want foreign cultures in my culture.
	That's what they are saying.
	But that's not the whole debate.
	I mean, I do agree that that's part of what happened on Twitter.
	And, like, you can see, like, there's organizations like Hindus for America First, where Republican organizations were very concerned about this.
	But I do think that the main concern from average people is that, you know, it's an economic concern.
	And you see that, you know, we have polling at the Manhattan Institute.
	I don't disagree that it's the main concern, but the thing that touched this whole debate off was a Trump appointee who was Indian, and so that's what launched this whole thing.
	So the idea that it's purely about policy disagreements or...
	Or economics even is—I just don't believe that it's totally about those things.
	But I do think—so there's those two groups, but then you have the American first market conservatives like Daniel, like Musk, and Vivek, who want to see the United States be the most economically prosperous and vibrant place on planet Earth, who want to bring people here who are going to contribute in— But I think they're outnumbered, and they feel that they're outnumbered, so they're constantly making concessions to these other groups.
	And you see it with Elon initially starting out saying, really bold, I will go to my grave defending this.
	And then he dials it way back and says, well, I really only want the 0.01% of the people who are coming.
	So they constantly feel like they have to make concessions to these other groups.
	But I don't think they should be making concessions.
	They are right on the economics and on the cultural issues.
	And these groups have proven themselves that they will never be satisfied.
	If you look at the US skilled legal immigration system, It is the most restrictive in the world.
	We're rejecting over 70% of the applicants for H-1B visas.
	If you look at the share of the green card backlog that gets a green card every year, it's only about 10% of those are even accepted.
	An insanely restrictive legal immigration system.
	So I don't think Musk and Vivek should be conceding anything.
	They should be defending the system and focusing on expanding it.
	So you think the system is fine how it is?
	Well, I just want to say the reason why Elon Musk— No, I think it's terribly restrictive.
	I think that is the main problem.
	The reason why Elon Musk backtracked under pressure wasn't because he wanted to make a concession to the traditional right wing.
	I think it was because he realized that, oh, the connotation of H-1B historically is that it brings in the Einsteins, the geniuses, into these various fields, when in fact it does not.
	Often it's mediocre, ordinary talent that we already have here in the United States.
	And these, of course, companies like Tesla and SpaceX have been built off of the backs of those low skilled immigrants.
	But those are not geniuses.
	And I think legal immigration in this country, one of the worst cliches in Republican politics is that illegal immigration is bad.
	Legal immigration is by default good.
	That's just not true.
	And the mandate of Trump this election was obviously to curtail illegal immigration, but also immigration generally, because I think many Americans and obviously a large majority of Americans in this country do think after the four years of border anarchy, And with the legal immigration system, which has many flaws and is prone to exploitation, we need a reset on that.
	And that's not because they're harboring racial animus toward these groups.
	It's because America First populism just says we want to prioritize the people that are native here.
	Who's multiple generations that are in this country that built it.
	That's their legacy.
	And so I do think it's kind of a misnomer about the motives of the people who are advocating for...
	You know, illegal immigration, either reduction or just a reanalysis of it.
	And the other thing I'll say is that, you know, there was a study in the Center for Immigration Studies that showed that foreign educated workers tend to be less skilled than their American counterparts, which raises the question...
	Yes, and the study was based on test results, on computational ability, literacy, as well as, you know, like just the third category, I think, of comprehension, and it showed that across the board, foreign-educated You know, immigrants, as well as U.S.-educated immigrants, underperformed Americans.
	Which, you know, begs the question, if we're looking at these people as highly skilled, should we be?
	Because when you compare them to Americans who have similar educational attainment, they're underperforming.
	Okay, so what I will say here is that I do agree that these...
	Cliché of legal good, illegal bad is a bad distinction.
	I think what, you know, the real reason or the real debate should be what kind of immigration policy do you want?
	But I do find it concerning that we're focusing on a population of immigrants who is English-speaking, makes on average over $118,000 a year, uh, Has no crime.
	I mean, can anybody name a crime from somebody who had an H-1B? An H-1B visa that brought Melania Trump, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, important CEOs and founders.
	This is a program with problems that we can solve very easily, by the way.
	But when we have a population of, say, parents of U.S. citizens that come here on green cards, 150,000, not 85,000, Who come here in their 50s, work 10 years, say, low-wage jobs, then collect Social Security and Medicare that is bankrupting this country.
	And yet we're focusing on a population that is tiny, that is relatively higher-skilled.
	You know, I think we should call this a day and just say, you know, we just are going to pick the highest wage offers of the H-1B visa.
	We're not going to pick all these Indian tech outsourcing firms that exploit these Indians in India and they tell them, you know, you have to pay me a fee in order to get you on the lottery.
	And that's what they do.
	That's what they do.
	And the lottery is what makes it prone to abuse.
	That's right.
	The fact that it's just this pool and we're going to pluck out of this pool rather than allow employers to compete for the highest salary.
	Isn't that a way to determine whether these people are in fact brilliant?
	is by letting the employers compete.
	And Trump proposed that in 2020 and the Biden administration promptly undid that, which tells you a lot about the Biden administration.
	- We shouldn't have a lottery because we shouldn't have a cap on these workers.
	I mean, the idea that we should be limiting people who have job offers of $100,000.
	But they don't.
	Yes, there's a spectrum of people here, but even a single person who's making above average income in the United States is contributing significantly to the prosperity of the country.
	It's far too restrictive, and you can see that in the lottery.
	The lottery is, you know, I mean, obviously you're picking people randomly.
	We should just be letting these people come in and contribute to our country.
	We're basically turning away every year at least $150 billion a year.
	And the idea that the government is going to know who's going to be the next great person.
	I mean, you look at the number of CEOs who've risen up through the ranks who were just that ordinary.
	They were just the ordinary H-1B, the ordinary international student.
	I mean, Musk was the ordinary international student, except he overstayed his visa and violated the rules of immigration law.
	I guarantee.
	But the idea that the government is going to know, oh, this person's going to be the next important founder of the next great company is just ludicrous.
	And Elon Musk would have passed that academic proficiency test that I mentioned.
	He would have knocked that out of the park.
	I mean, who cares about some standards?
	It's a standardized test.
	Look at what the market is saying.
	Well, it does matter, though.
	It does matter, though.
	No, it doesn't.
	It really doesn't.
	Because if you just allow anybody to come to the United States, you have a billion people show up at the door.
	What are we talking about anybody?
	I mean, we're talking about the H-1B visa.
	The H-1B visa is...
	Wait, you're also talking about...
	I'm going to jump in here.
	David, half of the world would prefer to be an Uber driver on welfare in the United States than living in their country.
	Hold on one second.
	You still have to realize that there are different wage categories for how many years of experience.
	And the first category is zero to two years experience.
	And they can make from, I think it's $39,000 to $50,000, something like that, right?
	Or $60,000.
	$39,000 to $59,900 is what the first year for zero to two years experience.
	We're talking that they need to pay these people on these H-1Bs.
	So you're talking about, we have kids coming out of college and they're freaking out because they can't get jobs and they're taking these horrible entry-level positions, but they can't get these entry-level positions because they're going to people who are supposed to be, what, like skilled workers?
	I don't understand.
	It's just not true.
	I mean, the number of software...
	Why should we take anybody, if they're supposed to be highly skilled, why are we taking anybody with zero to two years experience anyway?
	Entry-level accountants from abroad.
	Well, I will challenge that, but from another perspective from the right, and I would say is, first, what kind of person do you care about, right?
	When we think about the economics of immigration, who are physicians competing to?
	Even an entry-level physician.
	An entry-level physician is not competing with a construction worker or an office worker.
	I have problems with that too, though.
	The physicians.
	My mom used to train people at Jefferson and they would prioritize these foreign students over- Sure, but those physicians are not competing with construction workers.
	What happens if you have, say, 10,000 more physicians in the United States?
	Yes, they're going to compete with American physicians.
	They will certainly reduce their salaries, but they are going to demand services from construction workers, from stores, from apartments.
	They're going to raise the wages of the working class and depress the ones of physicians.
	And, you know, maybe that's a good trade-off.
	But no, when you have medical schools, when you have medical schools saying, okay, we only, like Jefferson just had, right?
	We only admit this many anesthesia students, say, right?
	And so you look at their grades.
	We have a girl from Penn.
	She has a 4.0.
	She's doing great.
	She doesn't get in, but the people from Iran were prioritized, right?
	Well, you know that people who are really being prioritized are the DEI stuff.
	Okay, so that's true.
	But these people are coming over on specialty visas to even be here to study like that, right?
	And so now that person who could have, you know, been at Jefferson now has to go to maybe a lesser one and it affects, you know, where they get placed.
	This is a bigger problem.
	Like, we limit the number of residencies.
	Like, you know, the American Medical Association lobbies to keep physician salaries high.
	Well, practically, many of the H-1B recipients are programmers.
	Like, cheap, basic programmers.
	Okay, so that's the STEM field.
	Why would we recruit for the STEM field if we don't have a shortage, is what the advocates of H-1B will say.
	Do we have a shortage of STEM workers in America unequivocally?
	No.
	There is no evidence.
	That we have a shortage of STEM workers in America.
	In 2022, there were, I think it was 17 million STEM graduates.
	So that means American people who graduated...
	This is complicated because you're comparing somebody with a BA in biology as a STEM graduate with somebody with a PhD in computer science.
	Like, they're both STEM graduates.
	And we have to realize, I'm going to push back there a little bit, too, in that we are, what, 36th in the world for STEM majors.
	Like, that's where we rank.
	Like, as far as output and quality, we rank that low.
	I think we're 16th in math, right?
	So it's not like our students are prioritizing things like, I think, psychology has moved up to the fifth best major.
	So there is that issue that...
	America produces great lawyers, right?
	Yeah, well, listen, Vivek was pushing back on culture, and I kind of have to give it to him.
	Like, there are the tiger moms, and there are the people that prioritize this, and maybe our parents do need to wake up and really start, you know, forcing your kids to actually do their homework.
	Like, that comedian's like, math is hard, you know?
	I want to die for my country like that.
	Yeah, I also think there's an indictment of academia embedded in that.
	I used to cover a lot of education for National Review, and I know that's not what this conversation is about.
	But look, if you're adding DEI as a fundamental building block of the medical training in America, yeah, you're going to have a diminished quality of medicine.
	Yeah.
	And medical trainees and graduates.
	So it's not necessarily the students' fault.
	Engineers too.
	And you're right that we're not exactly, you know, ranked the highest when it comes to this.
	And by the way, there are hundreds of counties in this country that have no primary care physician.
	And so do we say, is it okay to stop a foreign physician who graduated abroad to come and save lives in rural America?
	I think it would be a great thing to allow those people to save lives.
	Yeah, but they won't go there either.
	Actually, we have a program specifically to require them to go there.
	The problem is that insurance companies and the way that the insurance companies put their claws into the people in the medical field really hamper how successful they can be.
	I know because my whole family is in medicine.
	I'm the only one that's out on that.
	So yes and no.
	We have shortages of dermatologists.
	The VA can't even get a single dermatologist to actually go work for them.
	But that's also because of their pay scheme and how they pay.
	Anything that's overly regulated is going to do better.
	I do see your point.
	I see your point.
	So my family has a small cabin in a very rural town in Maine that literally has one major doctor on the peninsula, and he happens to be from the Philippines.
	And his family, they're very, very close to me.
	And growing up in this town, I've noticed how the whole town is dependent on this doctor because, I mean, frankly, who wants to be a doctor in rural Maine?
	Very few, very few people.
	There's a huge brain drain out of that state all the time.
	And I've seen the impact of, you know, his work and service in a place like that.
	We can have more people like that and not have, like, programmers making 50k a year that are working for hire through third-party companies, you know?
	I think that that's kind of like the solution for graphic designers should look like.
	I think Patrick McDavid was one of the people that was speaking out the most about it.
	And then when they went and pulled up the H-1B records for him, he's got a graphic designer making, what, 45,000?
	I was like, I know so many graphic designers right now that are lining up for jobs that can't wait to get them.
	And so what are we doing hiring graphic designers to do thumbnails for Patrick McDavid?
	The vast majority of H-1Bs are in computer jobs.
	Software developing employment has doubled in the last 10 years.
	Doubled.
	That's an insane rate of growth.
	There's been no decline in wages.
	If you look at the wages of the workers who were there 10 years ago, they have increased dramatically.
	Yes, lots of new people coming into the field, so they're coming in at the entry-level wage.
	But there's no evidence that they're harming anyone.
	The basic idea, right, getting back to the basic economics, what is the H-1B in this context?
	It is unlicensed to work, and a restrictive licensing regime hurts everyone except the special interest being protected.
	And Daniel's right.
	Who is the special interest being protected here?
	It's the top 10% of wage earners in the United States.
	That's who we're talking about, inflating the wages and benefits.
	Well, no one's just talking about 50K a year.
	Well, I mean, that's a spectrum.
	The average of this is $118,000 a year.
	That's the median, which means half make less.
	I understand that, but the average matters, or the median matters in this context, because if you got rid of the entire program, then you're lowering the wages for all those.
	Is that the average for the H-1V visa applicants, or is that how much they're making on average?
	That's how much the median person makes.
	Which, by the way, it means, like, if you look at the data, if you just did wage ranking because of the percentage that gets selected, the minimum salary that would end up being selected is over $120,000.
	That would be the minimum.
	The average would be well over $200,000.
	So this is about a trade-off, David, because we cannot just let in everybody with a job offer.
	You could absolutely uncap H-1B. We didn't have to.
	We had $190,000.
	The reason why it's gotten so insane in terms of the lottery is because we've had these restrictions in place, severe restrictions in the place for the last 20 years.
	In 1999, we had a cap of $190,000, so we didn't have this big backlog and these problems in terms of getting the visas.
	So we could have a much more expansive...
	You know how many applications there were, right?
	There were like over $500,000.
	So you think that it would be like okay to just get 500,000 more every year?
	No, it wouldn't work like that because the reason why we've created this huge backlog of the number of people who are trying to get it is because of the restrictions we've had for the last decade.
	So if we didn't have those restrictions, we would have not...
	I think that there would actually be cultural consequences.
	I do think that there would be political consequences.
	I do think that you would have people competing with medium-level jobs that wouldn't be super high-skilled.
	I'm super in favor of the high-skilled part, but I don't think that it would be okay to let in half a million programmers making $50,000 a year into the United States.
	Yeah, and most Americans who voted for Trump would agree that we're all for brain-draining the rest of the world.
	Bring in the prodigies.
	But when it comes to the middle denominator, no.
	We have no interest in that because, as I was mentioning, we have 17 million STEM graduates.
	Yes, it's a diverse range of majors.
	Only 8 million STEM graduates.
	Jobs filled?
	That means we have all these extra employees that have STEM degrees and disciplines who could be reactivated and reengaged.
	The question is, why haven't they been?
	I would argue it's because wages in STEM have stagnated.
	Why have they stagnated?
	Because of the influx of H-1B applicants and recipients.
	There's no incentive to raise their compensation, benefits, and salaries when they can just get cheaper labor abroad.
	No.
	That's not why they've stagnated.
	They've stagnated because there's been this huge infusion of new people entering the fields.
	It's like my public school down the street.
	The average height of the student fell when they increased the number of classes.
	You won't believe why.
	It wasn't because the public school teachers were chopping the kids' feet off.
	It was because they added an elementary school onto the building.
	The same thing is happening with the wage distribution in these fields that have, as I mentioned, doubled in employment.
	More people are graduating college.
	So more people are graduating college and going into these fields, which is a sign that the system is working.
	The wages are encouraging people to go into these fields.
	For every foreign increase in foreign employment and software development, there's been two Americans drawn in to...
	But I do think, David, that you're ignoring that there is a trade-off.
	And, you know, certainly when you have more people of a specific skill level, you are going to, in the long run, depress the wages of that skill level, but you are going to increase the wages of other skills levels.
	So when you say, you know, we don't need more STEM graduates, like, I think you're right, you would increase the average wage of, like, the STEM workforce in the U.S., native-born, but you would decrease the real incomes of people who are not in STEM. And I would rather help Americans who are not in college than Americans who went to college.
	By the way, it's actually a political issue.
	Why are Republicans complaining about harming Silicon Valley liberal woke people?
	Because Because their kids want jobs.
	Because their children want jobs.
	Because they've been, like, blue-collar, working hard.
	They've saved their money.
	They send their kids to college.
	And then their kids are coming out and they can't find jobs.
	And they're crying in their cars on TikTok saying, I can't afford to live.
	And so they're like, hey, this is harming my family.
	No matter which way you look at it, it's harming their family.
	And they don't want it.
	There is real displacement.
	There have been other studies that show for every H-1B recipient that comes into a company that displaces two American workers.
	So, I mean, there's plenty of studies for every counter-study, blah, blah, blah.
	But what I'll say, I have something else.
	What about the national security counterpoint?
	So, all right, a lot of these recipients come from China and India.
	Do we really want our STEM workforce, which is the highest foreign-born percentage I think it's ever been?
	It's like 29% foreign-born in STEM. Do we really want our STEM feel dependent on foreign labor?
	As we enter this new era of geopolitics with China as an adversary, especially, I mean, that's a...
	No, I mean, I think it's a good concern.
	What I'll say, you know, China, different issue than India.
	But I will say that...
	It's actually all the same.
	Yeah, aren't they kind of like...
	No, no, it's not.
	I mean, the CCP wants to destroy the United States.
	The Indian government doesn't want to destroy the United States.
	Like, it's fundamentally different.
	You'd be surprised.
	I'm just saying, they have been making a turn, from what I've heard.
	India has been making a turn to China, given some of America's policies.
	I mean, Eason Moody, like, best friends with Trump, anyway.
	For now, for now, yeah.
	I would definitely say, for...
	For national defense, I'm highly suspect about anybody who lives outside the United States working for defense contractors because they are privy to a lot of compartmentalized information that if does get out or get sold back to China...
	Don't you need to be a US citizen to work?
	Yeah, but what they do...
	There are other things to get around that, right?
	For right now, what they're saying is we have these big companies and they make the software.
	I think one of the largest companies that does H1B recipients, it has to do with the people who do the cloud, Azure or whatever it is.
	The what?
	The cloud?
	Azure.
	Microsoft.
	Microsoft, right.
	So they're one of the biggest H-1B employers.
	And what they do, though, they have a lot of contracts with the U.S. government.
	What they do, though, is they compartmentalize it, right?
	So they'll start building parts of the code and the code, and then they hand it off.
	And then it gets specialized through our Department of Defense.
	However, if you're building the original base to the code, then you know how to get around it, too.
	Not saying that that happens as much because, like I said, our own team of U.S. citizens in the Department of Defense really works with it themselves.
	But still, they're building the foundation for that code.
	The Trump Defense Department in 2020 wrote a report about this.
	And they said that the lack of STEM talent in the United States, specifically with computers...
	It's a direct threat to the self-determination of the United States because if you cannot control the future of artificial intelligence and these other technologies and technological growth, then you are beholden to whoever is developing that.
	And China is graduating right now Twice as many STEM PhDs, specifically in computer science fields, than the United States is.
	That is, I mean, a direct threat to our geopolitics.
	So of course, it's a benefit to the United States to, look, we don't need to hire them directly in the U.S. government.
	We can just free up a lot of the people who are in the private sector right now who are U.S. citizens to be attracted to these Government jobs where they need to be working on the type of defense projects that we need them in.
	So having a larger labor force in this is absolutely a benefit to our national security, even the Trump Defense Department.
	I will also say there is a lack of vetting that is enough.
	And I'll give you one story.
	So I had one Chinese student one time asking me for advice to get a job or something.
	She sent me her resume.
	And wanted to meet up.
	And I see the resume.
	What was the top experience thing?
	Organizer for the Chinese Communist Party.
	Are you kidding me?
	I'm not going to help.
	She volunteered the information.
	And I'm just thinking, what is the State Department doing when they're granting visas?
	That you do...
	Somebody who...
	Proud to be an organizer for the CCP. So I do think, you know, I don't want communists, I don't want adversaries, but I do think that the brain drain is a trade-off.
	So yes, you do risk something with that.
	U.S. citizens are also bribed to give information to foreign countries, by the way.
	This isn't just like an...
	Immigration problem.
	This happens all the time with Americans.
	But there is a trade-off because you do not want to be dependent on China for chips.
	You don't even want to be dependent on Taiwan for chips, right?
	And this whole issue that we have foreign policy is because we can't build it here.
	Well, part of that's their neon, too.
	I mean, Ukraine and Taiwan are the biggest producers of neon.
	No, but Taiwan has TSMC. We import all our high-quality chips from Taiwan.
	And, you know, the solution that the Biden administration did was let's just give hundreds of billions to these companies with DEI conditions, by the way, and all these stupid things.
	And then they can't even open because they don't have the Taiwanese high-skilled workers.
	Well, we should let them in, brain drain those countries, and then we will actually be independent.
	But you're right.
	I'm not just so sure I trust the government to screen these applicants.
	I really don't.
	I mean, I think...
	But then we can't even trust them to screen the Americans who are also sold out.
	That's true, too.
	That's true, too.
	But at least, you know, at least they're supposed to be here, right?
	Like, that's part of the problem that we're seeing.
	And I see that debate with immigration all the time is that they'll say, okay, well, you know, the immigrants that are coming over here, they don't commit that much crime.
	Well, anything that they crime, any crime that they commit is...
	Crime that shouldn't have been here in the first place.
	I'm talking about illegal immigrants, right?
	And they seem to forget that.
	They cause nominal crime.
	Well, it should be none.
	They shouldn't be here.
	So I don't know if the crime is that great of an argument when it comes to this.
	I don't think there are people coming in that are making...
	Well, and especially legal immigrants.
	They're not trying to get in trouble.
	I can't even find an anecdote of an H-1B immigrant who committed like a...
	I'm sure there's one.
	I'm sure there is.
	I'm sure there is.
	They're often in white collar.
	It's the white collar world that they're occupying.
	So I'm sure the crimes would be white collar crime.
	Right.
	Or something that has to do with surveillance or intelligence.
	Tax evasion.
	Yeah.
	It's not going to be a migrant gang attack in New York City.
	It's going to be of a different nature.
	Also, these people are exploited, right?
	So back to, you know, for those who want Aren't these people exploited through these companies that will do masks?
	They'll go to India and they'll say, hey, we're going to get you contracts.
	I'll contract you out.
	We'll sponsor your H-1B. That's my question.
	What are they called?
	Body shops, right?
	You've never heard of body shops?
	I mean, I hear that as a derogatory term, not as something that...
	No, but the Indian contracting firms that charge Indians in India to get into the lottery, they get them here, they get paid, say, 50k a year.
	So, can I just ask, what exactly is the process for an H-1B visa holder to get to the United States and start working for a company?
	And what part of that process needs to be reformed?
	Yes.
	So first step, the company needs to want to have somebody, right?
	And they apply with the Department of Labor for what's called a labor conditions application.
	They have to certify that they're paying the prevailing wage for the occupation, the experience, all of that.
	After that's approved, that's usually quick.
	They apply with USCIS. And this is where the whole misinformation happened on Twitter.
	Everybody was using the LCAs.
	When having an approved LCA doesn't mean you have an approved H-1B. It just means you are approved to apply for an H-1B. And then USCIS, the immigration agency, can approve or reject your application.
	They say, no, this wage is too low.
	Or this wage is not good.
	The location is not approved.
	Is there a background check?
	Yeah.
	There's biometrics and all of that.
	Biometrics, too?
	But this is so far without a visa yet.
	The labor conditions is not for a specific person yet.
	Then you do the actual application with immigration for the person.
	If that's approved, and they're abroad, they go to a consulate.
	If they're already here, say, an international student, that's very common, they just change status.
	And they were already vetted before they came here as an international student.
	Yeah.
	Even though I argued that the vetting process is not good enough for China or whatever.
	And then they can start working after that's approved if they get selected in the lottery.
	And it's a lottery subject application.
	Okay, so out of like 500,000 applicants, how many?
	85,000.
	85,000.
	Are selected.
	Are selected.
	But what's kind of tricky about that number is, like, right now I think we have around 500,000 people that are here on H-1B this year.
	Like, they're given out.
	Because even though you have the 65,000 of high school graduates and then the 20,000 of master's degrees, that's what the new ones that get approved every year.
	But remember, they can be here three to six years.
	And then they're waiting for their green card.
	And it doesn't count towards the cap, right?
	So the reason we have so many is because that's only for the new year, but there's 500,000 because those people don't, like the people that are getting theirs renewed, doesn't count towards the cap of this new year.
	So right now there's about 500, and I think it's 580,000 people here on...
	The problem with the green card stuff is that because it's taking so long to sponsor somebody for a permanent employment-based green card, what the companies are doing is that I'm just going to sponsor you for an H-1B, and I'm immediately beginning the green card process.
	If the green card process didn't take three years, there would be half the number of H-1B applications.
	It's really just a band-aid so that people can begin working before they get their green card.
	You asked about reforms.
	I think the most compelling proposals so far have been to get rid of the lottery and make it based on salary and what employers are willing to offer up.
	That way, the best and the brightest, we have a greater chance of recruiting them rather than this giant pool where they're plucked at random, essentially.
	Mark Krikorian laid out an interesting compromise in Compact magazine, which ideally would appease both factions of this conflict, the tech right and moguls like Elon Musk and all of the other Silicon Valley people, and then the MAGA populace,
	which is to end a good chunk of the chain migration that we have, which is essentially, you know, if your relative is here, that It makes it easy for their relatives to come over into the United States, as well as visa lotteries, which is different from what I understand.
	It's a diversity visa lottery.
	It's literally called diversity.
	We have been dying in immigration for decades, and people weren't thinking about that.
	Right, right.
	So we have that, and he wants to...
	Cut into that as well and replace a number of those spots with high skilled immigrants.
	So that way we reduce the overall level of legal immigration while increasing the skill level of the immigrants that we are taking in.
	Look, the biggest problem with the H-1B is how restrictive it is for the worker.
	So when they get here, it's very bureaucratic for them to be able to go to another job.
	They can.
	Many of them do change jobs, but it's very bureaucratic and limits their options.
	So what that does in the free market, you should be directed to the highest productivity use of your time.
	Whatever you think is going to be the most productive use of your activity, you should be directed to that by the wage in the market.
	But that doesn't happen as well as it could in the H-1B world because of the restrictions, the fact that the That every employer, in order to hire you, has to go through this government bureaucracy every time and pay, you know, $15,000 a pop to be able to hire you.
	It really limits the options and the availability.
	It also prevents you from going out and starting your own company, which is a very important contribution.
	So if we really wanted to change the H-1B, we'd free the H-1B population who's here by giving them green cards, ideally.
	But if not, just to say, look, you can work however you want, whatever company you want, start your own business.
	That would unleash their productive capacities more than any other reform.
	And look, coming up with these different schemes to limit it further and really only take this top slice of people, I mean, I mean, that's a turning away hundreds of billions of dollars in economic growth and benefit to US consumers and benefit to everyone who's not making over $100,000 a year.
	So it's a real blow to the economy.
	And the government doesn't know who's going to become the next CEO of Microsoft or Google or Twitter.
	Why not?
	Why can we not let in an unlimited number of college graduates in STEM who are going to make $100,000 a year?
	But that's not what you're saying.
	Yes, it is what I'm saying.
	You're saying that uncap the H-1B visa in which half of the people make less than $100,000 a year.
	Okay, that's their starting salary.
	That's their starting salary.
	Over the course of their career, they will be making a lot more than that.
	You mentioned productivity.
	There was a study that found that for the firms that won the H-1B visa lottery, their innovation and productivity was marginally increased.
	So it's not actually leading to this uncharted economic prowess for the companies that get these H-1B recipients.
	It's really insignificant statistically.
	So, I mean, maybe at the large scale, sure, GDP will increase.
	I mean, if you're able to increase innovation by 1% a year, that compounds and that's huge.
	I want to touch on something that you just said real quick.
	You said that it was hard for H-1B visa holders to start their own business or do something like that.
	You had Patrick Bet-David the other day arguing that, or saying that statistically, 50 billion dollar startups, the people that have the most billion dollar startups, 55% are foreign born, right?
	And so, but they're not coming over on the H1B. They are.
	They are.
	They start their careers.
	Well, you just said it was difficult, so it was impossible for them to start a business, right?
	That's what you said.
	They do it after they transition out of it.
	After they get off the H-1B. But there's also...
	It's important for that.
	That's what I'm talking about.
	The H-1B is too restrictive.
	We should be accelerating their ability to start...
	Aren't they on, though, the investor visas, right?
	Because there are foreign investor visas.
	I believe it's what...
	The EB-5, there's also the treaty trader, the E-Visas, which by the way, the EB-5 is limited, which I think it's kind of silly, right?
	Why do you limit to 9,000 people a year the number of multimillionaire investors who create at least 10 jobs?
	I agree.
	I think that qualifies as Einstein category.
	Same with O-1.
	Those are, right?
	I know some people personally that are on O-1 and I'm like, We're not that extraordinary.
	The issue with the O1, and this is why I prefer the wage ranking on the H-1B, the issue with the O1 is that you're asking the government to determine what's extraordinary, and that sometimes leads to rejecting good applications and approving bad applications, right?
	It's government officials.
	Too subjective to bureaucrats.
	It's very subjective.
	It's good to have that option.
	Can we privatize that?
	Can we privatize the selection of applicants?
	You kind of do already.
	One of the criterias for the O1 is national or international acclaim.
	So you have to have a name out there.
	So you kind of have to go out there and get your name placed in publications and try to do interviews.
	Yeah, there's a lot of writers that are...
	Right for publications.
	And it's all kind of, I mean, it's, you know, when you talk about, you know, kind of scammy things, it's like, I mean, okay, that's whatever.
	That's not like the wage is an objective thing.
	That is how much you are producing.
	But it's not perfect because if you're making a bet on yourself, if you go into a startup and they give you 10% equity because you think this is going to be the next great product or innovation...
	The fact that you have a low wage doesn't mean anything.
	That doesn't tell you really, from your perspective, you're betting on yourself.
	You're betting on that company to then become something very huge in the market that will make up for the fact that you have a low starting wage.
	So the wage ranking isn't perfect, but it's certainly better than kind of looking at whether your name got in the newspaper or something like that.
	I don't know.
	I just feel like people aren't going to be happy with extra immigrants coming over here and taking what they see as their jobs.
	I just don't ever see the MAGA base being okay with that.
	And so how is Trump going to square that?
	When he went back and said he said he limited in 2016, 2020, 2020, and he said, you know, it takes jobs from Americans and it drives their wages down and we don't want it.
	And now he's like, oh, I use it all the time.
	But he limited it in the middle of the pandemic when unemployment was the highest it's been since the Great Depression.
	I'm not a Trump defender on this, but you've got to have some context around this.
	In 2019, in his State of the Union address, he said, I want to have the highest legal immigration, merit-based legal immigration, He's been all over the place on it.
	So he is all over the place, but he's not consistently opposed to immigration.
	Though I think his advisors and a lot of people in his circle consistently are and kind of push him in that direction more than his natural instincts would go.
	I wanted to read to you from the Manhattan Institute polling that we did in 2023 during the Republican primary.
	This was only of likely Republican primary voters in Iowa, in New Hampshire, in South Carolina, and in Nevada.
	And we asked them about immigration, about legal, high-skilled immigration specifically.
	And we asked them, would you make it easier, not change it, or harder for immigrants who are professionals with advanced degrees in science, math, technology, and engineering to come to the U.S.? What do they mean by advanced degrees?
	Let's be clear.
	Masters in PhDs.
	43% said easier.
	Only 10% said harder.
	41% said no change.
	That is the most restrictionist, right, subset of the population.
	Among the overall population of Americans, or all Republicans, is well over 70% want to make it easier for people who have advanced degrees in STEM to come to the U.S. I think it's an easy sell.
	The hard sell is that we have over 2 million people coming illegally to the United States every year through the border.
	You have half a million people coming here through chain migration who have very little English proficiency.
	And that should be the conversation on immigration, not unlimited the high-skilled part, I think.
	I think those respondents, though, are under the impression that these are truly exceptional candidates.
	And as I already stated, the foreign-educated immigrants...
	Well, they're just professionals with...
	With advanced degrees from abroad?
	Sure.
	Is that what you're saying?
	They're just professionals with master's degrees and PhDs, right?
	Okay, well, they're lesser skilled in a number of...
	Than who?
	Than the average American?
	Certainly not.
	I mean, that's what the data shows.
	No, they're lesser skilled, you're saying, than people with the same degree who are born in the States.
	Right.
	Which makes all the sense because English is not a native language.
	No, it was adjusted for English literacy.
	Even adjusted for the language barrier, they are still less skilled.
	Sure, but if there's more skill than the average person, they're still increasing the average skill of the US, right?
	You're comparing STEM graduates of US universities to STEM graduates who had their graduation abroad.
	Right.
	So you're not comparing just to the average American.
	The average American doesn't even go to college.
	The average American doesn't even go to college.
	I'm saying of equal educational attainment adjusted for the English language barrier, they are less skilled.
	By the way, remember, the U.S. graduates are also children of immigrants, many of whom are the children of high-skilled immigrants.
	I think I saw something about the math Olympiads or like one of these high school competitions, like half of the winners are the children of H-1B visa holders.
	Because remember, who are these high school immigrants?
	Their marriage rate is super high.
	They have no children out of wedlock.
	They are highly educated and the result is that their children born in America are like superstars.
	And that's also a piece of this puzzle that we're not talking enough.
	What is the long-term impact of having a population that has very conservative cultural values, right?
	In marriage, in education, in pushing people to succeed.
	I think that's a good thing.
	I understand that point, but if we're going to talk about culture, a key indicator of assimilation is, I believe, is it intermarriage?
	Intermarriage, yes.
	Okay, so I think that's dropping actually among Indians.
	I can explain.
	Yeah, you're absolutely right.
	It is dropping among Asians in general.
	And that is because Asians, you know, until recently were a very tiny percent of the population.
	So it was hard to marry among Asians because it was hard to find people of your same ethnic background.
	Now it's easier, so mechanically it's falling.
	But she's saying it's dropping, meaning they're not doing that anymore, right?
	Right, right.
	They're not doing it.
	And I'm saying that's expected because the share of Asians of America is growing.
	In absolute terms, there is more intermarriage.
	It's in relative.
	They're still marrying outside of their race more than the average person, especially people with advanced degrees.
	I'm not sure specifically about the Indians.
	I just mean Asians in general.
	Indians do have a good, I mean, they have like a what?
	A one, some people say it, put it at one.
	Some people put it at a 6% divorce rate where white Americans are at 15.
	African Americans are about in the 30s, 35, 36% divorce rate.
	And that really has an impact on how kids perform in school, where they go to college, all of those things.
	I mean, there is some cultural aspects that need to be concerned.
	But before we get there, I want to go back to, you know, we have these big firms and you constantly see like big layoffs and big layoffs of American workers.
	And then you see, maybe it's anecdotally, but like I don't have the statistics on hand.
	But I always hear, you know, we have been replaced by lower wage tech workers from India.
	I always hear, you know, we have been replaced by lower wage tech workers from India.
	I mean, in Texas, it was a really big problem.
	I mean, in Texas, it was a really big problem.
	They would call the congressman's office constantly and complain about this.
	We see it happen.
	I think Tesla just laid off a whole bunch of people.
	And now they're having more people come in.
	Didn't Disney do the same thing?
	Disney had a problem with it.
	That was a scandal.
	And so we're still seeing problems with this.
	So I don't think that opening the cap to allow more of that to happen seems like a good idea at all.
	If this was really about low wages and replacing American workers, you would see more H-1B requests when companies are cutting and laying off jobs.
	In fact, you see the opposite.
	H-1B requests go up when employment is increasing in these fields.
	If you looked at during the recession, H-1B requests went way down.
	We didn't even have a lottery during that time.
	And again, it comes back up when the economy recovers and they're adding workers.
	So you see U.S. employment and immigrant employment go up together.
	Again, the idea that this is widespread and it's causing this unemployment is belied by the fact that you've Doubled the number of software developers in 10 years.
	Even in the last five years, we've seen an increase of almost 70% in software development employment.
	There's been no increase in the unemployment rate among software developers.
	So yes, you can look at these different...
	I mean, Musk took over X, right?
	Or Twitter.
	And he fired all these people who were doing useless DEI stuff and sensors and all this stuff.
	And okay, so that happened, but that doesn't mean – and then those people got productive jobs elsewhere in the labor force, and that's a good thing.
	So you can't just look at, oh, generically the company laid off some people and they hired some other people.
	That doesn't mean that there was replacement there.
	The real replacement I think is happening is on hiring people abroad.
	If you're going to really replace somebody, why would you bring them to the US, pay $15,000 for the sponsorship of an H-1B on average between government fees and lawyers?
	That's what it costs for a large company when you can just have a programming shop in India.
	It's a remote work, really.
	I mean, okay, but the same thing.
	There's graphic designers everywhere.
	Then why did Patrick Bat-David go through all those hoops to do that and pay that extra money for somebody to make his thumbnails just now?
	Maybe he really liked that person.
	Yeah, it could be that they really liked the specific person.
	Or they really enjoy having someone tied to them and the conditions of staying in the country, that you have to have that job.
	I mean, wouldn't you be able to pay somebody less in India?
	That happens.
	So, like, we're in the era of streaming, and it's huge for Twitch streamers to just go to Fiverr.
	And they pay five bucks to get all the graphics for their channels.
	Like, they'll pay some guy that's in Thailand or Vietnam, always foreign, and they'll say, hey, I want this, I want this.
	My podcast is about sports, so I need this theme, these colors.
	And it's cheap.
	It's dollars.
	It's not a salary of a graphic designer.
	That's right.
	So my main concern is when it becomes possible for really smart people to work from anywhere, why would they choose America, right?
	Because think about it, you can go to Dubai, there's zero income tax.
	It's safe, safer than the United States.
	Yep.
	You have great infrastructure, great services.
	Yes, it's not a democracy.
	I understand.
	You're still going to want the people who want freedom in the United States.
	But what about the billionaires and the people who invest in the next big startup and the next innovation?
	They're going to want to go to other countries where they can do these things.
	So we should want the smart people as long as they want to be here, here.
	Okay, so this is what the MAGA base will say.
	At the risk of what?
	At the risk of losing our culture?
	That's right.
	At the risk of losing our culture?
	At the risk of losing all the traditions and things that we have here.
	And it's not about brown skin.
	I didn't say brown skin.
	I just think we started this podcast off by saying that that wasn't a factor.
	I do think it is an important factor.
	Well, it's cultural.
	It's not just...
	Yeah, it's cultural, it's cultural and ethnic, and it's more than, you know, and I think that those people, it's not going to be easy to please them.
	I agree with that.
	But I think they are a minority.
	They're definitely a minority of the country.
	I think that the America First market conservatives like Daniel are a majority of the Republican Party.
	They want to see economic growth.
	They want to see the United States be the strongest and most economically prosperous country in the world.
	And if you look at the research that's been done on this, the H-1B restrictions are encouraging offshoring to other countries.
	And you're reducing investment in the United States.
	You're reducing the number of major companies who are created here and built here.
	You're increasing the amount of competitors who are getting startups in China and India and Canada.
	And that's a bad thing for the United States.
	We should want the United States to be the most, the hub of innovation.
	We're not an economic zone.
	Yeah, yeah.
	We're a country.
	Especially because it is a country.
	What does that mean?
	What does that mean?
	We're a country with customs and a credo and traditions and a language, you know?
	We're all these things.
	Yes, we are.
	We are not a mere GDP generation.
	That's right.
	An assimilation.
	An assimilation is a United States.
	I mean...
	My brother just went to Dubai, and he was like, it's dystopian over there.
	So, I mean, listen, we're not Dubai!
	We're not Dubai, and we're not going to be Dubai, because we have great tradition in assimilation.
	You should read Daniel's excellent report about assimilation.
	Sure, yeah, but...
	That shows that assimilation is happening as rapidly or more rapidly than in the past.
	So the idea that the United States culture is not attractive to the people who come here is wrong.
	Our cultural supremacy is built on the fact that it is attractive to people.
	It is about the current numbers.
	Yeah, but our current numbers are tiny.
	I mean, if you compare to the early 20th century, we had legal immigration rates three to four times what they were, and they were not professionals.
	They were not people.
	Huh?
	You also have three times the birth rate.
	Talk to the computer scientists.
	Who were the births to?
	They were disproportionately to the second generation, the immigrants were having the kids.
	But the culture is important, you know, and I think there are ways to preserve that.
	The culture is not threatened.
	The United States is the best culture in the world.
	And you could reduce that threat.
	I mean, you see it now with what happened on the college campuses with Hamas, right?
	And that is both homegrown and foreign grown.
	And how do you limit that, right?
	How do you limit people who actually work for the CCP coming to the United States?
	I see American leftists as a serious threat.
	It's a problem.
	They're the ones who are leading this Marxist takeover of our universities.
	I completely agree with that.
	I don't see it as the idea that that is homegrown or foreign grown is inaccurate.
	But you know, I think it's important to have a filter and that's how you actually protect the culture.
	You do have a stronger filter than you do.
	Why do you think it's both?
	You can go back almost 40 years, way before we had any major—to the 70s, the Marxists had already taken over significant portions of academia, and it's only continued since then.
	I'm not saying that it's not— The idea that getting rid of immigration is going to restore America to its traditional founding principles— Look, David, this is so homegrown.
	I visit high schools speaking against socialism.
	I went to one high school in North Carolina last year and I saw a picture of Che Guevara in the classroom It was the Spanish classroom and he was the only Spanish teacher who was like a white guy born in the United States that not the immigrants from Latin America and he had a The picture of Che Guevara and so the indoctrination is happening I see it in the even in my school among the PhD students It's the foreign ones that are less woke than the American born ones Absolutely.
	But I think Trump said he wanted to get rid of the kids who were protesting in the streets against Israel because they were on foreign visas.
	Some of them.
	Some of them.
	Yeah, but I mean, listen, I agree that it's homegrown.
	I'll be the first to admit that academia has been captured from within, not from outside.
	It's not like there was a foreign plant a long time ago.
	But I think that just comes from, honestly, the decadence that America has experienced.
	And I think it's been led down these slippery slopes to these ideologies.
	And if you can get rid of a communist, why wouldn't you?
	Those are the ones you can get rid of, so why wouldn't you?
	Well, I still believe in free speech, and I don't think we should just round up all the communists in the country and put them in cages.
	Sounds pretty good to me.
	I don't know.
	I'm from Venezuela, man.
	Yeah, no, but they serve a useful idiot function in our society of being easy to ridicule.
	But, I mean, look, the idea, again, that our culture is going to lose embraces the idea that our culture doesn't have vitality, that it isn't able to defend itself, and that's wrong.
	I think, as you mentioned, I think immigrants are actually helping in this respect if, you know, what Daniel is saying about these people who have direct experience with communism, they know it doesn't work.
	I do think, though, Vivek's critique was particularly inflammatory because he's basically saying that the bedrock, I think, of American society, as, you know, like Tocqueville said, there's this flourishing component of American society, these little platoons and kind of mediating institutions, whether it's churches or clubs after school, and there's the jocks and there's the prom queens.
	I mean, I'm just kind of extrapolating from what I think Tocqueville would have admired about our culture.
	But I do think he would have looked at it fondly.
	Like, wow, that's kind of really cool about America.
	To disparage them as being like low productive agents of an economic zone is just ridiculous.
	And I think most Americans would reject that wholeheartedly and say, oh, my bad.
	I'm not a decathlon star.
	Well, OK, so what?
	Like, but maybe I'm doing something else.
	Maybe I'm in speech and debate.
	Maybe I'm the quarterback who then works for NASA.
	I don't know.
	No, I completely agree.
	I completely agree with that.
	I think the idea—the great thing about the United States is that we can do whatever.
	If we want to be a psychology major and, you know, focus on football, I mean, we can do those things.
	It's a luxury, and that's a benefit—and the fact that we have these immigrants who want to come here and do extremely difficult jobs, whether at the low end or at the high end, that's a great thing for our country that Americans benefit from, that we can— Well, More things and not more.
	We can do a lot more things than we could otherwise because of immigrants being here.
	There's a cost to every benefit, right?
	So there are still some.
	Yeah, the companies pay them.
	That's the cost.
	It's internalized.
	This is just a testimony from friends and family who are computer scientists.
	Some of them graduated from tech schools and they have problems with what's going on.
	They have...
	Because, listen, if you have to train...
	Like, if you have to hold the hand of someone who came here from abroad to train them, that's going to foster resentment in a native-born STEM worker.
	I can understand that.
	It's going to say, like, oh, let me walk you through the job that you were paid for.
	What?
	Like, I mean, that's crazy, you know?
	Well, but that's the easy thing, right?
	If we just agree on doing the wage ranking and picking up the best people, you wouldn't have to train anybody like that.
	Sure.
	You get rid of the resentment.
	Sure.
	But I do agree that there's a trade-off.
	I mean, I'm the biggest supporter of America and what America stands for.
	I think this is the best country in the world for many reasons, not because it's the richest.
	Yes, it's one of the richest, but it's because of what it was founded on.
	It's the culture.
	So that's why I think that Vivek's criticism was a little misplaced, even though he did have a good point in that marriage rates have fallen.
	The academic quality has fallen.
	The family has broken apart, and that has destroyed education for children.
	There is communist indoctrination.
	All of these things are true, and we have to fight that.
	But I do think that immigration, uncontrolled and not properly done, can present a threat.
	And we saw that over the Biden administration, not because of the H-1B visa program, but because of the illegal border crossing.
	The emotional reaction from the MAGA base was a little confusing because here all this time I'm thinking of the paradigm of the culture's broken.
	It's degenerate and we hate it and the culture's messed up.
	I think Vivica is right.
	I didn't think he said anything wrong.
	I have no problem with what he said.
	I have more problems with something like what you would say that we can just have unfettered immigration, especially because I actually have a soft spot for H2B workers, right?
	We have these seasonal employees, right?
	And everybody's these low-wage workers.
	And so I've known doing immigration casework back in my old congressional days, I would help these people get these H2Bs and we would have seasonal landscapers and things like that.
	They'd want to help put Christmas lights up or mow your lawns in the summer.
	And they would put out ads, literally ads for $30 an hour, and we couldn't get anybody to fill them or they'd show up for one day and need to dig a ditch and quit.
	We see that even with the Postal Service, right?
	The Postal Service is having a very hard time retaining employees because nobody wants to walk around carrying a heavy bag.
	We're kind of entitled, right?
	So if you take...
	The people that are coming in on the H2B, and some of these businesses, because that's capped, can't keep their businesses afloat.
	I had several in Pennsylvania that were really at the brink because they didn't get the lottery of keeping their business afloat.
	So now you're talking about unfettered H-1B, right?
	And these higher skilled, I would say middle skilled, middle skilled workers.
	And then you have these low skilled workers, right?
	That are coming to really do the jobs that we're paying people to sit at home that they could do them.
	Like we're paying people on welfare that are able-bodied men to actually go out and...
	Do the jobs.
	Americans don't want to work hard.
	And that's what I've seen.
	And I hate to say it because I see a lot.
	Yes, there are people.
	I'm not saying it's all.
	But there are definitely people.
	They don't want to dig ditches.
	They don't want to be out in the blazing sun cutting down trees.
	Not a lot of them do.
	They certainly don't want to be carrying around heavy mailbags because the U.S. Postal Service is clearly having a shortfall in hiring and retaining employees.
	So if you want—now people are making the argument they want the lower-skilled workers to come and keep everything going, and now you want all the medium and higher-skilled workers to come over and do that.
	What are we going to have left for Americans?
	Well, it's not a replacement thing.
	The economy grows when there's— Heterosexual.
	Heterosexual.
	Heterosexual.
	security in 2020.
	I can't get a job, not even an entry-level job.
	Been middle-aged, white, homosexual male.
	Heterosexual.
	Heterosexual.
	But you know what I'm saying?
	But, you know, we're flooded.
	If he was, then he would have gotten the DEI. Oh, so true!
	But the whole point is that, you know, there are people that are inundated with messages like this and complaining about these things.
	I think we're mixing up the DEI stuff with the immigration stuff, and that's a problem, right?
	Remember, I mean, the Asians are the group that's been discriminated against, too, in DEI. It's not in favor.
	Only in colleges, not in employment.
	In employment, too.
	But you guys are kind of confusing Asians.
	When you say that, Asians, it's like Chinese, Asians, like Korean, right?
	You're not talking about Indians.
	Indians actually were being admitted to college.
	It was more like the Chinese.
	You can read my colleague, Renu Mukherjee, at the Manhattan Institute.
	Indians are heavily discriminated against both in college and employment.
	That's part of the DEI because they're very successful.
	You know, it's one of the most successful ethnic groups, much more than Chinese in the U.S. No, successful per their salary once they graduate, but we're talking about their technical skills when they're being admitted into colleges.
	That's what we were talking about.
	No, what I'm saying is that because of their success, they're discriminated against in the DEI ideology.
	Yeah, but not in colleges.
	In colleges, but those, they were talking about Asian Americans.
	I would argue they are.
	I would argue they are.
	That's not what, like, the Harvard lawsuits and all were talking about.
	Yes, yes, they were.
	I'm pretty sure it was China.
	It's Chinese, too.
	Mainly China.
	Yeah, but it also includes Indians.
	It's all Asian groups, except, I think, the Vietnamese, for some reason, that they're, like, given DEI preference.
	Yes.
	They had a very specific ethnic DEI structure.
	Very specific, yeah.
	But the point is, you know, I think we're mixing up stories that obviously this is all unverified.
	But we're mixing up stories.
	I mean, people aren't taking time out of their day to go DM people about their woes.
	Well, I don't know anything about this DM. I'm just saying.
	But the point is, this could just be a DEI story, right?
	And I think that that's a terrible thing.
	I think I'm very glad that Trump is going to come in and Harmeet Dillon is going to persecute all these colleges and all these employers that discriminate based on race, sex and everything.
	And they should.
	But if anything, legally, Americans have a legal preference to get the job over the foreign workers.
	And if they find that they have been screwed, they can go and sue, and they can go and report this.
	So my question, when you...
	It takes money to do that.
	No, no, you can report for free to the Department of Labor.
	Yeah, you can, but you need somebody to pursue it.
	Like, when you have...
	What?
	That's a...
	I forget what it is.
	It's a right-to-sue letter, right?
	So you have to go to the Department of Labor, then you have to say that you have a claim, an EEOC, I believe, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so you have the EEOC, then you get the right-to-sue letter, and then you take that right-to-sue letter, and you have to get an attorney to go sue anybody, and that costs money.
	And a lot of times, those are just...
	Blanketly done.
	You can even ask for a right to sue without a full evaluation after 30 days.
	Anyway, I know.
	I've been through the process.
	But my point is that you have to have money in order to sue people for what you think is some...
	But this is why we need to get rid of all these Indian shops that are just outsourcing work for the tech companies at low wages, right?
	Like, these are the people who are actually competing unfairly.
	These are the people who are actually being exploited.
	These are the people who are really taking also a spot in the visa from somebody who is much more highly paid, right?
	And so if you did that, you wouldn't have any of these stories because you would just have people making 200K, 150K, 500K coming to work in really highly specialized fields where you really need them.
	But to get back to your question, right?
	I mean, what are the jobs that Americans are going to do?
	They're going to do all the jobs in the middle, right?
	And that's what we're seeing already with the immigration that has happened.
	These are the jobs.
	H-1B is jobs in the middle.
	No.
	Some of it.
	Practically.
	The median income of an H-1B worker is in the 90th percentile.
	These are not the just...
	Does it account for where they live?
	Yes.
	No, no.
	So the media...
	Right, an issue.
	Most of the H-1B visa holders are in urban areas, and that's the median job, which is why when...
	San Francisco, of course, is going to be a lot higher salary than West Virginia.
	So this is why when I think of we should do a wage ranking, it shouldn't just be a pure based on wages.
	It should be adjusted by age and location.
	Otherwise, all the visas are going to go to...
	It's inflated.
	Artificially inflated.
	That's right.
	It's inflated by cost of living.
	Right.
	I mean, the basic point, right, is that you have people who come in to the country.
	It doesn't matter whether they're immigrants or not.
	When you have people who enter the labor force, they increase demand for jobs elsewhere in the economy.
	So an increase in the population or an increase in the labor force does not reduce the number of jobs available or increase employment.
	That's why we've had a hundred million person increase in the labor force over the last century.
	That has not resulted in mass unemployment and people just eating out of their hands.
	We've actually seen an increase in our living standards over the last hundred years.
	Because we're here to automate stuff, right?
	They're here to make AI and to do computer programming and to make— That is a good thing because it increases the productivity of workers.
	I do agree that the automation is going to be a good thing.
	But you're still going to displace those workers though, right?
	When we invented the car, we displaced all the horse riders.
	And we did destroy that whole industry.
	It was obliterated.
	It's kind of like, no, but it's kind of like when you have, you raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over in Seattle, and now everywhere, every McDonald's you go into, everything has automated absolutely everything.
	And so then you have those, you know, 16 to 20-year-olds that would normally be a part of the workforce and contributing.
	Now they're mooching off mom and dad, still on their parents' health insurance, not getting those jobs at McDonald's, not doing So it is putting people out of work.
	Well, it's different because the minimum wage is a government thing to destroy an industry.
	I'm just saying in general, but I'm just saying that they took it out, right?
	They did that because they don't want to pay those prices, which is going to happen eventually.
	If the automation becomes cheap enough, they're going to have all of these automated tellers everywhere you go.
	And then who makes the automated tellers, right?
	China!
	Well, that's a different issue, but you know...
	No, our manufacturing is overseas, and so it's going to be, who's going to manufacture all these goods?
	And then, no, we're a service economy.
	What are we going to be doing as a service?
	If that was true, Lisa, then why is the unemployment rate lower and the employment rate of prime age people higher today than it was 100 years ago when there was less technology?
	Wait, say this again?
	The unemployment rate is lower today than it was 100 years ago when there were less people and less technology.
	Because we've expanded, like we have other things to do, right?
	Exactly.
	So that's exactly what the innovation creates.
	It makes us all rich.
	Not always, though.
	Well, you could think of a theoretical case where that's not always, but I do think that, you know, innovation in general does.
	There's also more people.
	Think about, say, self-driving trucks.
	I think there was a really cool debate between Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson on the self-driving trucks.
	Oh, I remember that.
	Tucker's against them and Ben Shapiro is for them.
	It's a little spooky.
	I'm squirrelly for them because we have trouble finding truck drivers to drive trucks.
	Imagine if you could get trucks to drive 24-7.
	It would be so much cheaper to buy everything.
	So would you buy more things?
	You will make more books.
	You will make more apples.
	You will make more of everything else.
	But we're not making them.
	That's the thing.
	We are exporting them, right?
	That's being made.
	In some things, but in everything.
	Because imagine we're importing more things from China, right?
	Well, China is a bad case because China is an enemy, but from Canada.
	That means Canada will receive more dollars, more U.S. dollars, because we're paying them in dollars.
	What are they going to do with those U.S. dollars?
	Are they just going to pocket them?
	No, they're going to buy things from America.
	We're talking about jobs.
	Yes.
	But our Americans aren't going there to get the jobs to go do the manufacturing jobs.
	Why don't we look at what actually has happened?
	We've seen a huge increase in Americans going into healthcare, into education, into all these other service sector jobs, which are actually paying better and growing faster than a lot of the manufacturing jobs that have gone away.
	That's even problematic.
	So, I mean, why is it problematic?
	Because they're going up in psychology.
	Everybody's mentally ill.
	Is that the problem?
	We're doing a podcast.
	Like, this is a job that didn't exist 50 years ago.
	Absolutely.
	But what I'm saying, like, he's talking about things going up.
	It's like psychology is going up, right?
	Like, we have more mentally ill people in the U.S. than ever.
	And you know what?
	People need to...
	I hate to say this, but...
	Because of technology.
	But, like, social media.
	I don't know.
	The automation is problematic in another way.
	People used to do things with their hands and feel some type of...
	I don't know if you guys know this, but back when they were making the Betty Crocker cake stuff...
	No, just listen.
	When they were making the Betty Crocker cake stuff, women didn't want to buy it because they didn't feel like they were really making a cake.
	So they were like, if you add an egg to this and you actually manually break it yourself, these women will psychologically feel like they're baking cakes.
	It's true.
	That's what they did, right?
	It's wild.
	It's true.
	Well, a lot of people are not feeling satisfaction because they're not physically doing labor.
	Even if you tinker with something, right?
	There's some satisfaction out of that.
	These service jobs or no jobs or whatever are making people...
	That's a good point.
	How do you measure the health of a country?
	How do you measure the health of a country?
	Is it gross domestic product, or is it kind of some inexplicable hidden factors?
	I mean, GDP correlates with almost every positive outcome you could possibly think of.
	No, they're doing happiness studies now that are saying that they don't correlate.
	But the idea that people on the assembly line had better jobs and felt more satisfied, it's just—I mean, you look at the complaints about capitalism 100 years ago or even 50 years ago.
	There was, like, all this soul-draining drudgery of the assembly line.
	There were people— I thought we didn't want child labor.
	I thought we didn't want child labor.
	Have you heard of the touch grass thing?
	Why is it like a chronically online slogan to say touch grass if we didn't desperately need to touch grass as a culture?
	I just don't think the way to touch grass is to make people work at McDonald's, you know?
	Honestly, I think it would be great.
	Maybe we should force unemployed teenagers to do that.
	I think that's a different question.
	It's a very formative, entry-level role.
	I was a waitress.
	I worked in college.
	And let me tell you, it's great.
	But that's service sector.
	That's not...
	Yes.
	But the idea that those jobs...
	Those jobs that connect us personally in education, in healthcare, nursing, home healthcare, all of these jobs that have been created, they are connecting us interpersonally.
	I think that's a great thing.
	That's better than being a drone on an assembly line.
	We've obviously innovated our way out of that problem, for the most part.
	That's a great thing for the country.
	I don't think that we...
	Whatever's good for our soul is going to be going back to that and taking away the opportunities that have been created to do this interpersonal service.
	I mean, I do think doing things with their hands is good for our soul.
	It's constructive.
	But the question is what things, right?
	And it doesn't necessarily have to be a manufacturing job.
	Nurses do things with their hands, too.
	You mentioned interpersonal.
	This is bearing such great interpersonal fruits.
	Why is the country experiencing record levels of loneliness?
	Why are young people reporting so much depression and anxiety?
	Why is there a mental health crisis?
	Everybody has a therapist.
	I'm sorry.
	I don't think all these people need therapy.
	Of course they don't need therapy.
	Therapy is a problem to a solution.
	They just need something to do.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I don't think those issues are a result of increase in prosperity.
	I think those issues are mainly a result of breakdowns in family life.
	Actually, it is.
	You know what we're saying the rest of the world.
	It's first world problems.
	It's because you are wealthy enough to be concerned about those things.
	We don't have adversity.
	As a country, we live in immense decadence and prosperity.
	We do not face adversity.
	And it's interesting.
	I went to the MI gala where Douglas Murray was the keynote speaker.
	It was great.
	It was incredible.
	And it was just this case study about how he went to Israel in the aftermath of October 7th and the war and how the young people there shocked him.
	Because just like here, our young people are dismissed as, oh, you good for nothing.
	You know, you're addicted to your screens and, you know, you don't care about contributing to society.
	And there it's the same, you know, the same reputation that young people had.
	had and he was amazed at how they sprung into action when Israel was facing existential crisis.
	When the country was under attack from all sides, the young people wowed everyone with what they were capable of as well as how much patriotism suddenly was sparked within them.
	Israel is a different case, but I think America, the culture, and I don't know if it's really what Vivek was saying, but there's something deeply suppressed about our culture.
	We haven't experienced like this fraternal love of our citizens and for each other because- And work.
	And work because of what is in our...
	Our national identity, I think, is unknown actually at this point.
	And it used to be quite clear.
	And frankly, I think it was those big crises, international wars, especially World War II, that almost activated this sense of understanding of who we are as a people.
	And we don't.
	I want to say something about Israel and bring it back to the immigration stuff because Israel is an amazing case on the whole immigration situation.
	I think I read on X that somebody said, why doesn't Israel need tech workers from abroad to be in a powerhouse?
	Actually, they do.
	First, they have an amazingly liberal high-skilled visa program where the only requirement is that you make over twice the average salary of an Israeli and get sponsored by a tech company.
	And then second, yeah, Israel...
	Maybe it doesn't count as foreign workers, but you can do alijai if you're Jewish abroad.
	And in fact, after the Soviet Union fell, the population of Israel grew by like 20% from Soviet Jews, who were very different culturally, even in looks, racially, you could say, even though they're still Jewish, from the...
	Previous Israeli populations.
	Their traditions were very similar.
	Their cultural was similar.
	That makes a huge difference.
	Or at least they were considered similar.
	Because they were not religious at all, unlike the previous Jews who were there.
	But H-1B people are not Westerners.
	Right.
	So...
	But the point of this is Israel had extreme prosperity from really highly skilled people.
	They were very smart.
	They do have this creedal, you know, it's the Jewish state, right?
	It's the only developed nation in the world with above replacement fertility.
	The fertility rate of Israelis is three children per woman.
	It's the only one.
	It's like a puzzle.
	Why is infertility going down in Israel?
	And I think it's because of these values, right?
	So you do need to have a revival of values in America.
	And I don't think that's about immigration policy.
	I think it's about education and it's about many other things.
	There are many symptoms.
	I mean, South Korea, though, isn't that an economic powerhouse that has this dismal replacement rate?
	It's wild.
	And it's homogeneous, right?
	It's like everybody's South Korean.
	Yeah, but that civilization is going to die.
	It is.
	Straight up.
	Japan too.
	Yeah.
	And they are innovators and it's very techy.
	And in fact, it becomes worse because now Japan doesn't have people to take care of the elderly.
	So now they have to bring in all these people from the Philippines to take care of them as they die off and disappear.
	That's brutal.
	Wow.
	What were you going to say?
	No, I just, I mean, you know, South Korea is not really, I mean, they're poor compared to the United States.
	Most of the world is poor compared to the United States.
	And a big reason why the United States is so wealthy, and we have the resources to address a lot of the problems that come up in the conversation here, is because of immigration and because of the people who've come.
	We would already—you know, talk about decline—we'd already be seeing population decline if we hadn't had immigration since 1965, which a lot of people think would be a good thing.
	I mean, I see this all the time.
	We just should have banned all immigration over the last 50 years, which would have been a terrible, disastrous thing for the United States as opposed to something that's a positive.
	You look at—you've got to get back to fundamentals on some of this when you just— We are advocating we shouldn't have population growth because it's going to be bad.
	New labor force entrance is going to make us poorer.
	That's a scary thing.
	Once you start talking in those terms, then you adopt a lot of policies that would be bad for population growth.
	We'd actually advocate for more abortion, more restrictions on childbirth, and not address a lot of the crises in child care and health care that we desperately need to address.
	So, but you want to uncap H-1B. Do you want to have unfettered migration in general, no matter what?
	Like, do you want anybody to come in anytime?
	Like, how do you feel about all the people that were crossing the border legally?
	Should we let them stay?
	Like, how do you feel about that?
	Because it seems to me that you just won't let every worker in.
	Yeah, I mean, I think that immigration should be presumptively legal to come to the United States.
	There should be a presumption in favor of it if you come and you can show that you can support yourself.
	And look, we should change our welfare laws.
	Like, we shouldn't just have people who can come in and they can't support themselves and then go on welfare.
	We should restrict welfare for non-citizens, and if you don't pay in sufficient amount, then you shouldn't get to naturalize and get those benefits.
	We can create—look, anyone I talk to about immigration can create a better system than the one we have right now.
	Look— Illegal immigration, it's a result of the fact that, look, the H-1B visa, it's the only year-round guest worker visa we have for year-round positions.
	It's the only one.
	So where are all the illegal immigrants going when they get here?
	They're going to year-round jobs that are categorically prohibited from guest workers, like you talked about the H-2A and H-2B. There's no guest worker visa for poultry processing, for livestock, dairies, construction.
	All of these industries are completely prohibited.
	Dairy workers have some of the H2A. They're not illegible, the dairy industry, because it's not seasonal.
	There's a very small number.
	They can kind of hack the system because of when dairy cows are born is seasonal, so they can kind of hack the system a little bit.
	But in general, the milk has to be...
	You know, collected regularly every day.
	So it's not a seasonal or temporary job.
	So it's categorically ineligible.
	So you have 70% of the jobs, 75% of the jobs are categorically ineligible, banned from guest worker legal migration.
	And that...
	Produces the illegal immigration and chaos that we saw over the last four years.
	I actually think, David, even if you made it legal for companies to sponsor guest workers in everything, I still think you would have massive numbers of people coming in illegally without border security.
	I mean, think about it.
	The people at the border don't speak English.
	They have a relatively low level of education.
	They don't have actually a contact with employers here most.
	In fact, this is the first time we have a border crisis where people all over the world are coming.
	It's not primarily Mexican or Central American anymore.
	And it's people who have no previous connection, not even a family member here.
	And so they're just showing up.
	So they wouldn't have been sponsored by employers.
	They would still show up.
	Yeah, no, it would benefit.
	I'm not saying it's a cure-all for every immigration problem, but it would be a significant benefit.
	You understand in context that, look, 75% of the jobs were just saying the only way you can fill these jobs with a foreign worker is illegally.
	That is a significant problem for illegal immigration.
	It makes it harder because you're turning— I mean, what do you mean?
	In agriculture, they have the H-2A visa, and they still have massive numbers of illegal immigrants.
	Not anymore.
	Not anymore.
	Not into seasonal agriculture.
	Not anymore.
	All of the increase in seasonal agricultural employment has come through the H-2A visa since the H-2A expanded in the early 2000s.
	So we have cured that problem.
	That used to be the main form of illegal immigration was into seasonal agriculture.
	No, we still have it, though.
	We definitely still have it.
	Pennsylvania, New Jersey, they're picking the blueberry farms down in Hamilton, New Jersey, I'm telling you right now.
	They stand outside Wawa's waiting to get picked up for day work every day.
	Same thing in Florida.
	I'm not saying that it doesn't exist.
	I'm saying that all of the increase in employment has come from the H-2A. So we could see, yes, there are some illegal immigrants who come in, some die, some leave, whatever.
	There's a lot.
	And there are.
	And there are a lot.
	There are a lot.
	But I'm not saying it doesn't exist at all.
	I'm saying that the H-2A has prevented that problem from getting worse.
	You said solved first.
	That's prevented from getting worse.
	It's not the same thing as solved.
	To solve it, you would have to ultimately legalize the population who are already here illegally, which obviously people don't want.
	How do you feel about violating yourself?
	You don't want to do.
	I wanted to add one quick thing on the economics.
	Doesn't all this contradict the ethos of free men, free soil, because these are labor subsidies?
	Are companies entitled to foreign labor?
	Because I think the plenary power of the Constitution grants, I believe, the government the authority to regulate immigration.
	And we're a sovereign nation.
	Why do we think that these companies are entitled to foreign labor?
	Well, it's not about entitled.
	The question is what benefits the United States, right?
	Yeah, but I think it's like we're almost operating under this assumption of like, absolutely, like, yes, like, they should get access to these cheaper laborers, when it's like, well, actually, you're operating within a country.
	Well, but remember, I think that the problem is that we're treating immigrants as if they were machines that are just workers, but immigrants are people, right?
	They're not just workers.
	And because they're people, they also consume, they also innovate, which is why the whole high-skilled immigration...
	They also drain the system.
	They get welfare.
	Apple, free trading Apple.
	Strain the social safety net.
	Not H-2A workers.
	Sure, but they use the roads.
	They need police services.
	Yeah, I mean, this is very, very...
	Hospital schools, all the other social safety net that's out there, there will be strain and burden.
	Yeah, so the point is...
	People are not just workers.
	They also get welfare, which is why the whole thing with high-skilled immigration is so good, because they actually are net taxpayers.
	I have a whole story about the fiscal impact of immigrants.
	In fact, even the average H-1B worker will reduce the deficit by over half a million dollars over his lifetime.
	Now, we could increase that to over a million dollars if we just did wage ranking, so that would be better.
	But on the culture part, I think the culture is important, David, because...
	You know, I'm Catholic, right?
	I think that if I lived in a country that was primarily Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, I wouldn't like it.
	And I'm not saying that immigration is going to turn that into the United States.
	I'm not even sure how I feel about this.
	I'm really just asking a genuine question out of my heart because I do think Christianity is important and I do think it is important for America.
	You look at what happened with Catholic immigration.
	It's a great case study.
	The late 19th century, you look at what the popes were putting out on freedom of religion, democracy.
	It was not good stuff.
	And the people who were opposed to Catholic immigration had all the same arguments that you hear about Islam and Hindus and whatever.
	Non-Christian immigration today used the exact same arguments and had better, really better ammunition.
	Of course.
	You would?
	Yeah.
	Really?
	We're already headed there.
	It's just going to be primarily atheist.
	I'm concerned about that.
	I'm opposed to the secularization of society.
	But we have a Judeo-Christian foundation.
	And you have a duty to advocate for that.
	You can advocate for that.
	That's fine.
	We have a Christian foundation.
	The Judeo is added on later.
	Let's be fair.
	We have a Christian foundation.
	But...
	That's besides the point.
	You don't – keep going.
	You talk because I don't want to get off on a religious tangent here.
	All I'm going to say is if you look at what happened with Catholic immigration, you had all of these concerns that the Catholics are going to change us and they're going to transform our culture and turn us against freedom of religion and have an impressive indoctrination and have separate schools and they're going to never – They do.
	They do.
	I like them.
	They do.
	The integralist movement is certainly gaining steam these days.
	You're Catholic too, right?
	I am Catholic, and I hear a lot about Catholic nationalism.
	And it's a good thing.
	It ended up being a great thing for the country, not just for America, but also for the world.
	Because when you look at what happened with Vatican II and the adoption of religious liberty as a core fundamental belief of Catholics now...
	It was directly tied to the American experiment.
	They cited the American experiment.
	And if you look at which Catholics actually wrote...
	We come from the same source.
	It's different.
	You're comparing different faiths.
	What do you mean it's the same source?
	I agree.
	Buddhism, it's like night and day.
	We have the same Bible except for a couple of books.
	Monotheism, for starters.
	Yes, the starting place is different, but the experience of the United States is our culture is so attractive to people that we transform them, they don't transform us.
	That's the American experience.
	I think we're getting just a different flow from, say, Europe.
	I mean, you're seeing this problem in Europe.
	Now, thankfully, we're not having that same problem because we just are in a different geographical location.
	But look at what's happening in the United Kingdom.
	Look at what's happening in Spain, in France.
	This is a fundamentally different moral code.
	We are importing a different moral code.
	Even for people in America who claim they're atheists, they are still beneficiaries of a different moral code.
	I'm just more optimistic than you, and if you look at...
	You know, surveys of Muslims.
	Obviously, this is mainly a Muslim conversation.
	I don't know many people, maybe some other people are concerned about other faiths, but mainly a Muslim conversation.
	You look at surveys of Muslims, they are becoming more socially tolerant and more socially liberal over the last...
	40% won't even tell.
	40% self-reported.
	40% of Muslims will not tell if there's an ISIS attack or a terrorist attack.
	They will not report to authorities.
	They believe in Sharia law.
	Trump did have a lot of Muslim votes, though.
	He had a lot of Muslim votes.
	Absolutely.
	Oh, I know.
	He did.
	That was a very interesting development.
	And I will say, I follow a lot of...
	Because they're tired of the LGBT stuff.
	Yes, which is...
	That is traditionalism, and I agree with that side of it.
	They're against the DEI... I prefer that over the leftist atheists.
	They're against the DEI bureaucracy as well.
	So again, yes, there are going to be people who have views that we abhor, that we want to oppose, but the trajectory of American history and American tradition is that we conquer.
	Our culture wins.
	And that is not true in Europe.
	Europe does not have that experience that the United States does.
	Our culture is better than theirs.
	They get invaded by a culture.
	Sure, until the left destroys it all again.
	Islam has been entrenched in Europe for centuries.
	Not just centuries, a millennia.
	They made me do a walk of privilege.
	That's a religion.
	This is a religion right here.
	When we asked you an orientation.
	Who did?
	The university.
	Muslims?
	No, no, no.
	Colombia.
	But the point related to this is that because they're erasing American culture...
	I missed the transition.
	Because they're erasing American culture, they are...
	Reducing the way to assimilate.
	You're assimilating into something else.
	I don't think this is an argument to say we shouldn't have immigration or whatever in any country.
	It's an argument to say you need to select immigrants that are aligned with the cultural values.
	Then how come Gen Z voted majority for Trump?
	They didn't.
	Actually, women went for Kamala.
	7% more Gen Z women went for Trump.
	Thanks for that correction.
	But obviously he did much better, despite all of these...
	He did better with the men because they're not getting the jobs that we're talking about that are being replaced by the immigrants.
	Oh, come on, come on.
	That's what's happening.
	No, it's not.
	It is absolutely not happening.
	But the argument I'm making is not to prove it or anything.
	It's simple to say, don't you think that it would be beneficial to select based on cultural values too?
	I don't trust the government to select based on cultural values.
	If we had the Biden administration in charge of cultural whatever, no.
	Bring me all the blue haired people.
	Did you know that on the biometrics form for immigrants now, they put in the hair color options blue and pink?
	No way.
	I swear I saw it.
	See, this does give me pause and I understand your point here.
	That being said, the argument that we do need to recruit based on alignment to our cultural credo is important.
	Blue and pink hair should be an automatic rejection.
	Automatic rejection.
	You have blue or pink hair, you're automatically rejected.
	What form was that?
	Wait, aren't there ways to test, though?
	Like, just ways to test that.
	And with this administration, maybe there's a way to codify what a good metric barometer of patriotism and allegiance to our values is.
	I don't know what that looks like because I know the citizenship test is not like for everybody, but Cap it at a certain level.
	No pink or blue hair.
	You've got to be under a certain BMI, right?
	So because you're you know, they have to be healthy and BMI And you have to like you need to know our founding history I need to know our American political thought the Declaration of Independence the Constitution.
	You should know basic Basic stuff.
	I mean pretty basic but important in most most For citizenship, at least.
	For citizenship.
	And I will fully admit that most Americans my age don't know squat about that stuff, and that is tragic.
	And that, once again, is an indictment of the public education system, which is a monopoly, and we need to...
	Demolish the Department of Education, and then we need to...
	Well, if we can't do that, we've got to sever its relationship, which is basically a cabal with the teachers' unions, and then we need to basically privatize a lot of this, and school choice needs to be implemented across the land, and I do think charter schools need to flourish, the classical education model...
	That's what my kids are in.
	Religious education.
	That's my plan.
	Religious education, the parochial schools, we need to make sure that these multiply and are fruitful, and that...
	I will say about immigrants and culture, at least because immigrants do tend to be more religious than any born.
	The children do tend to succeed much more.
	And I see that very often in the schools that I travel to when I speak and in the colleges with Young America's Foundation that I speak through.
	And it's really moving.
	You know, they're very inspired by their parents' stories.
	That's kind of like what America has always been about, at least how I've always perceived it.
	And that's a special thing, right?
	It's different from Europe.
	It's different from other countries that are based on, you know, whatever, a people, right?
	But that requires maintaining the culture.
	I think it also requires saying, you know, there is actually an upper limit of people that you can bring in.
	I don't think legally we're at that upper limit.
	Certainly illegally, it's a problem.
	But within that limit, you would want to have the people who are more likely to be entrepreneurs, who are likely to speak English, who are likely to not be on welfare and make more money.
	Which is why I think, yes, we can fix the H-1B visa issue very easily with just wage ranking.
	But yeah, we should...
	Redirect chain migration towards skills-based, right?
	Yeah.
	Which, by the way, the left will say, oh, that's unfair.
	Actually, it's fairer because not everybody has a sibling living in America.
	Yeah, right.
	Everybody can actually get the skills to qualify through skills-based systems.
	It's meritocracy.
	It's meritocracy.
	If you prove yourself, you can come here rather than, oh, my third cousin.
	We should get rid of that.
	Only keep it to the direct relatives, the mother, father, and the children.
	Even then, I don't know.
	Yeah, I mean, again, I'm talking about a compromise.
	Like, the tech right is a very real presence in the MAGA coalition.
	If you really want to appease them, you know, you probably have to do something to the effect of what Daniel just outlined.
	No, but I think it's a good thing.
	You need meritocracy in education.
	You need meritocracy in employment.
	You need meritocracy in immigration.
	And demolish this whole DEI structure that's been built for decades.
	That's been built in immigration with the diversity lottery, all these lotteries, all these things, right?
	Right.
	Caps per country, like you select which countries, and it's like silly because you select also the bad countries.
	You're against the high-skilled ones.
	And then also in education, also in employment, like everything.
	And bring in the geniuses like Operation Paperclip did with, of course, there were some ethical issues with the German scientists.
	But, well, okay, I'm not saying we bring in...
	Not saying we bring in ex-Nazis, but I'm saying that the truly most brilliant thinkers on this earth, I think it'd be terrific if they came here.
	Because you can't identify the people who are young before they do that, which is why you need to adjust by age.
	Think of Elon Musk.
	A lot of people in this conversation were saying, well, we have the O visa, why do we need the H-1B? Elon Musk would not have qualified for the O visa.
	Because he was just coming out of college.
	He didn't have extraordinary achievements.
	So you do need to give people a chance to prove themselves.
	Well, wait.
	You could adjust what extraordinary achievements mean.
	What's his IQ? You could do a test.
	What's his IQ? What's Elon Musk's IQ? GPA, IQ. You could do a test, yes.
	A test.
	There's plenty of things that you can do to rule that out.
	You can suss someone out as gifted at a young age, I'm pretty sure.
	That's right, but that's not what the current immigration system does.
	So if you just got rid of, say, H-1B, even though it's imperfect, definitely needs to be fixed, you would lose the only path for people like that.
	I think that right now we have too many people in general that have come in because of the way that the border was for a while.
	So I don't understand why there can't be a temporary halt on everything until we sort out...
	Yeah, like, just a temporary one until we sort out who's already here, who out of those people need to stay, who out of those people need to go.
	And then once you figure that out and then assess the situation, okay, then we can start talking about getting people in this country and basically what I tweeted out saying, like, stealing the best people from, you know, our adversaries or other countries to put us on top.
	But it doesn't even need to take that long.
	You do need a moratorium on, like, illegal immigration, but, like...
	Well, that we need first, but...
	Why would you stop, say, an American who's marrying a foreign person from being able to...
	Like, you're talking about, like, the K or the I-130, right?
	I'm not talking about that.
	I'm talking about...
	Okay, but that's, like, half of the illegal immigrant flow.
	And some of that...
	But that's mostly chain migration, isn't it, like...
	No, no, no.
	Like, just the spouses and the children are half of the...
	Yeah, and I don't even love...
	I don't even love a ton of that, you know, I'm not gonna lie.
	There's a lot of fraud.
	There's a lot of fraud there.
	People marry their sisters and their cousins and they say that they're not and it's very strange.
	I was trying to help somebody come here and they were from Syria at the time and there was only one road and they had to travel.
	It was during the war and they had to travel to Lebanon to go to the consulate and USCIS lost their case file.
	It was a nightmare, right?
	But they wound up lying about who they were.
	And because we don't have consulates in these areas and we don't have people to actually vet them and do the biometrics and really prove that this is like who they are and what they say they're going to be.
	That's a big problem.
	That needs a moratorium.
	If we don't have consulates and people to investigate, do background checks on these people and fully vet them, they can't come here.
	We don't have a consulate.
	You're talking about Daniel here because there's no consulate in Venezuela.
	I mean, the idea that we're going to ban Americans from marrying people who are born in other countries, I mean, that is horrible.
	That is a violation of American rights.
	Our presumption, the government actually needs a good reason to violate your rights.
	I think that's a fundamental principle.
	You are, yes, you have a right to marry whoever you want.
	They go live in their country if you want to marry them.
	No, that is not what American rights means.
	I do think that's pretty radical to just say that you...
	You don't think that if we're getting...
	Somebody's getting married on a K visa, right?
	Or I-130, whatever we got going on.
	But they're already here and they get married.
	That's not always true.
	Do you think people do that for utility reasons?
	Do people do that for utility reasons?
	But what if they're doing it for diabolical reasons, which they've done?
	You said there's a lot of fraud in there, right?
	I've had two Uber drivers already confess to me from the Dominican Republic that they married just to get their green card.
	And I'm like, why are you telling me this?
	Oh, it happens all the time.
	But you have nefarious actors in these countries with no consulates where it's very hard to back around the Czechs where all their names sound the same, right?
	Everybody has the same first name, very similar last names, and you have to go in and try to See if they are who they say they're if they don't have any ties to crime and you're just saying that yeah like no problem they don't have a consulate there we should just let them in because somebody wants to marry them or somebody got ten thousand dollars that's a security issue and I agree there are security issues but just unlike say you know we just need to stop to figure it out I don't think we should stop millionaires from creating jobs and innovators from doing that to figure out the illegal border situation like you know the EB-5s and I
	agree.
	And that's what David Sacks said.
	David Sacks said, we can all agree that we need to just stop the flow illegally at the border, and then we can look at legal immigration.
	And the question of how to do that is important, right?
	I think everybody's like, well, Trump is going to come in on the first day, he's going to close it.
	He's actually going to need a lot of money, which is why Republicans in Congress are working on a reconciliation bill.
	We need appropriate money to detain people, because it's like, oh, we're not going to release them.
	We only have, what, 40,000 bets?
	Less than 40,000.
	Less than 40,000 bets, that's half a month.
	Less than half a month.
	That's a week and a half of illegal border crossings.
	Oh my gosh.
	We need to scare the border.
	I mean, look, the idea that you're going to end illegal immigration without a fundamental change in the legal immigration system, it's just fanciful thinking.
	I mean, you look at Trump's term in office.
	He had a lot of illegal immigration that happened, despite...
	Does anyone doubt that he was upset about it, that he was highly focused on it throughout his entire term in office?
	He left office in December of 2020 with apprehensions at the border that were the highest in 21 years.
	So he didn't solve the problem.
	Yes, it wasn't as bad as it was under Biden.
	But that is not the end-all, be-all.
	We need to fundamentally change our legal immigration system as well.
	He was hamstringed by his own people though, right?
	They were undermining him at every turn.
	So he already got it under control with what limited resources and opportunities he had.
	I will say Obama, I think looking back at Obama's term, he was actually very good on illegal immigration.
	More deportations, I believe.
	More deportations.
	The average number of border crossings was lower in the second term of Obama than on Trump's term, if you exclude COVID. So it's like, actually, you can't have better immigration policy even under Democrats if they actually cared about it.
	If they actually enforce the laws that are on the books and deport people that shouldn't be here.
	Which is very popular.
	But then we'll have people like you saying they're here and they're contributing to the GDP and maybe they should work, right?
	I mean, you would let all the people that came here illegally stay, correct?
	No, not if they committed crimes and caused problems in our country.
	We shouldn't have...
	Law enforcement should be focused on people who threaten our lives and our liberties and otherwise threaten our property.
	People who are threats to the community should be the target of law enforcement.
	When you say we're going to have the law enforcement going around doing The social micromanaging of our population.
	They are not focused on the threats to the community.
	So you should have law enforcement have that targeting, whether it's on immigration or just regular police, be focused on excluding people who are threats to the community.
	Now they have more to do, right?
	These people are here illegally.
	We have a police department that is supposed to be for X amount of number of citizens.
	Okay, now you're flooding these people in.
	It's increasing their demand on society for their schools, their police departments, right?
	Now they're unvetted.
	They're coming with gangs.
	They're causing more problems.
	And so now you have the regular criminals that we need to round up and take care of.
	And then you have these extra people that are an additional burden.
	Well, Well, and by the time the feds and the police identify these people as potentially as dangerous and causing crime, it's too late, I think, sometimes.
	I remember in New York City, I was covering what was going on in the Upper West Side with the migrant crisis.
	And it was like, here were the crimes that I just witnessed in broad daylight, and, you know, whether the city actually had the power to crack down on that is a whole other problem, the fecklessness of the Eric Adams regime.
	But, I mean, racing illegally registered mopeds up and down Broadway the wrong way, you know, like harassing elderly women who've lived in New York City for their entire lives, like multiple generation family children, you know, public defecation, public urination, obscenity, public defecation, public urination, obscenity, exposing themselves to people.
	I mean, it was like a long list of things.
	So we should focus on those people.
	We should get them out.
	The idea that there's all this.
	The idea that there should be all this slack in the system, that law enforcement just – they're not doing anything.
	They're just hanging out over here and they can just go.
	No, like 50 percent of murders go unsolved in this country.
	70 percent of rapes go unsolved.
	If you look at property crimes, they basically don't even show up.
	Well, but that's not— So the idea that we should be spending tens of billions of dollars on people who aren't causing problems, who haven't committed crimes, that is diverting law enforcement away from its job.
	What is its job?
	Its job is to defend our rights.
	You can't say that to Lake and Riley's parents or any of these other— Absolutely, I can't.
	Let me tell you something about that case.
	Let me tell you something about that case.
	Not just her, but the other little— This is really the apex of the failure of the Democrats on everything from criminal justice to border security to welfare.
	Jose Barra, the guy who murdered Lake and Riley, Venezuelan too, by the way, Trent de Aragua affiliated, the gang, he was committing a crime in New York City when he first arrived.
	He was bussed for free to New York City from the border.
	By Texas.
	Yep, sure, you know.
	Taxpayer dollars.
	Yeah, it's a problem.
	I actually don't support free bus.
	You can use taxpayer dollars.
	No credit cards.
	No transportation.
	Just leave them hanging on the border.
	Like, why should you pay for it?
	Because then Texas has to deal with it and they're tired of dealing with it when the rest of the country is...
	Yeah, I understand.
	But, you know, well, but he was let in by Biden, right?
	He was not a gotaway.
	He was let in.
	Somebody that you should have checked if he had gang affiliations detained him as much as you could.
	But there's no consulates in Venezuela.
	It's not because of the consulate.
	It's about the tattoos, too.
	True, true.
	All these gang members are tattooed.
	There was a woman who was a child sex trafficker.
	Her nickname was La Barbie, the Barbie.
	You just had to see her to know that she shouldn't be in the United States.
	Really, we need some more discrimination.
	More profiling!
	All facial tattoos.
	This woman looked like she was going to murder any of us at any point.
	And they let her in.
	She didn't sneak into the United States.
	And so Jose Barra gets to New York, starts robbing, Then he gets released because there's no bail, and also it's a sanctuary city, so they don't call ICE. And then they give him a free flight, paid for by the New York City government, to Georgia, where he goes and kills this girl.
	It's all these failures.
	Yeah, so absolutely.
	You should be focused on people committing crimes, including...
	What New York City would call a low-level offense.
	So you don't support sanctuary cities?
	No, absolutely not.
	Oh, really?
	I'm not so surprised.
	No, I mean, not as how they're interpreted.
	I mean, if you commit a crime that harms someone else, you should absolutely be a target of law enforcement.
	Sanctuary cities, I believe, harbor, like, that allows that progressive city to harbor any illegal aliens, like, regardless of whether they have a criminal record.
	So do you support that?
	No, I just said I didn't.
	No, the point I'm making is we have so many immigration agents.
	There's really 5,000 that go out and actually try to arrest people in the streets that go out looking for people.
	That's the number of people.
	So who are you going to go after?
	Who do you want to target?
	You want to target the people who committed violent crimes, who committed property crimes as well.
	I mean, anyone who's violated the rights of Americans should be the priority for law enforcement.
	We shouldn't have them just going out randomly grabbing people off the streets.
	But they're prone to that.
	Like, what if they haven't yet, but they're prone to that?
	What do you mean they're prone to that?
	Illegal immigrants commit crimes at a lower per capita rate than the U.S.-born population.
	So they're actually lowering the crime rate.
	Actually, the main reason for that is because most crimes are committed by people who commit a repeat crime, and because the illegals are deported, you don't have as many repeat offenders.
	So if you look at the first-time crime rate, it's actually higher for illegal immigrants.
	I mean, that is not what the...
	No, I mean, it is.
	It's just a mechanical thing.
	The Americans are not deported after they leave jail.
	So they commit crimes again and again.
	No, I mean, if you look at DACA recipients, they've been in the country...
	DACA recipients are not the average illegal immigrants.
	Yeah, well, I mean...
	They're college educated.
	But we actually have...
	They're not, I mean, majority...
	It's one of the conditions...
	Are you talking about the dreamers?
	No, you're talking about...
	It's one of the conditions to be in DACA is that you need to go to college.
	No, you don't need to have graduated college to be in...
	To be part of the DACA problem.
	Or serve in the military, do something equivalent.
	No, all you have to do is be enrolled in high school or try to graduate high school.
	That's all you have to be.
	I thought it was you have to have graduated high school and then be enrolled in college.
	Or pursuing college.
	No, you can be pursuing a degree in high school.
	I'm looking it up right now.
	But anyway, there are numerous different data sources.
	But we actually know how to target people who are prone to crime.
	And it doesn't even matter.
	Most of the crime in this country is committed by men who are young, who are high school dropouts.
	Should we allow in people from countries that are known to be safe havens for terrorism?
	No.
	Even if they themselves, we don't know that they have any criminal background.
	What about people from Iran who, like, oppose the regime?
	You have to demonstrate that.
	Yes, of course.
	You have to demonstrate that.
	These are more complicated questions that you look at specifically for the individual.
	So someone who was born in Iran, they may have lived their entire life somewhere else.
	So we have a long record of them.
	It really depends on who this person is, how much we know about it.
	We might know a lot about them from the DOD. Maybe they've been working with the DOD. You have to have an individualized assessment of risk.
	You should not be just saying, well, this person was born in Iran, therefore every Iranian should be banned because we're the Iranian government.
	But de facto, if we have no information on them, don't let them in.
	Well, I mean, sure, if you don't have any information.
	It depends.
	And they need to be interviewed, you know?
	But I do – I would never support something like a band like that because, I mean, think about it.
	I have an organization like The Citizen Project.
	All our speakers come from countries that are dictatorships.
	Iran, Russia, North Korea, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Eritrea, Zimbabwe.
	And these are really good people who come and educate Americans about the blessings of being an American, of the Constitution.
	We need those perspectives, right?
	But you need good vetting, right?
	All of these speakers will also tell you, no, I don't want Russians who support Putin or Chinese who support the CCP or even less like a North Korean who supports...
	Yeah, yeah.
	The regime.
	I want to make your correction, because to be fair, so they have to be GED, high school, honorably discharged veteran.
	They do not need to be in college, and if they are, it allows them to go to college, but it does not guarantee access to federal aid.
	They will have options for federal aid, but they don't have to.
	So I just wanted to make sure we get that clear.
	I mean, there are a number of different...
	They're not high school dropouts.
	It's important.
	True.
	I mean, yes, supposedly.
	The National Longitudinal Youth Survey is really the best evidence for this because you can actually see the arrest rates for people over time.
	The first generation is the least likely to commit violence.
	Of all immigrants.
	Of all immigrants, sure.
	But, like, I mean, it's disproportionately, you know, if you look at—you can look at it by education as well.
	But, look, I mean, at the end of the day, what do we want law enforcement to be doing?
	We want law enforcement to be targeting people who commit crimes.
	The way to stop crimes— The first crime that you commit is coming here illegally.
	That's a crime.
	That is a crime, and I don't think the solution is just to make all the illegals legal.
	Like, I don't think that is— What I will say about that is that, you know, I did a study about the fiscal impact of immigrants.
	It's where David and I have many methodological disagreements, where the average illegal immigrant is expected to cost the government, have a net cost over their lifetime.
	Correct.
	And so you can, you know, say, well, but deportation also has a cost, actually, tens of thousands of dollars.
	So you have to balance that and think, who do you really want?
	And also understand that just physically it's going to be impossible to do with everyone.
	So how do you want to handle it?
	Obviously, you want to deport the criminals.
	I think you should want to deport then everybody else who doesn't pay up.
	And then people should pay up to become legal and it should be a very high fee.
	And then that's how you really should solve it.
	Also, if illegal aliens know that winter is coming with this next administration, maybe self-deportation is also...
	Yeah, you need better employment verification system.
	You know, E-Verify is actually very defective.
	It's not good.
	So when people say, we should just require E-Verify, actually, you need to fix E-Verify first so that it actually works.
	That was instituted under IRCA, right?
	Under the law, under Reagan.
	But isn't E-Verify, like, very problematic, like, at its...
	Even U.S. citizens are marked to us as illegal sometimes.
	Guys, we've got like two minutes left here.
	So we clearly don't all agree.
	Why don't we each give our closing thoughts about what you think that you would want, what we should do, how quickly it would take to fix it, if that's your situation or if you're like me and say no more.
	Go ahead.
	We'll start with you.
	Yeah, so, I mean, the most important reform the government could do is expand legal immigration, particularly for skilled immigrants in this context.
	I mean, we're turning away 70% of people.
	And look, their median income is $118,000 a year.
	This is an extraordinary blow to our economy.
	You look at 55% of the billion-dollar startups in this country founded by foreign workers.
	This is a critical issue for the future of the United States.
	If we decide that we're going to close our borders and keep out people who are going to invent the next great company, come up with artificial intelligence that allows us to compete with the Chinese, if we prevent that from happening, it will be to the detriment of the United States.
	Well, I would say that the US immigration system is deeply flawed.
	And I would say that it needs to be rebalanced to focus much more on English ability, to focus much more on skills, to focus much more on whether you're a welfare recipient or not, whether you align with American values.
	Over a million green cards a year are granted to people to stay in the U.S. permanently.
	And most of them really go to people who don't have enough English ability, who don't have skills, who just have a relative in the United States.
	And you don't really need to increase legal immigration to fix that.
	You just need to rebalance it and reduce low-skilled legal immigration.
	And imagine what a better country this would be if you had so many more people.
	The immigrants here spoke English.
	They made money.
	They were not on welfare.
	They did not commit crimes.
	That's the immigration system that I think the average person wants.
	The average person doesn't want to just not let in everybody.
	I mean, everybody loves...
	What America is about.
	And everybody loves an immigrant who loves America, too.
	And so I've loved America even before I came.
	So that's what I think America stands for.
	H-1B, the program we know is abused by employers under the pretense that this is just for a shortage of STEM and it's going to be temporary.
	But as I said, we don't have a shortage of highly skilled workers in this country.
	We just have them in this dormant state.
	And I think we need to figure out how to activate those people and re-engage them so that they can take some of these jobs back.
	And I think Mark Krikorian's proposal is compelling for both sides of this debate because it gets rid of some of the low-skilled immigration, which many on the MAGA, right, I would say the mandate is to probably reduce low-skilled immigration, and that is to cut into the chain migration and then transferred over to high-skilled visas.
	I think part of that is we do want geniuses and Einsteins to come into this country.
	And I think very few would dispute that would be a net benefit.
	But there needs to be a better process for figuring out whether they are, in fact, you know, exemplary candidates.
	And just last thing I'll say is America is a sovereign nation.
	We have every right to be selective in who we recruit to our shores.
	And I think it should be the best and the brightest.
	Wow.
	What a great conversation today.
	A lot of information was gathered here.
	And first of all, I grew up overseas 18 years.
	I finally came to the States back in 2010 after I joined the Air Force.
	And so I've been pretty multicultural, you know, since my entire life.
	So it wasn't really too much of a big change for me when I came to the United States, especially in this area.
	There's some things that need to be ironed out in our immigration system.
	You know, as of right now, my mom's been waiting about six and a half months to get her green card renewed.
	So there's stuff like that that needs to get ironed, obviously.
	So while I don't agree with just the blanket statement of or the blanket granting amnesty for all the illegal immigrants that are here in the United States, I don't know what kind of budgetary requirement that would, you know, require, really.
	Um, There does need to be something ironed out, especially with the people that are already here.
	Whether that means deporting them, I don't know.
	I don't have all the answers.
	You guys seem to have some answers, so hopefully people in higher places hopefully heed your warnings and advisements, and hopefully we can come to a better understanding of how we can run our immigration system.
	Thanks, Brian.
	I'll just say the left rags on the right a lot for disagreeing, but that's how you get to the best possible outcome.
	Absolutely.
	It's conversations like this saying, no, your idea sucks.
	This is better.
	Okay, I see what you did there, but what if we tweak it?
	And it's conversations like this happening every day is how we get to having the best country.
	And you guys can follow me at KellenPDL.
	Thanks.
	Okay, we can tell everybody.
	Go ahead and tell everybody real quick where to follow you, and then I'll close us out.
	Writer National Review, just on the website, and Twitter, Caroline Downey underscore, I think.
	Yeah, yeah, it is.
	I'm at DanielDMartino.
	You can also look me up, just DanielDMartino.com, the Manhattan Institute, this is a project.
	At David underscore J underscore beer.
	And you can find all of our work at Cato.org, the Cato Institute website.
	Oh, go ahead, Brian.
	Yeah, no worries.
	I'm at Helmsway1 on X and obviously TimCast.com.
	Please check out our website.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Well, everybody, thank you for coming.
	We all know that I have more of the right-wing MAGA tendencies in me.
	Let's go.
	I will say that whatever policies that they do, obviously everybody kind of agrees, well, other than you, that there needs to be reform or some changes made, even if you want to uncap it.
	But that when the policymakers do it, they do it with the intent of what's going to benefit America and Americans first.
	And that's really what the MAGA movement has been all about, whether that's economically or whether that's individually, culturally, financially.
	Whatever way, we always should put American workers first.
	So I want to thank everybody for coming out.
	Guys, make sure you subscribe, like the channel.
	All of that helps us.
	Follow Tim.
	You can follow him on X. And also follow him, get him in the mornings.
	10 o'clock, I think, is the show on his main channel.
	Something like that.
	You'll see Tim.
	He does clips all day.
	Yeah, for his new show.
	8 o'clock for IRL. And then Friday's back here every week at 10 a.m.
	Tim will be here next week.
	And thanks for tuning in today, guys.

▲