WEBVTT - A Post American Society - Mark Krikorian talks with A&G 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:02.199 You don't hear much about the border unless you're watching 0:00:02.240 --> 0:00:05.080 Fox News or listening to some AM talk radio. But 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:08.920 we're setting records every single month. I'm sure our next 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:11.760 guest has the numbers at hand, but they're very large 0:00:11.840 --> 0:00:14.960 numbers of people coming across and staying, as there have 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:18.959 been for years. By the way, I always like to 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:22.200 point out that Gallup polling has been pretty consistent that 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:28.280 close to nine of Americans want secure borders close. Obviously, 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:33.080 that includes a lot of people from every political strip. Now, 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:36.360 beyond securing the borders, how many people you want to 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:39.239 come in from? Where is where we get into an argument. 0:00:39.240 --> 0:00:42.960 But that's fine, That's absolutely fine. Why we can't secure 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:45.519 the borders though, when almost everybody wants it and it 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:48.599 leads to tragedies like we had the other day when 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:51.360 all those people died horrific deaths in the back of 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:56.400 that truck. We have been saying, administration after administration, both parties, 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:59.000 for a very long time. If you come to America, 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:00.680 if you try to get across the order decent change, 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:02.280 you're gonna get across. And if you get across, you 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:04.760 get to stay. And if you stay, we're gonna take 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:07.000 care of you no matter what health care, food, whatever, 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:09.520 or let you work where. We won't really cracked down 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:11.800 on the whole whether or not you've got an I D. Stuff, 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:13.920 We'll let you be here. We've been sending that message 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:15.480 to the world for a long time, and of course 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:18.440 we get this result. That's my opinion. Let's hear more 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:21.360 from somebody who deals with this for a living. Mark Krikorian, 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.600 we've talked too many times over the years, Executive Director, 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:29.240 Center for Immigration Studies, Mark, thanks for joining us today. Well, 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:31.360 thanks for having me. Could you hit me with a 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:35.000 quick statement of what you guys want? What? What? What 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:38.160 would be your if you could, if you were king 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:41.759 and rule the world? What would you like to see happen? Well, 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:43.520 the first thing is you've got to enforce whatever the 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:46.800 immigration laws are. As you suggested. I mean that that 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:50.320 should go without saying. But as far as legal immigration goes, 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:54.880 the short version is that a modern society like ours 0:01:54.920 --> 0:01:58.720 has outgrown immigration. Immigrants aren't different really from a hundred 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:00.720 or two hundred years ago, the same kind of people. 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:04.080 What's different is our society. We have a post industrial 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:07.400 knowledge based economy, we have a welfare state. The world 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:12.120 has shrunk and so we need to downsize the federal 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:14.400 immigration program because that's what it is. It's just a 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:18.080 government program like the Air Force or the Small Business Administration, 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:21.120 and it needs to be smaller, uh than it is now. 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:25.320 And we take a million sometimes more legal immigrants every 0:02:25.400 --> 0:02:29.560 year and half a million plus so called temporary workers. 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:32.520 A lot of them just end up staying anyway, uh. 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:34.280 And that, you know, we just need to turn the 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:36.639 dial down from that, you know, turn it down from 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:39.400 eleven down to I don't know, something lower. That's interesting. 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:40.800 I don't know if we've ever gotten into this. So 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:45.120 you think the number of a million legal immigrants is 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:47.799 too high? What do you think the number are to be? Well, 0:02:47.840 --> 0:02:49.560 I don't have a magic number because I don't think 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:50.919 that's the way to think about it. What I The 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:53.280 way I think about it is kind of like zero 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:57.600 based budgeting, um where you start at zero not because 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:00.520 you want zero immigration, but you start there because a 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:03.400 modern society like ours, with a third of a billion 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:07.839 people that spans a continent, doesn't really need any immigration. 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:11.800 But once you started zero, then who are the categories 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:14.919 of people that have such a compelling case to come 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:16.720 in that we should let him in and for me 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:19.560 that would be husband's wives and little kids of Americans. 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:22.639 That's a lot of people every year, three hundred four 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:26.800 hundred thousand people a year. And then real Einstein's which 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:31.279 is not a huge number, and then people humanitarian immigration 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:34.560 of people who really don't have anywhere else to go 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:37.280 and literally cannot stay one more second where they are. 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:39.600 The un actually keeps a list of people like that. 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:42.240 So you add that up, it's you know, half less 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:44.080 than half of what we take now, but it's still 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:47.360 more immigration than any other country in the world taps, 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:51.400 which often gets left out of the conversation um by 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:55.000 people who who think we're evil and mean. Um. So 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:58.880 you're laying this horrible tragedy from a couple of weeks 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:01.280 ago where all those people died in the back of 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:06.400 that truck the blame at Joe Biden's feet. Why, well, 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:08.040 it's plenty of blame to go around. I mean, the 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:12.120 smugglers themselves obviously are most directly responsibilities of the scum 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:15.040 of the earth who use people for money, But the 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:18.720 administration shares in the blame because what they've done with 0:04:18.800 --> 0:04:25.280 their immigration policies is essentially lure people here, uh like 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:27.440 you said, if you get past the border, your home 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:32.600 free for all intents and purposes, but it's you still 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:35.560 have to There's still some people that get arrested and deported. 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:39.400 So it's not totally open borders, which are terrible but 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:42.880 at least wouldn't result in these kind of tragedies. But 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:46.120 it's not an enforced border either. The way I refer 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:49.200 to it is what we have under Biden is an 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:53.040 open ish border. It's like putting a fence up around 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.200 a swimming pool, which you're legally required to do because 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:58.920 if some kid falls into your pool and there's no fence, 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:03.200 your posible. But what we have is like offense around 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:04.920 your swimming pool, but there's a lot of holes in 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:08.240 it and you don't take care of it, and people 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:10.560 can kids can still get in and they fall into 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:13.839 the pool, and um, you know, that's that's on you. 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:16.560 I mean, that's your responsibility. There's always going to be 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:20.720 some people who want to come here, regardless of the laws, 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:24.520 even if they know the odds are low of their 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.760 getting of their succeeding. Some is still going to try, 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:31.320 but not as many as now, given that the odds 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:35.200 of success getting past the border patrol and living home 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:38.640 free in the United States are so high under this administration. 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:41.440 I would certainly try it if I was from one 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:43.960 of these other countries and had a chance to get 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:46.800 my family into the United States. Sure you would, I mean, 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:50.679 especially if I mean the majority of the people who 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:54.320 are encountered, that's the pc tourna instead of arrested who 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:57.440 were encountered at the border, the majority of them in 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:00.120 May were let go into the United States one way 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:03.839 or another. Uh. In fact, since this administration has taken 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:08.920 over well over one million illegal immigrants, illegal border crosses 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:11.479 have just been let go into the United States. Some 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:14.440 of them will show up for hearings, maybe, uh, some 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:17.040 of them won't. But even the ones who show up 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:20.320 for their hearings, at the end of the process, if 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:23.360 they get turned down for asylum, as most people do, 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:27.400 they still don't leave. And there's no intention of that 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:31.200 Biden administration to find them and make them leave. So, um, 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:33.160 why would like you said, why wouldn't you do it? 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:36.280 And the Wall Street Journal crowd, which tends to be Republican, 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:40.400 they're not gonna raise a stink about it because they 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:45.960 need workers in you know, hotels, restaurants, and farms. The 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:47.800 left is not going to raise a stink about it 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:50.360 because they think they're getting voters, although I think that's 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:56.239 being decreasingly true. But between those two things we don't 0:06:56.240 --> 0:06:59.880 get to the answer that you described earlier. I feel 0:06:59.880 --> 0:07:02.080 like if you put what you just described at the 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:05.159 beginning of this as an immigration policy to Americans, I 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:09.000 feel like that would be an above issue, don't you. 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:12.720 I suspect it would be. Um. You know, it's not 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:15.920 usually pulled in that way, and other posters don't really 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:18.840 ask the questions that way. But yes, I think so. 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:22.600 And I gotta say, though, both the libertarian and corporate 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:25.080 folks on the one side and the lefties on the other, 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:27.840 the kind of things you talked about, whether it's cheap 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:31.640 labor or cheap votes, it's part of what's going on 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:34.360 in there, you know, calculations, But I don't think that's 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:38.880 the main thing in either case. I think it's ideological. 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.760 In other words, their worldview is that they're citizens of 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:46.160 the world. They're post American. I don't mean they hate America. 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:48.760 Some of them do, but for the most part, you know, 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:51.800 they're happy enough to be here, but they don't consider 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:55.960 themselves to have any greater responsibility to their fellow Americans 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:59.120 than to others. And therefore, what that means is it 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:03.360 would be wrong for somebody, say from Haiti, to be 0:08:03.440 --> 0:08:06.240 kept out. And if they make it here, we have 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:09.640 no right to say no. That's the what that that 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:13.720 at the bottom, that's what the perspective of the anti 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:17.280 borders people is, is that believe an unlimited immigration. I 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:20.320 get that libertarian argument that works if you don't have 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:24.120 a welfare state, because you know, if you even even 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:26.400 if you did, even if you didn't have a welfare state, 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:28.640 it wouldn't work. I mean, it'd be better to live 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:31.280 on the street in the US than type of job 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:35.560 in Haiti. Equally decent point, but it wouldn't work as easily. 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:37.320 But if you do have a welfare state like we do, 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:38.960 it works pretty well. If you can get in here, 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:41.160 you'll get fed, you'll get your cancer treated, you'll get 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:43.960 your abortion paid for, whatever it is that you want. Then, 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:47.600 you know, and what I what I tell people who 0:08:47.600 --> 0:08:50.120 make that argument is Okay, well, let's just for the 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:53.040 sake of argument, let's stipulate that, so get rid of 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:54.960 the welfare state and then come back to me and 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:57.680 we'll talk, and the fact is it's not happening. A 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:00.680 welfare standard. Look, I'm a conservative personally. Matter think tank 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:05.400 is more kind of diverse and ambidextrous. But um, I'm conservative, 0:09:05.440 --> 0:09:09.800 and I think our um social system of social provision 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:12.360 for the poor needs to be more tightly run and 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:14.880 more responsible. But even I don't want to get rid 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:18.120 of the welfare state. It's the part of a modern society. 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:20.280 I don't want people dying on the steps of the 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:24.720 emergency room because you know they can't afford care. But 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:28.480 you can't have a society like that and then constantly 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:33.280 have it open two people from countries that aren't as developed. 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.160 What kinds of people do you think we need in 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:40.480 this country? And I don't mean skin color, for crying 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:42.520 out loud, I mean skills. I don't care what some 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:45.319 of these skin colors, But what what what best benefits? 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:47.800 Outside of that you talked about refugees and people from 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:50.160 all that sort of stuff. Get that. I'm on board 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:52.720 with that. But in general, if we want to import workers, 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:56.319 what what do we need? We don't really need workers, 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.120 That's that's my point. In other words, there were, like 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:00.959 I said, we have a third of a billion people. 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:05.800 We have actually a larger and larger share of working 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:08.240 age people who have dropped out of the labor market. 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:11.319 This is a serious social problem. That's what we need 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:14.360 to fix, not just import people to replace them and 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:18.120 then send the Americans welfare checks and you know, cheap 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:22.760 hypodermic needles. I mean, that's not a solution. But uh, 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:26.199 you know, there are people who a relatively small number 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:30.520 of people, like I said Einstein, immigrants whose contribution to 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:33.120 the productive capacity of the United States is so could 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:36.560 be so large that um, I'm happy to let him in, 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:39.880 and most people are. But we're not talking about people 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:43.360 with you know, a bachelor's degree from hid or a 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:47.000 bad community college. We're talking about somebody with a pH 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:51.480 d in chemical engineering or something like that that you know, Okay, 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:54.559 I'm I'm happy for I'll go and drive the green 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:58.880 card over to the person myself. But and and people 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:01.800 like that are and he can get in even under 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:06.960 our current system. It's just that we have defined you know, 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:11.280 best and brightest as it were, way too broadly, which 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:14.480 is probably similar to the fact that domestically, you know, 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:18.000 half the kids in school get the honor roll. You 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:20.000 know what, I mean, it's not because they're all smartest, 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:22.480 because everybody is supposedly above average. Well, we've got that 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:25.600 same perspective for too much of skilled immigration. Well, and 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:27.880 then the other side of our immigration system, which is 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:30.520 so angering. If you've ever known anybody who tried to 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:32.000 do it the right way. I had a friend who 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:36.640 was a PhD PhD biologist who was constantly fighting our system. 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.640 He would he would like need to go on to 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:41.840 go home to take care of his sick mom, and 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:44.559 he couldn't go because something happened with the paperwork and 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:46.120 they weren't gonna let him back in. And I mean, 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:48.400 they make it so, we make it so hard for 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:50.040 people are trying to do it the right way. It's 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:55.000 very frustrating. Yeah, I mean, and that's one of the ways. 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:57.079 That is one of the reasons you see that our 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:01.840 immigration law is the is the second most complicated and 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:05.440 byzantine part of our immigration our legal system, after the 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:10.680 tax code. And so one of the important elements of 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:16.640 a better immigration policy is radical simplification. In other words, 0:12:16.640 --> 0:12:19.640 streamlined stuff, cut out all of this nonsense. And the 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:22.640 fact is the immigration lawyers and the rest of them 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:25.960 like that stuff because it creates employment for them, just 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:31.800 like tax lawyers. Lawyers complicated the voice lawyers. I suppose, yeah, 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:33.880 well you're luckily you will only say I suppose I 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:38.439 can speak from personal experience. UM. Hey, Mark Rikorian Um, 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:41.600 executive director, Center for Immigration Studies, Thanks for coming on today. 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:44.080 Very enlightening. I appreciate the fact that you always have 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:46.760 so much knowledge at your fingertips. Thanks for coming on. 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:48.040 Thank you.