Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 807 ｜ 'Loving the Foreigner' Means Opposing Illegal Immigration ｜ Guest： Barry Latzer

00:00:00.580 The immigration crisis and the crime crisis in our country is creating an unstable, chaotic 1.00

00:00:07.100 situation that most Americans really want to fix.

00:00:10.640 So what is going on?

00:00:12.040 What are the policies that are causing all of this?

00:00:14.280 And what can we do to fix it?

00:00:17.160 We're going to go through everything that's happened in the past week or so since Title

00:00:21.620 42 has gone away, resulting in a surge of migrants at the southern border, all the problems 0.99

00:00:27.360 there.

00:00:27.740 But I'm also going to talk to a crime expert, Barry Latzer.

00:00:33.160 He is a professor.

00:00:33.880 He's written several books on the criminal justice system in America.

00:00:37.800 And we're going to take a look at that, a really fascinating look at that.

00:00:40.700 And he's going to propose some very real, very viable solutions for how we can actually

00:00:47.020 reduce crime in the United States.

00:00:49.420 And he and I will also discuss this terrible story of Jordan Neely and now Daniel Penny,

00:00:54.860 who is being charged with manslaughter for that whole subway debacle that we talked about

00:00:59.300 a couple of weeks ago.

00:01:00.200 So really important, really good episode that I think that you're going to learn a lot from.

00:01:04.280 It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers, which is American meat delivered right

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00:01:14.060 Hey, guys, welcome to Relatable.

00:01:25.880 Happy Wednesday.

00:01:27.340 Hope everyone's having a wonderful week.

00:01:29.100 Make sure you go back and listen to yesterday's episode, my interview with Holly Simon about

00:01:33.400 the terrible tragedy that they had to endure at their family farm in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

00:01:38.760 It might seem like a random local story that I'm telling you, but it really has bigger implications.

00:01:45.860 We're talking about people's lives, so make sure that you contact the people that we gave

00:01:49.660 you the contact information for to make sure that we ensure the resignation of Rita Watkins.

00:01:56.660 It's just a way that we can share arrows with someone who shares our values and is seeking

00:02:00.820 justice, not just for her family, but also seeking protection for her community.

00:02:04.500 All right, today we are going to talk about this migrant crisis that is happening, much 0.99

00:02:09.980 thanks to Biden's border policies or lack of border policies, and we're also going to

00:02:15.380 talk about the problems within our criminal justice system with our guest.

00:02:20.440 We're going to discuss the Jordan Neely situation, the former Marine, Daniel Penny, putting him in

00:02:26.900 a headlock, accidentally killing him because Penny was, or because Neely was harassing the people

00:02:33.820 on the subway cart.

00:02:34.680 So what led to then this former Marine being charged with manslaughter, facing 15 years

00:02:41.120 of prison, while this guy who never should have been out of jail was free to harass people

00:02:45.700 in the subway?

00:02:46.280 We're going to talk about the entire system that led to something like that and what the

00:02:49.920 solutions could possibly be.

00:02:51.680 Then we'll get his insight a little bit on the history of immigration.

00:02:54.500 Very, very fascinating conversation.

00:02:56.620 But before we get into the criminal justice so-called conversation and the immigration conversation

00:03:01.880 with Mr. Latzer, I did just want to give you an update, some stats, some recent stories

00:03:06.660 about what is going on at our border, why this actually matters, and why this is one of

00:03:12.400 those topics where the weaponization of toxic empathy can be really effective, I think, especially

00:03:18.100 for Christian women who are just kind of, they decontextualize that verse that Christians should 1.00

00:03:24.160 care for the, or that we should care for the foreigners, that we should care for the sojourners 0.98

00:03:27.740 because we were once sojourners.

00:03:29.080 That, of course, is what Israel is told in the Old Testament by the Lord, but that is

00:03:37.200 completely decontextualized from the rest of the policies that centered on migrants and

00:03:43.620 foreigners and sojourners in ancient Israel, and also just ignores the truth of the dangers 0.80

00:03:50.520 of illegal immigration and also just mass migration in general.

00:03:55.140 It is not compassionate to be for liberal border policy.

00:03:59.060 It is not compassionate to just say, yes, you should come to our country to have a better

00:04:03.320 life simply because you want to. 0.99

00:04:05.180 It's not compassionate, and it's also dumb. 0.94

00:04:08.180 Because if you care about the cohesiveness, the stability of your country, which I believe 0.98

00:04:12.880 that we are called to care about as people who love our neighbors, as people who have

00:04:16.740 been providentially, purposely placed in the city, in the state, in the country in which

00:04:21.360 we dwell, if we care about the stability of a country, we have to care about the sovereignty

00:04:26.280 of the country.

00:04:26.880 Because without sovereignty of a country, there is no legitimate basis for law enforcement.

00:04:33.180 There's no legitimate basis for citizenship.

00:04:35.420 There's no legitimate basis for unique rights that are afforded to people because they are

00:04:40.380 citizens.

00:04:41.060 And without that, you don't have a nation.

00:04:42.680 And if you don't have a nation, you have no entity that can actually keep you collectively

00:04:48.240 secure.

00:04:49.840 No one looking out for the best interest of their constituents, of the people that they

00:04:55.380 were actually elected or appointed to lead.

00:04:58.780 That's a problem.

00:04:59.740 God created nations.

00:05:01.240 He created the borders.

00:05:02.600 He created these human systems.

00:05:04.580 We read in Romans 13 that governments were actually put in place to be tools for good,

00:05:09.360 to be punishers of wrongdoing.

00:05:11.680 There is a goodness and a righteousness in that, in these systems called governments and

00:05:19.060 nations, which have to be held together by borders and sovereignty.

00:05:23.320 So when you ignore that, when you let that fly out the window, you're not only lacking compassion

00:05:29.640 for the people that you're incentivizing to come here in a very dangerous way and putting

00:05:35.340 the people at the border, the American citizens at risk there.

00:05:39.300 You are also forsaking God's good idea of nations and borders and people groups.

00:05:47.080 So let's talk a little bit about what's going on.

00:05:49.420 We've already covered this.

00:05:50.440 I think we covered it a little bit last week at the end of last week, that last Thursday,

00:05:55.040 May 11th was the final day that Title 42 would be in effect.

00:05:59.180 In effect, Title 42 was a holdover from President Trump's immigration policy that allowed officials

00:06:04.520 to turn away migrants on public health emergency grounds during the COVID-19 pandemic.

00:06:11.740 Biden tried to end Title 42 last year, but Republicans sued him, arguing that the restrictions

00:06:16.760 were necessary for border security and the courts ruled to keep it in place.

00:06:20.860 But now that Biden has announced the end of national COVID-19 emergencies three years later,

00:06:26.640 the border restrictions have now gone away.

00:06:28.840 And I do wonder if that was actually why they got rid of the national COVID emergency policies,

00:06:34.240 simply so they could have a basis for getting rid of Title 42 and allowing the surge of migrants.

00:06:41.800 The AP reports that now there will be strict consequences for trying to cross illegally.

00:06:46.180 They will not be allowed to return for five years.

00:06:48.100 They can face criminal prosecution if they do.

00:06:50.800 But that doesn't seem to be what's going on.

00:06:52.760 There are some reporters that have gotten some footage from the border,

00:06:55.200 and they see these migrants coming in, and they are processed, and they're given these

00:07:00.720 kind of court dates to say, yeah, you have to come back, and we'll process your request

00:07:05.300 for asylum and things like that.

00:07:07.000 And these people aren't really seeking asylum.

00:07:09.240 They say that they're asylum seekers.

00:07:10.860 They say that they're refugees.

00:07:12.480 But there are actual definitions to that.

00:07:14.760 You're not an asylum seeker or refugee just because you're coming here for a better life.

00:07:18.480 That would be everyone in the world then.

00:07:21.240 Wanting a better job is not seeking asylum.

00:07:24.380 That could be a reason to try to legally migrate somewhere, but that's not a justification for

00:07:28.660 being able to illegally cross into a place to try to seek some kind of refuge.

00:07:33.940 Having a hard life is not a good enough reason to be able to come here just because you want to.

00:07:40.700 So reporter Taylor Hanson, he has seen some of these documented, some of these court dates,

00:07:46.700 these documents that these migrants are getting.

00:07:50.320 They're also given a government-issued cell phone, and apparently it is pre-programmed

00:07:58.240 with some kind of app that keeps track of them.

00:08:03.460 I'm not sure how effective that is, but some of these court dates apparently are as late as 2027.

00:08:11.240 And most of these people don't show up for their court dates, and there's no consequences,

00:08:15.240 really, if you don't show up for your court dates.

00:08:16.840 There's no guaranteed consequences, and so it's all just a joke.

00:08:20.000 So here's a video of some of these migrants who just crossed the border saying that they

00:08:24.340 need to be here for whatever reason, given these government-issued phones.

00:08:27.940 All right.

00:08:45.840 This is also leading, as you can imagine, to an overcrowding of these migrant facilities.

00:08:50.940 We saw that terrible story in Brownsville, Texas, a couple weeks ago, where there was someone who

00:08:55.560 looked like a migrant himself. He was definitely Hispanic. I don't know what country he was a

00:08:59.760 citizen of, but he took his car and he rammed through a group of migrants outside this migrant

00:09:05.020 facility, killing several of them, including children. And part of this is because these

00:09:09.860 places are just overwhelmed. I mean, they have so many migrants because these migrants are 1.00

00:09:14.280 incentivized to come. They know that it's pretty easy to get over our border just because border

00:09:20.700 security isn't well-funded and Biden isn't doing his part. So it's basically just Texas that's trying

00:09:26.780 to hold the line here. And so this leads to all kinds of dangers. This leads to all kinds of poor

00:09:35.760 health outcomes for these migrants who are here. So here's a video of a very overcrowded facility in

00:09:42.660 El Paso. What do you notice about that, by the way? Those are all men, all grown men. Now, maybe this

00:10:05.360 was just a, this is just a shot of where the men are. Maybe the men and women are separated. All of a

00:10:12.640 difference between male and female when it comes to migrant facilities, but these are all grown men.

00:10:19.300 They're not starving, clearly. They've got their clothes on. They've got their shoes on. They're

00:10:24.980 ready to come into America because they claim that they need to be here. This also just, this picture 0.68

00:10:30.300 alone just signifies one of the issues with mass migration is that these countries that they are

00:10:37.380 fleeing from experience something called brain drain. And that is when all of the people with any means

00:10:44.340 or any just kind of like mental coherence leave those countries to go to another country, making the

00:10:52.460 countries that they leave even worse. I understand that El Salvador and Colombia aren't great places

00:10:58.040 to live for a variety of reasons. El Salvador is trying to clean itself up right now with some tough

00:11:02.640 crime policies. But I mean, that doesn't mean that these people have a right to come here. It also

00:11:07.260 doesn't mean that it's actually beneficial for America or for the places that they're leaving. So

00:11:11.420 it's just bad all around. Agents were told to begin releases in any areas holding facilities that were

00:11:18.640 at 125% capacity. This is according to the AP or the average time in custody exceeded 60 hours. So they

00:11:26.320 just have to be released. They were also told to start releasing these men, mostly men,

00:11:31.020 of 7,000 migrants were taken into custody across the entire border in any one day. Like so you see that

00:11:37.480 a Secretary Mayorkas who claims by the way that the border is totally secure, who claims that everything is

00:11:43.320 fine. Like you see that they might have, they might have some kind of policies in place ostensibly, but

00:11:51.020 they're all being any kind of security is being broken if these quotas are reached, which they are. These

00:11:58.060 people, they hear about the policies in the United States and they come here based on how easy they

00:12:04.620 think it's going to be to get across. And that's why we've seen such a surge since Biden became

00:12:09.340 president because they don't care. They actually want this. They like this. They like the chaos. They

00:12:14.320 like the reorganizing of cities. They like the change in demographics because they think that it's going

00:12:21.080 to help them win more elections, either with integrity or not, and that it's going to help them

00:12:28.700 achieve the agenda that they have. That's what it is. And so it's in part of it is because I, like I said,

00:12:34.940 this kind of toxic, warped, dumb, fake empathy that makes people think that it's our responsibility 0.98

00:12:41.620 to accept every single person in the world who wants to come here. No other country thinks that 1.00

00:12:46.500 like you don't have a right to go to Zambia and to say, I'm just going to be here and take your

00:12:50.660 resources and take your jobs. You don't have a right to go to other countries and do that. And

00:12:54.820 like, we're okay with African countries, you know, kicking an American out who says that they're

00:13:00.000 entitled to be there, but we're not okay with saying it when it comes to protecting our own sovereignty.

00:13:05.240 It doesn't make any sense.

00:13:16.500 So the memo that is calling for the release of these migrants, if these facilities, you know,

00:13:25.560 reach the seven or reach the 125% capacity or whatever, it's called the parole with conditions

00:13:32.520 practice. It's a process that's typically reserved for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public

00:13:38.540 benefit. Um, but that is not really the justification that's going on here. That's not really

00:13:45.620 applicable. And Stephen Miller is a senior advisor to president Trump. He's founder of America first

00:13:52.580 legal. He was talking about this on Fox business last week, and he's big immigration hawk. He talks

00:13:58.500 about this a lot. He, um, he talks about the Fox news report that they don't get an alien registration

00:14:03.880 number. These people who were released in the name of parole, and they don't receive a court date.

00:14:07.900 And he says, we are living through the Democrats in game. They have been systemically stripping away

00:14:12.600 every last piece of the Trump immigration policies for the last two years. And they're replacing it

00:14:16.940 with something called the parole scheme. And it's a scheme whereby an illegal alien, he says,

00:14:22.180 is paroled into the country, given a two year immunity from deportation and the chance to apply

00:14:26.900 for a work permit. The Biden administration is trying to push as many illegal aliens into the

00:14:31.540 parole system. It's a DACA like benefit to try to legalize illegal immigration. That is what they

00:14:36.900 have been working towards for two years. And now we are seeing people from around the world trying

00:14:43.020 to get their amnesty benefits. And that's true. Like I've seen the pictures, the videos of the

00:14:47.460 Chinese, all grown men, again, Chinese migrants trying to get in through the Southern border because 1.00

00:14:52.620 of Biden's policies. Um, the Florida attorney general, there's been some legal pushback sued the

00:14:59.620 secretary of Homeland security, uh, uh, Alejandro Mayorkas and the Biden administration. Um,

00:15:06.320 uh, over this, I mean, basically, you know, because this is causing a lack of security,

00:15:12.020 it's a dereliction of duty from the federal government. And, um, uh, there is a big fear

00:15:18.860 of the security risk of this. And this is a legitimate fear. There was an Afghan national 1.00

00:15:23.620 that is on the FBI's terror watch list that was arrested this week as he was crossing the border

00:15:30.860 near San Diego with a group of migrants. Of course, guys, like think through this a little 0.98

00:15:36.060 bit like push past the superficial definitions of empathy that are being used to simply emotionally

00:15:43.720 extort you and manipulate you. And think about this. If you are letting through surges of people

00:15:50.280 without any background checks, without any kind of accountability whatsoever, you are going to get

00:15:56.020 terrorists. Yes, you are going to get very dangerous people that are not only a terror to

00:16:03.100 immigrants in this country. It's a terrorist to citizens in this country. It's a terror to 1.00

00:16:08.220 everyone. There's no compassion in allowing these people unchecked to surge into our country. It is

00:16:17.340 a recipe for chaos. It's immoral. The New York post reported that a previous order to let migrants go

00:16:24.460 with notices to report to ice had been tried in 2021. It was unsuccessful as thousands of those

00:16:29.880 migrants simply didn't ever check in. It is an absolute mess. Secretary Mayorkas, though, for his 1.00

00:16:37.820 part, he's saying that everything is going absolutely swimmingly, loves it. He says that the border is

00:16:44.860 totally secure. Recently said, I think it was in his testimony before Congress that, well, you know,

00:16:51.540 a million people were deported last year. It doesn't really matter how many people were deported.

00:16:55.520 It doesn't really matter. It matters how many people actually got in. So you can't say that the

00:17:00.640 border is secure just because a certain number of people got deported. What really tells us whether

00:17:05.260 the border is porous or secure is how many people were actually able to get in. And the stats say

00:17:10.760 that 1.5 million gotaways. There are 1.5 million gotaways at the border under the Biden administration.

00:17:18.000 Wow. These are illegal immigrants who are known to have entered the country but had not 1.00

00:17:24.460 been caught. So we're going to see, of course, even more of this. Fox News is also reporting that in

00:17:33.560 the past two days, in the past two days, there were six arrests, six arrests of people on the FBI's

00:17:43.240 terror watch list. Awesome. 2023, 88. I'm glad the FBI is doing their job when it comes to this.

00:17:52.220 But how many of them were in that group of 1.5 million gotaways? This is something that we

00:17:57.740 should care about, right? Biden himself doesn't seem to know what's going on or where he is or

00:18:05.020 what his job title is. He says that things are great. Here he is.

00:18:13.240 Okay, so you probably couldn't hear what he said because it was, there were press in there yelling,

00:18:25.880 but someone asked him, what do you think about the border? He said, it's getting much better.

00:18:30.500 You see it? It's getting much better. Probably didn't know. He's probably talking about, I don't

00:18:36.060 know, the border of the construction paper craft that his handlers had him do that morning as a

00:18:41.500 brain exercise. So in New York City, they are sending migrants to public school gyms. 0.98

00:18:47.500 The parents of the kids who attend those schools are like, um, I'm sorry. What, what exactly is

00:18:55.320 happening here? There was this horrible story. And this just goes to show again, no compassion for

00:19:01.220 anyone involved when we allow these kinds of policies to flourish. This is according to the

00:19:06.220 Tampa Bay Times that a teen died after a seizure at a migrant shelter. A 17-year-old from Honduras,

00:19:14.360 Angel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinosa, died during his sleep, likely due to having an epileptic seizure in

00:19:22.180 his sleep and becoming unconscious. The teen had been transferred by the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement

00:19:27.620 to the Safety Harbor Migrant Shelter run by Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Children's Services in

00:19:32.660 Florida. He was in the process of being placed with his cousin in Tampa, his sponsor in the U.S. But

00:19:36.880 look, because they don't have the resources, we've got too many people there. And so we're

00:19:42.440 incentivizing these very, very dangerous tracks. We do not have the resources to be able to care for

00:19:49.060 these people. In a lot of cases, we're handing them off to nonprofits who are willing to do good

00:19:54.500 service and to help, but we can't handle it. And so we're putting people at risk, not to mention

00:19:59.500 we're incentivizing, enabling the cartels, trafficking the guns, trafficking the drugs,

00:20:05.820 trafficking the human beings, raping and assaulting and impregnating these young girls. You're encouraging 1.00

00:20:12.360 all of that when you take away strict border policy that encourages these people to come in. And so it's

00:20:21.880 all very, very sad. It is a complete dereliction of duty. Even the most libertarian person among you

00:20:29.340 should be able to recognize that it is at the very least the government's job to protect the

00:20:36.060 border. It is at the very least the government's job to care for the safety and the security of his

00:20:42.160 country first. First, before you even consider the well-being of people from other countries, 0.80

00:20:48.380 before you even consider the interests of people of other countries, you should be prioritizing

00:20:53.020 relentlessly and unabashedly the safety, security and interests of your country first. That doesn't

00:20:59.800 mean that you hate other countries. It doesn't mean that you think that you're inherently better than

00:21:04.580 other countries. It just means that you're responsible, that you are actually taking the

00:21:08.120 job that God has given you, according to Romans 13, seriously and righteously. I just, I, as you can

00:21:14.900 tell, I just have like such an impatience and intolerance towards Christians who think they're being 1.00

00:21:18.780 loving by being for liberal border policy and thinking it's hateful and it's unchristian to not

00:21:24.520 be or to be America first or whatever. Look, you feed your family, even though you don't feed everyone

00:21:29.720 else's family, right? You lock your doors. You live with walls up. You don't let just anyone into your

00:21:36.380 house that wants to come in there just because they're having a difficult night, just because they

00:21:42.280 might be hungry. Sure, you do other things to help those who are in need, but you don't let people into

00:21:47.880 your house who just want to be there and sleep in your kid's bed, right? Does that mean you're a

00:21:52.820 bigot? Does that mean you hate your neighbors? Does that mean that you aren't caring for the least of

00:21:58.860 these? No, it just means that you are doing what you are called to do, which is steward the needs and

00:22:04.080 the well-being and the safety of your family first. That's what God has called you to. And on a bigger

00:22:09.340 level, because nations are like families, that's what the government is called to do. So this dereliction

00:22:13.880 of duty is wicked. It's wicked. And not just when it comes to immigration, but when it comes to crime 0.96

00:22:18.900 in general. The failure of our officials to actually care for and protect the safety of the

00:22:30.600 citizenry is wicked. And we're going to talk about why that is today with our guest, and he's going to

00:22:37.360 get into all of the ins and outs and the history of all this, which is very interesting and what we can

00:22:41.800 actually do to fix it. Mr. Latzer, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Before we get

00:22:59.200 started, could you tell us who you are and what you do? I'm Barry Latzer. I'm an emeritus professor of

00:23:07.480 criminal justice. I taught for over three and a half decades at John Jay College of Criminal Justice,

00:23:15.180 which is a part of the City University of New York. I'm retired, but very active writing.

00:23:23.240 And my latest book is called The Myth of Overpunishment. It's about imprisonment. And it's

00:23:31.800 really a response to some of the progressive or woke claims about mass incarceration.

00:23:41.080 I want to talk about that before we even talk about what we're really here to discuss, which is

00:23:47.120 Title 42 and the immigration crisis. But I'm very interested in the subject of your book, because

00:23:53.000 we hear a lot, even from those who consider themselves maybe on the right, libertarian,

00:23:58.660 center right, that we do have a mass incarceration problem. And because we have a mass incarceration

00:24:04.000 problem, that the solution to any of our crime issues in any of the cities is not to put people

00:24:12.380 in jail. It shouldn't be what they refer to as punitive justice. It should be restorative justice,

00:24:17.560 social justice, all these kind of fluffy words. So you're saying that we don't have an over

00:24:24.340 incarceration problem in the United States. Well, let me throw some numbers at you. And I'll

00:24:30.860 be gentle on this now. It's hard for people to follow numbers. I know that. The Census Bureau,

00:24:38.120 the federal government does a crime victim survey every year. And it's an enormous survey as surveys go.

00:24:45.760 They interview, last time they did it, 249,000 people. And by way of contrast, you may notice

00:24:58.200 that these political surveys done by the Gallup poll, for instance, always involve something less

00:25:05.520 than a thousand people. So the result is their survey is, that is the Census Bureau survey,

00:25:12.280 is much more accurate. Well, based on this survey, each year, we have 5.8 million violent attacks,

00:25:22.440 12.8 million property offenses, such as burglary or theft, for a total of over 18 million victimizations,

00:25:34.400 criminal victimizations nationwide. Now, a lot of these attacks or victimizations are not reported.

00:25:44.740 Fewer than half are reported to the police. Nevertheless, the police arrest millions of people,

00:25:52.320 as you'd expect, big country, a lot of criminals. In fact, they arrested 10 million people in 2019.

00:26:01.560 My data is pre-pandemic because the pandemic threw things off, as you might imagine, and also because

00:26:10.440 there's a lag in the reporting of the data. So in 2019, there were 10 million arrests made of criminal

00:26:21.560 suspects. Of the 10 million, and here's the key point, you end up with 1.4 million put into jail.

00:26:29.880 Jail is where you go after you're arrested, and you stay there usually just a few days until you are brought

00:26:38.640 before a judge. That's called an arraignment. And when you're arraigned, usually you're released.

00:26:44.840 So you only spend a few days in jail. Jails are short-term institutions.

00:26:51.760 What about the really serious offenders for whom there is a great deal of evidence that they committed

00:26:59.440 a crime? 577,000 of them went into prison in 2019. So we have 18.6 million crimes, 10 million arrests,

00:27:13.120 and only 577,000 people actually going into prison. So just on the face of it, you have to say, I think,

00:27:26.500 it's not clear that there's mass incarceration here. In fact, only murderers stand a pretty good chance

00:27:35.060 of being incarcerated. They have about a 49% imprisonment rate, those who commit murder.

00:27:42.260 Only 49%? 49% of people who are charged with murder end up in prison?

00:27:50.800 Of the crimes reported to the victim survey. So of course, murder victims obviously don't report to the

00:28:00.060 survey, but we have the most accurate data for murders because you have dead bodies. So we know,

00:28:08.140 the police know, and we know how many murders there are every year. Of course, for people who die from

00:28:17.820 natural causes, there's a death certificate prepared by a physician, and we know that they're not murder

00:28:24.680 victims. But we know how many murder victims there are every year. And the data on that, we have multiple

00:28:33.460 sources, the police, the Centers for Disease Control in Washington also keep those records. So we know

00:28:40.900 pretty well how many murders there are. And 49% of the murders are solved with people actually going to

00:28:52.020 prison. For rape and robbery and aggravated assault, the other serious violent crimes,

00:29:00.100 less than 6% of the incidents reported by victims lead to imprisonment. So these are extremely low

00:29:09.620 figures. So when they talk about mass incarceration, one has to ask, well, really, compared to the number

00:29:19.040 of crimes, this doesn't look like excessive incarceration. And that's because it isn't.

00:29:27.100 Right. And you've written a lot about why we have the crime problems that we do. In your estimation,

00:29:32.860 is it because we don't incarcerate enough people that we continue to have high crime? And especially

00:29:38.920 in these kind of progressive cities with the progressive DAs and the progressive judges, you just

00:29:43.660 see these serial criminals let out on the street. I mean, is that what motivates people to continue

00:29:49.440 to commit crimes? Because there's just very little punishment?

00:29:55.240 We haven't been doing this long enough to know yet, Alan, to be perfectly honest. There are some

00:30:02.820 preliminary studies that indicate that in cities where you have prosecutors who are excessively lenient,

00:30:10.980 that it is a cause of increased crime. But these are preliminary, it's provisional data. So to be

00:30:20.360 perfectly candid, to be perfectly honest about these things, we're not sure yet. However,

00:30:27.880 I do know from my work on the history of crime, that when in the late 1960s, the system was very lenient,

00:30:37.660 police made relatively fewer arrests. Sentences were much shorter. Time served in prison was much

00:30:46.940 reduced. When that happened, it was apparently a big spur, a big incentive to more crime. So we know

00:30:57.620 from history that when the criminal justice system is weakened substantially, when they don't arrest or

00:31:05.780 punishes many people who are committing crimes, that is an incentive to more criminality. So that's not,

00:31:13.620 you know, a shocking assertion or shocking claim, that's what we'd expect. So I would think if we continue

00:31:22.040 with a lot of lenient prosecutors, especially in big cities where there's a great deal of crime,

00:31:28.740 crime, if we continue to release people who commit crimes, I think that will serve to incentivize more

00:31:38.860 crime. Because we do know that people who are in prison and are released do recidivate in very high

00:31:46.980 numbers. In fact, Allie, 83% of those who are released from prison commit an additional crime,

00:31:56.320 at least one, and are rearrested. 83%. That's a scary number.

00:32:03.220 Yeah, there was, of course, that subway situation with a guy named Jordan Neely,

00:32:08.080 who he ended up being killed by the Marine, put in a chokehold because he was harassing people,

00:32:13.820 threatening violence and things like that. But I mean, he had been arrested apparently 42 times,

00:32:18.820 one of them for assaulting an elderly woman. And so it's a disservice, not just to Jordan Neely,

00:32:24.980 but also to the community around you when you don't have any mechanisms in place to apparently,

00:32:31.260 or you're not willing to put the mechanisms in place to really protect people in the name of

00:32:37.480 social justice, I guess. Yeah. Absolutely. These so-called low-level crimes

00:32:43.840 can be serious, as was certainly the case with the woman who was assaulted.

00:32:49.900 And even if it's not that bad, if people on the street sense that there's no punishment at all,

00:32:58.580 really, for doing these crimes, and you know, the police are not going to keep arresting people

00:33:03.420 if there's no prosecution. So if a prosecutor like this Alvin Bragg in Manhattan, if he says,

00:33:12.060 well, I'm not going to prosecute these, quote, low-level crimes anymore, I don't want to fill

00:33:17.780 up the jails and prisons, what will happen is the police won't arrest people who commit these

00:33:23.780 offenses. Well, of course, that in and of itself causes more disorder in the streets,

00:33:30.300 and probably, we don't know yet, probably incentivizes more serious offenses.

00:33:36.380 So it's very disturbing. And by the way, the communities most affected by this

00:33:42.360 are communities where you have high crime and high disorder. And those are often minority

00:33:48.840 and poor minority communities. So who's really paying the price for this? Not the more affluent 0.99

00:33:56.600 people who have gates around their communities, who have security guards, who have a means for

00:34:05.700 self-protection, but rather the poorer people who don't. So, yeah, I think these are terrible

00:34:15.060 policies, very misguided. And in fact, not even necessary. It's just silliness. The really serious

00:34:23.260 offenses, the ones filling up the prisons, they have to be prosecuted anyway. And even these woke

00:34:30.220 prosecutors will say, well, of course, I'm going to go after the serious offenders.

00:34:35.580 Yeah. And you know, you know, it's strange, because you see, though, that it's not just

00:34:41.620 about keeping people out of prison, because this Marine who put Jordan Neely in a chokehold,

00:34:48.320 he is he's charged with manslaughter. He's facing 15 years with prison. His name is Daniel Penny.

00:34:54.560 So obviously, if it was just about not prosecuting crime, if it was just about not putting people

00:35:00.620 in prison, you wouldn't be criminalizing what a lot of people are calling self-defense. There was

00:35:05.940 another, I think, a bodega owner who killed someone who was he was actually being attacked with a knife.

00:35:11.380 And this bodega owner killed the person who was trying to attack him. And Alvin Bragg ended up

00:35:17.480 dropping the charges of murder. But I'm pretty sure that he was charged with murder. And so it's about

00:35:22.300 criminalizing, I think, self-defense in a lot of cases and not criminalizing things like assault.

00:35:28.160 So I don't know, there's some racial quotas behind it, but it's very strange. It's not just about

00:35:32.740 emptying the prisons.

00:35:34.780 No, absolutely. Because you could see this prosecutor's judgment. And, you know, most of us,

00:35:41.660 and I think most of the public will think this judgment is warped. When you have this case with

00:35:47.200 Neely, I think most people will consider Mr. Penny to be a hero rather than a criminal. We'll have to

00:35:54.400 see if the grand jury, which of course is a Manhattan grand jury, and Manhattanites are known

00:36:00.020 for being very liberal and very pro-democratic, which is why they elected Mr. Bragg in the first

00:36:07.380 place. We'll have to see what the grand jury does. And of course, even if the grand jury were to indict

00:36:14.660 him, that's formal accusation is what it amounts to, formal accusation of a felony. Even if they

00:36:21.700 indict him, I suspect that Mr. Penny is not going to take a plea and will go to trial. And if he does,

00:36:31.260 then the public, speaking through a jury, will have another chance to acquit him. And I certainly

00:36:39.840 hope they do, because I think that he is something of a hero. Most people on the subway, if they see

00:36:48.980 a person with obviously some sort of mental disorder acting out, well, they go the other way. You walk to

00:36:58.220 the other end of the car so that you don't have to sit near him and you get out perhaps in the next

00:37:04.600 subway stop and move to a different car altogether. This fellow Penny took initiative and protected his

00:37:14.960 fellow riders. So I think most people are going to view him as a hero, but we'll see. We'll see what

00:37:21.480 happen. So I agree with you. Yeah, go ahead. It's not just about, you know, emptying the jails. He's

00:37:29.020 making a judgment here, too, that this sort of behavior, which, as I say, can be really seen as

00:37:36.940 heroic behavior, should be instead criminalized. So he's making judgments here. And at some point,

00:37:44.580 I think the public will make a judgment on him when he has to stand for election and we'll see what happens.

00:37:51.480 People wonder why, you know, there's always those videos that go viral a lot of times on the New

00:38:07.400 York subway, but other times it's at like a Walmart or something like that, where someone is clearly

00:38:12.060 harming someone else. They're attacking someone else. I saw this video not too long ago of a woman

00:38:17.520 on a subway and this guy, he seemed really erratic. I don't know if he was homeless or whatever, but he

00:38:23.780 he was sitting next to this woman by herself and grabbed her by the back of the head and just held

00:38:30.300 on to her hair. And she was looking around and she was saying, help me, help me. No one did anything.

00:38:36.040 The person filming didn't do anything. No one around. And OK, so we can all criticize them and say,

00:38:42.920 you know, why wouldn't you do something? And then we look at what happened with Penny and we're like,

00:38:47.260 well, that's why, because it's not worth it to a lot of people to risk their jobs, risk their lives

00:38:53.240 and go to jail because now self-defense or defending someone else is being criminalized. And that's a

00:38:59.280 really dangerous place to be. Yes. Well put. Well put. And by the way, in the criminal law, just to be

00:39:05.560 technical about it legally, there is such a thing called defense of others. And the theory of the

00:39:13.600 criminal law is if you come to the rescue of someone else, you're in the shoes, so to speak,

00:39:19.840 of the person being victimized. You have the same rights that they do to defend themselves. Those rights

00:39:26.900 are in effect transferred to you when you're acting to protect them. So yeah, you're right. It makes

00:39:34.680 people say, well, gee, look what happened to this guy, Penny. He tried to help out and they branded him

00:39:41.920 a criminal and prosecuted him for it. So sure, it discourages people from being good Samaritans

00:39:52.280 and trying to help their fellow human beings. And Lord knows we need more of that kind of behavior,

00:39:59.240 especially in the big city where everything is anonymous and you have no friends to help you.

00:40:05.440 You have to rely often on strangers. And I'm wondering what your kind of solution to this

00:40:12.480 recidivism thing is, because you talk about even in the title of your book, you said a proposal to

00:40:17.320 reduce incarceration while protecting the public. Because sometimes I think about this, okay,

00:40:21.200 someone like Jordan Neely, he had all these past arrests, but we don't believe in, you know,

00:40:26.400 putting someone in jail for the rest of their lives for theft or even assault. We don't believe

00:40:31.100 that that should be a life sentence. And so what is the solution besides just keeping someone in jail

00:40:37.100 forever? If this man and others like him has serious mental disorder, then we have civil

00:40:46.960 provisions, as they're called, non-criminal provisions, where we can hospitalize and institutionalize,

00:40:54.400 except that 30, 40 years ago, they closed all the mental hospitals. They closed all the hospitals

00:41:03.360 that provided psychiatric care. Not all of them, I'm exaggerating, but many of them. Well, this, I think,

00:41:11.440 is a big policy error because there are many people who need continuing care. Probably this Mr. Neely

00:41:22.400 needed continuing care. That's why he was arrested over 40 times. So I think it would certainly be a help

00:41:30.160 to the criminal justice system if people received mental health care instead of being left to their

00:41:39.320 own devices, left on the streets, where if they don't take their meds, they may be acting out,

00:41:47.180 they may have psychotic episodes, and they may harm themselves or others. So this is a very bad policy.

00:41:55.260 Set aside the criminal justice policies that we were talking about, the lenient prosecutors. This notion

00:42:03.980 that people who really need medical care should be left to their own devices, should be left free to do

00:42:11.820 what they want, is really a dangerous policy, a very unwise policy. People who are a risk to themselves or

00:42:24.620 others, serious risk, as a result of mental disease, they need to be placed in an institution for people 0.98

00:42:35.820 to get help, to get psychiatric help. And these institutions need to be reopened, revitalized,

00:42:46.540 and rebuilt so that we can get a handle on this problem, which is, as I say, plays into the criminal

00:42:54.860 justice issue because many of the people arrested, many of the people jailed, and even imprisoned are there,

00:43:03.500 in part because of mental disorders. So it would help us in terms of aiding the people who have the issues,

00:43:15.580 helping clear the streets of people who are mentally disabled, which is a large percentage of the so-called 1.00

00:43:23.340 homeless population, and also reducing the crime problem. Because when they commit crimes, the police, 0.99

00:43:32.060 of course, are called in. So I think it's win-win-win, and we need to reopen the psychiatric hospitals.

00:43:41.340 Yes. And obviously, there would have to be a lot of oversight when it comes to civil liberties and

00:43:47.020 things like that. It's especially difficult for those who don't have family advocating for them,

00:43:51.260 making sure that their best interests are being sought after. I do wonder even about this whole Jordan 1.00

00:43:56.380 Neely thing. I figured, you know, the guy probably doesn't have family. He's obviously homeless. He's on

00:44:02.220 the subway. He's harassing people. And then the family pops up when there is a television camera in

00:44:10.540 front of them and when there is money to be sought after. And I just wonder, where were you? Where were

00:44:16.060 you when this person was harassing and assaulting people on the subway and was arrested 44 times and

00:44:21.980 needed your support then? I mean, who knows? I can't completely judge them because I don't know

00:44:26.780 the entire situation. But now they've been able to hire lawyers and all of that. These people really

00:44:32.380 need, more than anything, some kind of familial support, someone who loves them enough to say,

00:44:36.940 no, I'm not going to let you live that way. I think the lack of support, lack of family structure

00:44:41.020 is also just a huge problem that exacerbates crime, it seems.

00:44:43.980 Yeah, I think, Ali, these people are so difficult to help and manage and care for,

00:44:54.220 you'd have to devote your life and your time. And, you know, people have their own families,

00:45:00.780 they have jobs. And if a loved one is in this terrible situation, it can be extremely difficult

00:45:09.340 on the family to care for them. And so you're right, of course, they just popped up at the last

00:45:16.060 minute. Maybe the lawyers encouraged them and said, you can make money off this. But the truth is,

00:45:23.900 these people need professional care. They can't be cared for by their families often. And, you know,

00:45:31.260 they're grownups. And if they say, I'm not staying here, I don't want to have anything to do with you,

00:45:37.260 I'd rather be out on my own. Well, what can you do about that? Not much.

00:45:41.820 Yeah. So, you know, I'm sympathetic to the families, too. But I take your point that there

00:45:49.260 should have been earlier interventions, but there's no place for them. If they put them in a halfway

00:45:55.340 house, they can leave on their own, at their own, you know, free will, they can leave. And then they

00:46:03.660 don't take their meds. And then we have psychotic episodes, crime and, you know, horrible situations.

00:46:10.860 You know, it's true access to real mental health services, especially where you can go live

00:46:16.220 somewhere. It seems like that's really only accessible for people who have just tens of

00:46:21.100 thousands of dollars to be able to spend. I mean, I know people who have had to get real help,

00:46:27.740 you know, rehabilitation and things like that. And I know how much it costs to go to a nice place

00:46:34.300 that is going to really take care of you and to really help you. I mean, it's true. Most of most

00:46:40.540 families, even if they want to help and can help, they can't, they just can't afford the help. And so

00:46:45.500 I agree. That's a huge, huge problem. Yeah, we really need to rethink our views. I mean,

00:46:52.780 I remember, I'm old enough to remember when they closed so many of these hospitals, Ali,

00:46:58.540 and the argument was, you know, they're abusive, they're mistreating people. And there were some

00:47:03.740 horror stories. There were. But of course, they were exaggerated. And the whole movement

00:47:10.620 to deinstitutionalize, as they called it, it snowballed. It gained a lot of traction,

00:47:19.260 in part because of these incidents that occurred. And then, of course, you even had the culture in

00:47:29.100 general, supporting this. I can recall the movie, maybe you've seen it on video, One Flew Over the

00:47:35.500 Cuckoo's Nest. Yes. Yeah, it's a classic, right? And I remember when it came out. And of course,

00:47:41.660 it, it, it, I'm not blaming the movie, obviously, but the movie presented what was then the prevailing

00:47:49.420 view, which is that these places restrain people and keep them from freely living their own lives,

00:47:58.140 living the way they want to live. But of course, you know, that was one side of the story. And it was not

00:48:04.380 the only side to the story. So yeah, so this turned out to be a very, a very bad policy choice. Yes.

00:48:13.980 And it's especially bad for big cities, as we see now with San Francisco, and cities where the weather

00:48:20.780 is warm, people are out in the streets all the time, camp, they camp in the streets. And what about

00:48:27.980 the public's right to use these public spaces, parks and streets? No consideration is even given to that

00:48:38.860 sometimes. Now, it's an awful policy, a big mistake, big mistake, but not too late. We were wealthy

00:48:46.060 enough, we could reverse this and start down a different road. Yeah. And hopefully, I think that

00:48:51.580 there is growing bipartisan support for that, because you don't have to be a Republican to say, I want to be

00:48:56.460 able to take my kid to the park in San Francisco without stepping over needles or getting my car

00:49:02.700 hijacked. I saw some viral threat on Twitter of someone, he took his kid to the park, he was gone

00:49:08.860 for 45 minutes, he knew that you can't leave anything in your car in San Francisco. But someone broke into

00:49:13.980 his car, glass all over the car seat. And then he, you know, calls the police, and he knows the police

00:49:19.660 aren't going to do anything. But just for the statistics, he just wanted to file the report. Well, even that is a

00:49:25.180 complicated process that takes hours to do. And so but then San Francisco will say things like, well,

00:49:30.940 crime is down. But that's probably because they don't even have the system in place to properly

00:49:35.660 report the crime. So that's a whole problem in itself. But I did just want to say something about

00:49:41.560 the psychiatric hospitals, because most of the things that we're talking about are the failure of

00:49:46.020 progressive policies. But it was Ronald Reagan, he was one of the people who really,

00:49:50.860 in California, in California, and then continued to push for the closing down of these psychiatric

00:49:56.620 hospitals. And that was 1980 was the, the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980. And then I just wanted

00:50:06.860 to see the, if there was any like coinciding timeline, I don't know if you know, it was inspired by this at

00:50:13.700 all. But one flew over the cuckoo's nest, which is a great film, by the way, that was 1975. So I'm sure

00:50:19.860 they were kind of happening simultaneously, as maybe I don't know, society in general had less

00:50:25.160 tolerance for these mental health institutions. But Reagan's policies in California, and then

00:50:30.780 nationally, and one flew over the cuckoo's nest, they do kind of overlap. So it's interesting.

00:50:35.020 It's interesting how that happened.

00:50:37.220 Look, I mean, you know, you probe any politician's position, and if he's been around long enough,

00:50:43.320 you're going to find him that he's taken some positions that may be embarrassing later on.

00:50:47.800 Joe Biden was the one who shepherded through the US Senate, the Crime Control Act of 1994.

00:50:55.540 Of course, he doesn't want to remind his progressive supporters about that, right? That was pretty strong

00:51:01.980 criminal justice bill. And he was the one of the leaders who got it through the Senate. So, you know,

00:51:09.700 if a politician has been around long enough, he probably has taken positions that embarrass them

00:51:15.300 nowadays. But yeah, hindsight is, you know, so what? It doesn't matter. We need to pick the right path

00:51:22.260 and stay on it, whether it's Republicans or Democrats. Right.

00:51:26.380 Okay, I want to talk about this migrant crisis. That's actually what we originally we saw your opinion piece

00:51:45.540 in the Wall Street Journal titled, This Isn't the First Migrant Crisis. That's why we wanted to have 1.00

00:51:51.380 you on. But then we just got into this interesting conversation, but they're not disconnected. I mean,

00:51:56.040 these things are connected in some way, just the systems in America and how they're failing and

00:52:00.540 things. But your main argument is that this is not the first migrant crisis. You're referring to the

00:52:06.020 end of Title 42, the expected surge of migrants. Of course, we've seen this over the past few years,

00:52:12.260 but especially concerned right now with Title 42, which was the remain in Mexico policy. Trump,

00:52:19.160 because of COVID, was able to say, okay, if you come here, you got to remain in Mexico until we

00:52:23.840 decide what to do with you, basically. So a lot of people are concerned that the migrant crisis is

00:52:28.380 going to get even worse. We're not securing our border. Mayorkas doesn't seem to care. What's your

00:52:33.480 take on all that? Let me preface this by saying I'm not really an expert on immigration, notwithstanding

00:52:42.220 that op-ed. And also, the Biden administration has come up with a new policy. It's very complicated,

00:52:50.020 actually. I read through it. I don't know it in detail, but it's a very complicated policy.

00:52:56.920 So they are trying to address the situation. But whether they can actually implement this policy,

00:53:05.360 part of which involves people staying in Mexico and applying for asylum when they are asylum applicants.

00:53:16.760 So part of this is borrowing from the Trump-era policies. Whether this will work or not

00:53:25.100 is a whole other question. Now, first, on the issue of whether illegal immigrants, let's call them

00:53:32.720 people who come here illegally, are committing crimes or contributing to the crime rise.

00:53:40.260 The answer is we don't know yet. And I know that sounds like a cop-out alley, but that's the fact.

00:53:46.400 It's very hard to get data on this sort of thing. It's hard because we don't separately track,

00:53:55.100 people who enter the United States illegally and offenders who may be of Hispanic heritage and

00:54:04.600 may have come here perfectly legally. We don't make those distinctions. And so it's very difficult

00:54:10.760 to say for sure whether illegal entrants have raised the crime rates in the United States.

00:54:19.700 Of course, one response to that is, well, it shouldn't really matter if they're here illegally. We don't 0.98

00:54:26.740 want them to be free to move about to the country. And I agree with that. But whether that contributes to

00:54:34.840 a crime increase, we don't know. Now, one of the things that I'm proposing for the criminal justice system,

00:54:42.040 and this has application to the immigration system as well, is to use electronic monitoring much more

00:54:50.520 than we've been doing. I think it would have an application to people who are released from prison

00:54:58.640 and are put on parole. They have a very high recidivism rate. Over 80% are rearrested after they're released.

00:55:08.000 And a tracking system, an electronic monitoring system, would be very useful for this cohort.

00:55:15.920 But also, immigrants who are released into the United States who are asking for asylum and who are

00:55:25.040 released into the United States pending their hearing, they should also be tracked. And there

00:55:30.320 was something in the Biden administration's proposal providing for this. And I'm in favor of this. This is

00:55:37.920 an expanded use of electronic monitoring as well. And we should be able to track them because otherwise

00:55:44.400 they don't show up for their hearings. And they just skip and get lost into the vast United States.

00:55:52.960 And then, of course, we don't find them again. Or we only find them again if they're arrested and

00:56:00.080 have committed a crime. So I think tracking ex-prisoners, tracking migrants who are asking for asylum,

00:56:10.080 most of which, by the way, are really bogus claims, they are unable to get asylum, at least

00:56:16.880 not the way the law is written. These people, it seems to me, would be perfect subjects of electronic

00:56:26.240 monitoring. So I think it would be useful in the criminal justice system, and it would be useful in

00:56:33.040 the immigration system. Very useful, very helpful. Right. Yeah, I think that that's a really good

00:56:40.240 point. So we don't quite know if there is a direct causal relationship between the surge of migrants

00:56:47.360 and crime. Now, I mean, we could probably deduce that like any surge of new, like a new crowd of

00:56:56.720 people. Anytime something, a place is more densely packed, especially with people we don't know their

00:57:03.520 background, they're not familiar with the laws. It tends to be just kind of common sense that yes,

00:57:09.680 this is going to cause more crime, more chaos, fewer resources. But you're saying that the data

00:57:16.560 doesn't necessarily prove that yet. It's early days. That's what I'm saying. It's early times. We don't

00:57:23.440 know. By the way, what you're saying is historically absolutely correct. When there are migrations into

00:57:30.560 the cities of the United States, and the group entering, the migrant group, has high crime rate 1.00

00:57:38.880 backgrounds, it does contribute to higher crime rates in the destination area. So you're absolutely

00:57:47.440 right about that. And it also overtaxes the criminal justice and other systems in the destination 0.74

00:57:55.920 location. So we've seen this throughout history, throughout American history. We just don't know

00:58:02.240 if this migrant group from South America, Latin America, Central America falls into that category.

00:58:10.560 Many of them are really just economic migrants. They're here because they think they 1.00

00:58:17.360 can earn more money and get better jobs, which they undoubtedly could. And some are also here

00:58:24.480 because they think they could stay long enough for their children to have better opportunities for

00:58:29.840 advancement, which they could as well. Of course, that doesn't make their entry lawful, and it doesn't

00:58:38.560 really meet the requirements for asylum. Asylum is supposed to be granted for people who are being 1.00

00:58:44.720 persecuted, politically persecuted, for instance. So that's not really applicable. But yes, you're

00:58:52.720 absolutely right to say that when you have a migration of sizable proportion, and the migrant group has high

00:59:03.680 crime rates, or had high crime rates in its country of origin, or its locale of origin, then they will raise the

00:59:11.680 crime rates in the destination locale. That is historically correct.

00:59:16.720 Right. And a lot of people on the progressive side will say, well, you know, citizens commit

00:59:22.000 crimes too. We shouldn't highlight illegal immigrants. But of course, the difference in a crime committed 0.96

00:59:28.080 by an illegal immigrant and a crime committed by a citizen is that the crime committed by an illegal 0.85

00:59:32.960 immigrant was, I mean, theoretically completely preventable by another law that should have 1.00

00:59:39.680 prevented them from even being here in the first place. So it's just an even bigger failure of the

00:59:44.320 system, which is why I think it matters even more when those crimes do actually occur.

00:59:50.160 Yes, you're so right. That's absolutely correct. Obviously, it's preventable because they should

00:59:54.560 never have been here in the first place if they've entered illegally. Now, by the way, there are other

00:59:59.680 policies we should start seriously thinking about to arrest this issue. And that is, for instance, if

01:00:08.240 really they're economic migrants looking for work. Now that we have a situation where there's very 0.97

01:00:15.600 little unemployment in the United States, it's around 4.3% or something like that, there are many jobs

01:00:23.440 that are open and unfilled. And here we have people who do want to come here and work. So, wow, why not match

01:00:32.960 up the people who want to immigrate to the United States for work and the job openings? It seems like a

01:00:40.960 no-brainer to me. It's time to really beef up our legal entries with visas that enable people to stay

01:00:52.000 here for short times, a few years perhaps, and work in the United States, work in fields where we need

01:01:01.040 the labor. We can use them. By the way, the Europeans are doing this. In the Wall Street Journal just today,

01:01:08.000 there was an article to that effect. Why can't we do it too? If we find we need people to work in certain

01:01:16.000 fields, why not give people who want to be in the United States and have these skills or don't have

01:01:24.160 skills, as the case may be, why not give them an opportunity to get these jobs and hold these jobs?

01:01:30.560 They won't be taking jobs away from Native American citizens because they're not taking those jobs.

01:01:37.520 That's why there are job openings. So this is another missed opportunity as far as I'm concerned.

01:01:45.440 Of course, we both know the reason for all of these really errors in policy. And that is because

01:01:54.400 the country's polarized, the politicians are polarized, and they can't seem to reach any

01:02:00.320 compromises. And in the immigration field, this has been going on for years and it's a disaster.

01:02:06.400 Yeah. And there's a big debate on the right about even legal immigration. How much legal immigration

01:02:12.640 should we actually support? Republicans don't even necessarily agree on that. So I just want

01:02:17.440 to acknowledge the debate. We won't even get into all of that. But I do think that everyone can agree

01:02:22.560 that Florida, for example, they just have decided to require all employers to use E-Verify, which checks

01:02:30.880 the immigration status of all the people that they're hiring. And that, in addition to what you're

01:02:35.120 talking about, electronic monitoring for people who are in the country awaiting all of that,

01:02:39.440 I think that that could be really good. There are things to be put in place in states and on

01:02:45.760 the national level that could actually help. But you're right. There's very little motivation.

01:02:50.560 I think especially on the Democrat side, I actually saw that 71%, I believe, of illegal migrants end up

01:02:57.440 in Republican areas, which is just interesting. I don't know if there's anything behind that. It's just

01:03:02.320 an interesting thing to note. So it's chaos. And you know what, it does kind of relate to the whole

01:03:08.080 like New York City subway thing, all of these feeling like you are not being taken care of,

01:03:14.640 feeling like no one really cares, the people in charge who are supposed to care about

01:03:18.640 the general welfare and security and stability of the country. They don't seem to care. And they seem

01:03:24.160 to be inducing chaos. It leads to a sense of distrust and restlessness and angst in the public that can

01:03:32.400 only lead, I think, to further violence, further polarization when you don't feel like the government,

01:03:39.200 your own government has your back just for the general safety of the border or crime. I mean,

01:03:44.960 bare minimum government responsibilities. Then you're looking at a very unstable future, in my opinion.

01:03:52.320 Yeah. Yeah, I think it is alienating to use a word that political scientists often use. It's very

01:04:03.200 alienating when people have a sense, right or wrong, but in this case, I think it's right,

01:04:09.520 that the governments are just not doing their job. I mean, if they can't control people entering

01:04:18.400 into the country illegally, you have to wonder, right? If they can't punish the criminals on the

01:04:26.640 streets, it doesn't give you a lot of confidence in the local system. I think that this explains why

01:04:36.160 a lot of people are really alienated from the system, probably don't vote at all, think that the

01:04:44.240 system is really run by a cabal, by some people who are engaged in a conspiracy.

01:04:54.320 You get these kinds of theories, which are kind of wacky, in my opinion, because people are so alienated,

01:05:02.560 because people are so convinced that the government is just ineffective. And I don't mean just the

01:05:11.760 federal government. So yeah, I think it really is dispiriting. It's a kind of malaise situation,

01:05:20.000 to use a word that some previous president got in trouble for using it. That was Jimmy Carter,

01:05:25.200 by the way. I'm not even sure he used that word. Anyway, it is a dispiriting and disheartening

01:05:32.880 situation. And the answers are, we do need to compromise. And I think there probably is a

01:05:42.400 pretty substantial group, I hope so, of Democrats and Republicans, of ideologically conservative and

01:05:50.720 ideologically left Americans, who would like to see the government compromise and come up with

01:05:58.800 proper policies. Well, crime is a different story, because that's really locally run. That's state and

01:06:06.320 municipally run. But certainly the border issue, they ought to be able to reach a compromise. But look,

01:06:12.800 they're going to push this debt ceiling issue right to the last days, probably. They are having a hard time

01:06:19.280 compromising even on that, even on meeting the debts of the United States. I mean, that's really scary,

01:06:27.280 isn't it? Yeah. But here they are, working up to the very last minute. And of course, they won't go

01:06:34.480 over the cliff, because I think each side, the Republicans and the Democrats are afraid of being

01:06:40.320 blamed for it if they do. Yeah. So I think they'll come up with something. But it's sort of disheartening

01:06:48.320 to see them having, you know, an inability to agree even on that, even on those fundamental things.

01:06:56.640 Yeah. Good point. You're right. Good point. Oh, yeah, go ahead. No, no, I was just gonna say,

01:07:01.520 good point. I think you put your finger on it. People, it really is disheartening. And as I said,

01:07:09.360 it's alienating when people expect these basics to be satisfied, and they're not.

01:07:18.240 Yeah. You know, I think when it comes to maybe a local level, but national level too,

01:07:23.680 because things seem just so chaotic, it seems like everyone kind of feels that, especially in these

01:07:29.680 cities. But, and then, you know, the right and the left feel that for different reasons. I think the

01:07:34.480 right is a special, they feel the moral chaos that we see going on. The left might feel it for,

01:07:40.240 you know, whatever reason. But I think in the end, the anti-chaos, whoever is perceived as the

01:07:47.160 anti-chaos candidate, especially when it comes to the president in the next year, is going to be the 0.88

01:07:52.960 one who wins. Last time, Trump was not seen as the anti-chaos president, even though I think that

01:07:58.380 Biden's policies are very chaotic. But he presented himself as a vessel of normalcy, as a vessel of

01:08:07.160 unity, and just calming the waters after the turbulent Trump years. And I think in the end,

01:08:14.400 that's what people are vying for. Give us some normalcy. Calm the waters. I think even Democrats

01:08:19.300 would say, yeah, lock these people up in jail. I'm tired of not being able to walk in downtown San

01:08:24.800 Francisco. So we'll see. But thank you so much, Mr. Latzer, for taking the time to come on. I do

01:08:30.300 encourage everyone to get your most recent book. You've written several, but The Myth of Overpunishment,

01:08:35.000 a Defense of the American Justice System, and a Proposal to Reduce Incarceration While Protecting

01:08:40.260 the Public. Very, very fascinating. Thank you for taking the time to come on.

01:08:45.840 Well, it was a pleasure. It was really an interesting conversation. I enjoyed it. Thank you.

01:08:50.180 Yes, sir. Thank you.

01:08:54.800 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 17, 2023

Ep 807 ｜ 'Loving the Foreigner' Means Opposing Illegal Immigration ｜ Guest： Barry Latzer

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