00:10:22.380So it's just there's higher returns to scales, higher returns to your labor if you have more skills, if you're more educated, the economy is changing.
00:10:32.340It's not like the 1950s anymore when anybody can get a job in a factory because now to work in a factory, you have to have a ton of skills.
00:10:38.660So I think it's more due to a factor of the change in economy. And we actually see that in places like Japan, which led in very, very few immigrants. The same wage dynamics are playing out there as they are in the United States. And that's highly suggestive evidence that there is just a bigger shift in the economy. And immigration really isn't playing that big of a role in it.
00:10:59.720interesting okay cool what about then the concern that you have people okay say what's happening
00:11:08.420in europe at the moment in some areas in europe where there's an influx of people with a different
00:11:13.240religion coming in and that's changing what's going on in some of these cities parents for
00:11:18.220instance and i probably come at this from more of a right-wing angle but that's what i've like read
00:11:24.040and what i've seen so i think that some of the concern about immigration lies in oh are we going
00:11:28.640to have an influx of people that, like I said, don't share American values? And then is that
00:11:32.780going to end up being a problem in the future? Right. So that's that's an important point. I
00:11:37.120actually wrote a whole book about this because it's, I think, potentially the most devastating
00:11:42.040counterargument to my position. So the book is called Wretched Refuse and it's published at
00:11:47.000Cambridge. And the idea is and I also want to say, you know, immigration is different in different
00:11:51.760countries, right? They have different issues and it depends on where the immigrants are coming from.
00:11:55.660partly. It also depends on the institutions in those countries. So to give you an example,
00:12:01.280immigrants in Europe usually have access to an enormous amount of means-tested welfare benefits
00:12:07.920immediately after coming into these countries. And in the same token, these countries have a lot
00:12:13.200of labor market regulations that make it very difficult for lower-skilled immigrants to get
00:12:19.000jobs, to get like a step up, right? So you have this bad situation where you have a high
00:12:24.600unemployment situation for immigrants and they get a lot of welfare benefits which makes it less
00:12:29.460likely that they work and then they're sort of by law kind of not unintentionally but unintentionally
00:12:36.100through these welfare benefits and public housing sort of like segregated and housing complexes in
00:12:41.340parts of the city where they don't interact um with natives in that area so i think it has more
00:12:47.460to do with that whereas in the united states you have a situation where there's very little access
00:12:53.540of new immigrants to means-tested welfare benefits.
00:13:20.600There's not an opportunity to culturally assimilate.
00:13:23.040And that also affects the types of people who are going to go because the type of person is going to go to a country where you have to work and pull yourself up is different than the type of person who's going to go to a country where they can live on welfare and these other issues for a long time.
00:13:36.640And then there's also just like a cultural difference, right? Like in the U.S. and Canada and Australia, you know, these are immigrant societies where their identity is not based on blood or borders or culture nearly as much as in the United States, Canada and Australia, where we have this idea of what it means to be an American.
00:13:54.740for instance is not based on like the color of your skin or your blood or anything like that
00:14:00.140but it's much more of sort of a creed it's much more of an ideological or civic identification
00:14:05.140and the nation states of europe that's a little different right it's based on your membership of
00:14:10.480these tribes right all right can you claim like a you know a descent from the frankish tribe that
00:14:15.780settled france in the year like 500 can you trace your ancestry back in some ways to like the ancient
00:14:22.460Gauls and Vercingetrics. That's just much more tied into it. So I have a cousin who is half
00:14:30.140Iranian and half Norwegian. And this is just an anecdote, but she lives in Norway. And when she
00:14:36.100says she's Norwegian, Norwegians correct her and say, no, you're something else. Whereas here,
00:14:42.060if an American were to say, oh, I'm not an American, I'm like Iranian, Americans are kind
00:14:47.300of offended to go, no, you're American. And that's just like a very opposite thing. It's
00:14:51.820starting to change a little bit in Europe because they are becoming more immigrant societies,
00:14:55.460but that's something that can only really happen once the definition of what it means to be German
00:15:00.860or French or Norwegian sort of grows to encompass the immigrants and their descendants.
00:15:08.560That's very interesting. Okay. This is why I like these episodes. This is good.
00:15:14.240Yeah. It's really like a superpower, actually. It's one way, one of many ways, I think,
00:15:19.980country United States is quite exceptional. And it's something, you know, I think Canada does
00:15:23.640well. I think Australia, New Zealand, all these countries do, I think, pretty well on this idea.
00:15:28.380And it's something that the rest of the world is starting to learn and pick up on. And they're
00:15:33.840going to have to adopt no matter what happens in the future. Yeah. OK, let me see. What about the
00:15:43.840issue right now? Like what percentage of immigrants right now in America? I don't know if you know
00:15:48.000this number off the top of your head, but are illegal. About 25 percent. Really? Yeah. So
00:15:54.120there's about 45 million or so immigrants in the United States and somewhere between about 10 and
00:16:01.02012 million are currently illegally present in the United States. About half of them entered
00:16:08.880legally, actually, and overstayed their visas. So they became illegal immigrants that way.
00:16:14.280the other half, uh, crossed the border, uh, or otherwise entered unlawfully and stayed
00:16:20.400around 12% or something like, um, well around 10 to 12 million, about 25%.
00:16:26.600Okay. Wow. Okay. And just to put that in perspective, right? Like that is a vastly
00:16:32.820greater percentage of the immigrant population that's illegal in the U S than any other country0.59
00:16:38.960in the world vastly greater yeah vastly and is that because of the border between the u.s and
00:16:45.960mexico so i think there's two reasons one of it is we're basically the only developed country
00:16:51.040that borders a developing country so if you take a look at europe like the land borders for instance
00:16:58.040i mean they basically all border countries that are pretty developed uh by comparison you know
00:17:03.240canada borders the united states which is developed australia doesn't have a land border
00:17:06.920neither does New Zealand. So that's, I think, part of it. So there's this enormous wage pull,
00:17:11.500like your sort of median Mexican worker coming to the U.S. who has a high school degree
00:17:15.500can expect a threefold increase in income by coming here. And that takes account of
00:17:21.020and that includes cost of living. Right. So that's an enormous economic pull
00:17:24.720for these folks to come here and to walk from Central America. And I think the second reason0.95
00:17:29.520is people don't realize how difficult it is legally for the vast majority of these people
00:17:36.280to come here. I mean, if you want to come here on a green card and you are not related to an
00:17:40.660American or another legal immigrant and you're not highly skilled and you're not one of a few
00:17:46.180refugees or asylum seekers, there is basically no way for you to come here on a green card.0.69
00:17:50.520Like there is no green card category for a low skilled worker unless you're related to an
00:17:56.040American. And so like if you apply these laws that we have right now, these immigration laws
00:18:00.480back in time, virtually no Americans would be here today because very few of us, our ancestors
00:18:06.580would have qualified to come here legally. Do you think that's reasonable given the
00:18:11.880population of the U.S. right now? No, no. I mean, what's interesting, right, is the U.S. does have
00:18:17.920330 million people. It's the third most populous country in the world, but it's also a very large
00:18:22.980country. And so when you take a look at the sort of number of people per square mile in the United
00:18:29.660States, we could have, you know, five to six times as many people here, and we'd have the
00:18:35.980population density of some Western European countries, you know, that are very, you know,
00:18:40.240wealthy, stable, industrialized, successful countries. So I don't think there's really
00:18:45.880any sort of limitation in terms of land area or space or economic system. I mean, one of the great
00:18:52.120things about free markets and capitalism, and I don't pretend the U.S. is a free market utopia
00:18:58.340or anything like that, but we do have relatively more free markets than most other countries in
00:19:02.740the world. But one of the great things is having more people come in who are producers, who are
00:19:06.980consumers, who are innovators, who are entrepreneurs, or just want to spend their money here, you know,
00:19:12.160renting and living, that increases the size of the economic pie. And that increases the amount
00:19:18.180of wealth and productivity, right? It's not like a redistribution. There's not a fixed supply of
00:19:23.440wealth that's being distributed around. They actually grow and increase the amount of wealth
00:19:28.120And that's one of the, you know, one of the secret powers of free markets. And it's one of the reasons why the world is so much more, so much wealthier than it is today. It's than it was, you know, for our ancestors and just the relatively recent past.
00:19:42.960And so there's really no limitation on this, except what the market puts a limitation on.0.88
00:19:49.340I mean, if there's no demand for workers, if there's no demand for foreigners to come here and start businesses, then they won't come.0.96
00:19:55.480But there is obviously an enormous demand, which is why people break our immigration laws, because our laws make it so difficult to come.0.88
00:20:02.800I mean, one of the things that people don't realize about American immigration laws is that compared to other OECD countries,
00:20:09.200other rich countries in the world, America's laws are more restrictive than most of them.
00:20:14.960So Western European countries, Canada, Australia, all allow in many more immigrants as a percentage
00:20:21.100of their population than the U.S. does. So for Canada, it's like three times as many annually
00:20:26.060compared to the United States as a percentage of the population. Australia, it's about five times
00:20:31.240as many. Switzerland, it's six times as many. So the U.S., you know, I think we're rightly proud
00:20:36.060of our immigrant ancestry and our history and our values in this sense. But when you take a look at
00:20:42.600current American laws, you can't come away with any impression except that it's highly restrictive
00:20:49.280and much more restrictive than other countries that don't even think of themselves as having
00:20:53.560a proud immigrant heritage. It's interesting talking to you. So you have the view, I think,
00:21:00.180that you bring more people in and then hooray, we have more helpful people here, more smart people
00:21:06.220to help improve the country. And the other side is you bring more people in and you have a whole
00:21:10.800bunch of unhelpful people you have to take care of. I think that's a fair characterization,
00:21:16.240right? And I think this comes down to just like a basic difference in how you view these things.
00:21:23.500Like I don't view immigration as charity. And this is something where I disagree with some
00:21:27.960my left-wing friends who are pro-immigration, you know, the way they talk about is, oh,
00:21:31.800immigration is us helping the world or us helping people. It's like, it's not helping. It's the U.S.
00:21:37.980government getting out of the way so that immigrants can help themselves. And so then1.00
00:21:43.720Americans can also benefit by working with them and selling to them and hiring them. So it's a
00:21:49.880mutually beneficial and voluntary exchange, right? It's like in the same sense where if, you know,
00:21:56.240I talked to my neighbor who's a native born American. Right. And I say, hey, I'll hire you a
00:21:59.960kid for ten dollars to mow my lawn. Well, what's the difference between that? Everyone realizes
00:22:05.360that's like mutually beneficial and positive. But all of a sudden, if I go and ask somebody
00:22:10.460from Mexico, hey, do you want to come over and work for me and I'll pay you ten dollars to mow1.00
00:22:14.800my lawn? All of a sudden, that's like viewed as bad. And there's really no economic reason why
00:22:20.880that is. There's no good economic justification for that. You know, there might be other effects.
00:22:26.080Right. If that person is a criminal. Yeah, that's bad. And I am in favor, of course, and blocking, you know, criminals, national security threats, people who have serious communicable diseases from coming to the U.S.
00:22:37.580But other than that, there's no good economic reasons to stop that.0.96
00:22:43.200I guess the concern there would be, for some reason, if you're paying an illegal immigrant, then the money they're earning isn't staying in America.0.84
00:22:49.860Maybe it's being shipped off somewhere else.1.00
00:22:51.440So some of that definitely is right. Whether it's an illegal immigrant or a legal immigrant or something. I mean, a lot of them do send a good amount of their money back to their home countries. But based on how sort of the international economics works, those dollars have to also come back to the United States in the form of American exports to those countries. Right.1.00
00:23:13.580So an American might hire, let's say, a worker in the United States to work at his business, that immigrant might send half of that money back to his home country, let's say Mexico, and then his family in Mexico uses that money to buy better education or to buy a better house, etc.
00:23:30.880But then that money, as it works its way through the Mexican economy, eventually makes its way back to the United States in the form of Americans exporting like iPads or cars back to Mexico, right?
00:23:41.180So, and it's important to know like that initial wealth, right?0.51
00:23:44.520Like that initial creation of that wealth of me or that American hiring that Mexican
00:23:48.980immigrant creates goods and services that would not have existed otherwise.0.98
00:23:53.740And as a result, that's what makes us wealthy, right?
00:23:56.480What makes us wealthy is not like the dollar number on our bank accounts or anything like
00:24:00.580that, but it's what you can do with that money, right?
00:24:02.800And we have access to goods and services.
00:24:51.940So means tested welfare benefits are welfare benefits for people who are poor, which is sort of different from like entitlement programs, which are like Social Security or Medicare, which are for people who are elderly.
00:25:05.400You know, so they sort of just qualify for it based on, oh, they worked a certain number
00:25:09.580of years and they're of a certain age, so they get these benefits.
00:25:13.260Meanwhile, means-tested benefits are for people who are in poverty and they are intended to
00:25:19.420help people get out of poverty or at least make poverty, you know, more, I don't know,
00:25:28.760I didn't realize that, I should have thought about this probably before this podcast, but
00:25:33.020I didn't realize that different countries bring in different sets of people. So it's not that
00:25:37.720everyone is specifically looking for skilled labor. Some people are doing it, like you said,
00:25:41.980out of charity. And so you said right now, when, when people, when the America brings immigrants
00:25:47.520in, you know, what percentage of that is specifically skilled workers? So when you take
00:25:53.200a, when you take a look at sort of the there's different portions of the U S immigration system.
00:25:58.420So if you look at green cards and green cards are lawful permanent residency, that means that if you're here for five years, you don't commit any crimes, then you can become a citizen if you want to.
00:26:10.560It's what we sort of traditionally think of like immigration.
00:26:12.900And there's basically four major portions of this. 70% are family members. About 5% are what are called diversity visa, which is basically like a lottery for 50,000 people who are, you know, they have some skills, but they're not coming for their skills necessarily.
00:26:32.660There's another about 5% or so who are refugees and asylum seekers who are fleeing persecution.
00:26:39.740And then you have somewhere around 7% to 10% who are specifically coming to the United States because they are high-skilled workers.
00:26:50.680And when you take a look at the numbers, this is somewhere around 70,000 to 80,000 per year.
00:26:56.780Some people will say it's 140,000, but that's the total number of people who can get these
00:27:02.120green cards for high-skilled workers, but that includes their family members, because
00:27:05.860you have to count their young children and spouses against that.
00:27:08.580But for the workers themselves, it's about 70,000 to 80,000.
00:27:13.200There are temporary visa programs called the H-1B for high-skilled workers.
00:27:21.420They're able to work and get some extensions sometimes.
00:27:23.660And we allow in about 85,000 of those types of people per year to work temporarily in those programs. And that's for firms. What's interesting is, you know, I work at a nonprofit research institution. There's an exception to the H-1B that says there's no numerical limitation on the number of people who can come in and work at nonprofit research institutions.
00:27:49.620So what's interesting is people like me and people who work at universities, I am more exposed to foreign high-skilled competition than just about anybody else in the U.S. labor market, to put that in perspective.
00:28:06.120That's so interesting. Why would that be? Specifically for nonprofits?
00:28:09.960Specifically for nonprofits who are doing research. So that was just an exception that was built into the law in 1990. And the idea was, you know, we don't want to limit the sort of temporary hiring of skilled people who are doing research because, you know, Congress is like, hey, research is pretty good. We want more research. It helps. We don't want to artificially limit that.
00:28:33.080And so this is sort of was expanded to the idea like nonprofits who do research should have, you know, access to these people. Now, there's a whole bunch of regulations in there. You know, you have to pay a minimum salary of $60,000 per year. You have to check a bunch of other boxes that costs thousands of dollars, sometimes upwards of $10,000 in legal and government fees to do this. Right.
00:28:53.720So it's not like you just get to pick and grab anybody you want. It's highly regulated. But when it comes to that, people like myself are the most exposed to this foreign competition. And a fairly large number of my colleagues are either currently H-1B employees or enter the United States initially as H-1Bs and then they're eventually able to get citizenship in the United States.
00:29:21.340yeah well so i'm speaking so i'm speaking from a position of experience right like i i do face
00:29:28.180this type of like competition it's not like i'm in an ivory tower right where i'm saying oh you
00:29:32.820little people you have to compete no i'm not saying that at all this is something this is
00:29:36.940something that i live uh day in and day out and it's something that i think has made me a better
00:29:42.500um a better employee at least i hope so and it's something where i've i've i've gained a lot of
00:29:48.160professional acquaintances and colleagues who have made me just a much better and more productive
00:29:55.060employee as a native-born American. What about the argument that an increase in immigration
00:30:03.320increases crime? Is there any truth behind that? So we've taken a look at this. Americans have0.61
00:30:09.500studied this. I've studied this going back over a century. There have been numerous government
00:30:14.220conditions that have taken a look at this. The academic evidence is clear and consistent that
00:30:20.240immigrants in the United States, and this is specific to the United States, I just want to
00:30:25.280be clear about that, are much less crime-prone than Native-born Americans, much less likely to0.86
00:30:31.740be incarcerated, much less likely to be convicted of crimes than Native-born Americans, much less0.98
00:30:37.060likely to be arrested. And that goes for legal immigrants. And interestingly enough, it goes for1.00
00:30:45.420illegal immigrants as well. So that kind of makes sense to me, though, because if you're already
00:30:52.160here legally, the probably the thing you want to avoid most is getting arrested. Absolutely. Because
00:30:57.420if you get arrested for a crime and you're convicted of a crime and you're an illegal0.99
00:31:01.480immigrant, you serve your jail sentence. And then on top of that, you get deported. So it's like a0.85
00:31:06.100double punishment. Oh, right. So, so it's like, okay, I came to the U S I got three times higher
00:31:12.700wages. If I commit a crime, I'm going to go to prison. I'm going to lose those years of wages
00:31:18.600and prison is terrible. And at the end of it, I'm going to be deported back to my home country
00:31:22.620and I'm, my income is going to fall by, you know, two thirds of 75%. So that's an enormous
00:31:28.600disincentive. And I think also another way to view it, right? Like even when there weren't
00:31:33.160deportations in the United States. In the 19th century, there were hardly any deportations in
00:31:38.220the early 20th century, too. It's also, I think, the type of person who decides to immigrate
00:31:43.420is different than the type of person who doesn't. The type of person, right, and this is something
00:31:48.620like when we're talking about immigration from Muslim countries or other places going,
00:31:52.740it's not the average person from those countries who comes. It's not like a random grab bag. It's
00:31:57.520people who decide to leave. And those people are different. They're thinking about the long-term
00:32:02.080for themselves and their family they're concerned about their sort of upward mobility they're
00:32:07.260planning ahead they're probably more cosmopolitan and tolerant to begin with they don't really care
00:32:11.560that much about living in the society where people speak a different language or have a
00:32:15.340different religion they're just like less concerned about that than other people from behind and those
00:32:19.620people i think are just generally much less likely to want to commit crimes than native-born
00:32:26.260uh americans are now this data may differ between countries of course this is one of the things to
00:32:32.740take account of this is uh i'm just talking about the united states in general um but the problem
00:32:39.440is european crime data are awful i mean awful i've spent a lot of time looking into the details of
00:32:48.160european crime data and they do not differentiate in many countries between you know native-born
00:32:54.300criminals foreign-born criminals uh just to give you an example in many european countries if you're
00:32:59.700an immigrant and you become a citizen they count you in the same category as native-born people0.99
00:33:04.440for crime and that makes it hard to figure out right but in the united states we keep that all
00:33:10.100separate because people have been worried about crime and immigration forever here so we have the
00:33:14.180data and we categorize it um you know and and one of the criticisms i get right is well you don't
00:33:20.300know about illegal immigrants necessarily. But one of the things I was able to find out is on
00:33:25.940U.S. states, U.S. states is where most criminal prosecutions are, because most criminal laws
00:33:31.040are on the state level. And 49 out of 50 American states do not keep data on criminal convictions
00:33:39.380or arrests by immigration status. They don't. But one state does. It's a great state, the great
00:33:45.880state of texas they keep this data it's a great state to study it has the second highest population
00:33:51.500of illegal immigrants of any state in the country it borders mexico it has republican government for
00:33:58.000the last 27 years so there's no reason why they would hide or obstruct this data in any kind of
00:34:04.240way and so when you take a look at that you see that the illegal immigrant criminal conviction
00:34:11.140rate is 37% below that of native-born Americans. And it even works out that way when you take a
00:34:19.600look at specific crimes like homicide. It's about 25% below native-born Americans. You take a look
00:34:25.880at sex crimes, it's below. You take a look at property crimes, it's below. And then legal
00:34:30.000immigrants are even lower than that. They're about 60% below the native-born American criminal0.98
00:34:35.360conviction rate. And that is something, you know, I wish Native born Americans had a criminal1.00
00:34:42.340conviction rate as low as illegal immigrants. This would be a much safer country if that were the1.00
00:34:47.840case. Wow. OK, that's really interesting. I don't think I knew that. That's a huge difference.
00:34:55.680Gigantic. I mean, it's it's it's it's gigantic. And this is something where government commissions
00:35:31.080OK, OK. So then here's another question. Going back to skilled workers, do you think it's reasonable that it's only seven to 10 percent of immigrants that are let in that are skilled? Should that be dramatically increased?
00:35:45.140yes so i think a lot of the so i think overall the numbers should be increased but um if we were
00:35:53.580to just increase the number of skilled workers i would take that deal in a heartbeat um the thing
00:35:59.680that is is interesting about the u.s immigration system is that basically it's an employer-driven
00:36:05.120system so the employers select high-skilled immigrants and then they sponsor them so the
00:36:11.340employers know like the workers who, it's not necessarily the government saying they have to
00:36:15.060be this way or that way. You know, they have to have this skill, not that skill. It's the employer
00:36:19.280figuring that out. And that's a pretty good system for selecting sort of these unmet, these
00:36:24.260unmeasurable characteristics of workers who are really going to succeed. So I would love to increase
00:36:29.840that number dramatically. I mean, I think if you get a degree from an American university and you're
00:36:34.000foreign born students, you should have a green card immediately. You should be allowed to stay1.00
00:36:37.660work, start a business if you want to in the United States. There should be, I mean, I don't
00:36:42.400think there's any good reason for a numerical cap on skilled immigrants who want to come here to the
00:36:46.600United States. And even more insane, there's no entrepreneur visa. If you want to come here and
00:36:53.260start a business, there's no visa for you. You can't do it. And that's crazy. Like, why would1.00
00:36:58.800we have that? What about the, okay, so I'm Canadian, right? And I'm planning on staying
00:37:06.180in the u.s because i don't want to go back to canada because canada is scary right now
00:37:09.160but what we've been looking into is e there's an entertainer visa so that that's what i'll
00:37:17.360that's what i have at the moment an entertainment visa so that's easy but i heard about something
00:37:22.780called an e1 visa i think which at least i thought that that was a business visa that might be that
00:37:28.660you're allowed to break like move a company that's already made into america so maybe it's just that
00:37:34.400But an E-1 visa definitely lets you do something business related.
00:37:59.900Now, there is something called an investor visa, where if you have a million dollars and you want to make an investment in the United States, then you can do that.
00:38:10.960And it's basically how that works is you basically have to lump your money together with a bunch of other people who have a million dollars on this visa to build like a hotel or something.
00:38:19.480So it's not like you can come here and start like a tech firm.
00:38:22.120Right. And so there are ways to get around this with different visas.
00:43:21.040And I think the second issue that a lot of people are concerned about is sort of like cultural assimilation.
00:43:26.600You know, do immigrants and their kids integrate and assimilate to American cultural norms?
00:43:32.540And the evidence on this is very positive.
00:43:36.000When we take a look at research from Jacob Vigdor and other economists who study this on issues of language, religiosity, civic participation, family size, income, education, etc., immigrants overwhelmingly by the third generation, so that's, you know, the grandchildren of the immigrants themselves, are indistinguishable from native-born Americans who have been here longer.
00:43:58.660and this has been the general finding for a long period of time some immigrant groups assimilate
00:44:02.480more quickly you know first generation the immigrants are the second by their kids some
00:44:06.800take a little bit longer maybe third the fourth generation but it's going very well and one of
00:44:11.940the best ways that it happens is actually through intermarriage that jump starts it right so like
00:44:17.040just to give you a personal anecdote like my um my paternal grandparents are iranian immigrants
00:44:22.260the united states so my father was born here so he's second generation um and um he married a
00:44:29.840woman uh my mother who um whose ancestors go back several generations and as a result like
00:44:36.240i don't know anything about irani culture right i i don't speak farsi i'm not a muslim
00:44:42.600i have never been there i have no interest in it i know probably a little bit more about the
00:44:47.760history than some people right i don't even like the food that much it's just okay and that's like
00:44:52.200a pretty like ordinary normal unexceptional tale of immigrant assimilation like my father
00:45:01.620uh you know bless him i love him he claims to speak farsi he speaks it like he's five years old
00:45:07.700with a wisconsin accent and uh it's hilarious so when you take a look at like third generation
00:45:13.760hispanic immigrants in the united states these are the grandkids of a hispanic immigrant who
00:45:18.920spoke Spanish, 78% of them are English only speakers. 22% claim to be bilingual, but I bet
00:45:28.160they speak Spanish about as bad as my father speaks Farsi and 0% claim to be Spanish only1.00
00:45:35.0200%. That's crazy. I guess that makes sense. Cause even if I look at like my ancestry,0.73
00:45:40.380so all my great grandparents were immigrants, so it's back that far, but I mean, we're like
00:45:46.940Canadian, right? And my parents were certainly Canadian. And my grandparents maybe had a tiny,
00:45:53.800tiny bit of the language, but not really. It is pretty quick in North America, at least
00:45:58.380from my anecdote experience. And that's the general experience, right? I think we look back
00:46:04.640at American history or Canadian history or whatnot, and we have this idea, at least when I
00:46:09.860was learning history, the Irish came in the 1850s and 60s, and we're reading about all these problems,
00:46:15.160And then we turn the page in the history book and it all worked out fine.
00:46:18.620But when we turn that page, that's 70 to 100 years that passed.
00:46:24.140And what's really good is taking a look at the current rates of assimilation of immigrants.0.86
00:46:29.400It is virtually identical to immigrants from over 100 years ago.0.85
00:46:32.740And so the pace of assimilation, the gaining of education, the gaining of experience, the1.00
00:46:37.920self-identifying as being an American, the religious traditions, the family size, all
00:46:43.760these measures that really, really matter, it's the same. And when you take a look at surveys
00:46:48.000about, say, like patriotism, you know, how much do you love the United States? Do you think it's
00:46:52.560the best country in the world? Immigrants either have the exact same opinions about patriotism1.00
00:46:57.860as native-born Americans, or they're slightly more patriotic. And I think part of the reason is0.98
00:47:02.940they understand that the places that they came from are not that good. So it's easy for me,
00:47:09.520like when I was a kid once, I was complaining to my immigrant grandfather about something0.99
00:47:13.520in politics, right? Like I was upset that the Republicans didn't cut budgets enough in the
00:47:18.6801990s. And he was like, yeah, Alex, you know, that's something to be upset about. And I understand
00:47:23.460you're mad about politicians lying, but no matter what you want to say about it, this is a lot0.99
00:47:27.580better than in Iran. Let me tell you. I'm like, I can't argue with that. Okay. Okay. Well, Alex,1.00
00:47:36.920that was enlightening and interesting. If people want to find you online, where should they go?
00:47:41.680So I think there are two sources. One is at the Cato website. That's C-A-T-O dot org.
00:47:48.640And the other is on Twitter. And that is at Alex Narasta, all one word on Twitter. And you can find
00:47:56.080all of my work on those two websites. I'm also on YouTube and everywhere else. So just Google me
00:48:02.160and Google Cato and you'll find all of our work. Great. And that's Alex N-O-W-R-A-S-T-E-H
00:48:09.300on twitter yes got it okay thank you very much for coming on thank you for having me this episode
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00:49:29.280mark krikorian welcome to my podcast glad to be here thanks for having me
00:49:37.940before we get started can you give a brief background about who you are and what it is you do
00:49:42.700i run the center for immigration studies i'm executive director i've been doing this
00:49:47.880longer than i care to remember i got my master's degree in international relations
00:49:53.600didn't get hired by the CIA, but that's OK. Actually, it worked out better. And I kind of
00:50:01.160dumbed into the immigration issue. But once you get, you know, the bug, once you get bitten by
00:50:08.980the immigration bug, you never let it go. So I've been running the center since 1995. And, you know,0.99
00:50:15.540I'm a writer and editor and I sign the checks and do all of that kind of administrative stuff as
00:50:21.500well. So if you could sum up your view on immigration as in too many immigrants, we need0.99
00:50:28.000more. Immigration is bad. Immigration is good. What's the short form? The short answer is1.00
00:50:34.920immigration is too high. But why? The problem is that mass immigration is not compatible1.00
00:50:45.280with the goals and characteristics of a modern society in a way that wasn't necessarily true
00:50:51.220100 or 200 years ago. In other words, the immigrants really aren't all that different.
00:50:56.020Yeah, some of them come from different countries, but that's not really the important difference.
00:51:00.320The important difference is us. We have a post-industrial knowledge-based economy. We have
00:51:05.620a welfare state. Technology shrinks the world, which is a good thing in a lot of ways, but also
00:51:12.520complicates assimilation. So all of the concerns people have about immigration really are all just
00:51:19.700different facets of the same thing. They're kind of like that image of blind men feeling different
00:51:25.980parts of the elephant, and they don't realize it's all the same elephant. Well, it's the same0.97
00:51:30.000kind of thing. If you're worried about whether it's security or assimilation or, you know,
00:51:35.540welfare use, the economy effect on workers, it's all the same thing. Immigration was something1.00
00:51:44.920that 100 or 200 years ago in a pre-modern conditions was still, frankly, created a lot
00:51:52.860of controversy and tumult and problems for people. We were able to work those through
00:51:58.040much more easily than we are today. And again, it's not because the immigrants are somehow
00:52:03.660inferior to your grandma who came from Sicily or anything like that. It's that we have changed
00:52:09.580fundamentally. Okay. And we have most definitely changed fundamentally, but how do we know that
00:52:17.220we're at the point where we should be slowing down immigrants versus 100 years ago, given all1.00
00:52:22.900the space in America? Well, I mean, space doesn't really count because immigrants don't spread1.00
00:52:28.660themselves out half an inch thick across, you know, sea to shining sea. They're moving into,1.00
00:52:33.820you know, the same places everybody else lives. So and, you know, even in open spaces, I mean,
00:52:39.520this is a sort of separate argument, but I mean, not a separate argument. It's part of this broader
00:52:43.420argument. We value things like, you know, access to nature, preserving open spaces and what have
00:52:50.300you. And, you know, the more people you add, inevitably, you're going to be cutting down
00:52:53.760more trees and paving over more land. And, you know, to some degree, that's just part of what
00:52:59.580human civilization does. But immigration is driving that in a way that is different today,
00:53:07.820because we are, as John Kennedy said, when he wrote the book Nation of Immigrants,
00:53:12.600we've moved past the stage of, you know, settling and pioneers and, you know, covered wagons and all
00:53:19.840the rest of that. We're now a settled, mature society. And, you know, we have the largest
00:53:25.800number of immigrants ever. We're at about 47 million foreign-born people. Now, obviously,
00:53:32.220our population is much larger too, but the percentage of foreign-born people in our
00:53:38.560population is just almost at the record level it reached before immigration was reduced in the 20s.
00:53:46.060And, you know, it's when you've had enough to eat, you take a break and we need a pause at the very least to enable the new people and the people who are here to knit together to work out the the effects on workers on wages and what have you.0.97
00:54:11.480Because if you get one batch, one large batch of immigrants, that will eventually the effects of that person on wages of those people on the wages and job opportunities of Americans will eventually work themselves out.0.98
00:54:26.220But what we're doing is taking in more than 1 million people from overseas every year.1.00
00:54:33.560So basically, we need a breather is really what it amounts to.
00:54:38.420And that breather doesn't mean no immigration.
00:54:43.540And I can go into detail on that if you want more sort of what my outline would be.0.66
00:54:48.960But we need a breather so that we can catch our breath, as it were.
00:54:54.440and then we can reassess in a generation or so what it is we want to do with immigration going
00:54:59.920forward so the guy i just spoke to who was an economist he said that you bring more people
00:55:06.120this was his view just kind of was this in erasta yeah okay yeah you're familiar with him yes that's
00:55:13.860good uh but so then you're probably familiar with his view but for the audience his view was
00:55:18.460basically the more people you bring in particularly skilled labor the more jobs are created
00:55:24.040the more money gets spent. And overall, it's just a positive good for society.
00:55:30.080Yeah, you know, I mean, I actually would prefer to go even step a little further back from that
00:55:36.020argument. I'll get to that argument of this as well. But the basic difference I have with
00:55:42.300the libertarian perspective that Narasta from Cato articulated is much more fundamental than
00:55:51.020just the question of economics, because the perspective that Alex represents is that everyone
00:55:58.760in the world has a right, literally a moral right to move to the United States with the certain
00:56:05.520exceptions we might make for terrorists and what have you. In other words, everybody can come
00:56:10.140except those few that we identify as not being allowed to come. The way I look at it, and this
00:56:17.120is, frankly, most regular people's point of view, is that nobody has a right to move here.
00:56:23.260But we make exceptions for particular people we do let in. So either everybody gets to come in
00:56:28.960and we make some exceptions, or nobody gets to come in and then we make some exceptions for those
00:56:34.020people who do get to come in. That is a basic difference of values and opinion. You've really
00:56:41.440got to get past that before you get to the point of arguing what the effect on workers is going to
00:56:47.840be. But there's no question that more people make the economy bigger. Bangladesh has a bigger
00:56:57.040economy than Belgium, for instance. But nobody would say that Bangladesh is better off than
00:57:03.920Belgium. The fact is that one of the points of immigration policy is to protect American workers,
00:57:14.940but most specifically, those who are less able to thrive and prosper in the kind of dynamic
00:57:25.580modern economy we have, whether it's people who have less education. People just aren't that
00:57:30.840bright. There's always half of people are below average, whether it's people who are recovering
00:57:36.180addicts, ex-cons trying to clean up their act and start a new life. Anybody that employers
00:57:42.860would kind of rather not hire is harmed by immigration. The people who benefit are, frankly,0.99
00:57:51.440people like Alex and you and I who have college educations, and we earn reasonably good wages,1.00
00:57:57.320and immigrants aren't really competing with us. But as an American, in thinking about
00:58:05.260immigration policy, I need to take into account not only my bottom line, whether I'm going to be
00:58:12.360able to hire servants cheaper or what have you, but rather the concerns of all of my fellow
00:58:18.880Americans. And those people who are sort of at the bottom rung for whatever reason,
00:58:27.320of the economic ladder are people who deserve our special consideration.
00:58:34.140And immigration policy is a torpedo aimed at their life opportunities.
00:58:42.140Hmm. Okay. This is a very, no wonder you've been stuck in this topic for so long.0.67
00:58:47.420It's really interesting because you're weighing the benefits to different people, right?0.99
00:58:52.160So your position is America, Americans, even if they're less able to work, but especially if they're less able to work, they need to be taken care of properly and they shouldn't have people from other countries kind of usurping that position, making their life more difficult.0.98
00:59:06.180Yeah, because immigration is just like any other government policy.0.99
00:59:14.640And to put some numbers on those costs and benefits, I'm not going to bore people too
00:59:19.440much, but the National Academies of Sciences did this magisterial report where they looked,
00:59:25.740you know, it's hundreds of pages long.
00:59:27.560They looked at all different aspects of this issue.
00:59:29.520And on the economics, the conclusion they came to is that importing0.52
00:59:35.600immigrant labor does in fact create a economic net benefit to the country. The round numbers,0.87
00:59:46.020then this was several years ago, so it will have changed, but round numbers, they said
00:59:49.860about $50 billion in extra income, extra earnings for Americans overall. And so that sounds like a
00:59:58.500lot. I'd take half of that and be satisfied. But when you sort of figure out, remember,
01:00:04.900net is the plus and the minus put together. And then what's the result? What they did is they
01:00:09.880looked at how do you get that number? And they said, immigrant labor creates increased earnings
01:00:17.540for the people who benefit from that labor, amounting to $550 billion. It's a lot of money.
01:00:24.360Even for a congressman, that would be a lot of money. But it comes at the expense of people who
01:00:31.680compete with them who lose $500 billion in earnings. So just to sort of spell out the math,
01:00:39.440again, roughly speaking, $550 billion plus, but $500 million minus for less skilled workers and
01:00:47.620others. And so you add those together, you end up with a net benefit of $50 billion. Again,
01:00:52.300not anything to, you know, to ignore, but the question is really a moral one.
01:00:59.640Is it right to engage in that kind of reverse Robin Hood government policy? And I just think
01:01:06.640it's wrong. Wouldn't it benefit a society as a whole, though, to operate in the way that you
01:01:13.340and as harsh as it sounds, bring in more skilled people and then reduce the number of less skilled
01:01:19.760people i mean overall if that improves society is that not a net benefit what are we doing with the
01:01:27.640less skilled people are they going anywhere uh apart from the moral question um where are they
01:01:35.820going what are we paying them off with welfare to sort of here take your opioids and here's your
01:01:40.200check and your ebt card and leave us alone we'll have the police come if you cause trouble that's
01:01:44.680just wrong. I mean, I don't want to live in that kind of society. And the other thing this
01:01:50.160National Academies of Sciences report found, because what we were talking about is the
01:01:57.100economic benefit, just the sort of dollars and cents from earnings and wages. The other thing
01:02:04.220they looked at was government services. And what they found is that that entire benefit of roughly
01:02:11.680$50 billion is totally wiped out by the extra social service costs that we have to pay because0.93
01:02:19.500poorer people, they're working. But in a modern society, a person with a sixth grade education1.00
01:02:26.380is not very likely to be able to earn enough money to feed his own children. So the taxpayer
01:02:31.220does it for him. And about half of immigrant-headed families use at least one federal0.95
01:02:37.620welfare program. It's not because there's anything wrong with them. They're not
01:02:40.800plotting to get food stamps. Nobody's sitting in Guatemala saying, boy, I want to get my hands on
01:02:48.460some American food stamps. They're coming here. They're working. They may be working two jobs.
01:02:52.940But because they're a mismatch, because they're 19th century style workers coming into a 21st
01:02:59.080century society, even though they get jobs, those jobs just aren't going to pay very much.
01:03:05.120And Congress can pass all the laws it wants about minimum wages and what have you. Fact is,
01:03:10.800you can't pay somebody more than the economic output they're creating. And so a poorly educated
01:03:18.040person, immigrant or American, just isn't going to earn much and isn't going to be able to support
01:03:23.360himself and his family in a way that a civilized society like ours thinks at least there should be
01:03:28.340a minimum. So taxpayers are going to do it. And I'm not against a social safety net. I'm a
01:03:34.620conservative personally. I think it should be more tightly run. It should be more responsible,
01:03:38.920but it's not going anywhere and it shouldn't go anywhere. And as Milton Friedman said,
01:03:44.420you can't have open borders and a welfare state. Now, Milton Friedman and other libertarians
01:03:50.520wanted to get rid of the welfare state and open the borders. OK, well, we're not getting rid of
01:03:55.100the welfare state. And even if you wanted to go and do that first, then call me and then we'll
01:03:59.680talk about immigration. OK. What if what if immigration looked more like not bringing
01:04:08.900in any unskilled workers and only bringing in the skilled workers? Sure. It's a good question.
01:04:15.400There's two parts to that. First is, most people who want to immigrate are in fact less skilled
01:04:25.460because once you're living a reasonably prosperous, stable, satisfactory life in your
01:04:32.920own country, why would you pick up and move somewhere else? Some people do that,
01:04:37.360But it's not generally a mass phenomenon. That's number one. Number two, it depends. Remember Bill Clinton said it depends on the meaning, what the meaning of the word is, is in that notorious interview of his 25 years ago.
01:04:54.320Well, it depends on what the meaning of skill is. What do you mean by skilled? Do you mean somebody who can read and write? Do you mean someone with a college degree from a third world community college? Or do you mean Albert Einstein?
01:05:11.040And the higher you set the bar for skills, the smaller the number of people who could qualify.
01:05:19.800So I'm completely in favor of genuinely best and brightest on the planet immigration.0.97
01:05:27.040But humanity doesn't create that many Einsteins every year.0.76
01:05:31.800So a small number of genuinely top people on the planet in their fields, I'm all for.
01:05:39.860That's not that many people. And one more twist to that. Interestingly enough,
01:05:48.920skilled immigration actually can create assimilation problems, which people wouldn't expect
01:05:53.780because almost all skilled immigrants, wherever you sort of draw that, wherever you set the bar
01:05:58.860of skills, somebody who's gone to college in a foreign country, they probably have some English,
01:06:04.380even if they're not native speakers, even if they didn't major in it, they probably know some
01:06:08.160English. So skilled immigrants are going to be more likely to speak English. They're more likely
01:06:13.680to be acclimated to urban life. You know, they're not you're not living on dirt floors and huts.
01:06:20.380You know what I mean? These are people who at least know the basics of modern life. So in that
01:06:25.560sense, you'd figure, well, they're probably more likely to be able to assimilate. And in those
01:06:30.300respects, that's true. But interestingly enough, and we found out this in earlier waves of
01:06:36.300immigration. If people are coming already educated here, they've gone through a school system,
01:06:44.220a socialization process in their own country, they have developed a national identity in a way that,0.98
01:06:52.660frankly, peasants haven't. In other words, they've gone and learned about how, you know,
01:06:58.400the sort of the glories of their nation and how they're part of this national enterprise. And then
01:07:03.460they come here and they may fit in as far as getting a job and driving on the right side of
01:07:09.080the road. But assimilation, real assimilation is a psychological and emotional process. Do you
01:07:15.020adopt this new country as your people? And that's just, frankly, less likely to happen
01:07:23.280with people who are highly educated. Whereas if you get, for instance, a Mayan speaking
01:07:29.380speaking person from the highlands of Guatemala, doesn't know much Spanish, frankly, let alone
01:07:34.620English, but also doesn't think of himself as a member of a nation in a modern sense.
01:07:44.420He likes his village, his region maybe, but not a nation. That's where we could come in
01:07:50.020and have in the past nationalized, Americanized to those people so they keep their
01:07:56.320village traditions and cultural practices and cuisine and what have you, but patriotically
01:08:03.460become Americans. We saw that 150 years ago. The problem, of course, is that our schools are not
01:08:09.500doing that very well at all. They're teaching American kids and immigrant kids to hate America.1.00
01:08:14.200So anyway, the point is that skills, changing immigration to skills is not some kind of silver0.94
01:08:22.240bullet that fixes everything. Hmm. This is very interesting. Okay. This is great. So then do you
01:08:30.140know the statistics behind one of the, one of the concerns I've heard from more conservative people0.99
01:08:34.100are more immigrants equals more crime. You know, the statistics behind that?
01:08:38.600No, that's actually not true. Um, and this is something, um, I mean, it's, I won't say it's
01:08:44.160the opposite or anything. Narasta tries to sort of flip that argument and say it's the other way
01:08:48.860around. The fact is the data is not very good, but it is pretty clear that immigrants themselves
01:08:53.920are not uniquely more likely to be engaged in crime. The reason the issue comes up and people
01:09:01.480kind of who, you know, look at this, regular folks, they confuse things, is that those immigrants
01:09:10.280who do commit crimes need to be booted out of the country. And the left is actively trying
01:09:18.760to prevent that and make sure that illegal immigrant criminals are able to stay. So the0.99
01:09:23.360issue is not that illegal immigrants are criminals. It's that those illegal immigrants who are1.00
01:09:29.640criminals need to be identified and removed from the country. And sanctuary cities, the whole point1.00
01:09:36.480to a sanctuary city is to protect illegal immigrant criminals. However many, if there's one illegal0.59
01:09:43.540immigrant who's a criminal, that's obviously one too many. That person needs to go. And that's the1.00
01:09:49.360issue. It's not that immigration itself is some kind of unique contributor to crime. The one place
01:09:57.040that is kind of an exception is organized crime. And the reason that's true is that
01:10:05.580criminal organizations don't have courts and contracts and nobody's enforcing the rules.
01:10:12.720There needs to be some kind of internalized code that would cause you to stick to whatever
01:10:20.280the rules are of that criminal organization.0.97
01:10:23.740And being a foreigner in a country, in other words, if you're Sicilian moving here, you're0.99
01:10:31.660sticking together and agreeing to those rules and operating by them among yourselves so0.99
01:10:37.320that organized crime among immigrant groups actually has a unique advantage. Whereas if0.91
01:10:43.420it's Americans, and there's Americans involved in organized crime, but it's not the same thing
01:10:48.500because the same bonds of loyalty, fear of betrayal, and the rest of it don't exist because
01:10:53.440you could always hop on a bus and move to Seattle or something and start over again. Whereas that's
01:10:58.040hard to do if you're a member of a sort of tighter knit immigrant group in a foreign country. And
01:11:07.400this isn't, I'm not even talking about just today. That's true today with Chinese or Central1.00
01:11:12.100American organized crime, but it was true of Russian organized crime, Sicilian, what have you.
01:11:17.040In fact, there's this whole book on immigrant organized crime and the first chapter of it,
01:11:22.320I forget the title of the book, but the first chapter of it was Australians in San Francisco,
01:11:26.440So apparently, and I'm talking way back, you know, in the 19th century, were in organized.
01:11:33.460They were dominating organized crime there, at least for a while.1.00
01:11:36.380So that part of immigrant criminality is real.1.00
01:11:41.460But when you look at crime overall, statistically, immigrants aren't especially likely to be criminals.1.00
01:11:48.700OK, interesting. So say we cut down on immigration.1.00
01:11:52.760What do we do about the fact that apparently a quarter of immigrants are illegal?
01:11:58.440Yeah, about a quarter of immigrants are illegal. And, you know, I'm kind of a squish on amnesty.
01:12:04.680I'm open to the idea of fixing an old problem, sort of starting fresh. But only if you fix the
01:12:14.740problem that created this illegal population in the first place. In other words, the approach0.54
01:12:20.880we've had all along, and this was from the 1986 amnesty, the big amnesty that President Reagan
01:12:26.600signed, and every proposal that's followed since then, is that it starts by amnestying people
01:12:34.660and then promises in the future, cross their hearts and hope to die, that they'll enforce
01:12:42.580the law so we won't have more illegal immigration. Well, that's just a lie. I mean, it's proven to0.95
01:12:47.240be a lie. It was, I have to, I don't blame the people in back in 1986 who agreed to it. 35 years
01:12:54.520ago was the first time we'd done anything like that. And, you know, it seemed like it was worth
01:12:59.420a try, but we've run that experiment, if you will, like a social experiment. Sorry, just before I
01:13:05.260continue, what exactly was that experiment? What does that mean? In 1986, after a number of years
01:13:11.620of going back and forth in, you know, different legislation in Congress. Congress passed and
01:13:18.680President Reagan signed what's called the Immigration Reform and Control Act. And what
01:13:23.200that did was amnesty, about 3 million illegal immigrants is what it ended up being, who were
01:13:29.060already here in exchange for, for the first time ever, making it illegal to employ illegal immigrants.
01:13:37.900because before 1986, the law specifically said you were allowed to employ illegal aliens.0.96
01:13:44.720So that's the magnet that draws people. I mean, people come because they have relatives. There's0.89
01:13:49.480a lot of reasons people come, but getting a job is the chief one, is the main thing.
01:13:53.960So if you can weaken that magnet, you can reduce illegal immigration. It's never going to go away,
01:13:59.900but you can make it a much smaller thing. Well, the problem is the amnesty happened up front.
01:14:04.920But the enforcement never happened. It was a lie to begin with. The people who were pro pro amnesty knew that they were going to Welsh on the deal, do everything they could to prevent, to undermine it. And we now have, what, four times as many illegal immigrants as we did back then.
01:14:21.080So if we're going to talk about amnesty, and I've written about this for years that I'm open to it, but we have to have in place, up and running, the systems to minimize future illegal immigration.0.66
01:14:36.920And not to, I'll give you the three-point plan, but it's only, I'll only give you a few seconds on each one.
01:14:42.420First thing is, we need to have universal use of what's called the e-verify program.
01:14:48.200It's online, free program run by the government, where when you hire somebody and you take their info for Social Security and IRS, which you have to do anyway, you just verify it online.
01:15:00.240Is that name real? Does it match the Social Security number? Do those match the date of birth? Is it real?
01:15:06.600Now, you can still fool it, but it's a sort of basic good governance thing to make sure that you are hiring somebody who's authorized to work.
01:15:16.780The program exists. About half of people hired, new people hired every year are screened through
01:15:23.580the system, but the other half aren't. And that's where the illegal aliens are. So that needs to be1.00
01:15:26.820up and running for everybody. Two, we need a check-in, check-out system for foreign visitors.
01:15:34.080And I say that because close to half of new illegal aliens in most years are people who
01:15:40.420came in legally. They had a tourist visa, student visa, whatever it is, and they just never left.
01:15:46.780And we don't know who has left. So if you don't know who has checked out and gone back to their home country, you don't know who's still here. We do the check in part a lot better than we did. 9-11 really woke people up about that. And Congress got serious. Government got serious. The check in part for foreign visitors, screening them and sort of registering the fact that they've come here is a lot better than it used to be.
01:16:12.480the check out part is still kind of a joke. Congress mandated an electronic system to do
01:16:19.700that checkout 25 years ago. It still hasn't happened. They made some little attempts at it.
01:16:25.820It's still not in place. So that's number two. That has to be up and running before you can say,
01:16:30.840okay, we fixed the problem. Now let's clear the decks. And the third thing you have to have0.93
01:16:35.320is sanctuary cities have to be banned by federal law. Because the whole point to a sanctuary city
01:16:42.980is not that it protects immigrants or something. What it does is when local police arrest somebody,
01:16:51.900say for dealing drugs or beating up his girlfriend or driving drunk, everybody that gets arrested,
01:16:58.760their fingerprints are scanned. It's all done electronically now. It's not when I was a kid,
01:17:02.860They still had on TV, you know, ink. You take the fingerprints with ink on paper. It's all electronic. It's all scanned now. When the fingerprints are scanned, everybody who's arrested, it goes to the FBI and now it goes to DHS. That's relatively new in the past few years.
01:17:17.740So now Homeland Security knows when an illegal immigrant has been arrested.
01:17:23.400And what a sanctuary city means is that that city prohibits telling or prohibits cooperating with ICE and handing over this person.
01:17:34.000Say he's a drunk driver, but and they arrested him.
01:17:37.900There's no question about it, but they didn't have good evidence or they've got too many other cases to trial.
01:17:41.860So they're not going to try it. They're going to let him go.
01:17:43.700Well, ICE can say, hey, can you hold on to this guy for 48 hours so we can get him and deport him? Sanctuary cities say basically give federal government the finger and say, no, we're protecting criminals who are in the United States.
01:17:56.900So anyway, that's the third thing that has to be in place, not promised, but in place.
01:18:23.320with the American people have, you know, graced me with this opportunity. And I will, you know,
01:18:29.620endeavor the rest of my life to make myself worthy of it. And we should never talk about
01:18:33.680there being illegal aliens, that person being an illegal alien again. But it needs to we need to
01:18:39.280have something in place. So we don't have a mass illegal immigration 10 or 20 years from now. We
01:18:45.800have another debate about amnesty okay so one question you said if you come here your passport
01:18:54.680stamped you have some sort of visa and you just stay there's no system in place that tracks how
01:18:59.360many days you're here what nothing that tracks you when you leave nothing that even i remember
01:19:05.500talking to a democratic senator once uh he was uh i forget who it was uh he was from delaware
01:19:11.420wasn't joe biden um and he said when he was i think he was former governor he said that they
01:19:17.020had some kind of program um when there was some kind of i don't know whether it was a uh welfare
01:19:23.340issue or something but they would text you say hey you're you know your hearing date is coming up or
01:19:29.580whatever it is in other words we don't even do that and he was saying well just doing that would
01:19:33.380get half the people who overstay their visas to leave because we would be telling him hey uncle
01:19:37.920Sam's paying attention to you. They know, you know, he knows you're here. So make and, you know,
01:19:42.940if we did something like that, should be a text that says, hope you're enjoying your stay in
01:19:46.900America. You know, you've got one week left on your period of stay is what it's called when you
01:19:52.160get at the airport and they stamp your passport. Make sure you leave on time, because if you don't,
01:19:57.380you know, it'll be hard to come back in in the future or something like that. Just doing that
01:20:03.120would in itself reduce visa overstaying significantly because it would be clear
01:20:09.600that somebody is paying attention. Right now, nobody's paying attention.
01:20:15.280So what if, okay, this is coming from a Canadian perspective. So we've got the type of visa where
01:20:20.380you can basically come in, you can't work, but you can stay for, I believe it's up to six months.
01:20:24.900Yeah. Six months is what we do too, usually. Yeah. Yeah. I assumed because every time you go,
01:20:31.940they're like, have you been here for over six months? Or, you know, how many days have you
01:20:34.740been here? I assume that was some formality that they were just asking me as like a trick question
01:20:39.180or something, assuming that there was something on their computer that said this person has been
01:20:43.700here for, you know, 140 days or something, but they're just looking at stamps and a passport
01:20:49.100and nothing's been. Basically. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's what it amounts to. I
01:20:54.040mean, you know, keep telling the truth. I encourage you to tell the truth, but, but yeah,
01:20:58.200it's not hard to fool our immigration system, not because they're stupid, but because it's designed0.99
01:21:05.000to not be particularly tight or well run. Interesting. Okay. Another question. Sanctuary1.00
01:21:12.700cities. So what are those, those, what are those exactly? Are they areas of places?
01:21:18.940Well, it's usually it's some jurisdiction. It could be a city. It could be a county.
01:21:22.900it could even be a whole state like California, that the law, and there's different versions of
01:21:29.020it, but what it boils down to is that the law enforcement in that jurisdiction is not allowed
01:21:36.120to cooperate with ICE. And now the way this is often presented is that our police aren't
01:21:42.760immigration agents. That's the federal government's business. Yeah, okay, well, that's true.
01:21:47.140ICE doesn't want police, local police, to be walking around the neighborhood saying,
01:21:52.740hey, Paco, where's your green card? Police aren't interested in that. ICE doesn't want people to do
01:21:58.680that. What the practical effect is that when the local police arrest somebody, that person
01:22:06.460will not face, they will protect that criminal from immigration consequences. If he is, for
01:22:14.560instance, if he's an illegal immigrant, ICE doesn't necessarily know about every illegal immigrant.
01:22:20.720I mean, if you snuck by the Border Patrol, nobody saw you. There's no record of your ever having been here. If you got arrested, you know, you may not pop up on ISIS computers, but most illegal immigrants either have come in legally, maybe they got stopped once by the Border Patrol, thrown back, and then the second time they made it so that they're in the system.
01:22:40.940In other words, they could have been deported, formally deported where they go through the whole court system.
01:22:46.680And if they come back, that's a felony to come back after being deported so that most illegal immigrants who get arrested have some kind of paperwork, some kind of record in DHS's computers.
01:22:59.820And what a sanctuary city means, sanctuary policies mean, is that those local or state governments are protecting illegal immigrants or protecting immigrants of whatever kind from the immigration consequences of their actions.
01:23:16.580And that's just wrong. It has nothing to do with protecting ordinary people. And when you press the sanctuary city people on this, they'll say, yeah, nobody should be deported.
01:23:26.900And if you're a murderer, you should go to jail. And then when you finish your jail term, you should just be let go and allowed to stay here because no one should ever be deported.
01:23:35.320There's even a hashtag not one more on Twitter, which one of the advocacy groups was pushing pretty actively in the past.
01:23:43.400And the point being that they don't think anyone, no matter how criminal they are, should be deported.
01:23:48.820It's not that they were saying criminals should just always be let go, but that if they're prosecuted, they go to jail when they finish their jail term.
01:23:58.280The way the law is supposed to work is they're handed over to Homeland Security and they're thrown out of the country.
01:24:03.680But these sanctuary city folks think that, you know, any convicted criminal who finished serves this term is an illegal immigrant.
01:24:11.720He should just be let to let go to go and live as an illegal alien again rather than be deported.
01:24:16.960Did I did I miss any of the main arguments? Is there anything else you want to talk about before I ask you where people can find you online?
01:24:26.380No, I think that's the main one is that the problem with immigration is not the immigrants. It's that we have changed. Well, let me just does one other sort of way of illustrating that.0.91
01:24:36.760I wrote a book a number of years ago making this argument. And when I sent the draft to my editor,
01:24:42.940the kind of the thing I opened with was the metaphor. And she made me take this out. So I
01:24:48.420always add it. I always mention it just to sort of get back at her. The metaphor I used was
01:24:53.020doughnuts. Immigration is like doughnuts. When you're seven years old, doughnuts are good for1.00
01:24:57.000you. You need the fat. You need the sugar. Your brain is growing. Your body is growing. It's good
01:25:02.880for you. When you're 57 years old, you can't eat donuts like that anymore. There's nothing wrong
01:25:08.040with the donuts. They're the same donuts. Maybe they're jelly donuts instead of crullers, but
01:25:11.880they're still just donuts. What's changed is you, and you're not sick. You're not broken.
01:25:17.240Your metabolism has changed, and so you need to change your diet. In a sense, this is the same
01:25:24.780thing where the metabolism of the body politic has changed. The immigrants aren't worse. We're
01:25:31.080not sick or broken. We've outgrown the ability to successfully deal with mass immigration.1.00
01:25:39.340And we need to adjust our policies. The federal immigration program is just that,0.99
01:25:46.420a federal government program. It's like farm subsidies or small business loans or the Air
01:25:52.340Force. And sometimes it may be bigger. Sometimes it should be smaller. That's what the debate
01:25:58.600should be about, and not sort of in these apocalyptic moral terms where anybody who
01:26:04.180critiques it is a, you know, an evil, racist, xenophobe, blah, blah, blah. You've heard all
01:26:09.920of that stuff before. This is a government policy. We need to debate it, have a normal debate. I
01:26:15.480probably won't get everything I want, but that's the way it is in democratic politics. But we need
01:26:20.380to debate this rather than make it some kind of, you know, apocalyptic issue.
01:26:25.960Yes, I 100% agree. I would say most issues out there need to be debated. Otherwise,
01:26:32.280what are you going to do about it? Yeah, well, exactly. Yeah,
01:26:35.280no question about it. Okay, Mark, where can people find you if they want to find you online?
01:26:40.120The Center for Immigration Studies. I'm the executive director. We're online at cis.org.
01:26:45.920We have a blog with new postings every day. We also have a weekly podcast called Parsing
01:26:51.840immigration policy it's on our website but it's also in all the usual podcast places
01:26:56.380and if you have a taste for snark and sarcasm i'm on twitter at mark s as in steven mark s
01:27:04.500krikorian okay thank you very much mark that was interesting