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Nov. 27, 2024 - Dennis Prager Show
18:02
Mass Deportations are Not Enough!
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I want to go to my guest.
I love talking to Mark Krikorian from the Center for Immigration Studies and his organization, All Things Concerning the Border Crisis.
Mark, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show, man.
Good to speak with you.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
I hope Dennis is feeling better.
Listen, he's got a long road to hoe here, Mark, but he is gradually feeling better.
But it is going to be a long haul.
But anyway, we appreciate you mentioning that, and please continue to pray for him.
All right, so I want to get to this article that you wrote, Mark.
Mass deportations are not...
Enough.
Talk to us a little bit about the article, and then I just want to pick through parts of it and get your comments on it.
My basic point in the article was that, obviously, the stuff that President Trump has been talking about, you know, large-scale removal of illegal aliens, that's all fantastic.
But that's only part of the story.
Large-scale legal immigration is also a problem.
And we need a breather from this.
And so what I was in this piece specifically, I was kind of pushing back against some comments by Vivek Ramaswamy, who's got a lot of smart guys, come up with a lot of good stuff.
But on immigration, you know, I took issue with some of his positions.
And I was saying that the goal needs to be.
A breather from immigration as we took 100 years ago.
Literally, this year is the 100th anniversary of the 1924 immigration law that brought the Ellis Island era to an end.
And it did it in a stupid way.
It had these national origins quotas, kind of race-based baloney.
But the result was enormously beneficial for America.
And we can repeat that by taking the, you know, sort of best aspects of the...
The 1924 Act and combining it with the best aspects of the 1965 immigration law, which created the mess we're dealing with, but got rid of those racial quotas.
It's like, okay, we'll take the good part from each of those and let's take a break and a breather from the decades of mass immigration that we've been dealing with now, really since 1970. What are some of the benefits that you believe America would reap?
Mark Krikorian is my guest from the Center for Immigration Studies.
What are some of the benefits that you believe America will reap?
Because I totally agree with you here, Mark, but I want the audience to hear it from you.
Sure.
Will reap if we were to return to that era where there was a moratorium on immigration?
Yeah, I mean, just to be clear, it's not going to be zero immigration.
It would just be a lot lower than it is now.
And so the results, two big things.
There's lots of benefits, but two would be most important.
One is less skilled workers, people who, for whatever reason, aren't in great demand in the labor market, see their bargaining power increase.
We even saw a little blip of that.
During the first Trump administration, when numbers went down, not because they changed the law, but they basically tightened enforcement.
And so even legal immigration went down.
And guess what?
Everybody's wages went up because it was good economic times.
But people at the bottom went up more than anyone else because after 50 years of basically getting the shaft...
Their only asset, which is basically their two hands, became much more valuable, and they did a lot better.
And that's exactly what we saw after the 1924 Act.
In fact, it was shocking that people in the South, black and white, but especially black, who were basically frozen out of the newly developing industrial economy at that point, once immigration was reduced, industrialists sent recruiters to the South.
Begging black people to move north and take jobs.
Begging them.
So that's, you know, the best social policy is a tight labor market, which is to say one where employers have to hustle to find workers rather than workers having to hustle to find jobs.
And immigration reduction is a key part of that.
The other part, the other huge benefit, is assimilation.
Look, we've taken in, you know, millions, millions of people.
I'm talking about legally, not even Biden's illegal aliens.
I'm talking about over the past 50 years.
And a lot of those people have become, you know, good citizens, good Americans.
There's no question about it.
But look at our institutions that are supposed to assimilate people.
Schools, most importantly.
What are they teaching kids in schools?
My mom.
Was a daughter of immigrants and went to public school outside Boston in the 30s and 40s, and she learned to love America, sing Hail Columbia, memorize the Gettysburg Address.
You think they're teaching that to kids now in the L.A. Unified School District or New York or Chicago?
No, and it's not the kids' fault.
It's not the immigrant parents' fault.
It's our problem.
We need to deal with it.
But until we fix that, how can we possibly justify taking in a million new people every year, year after year, legally to become Americanized?
It's just crazy.
Mark, for whatever reason, I didn't mark this in your column, and so now I'm annoyed because I'm trying to find it and I can barely see it.
But you mentioned all of the ways in which the Trump administration could put pressure.
On many people, basically, to self-deport all the way to going to construction sites and making people a little nervous.
Talk to us about some ways in which maybe the Trump administration, and I actually believe he's kind of doing that now with the saber rattling when it comes to the tariffs on Mexico, China, and Canada.
I think a lot of people might self-deport just listening.
Just listening to this stuff.
Right.
Yeah, that was a different column, actually, I wrote in National Review.
And the point was, you know, for all of the mockery that Mitt Romney got, this is 10 plus years ago now when he talked about self-deportation, that actually is a key part of enforcing immigration laws.
Because you have the open borders people saying, oh, we can never arrest all of these people and it'll cost trillions of dollars, blah, blah, blah.
The fact is, you need to make it impractical to live here as an illegal alien.
You can't get a job, you can't get a driver's license, all of that sort of thing.
And you're right, a lot of what we're hearing now from the incoming border czar, Tom Homan and others, is basically designed to get people to pack up and leave on their own.
And the thing is, it's more dignified for them.
You're not arrested.
You're not even barred from coming back in the future if you get your affairs together, pack up the wife and kids, and go home, which you probably were doing every once in a while for vacations.
Go home for Christmas and don't come back.
And this is a way to avoid being arrested.
One of the most important ways you send that message is not just the talk that you've been hearing now, because the new administration hasn't even started yet.
It's enforcing the law against hiring and employing illegal aliens, because that sends an enormous and powerful signal if you do it.
And enforcement has been spotty at best over the past 40 years.
And, you know, understand that it wasn't illegal to hire illegal aliens until 1986. There was a deal that the big Reagan amnesty, the one that he signed, the deal was amnesty for people who were already here.
In exchange for enforcing the law against hiring illegal aliens.
The amnesty happened.
The enforcement didn't.
If it does, you can see a significant number of people deciding, you know, the party's over.
We need to get right with the law, go home, and avoid ICE, which is going to be coming for us at some point after they get the criminals and the terrorists.
There's plenty of them, but they're not going to stop at that.
Put your affairs in order, go home in a dignified way, and everybody's better off that way.
I'm speaking to Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies.
We only have a minute left in this block.
Mark, can you stick with me for another segment, or do you have to go?
No, no, I'd be happy to.
I got something in 45 minutes, but I can do another segment.
Sure, happy to.
Okay, all right.
So we just have a second, maybe 50 seconds or so.
All right, so a minute left in this block.
So let me just respond to something you said regarding low-skilled workers.
So I own a business where, listen, I'm a service worker.
I'm a blue-collar worker when I leave the radio, and I can testify that you're absolutely right when it comes to low-skilled work.
Honestly, even low-skilled workers made much more money under the Trump administration when they were getting illegal immigration under control.
I mean, I have a landscape business.
I've also had a janitorial service in the past.
And that was true in both cases, Mark.
Your response, 10 seconds.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, I mean, the fact is, look, employers are not lying when they say it's hard to find good employees.
American workers, if they're not good employees, we need to come up with ways of helping them become good employees because they're not going to disappear.
Mark, this broke, so I just want to get your quick response to this.
I saw this on X. This is Libza TikTok here.
Frederick, Maryland Mayor Michael O'Connor has announced that he's creating a fund using tax dollars to help illegals pay for legal fees to fight deportations once Trump takes office.
I don't understand why this isn't against federal law.
And I'm assuming it is because Tom Holman said they're going to go after these illegals anyway.
But this is...
This is crazy.
All of these people that are standing up to support people that have literally broken into the country.
Yeah, no, it's definitely crazy.
I mean, this thing by Frederick, Maryland, isn't illegal because you have a right to a lawyer in immigration proceedings.
But since they're not criminal proceedings, the state doesn't provide you one.
You don't get one for free.
If you want.
You can't have one, but you've got to pay for it.
So what they're doing is raising money for it.
But the point is, they're using taxpayer money to keep illegal aliens in the United States.
I mean, what's even more absurd is something that happened a few days ago.
The mayor of Denver, if he's prepared to go to jail, he'll be like the guy in Tiananmen Square standing in front of the tank, stopping ice.
I mean, give me a break.
This is absurd.
These people who should...
We're not allowed to come in here, are here anyway.
They have no right to be here.
All the Trump people are doing is saying, well, we're going to actually enforce the law.
That's a scandal?
That's outrageous, is to enforce the law?
It's nuts.
And frankly, it's one of the reasons, one of the big reasons the Democrats got their behinds kicked earlier this month, and they don't seem to have learned.
Yeah, honestly, and I don't think they will.
I really believe even though we have an uphill battle keeping control of the Senate in just a couple of years, I don't believe they are going to learn their lessons because they've got too many woksers inside of their party.
All right, so let me get your take on this, Mark.
There was apparently some type of study.
I mean, and there are, the numbers are astounding of people that really do support mass deportation inside of the United States.
My concern is, and I like what President Trump is doing, kind of saber-rattling right now, because I believe that there needs to be...
Tons of people, Lord willing, that will self-deport.
But if they're going to mass deport, obviously they'll go after criminals first.
But whatever they are going to do, it has to happen very quickly.
Your take?
Oh, I think it definitely will.
I mean, Tom Homan, the border czar, is somebody I've known for a long time.
He was a Border Patrol agent.
He ran ICE, basically, under Trump.
He knows what he's doing.
And they understand that they need to show results.
Quickly.
And I'm pretty sure, I don't know this because it's not like anybody, you know, is giving me inside info, but I'm pretty sure they're going to go after really the lowest slimeballs first and make sure that they do publicity on that so people understand this isn't, you know, grandma being dragged out of her apartment.
You know, if they run into regular illegal aliens who aren't rapists.
They're going to get deported, too.
I mean, it's not like you're going to get a pass.
It's just that there's only so many people and so many hours in the day, and this administration has so completely stopped immigration enforcement that they could spend two years just trying to mop up a little bit of the mess that this administration left.
Oh, man, I'm so concerned about this, given I know Democrats will try to use illegals to...
I mean, they love the population numbers.
I know they want more power in the House and with the Electoral College points.
But listen to this, and I want to get your response to this.
We just have three minutes left in this block.
I'm speaking to Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies.
It says here, Mark, this is hat tip to the Daily Wire, and they're discussing this YouGov poll.
But it says a full 74 percent.
White respondents said that deportation should be a higher medium priority of the Trump administration.
70% of black respondents and 69% of Hispanic respondents agreed, and they all displayed broad support for this initiative.
I don't think Democrats expected that when they opened the floodgates of our borders.
Oh, they definitely did not expect it.
I mean, they just...
They have this condescending idea that, you know, they're all people of color and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.
It's nonsense.
I mean, whose neighborhoods, whose jobs, whose schools are impacted first?
Frankly, it's Hispanic Americans and then disproportionately black Americans.
I mean, this affects everybody.
But the fact is that Americans who are black and Hispanic have the same experience as Americans who aren't in dealing with the consequences of immigration.
I mean, I was down in...
Earlier this year in some of those Texas border counties, you know, the ones that swung like 70 points toward Trump, didn't surprise me at all.
Those people are patriotic Americans.
I mean, it's not, they don't care about Mexico.
It's a regional culture.
It's like Amish or Cajuns.
In other words, they've got their own local traditions and all that stuff, and that's fine.
But it has nothing to do.
It doesn't interfere with their love of America.
Those people are veterans.
They're law enforcement.
They all have NRA stickers on their pickup trucks.
These people are Americans, and of course they're going to reject this.
And shame on the Democrats for thinking, you know, that it would turn out differently.
Mark, we only have a minute and a half left.
I want to get your response to this because obviously the left is going to continue to cry foul and they're going to make arguments like, wait, wait a minute.
The economy is going to be destroyed if we send all of these people back.
And I sit here and think, Mark.
Wait a minute, the economy was fine when they weren't here.
But apparently they want a perpetual underclass to pick their fruit and, you know, just being facetious here, pick their cotton, so to speak.
It's astounding to me, as if we weren't surviving before they invaded the country.
Yeah, but I mean, you were being facetious, but you really weren't being facetious.
I mean, this is the same argument the Democrats made 150 years ago.
You know, who's going to...
Who's going to pick the cotton?
Oh, well, you know what?
It's all done by machine now.
And that only happened because we ended the earlier worker program that the Democrats had cooked up.
And it's the same situation now.
Now, what they say is, look, if everybody disappeared tomorrow, that would be disruptive to the economy.
Yeah, it probably would.
Does anybody think that every illegal alien is going to magically sort of disappear tomorrow?
That's not the way it works.
It's a process.
It's over time more people get...
Either taken into custody and thrown out or squeezed out and they leave on their own.
It happens over time and the economy adjusts over time by employers offering higher wages, looking for workers in places they weren't looking for before, hiring people they maybe didn't consider before.
All right.
Just to give a quick...
Yeah, anyway.
Mark, Mark, we have to...
We have to leave it there.
Mark Krikorian, thank you so much.
Read his column.
Mass deportations are not enough.
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