Speaker 1: Critical to ending the border crisis is removing all incentives
Speaker 1: for smuggling women and children. Part of the president's speech
Speaker 1: there from the White House lawn about the new immigration
Speaker 1: proposal floated by his administration, and to discuss that proposition
Speaker 1: and some of the gallop poll numbers we were talking
Speaker 1: about in in a lot more about immigration, illegal immigration.
Speaker 1: Markeret Coryan joins us in studio. What an honor. Mark
Speaker 1: is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
Speaker 1: Market's good to you to come by, good to see
Speaker 1: it in person, Glad to be here. Sure, we've talked
Speaker 1: many many times through the years. So you want to
Speaker 1: give us a brief reaction to the proposal what you
Speaker 1: heard yesterday. There's a lot good in there, because part
Speaker 1: of it is illegal immigration measures, in other words, plugging
Speaker 1: these loopholes that are drawing people to the border that
Speaker 1: the cartels are well aware of and exploit exactly. And
Speaker 1: the other part, the one that's gotten more attention, is
Speaker 1: the legal immigration changes. And the point there is to
Speaker 1: focus family immigration on just nuclear family, husband's wives and
Speaker 1: little kids, and then move all of those green card
Speaker 1: numbers basically into a new merit based system where they
Speaker 1: would pick people based on, you know, a point system
Speaker 1: where you get points for you know, your degree and
Speaker 1: what you're doing, what your age is, that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and then people who make the cut would be able
Speaker 1: to get in. So all of that, I'm for. The
Speaker 1: part that I'm worried about is that this doesn't even
Speaker 1: have a token reduction in the overall level of immigration.
Speaker 1: The president's proposal endorses the current one point one million
Speaker 1: new legal immigrants a year, and even a little cut
Speaker 1: would at least have acknowledged that there's potentially problems in
Speaker 1: a modern society like ours and taking in more than
Speaker 1: a million people every year from abroad. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I'm with you on that there ought to be
Speaker 1: a cut, but you're bringing that up introduces the question
Speaker 1: what's the proper number? What is healthy? What is productive?
Speaker 1: What is safe? What what is smart? And just that
Speaker 1: question has been a taboo in a lot of circles,
Speaker 1: which is just ridiculous and in a sense that debate
Speaker 1: we need to have, and that's I mean, even people
Speaker 1: who don't agree with me, it seems to me, should
Speaker 1: embrace the idea that if this proposal had had even
Speaker 1: just a five percent cut the visa lottery. They also
Speaker 1: got rid of which is a ridiculous thing. We give
Speaker 1: away fifty thousand green cards at random. If they got
Speaker 1: rid of that and didn't really reallocate those numbers, it
Speaker 1: would have been a tiny cut, maybe even four. But
Speaker 1: people would then have gotten this debate going. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think there is a magic number. Quite honestly,
Speaker 1: the way I look at it is zero based budgeting.
Speaker 1: You started zero because we're a continent spanning country with
Speaker 1: a third of a billion people who invented the modern world.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not sure we really need any immigration,
Speaker 1: but let's have that debate. It start at zero, and
Speaker 1: then which categories of people have such a compelling case
Speaker 1: to come in that we let him in. Okay? What
Speaker 1: our theme of the last hour was looking through Gallop
Speaker 1: polling on immigration and the incredibly distorted view of America's opinions.
Speaker 1: American's opinions that you get through the mainstream media in particular.
Speaker 1: For instance, seventy seven percent of people think that the
Speaker 1: large number number of illegal immigrants is a critical or
Speaker 1: important threat to the United States. Seventies seven percent. If
Speaker 1: you watch, you know, the mainstream news, you listen to
Speaker 1: Democratic politicians in particular, you'd get the idea that there's
Speaker 1: this hardcore of I don't know, maybe the country most
Speaker 1: Republicans are just racists, and those are the only people
Speaker 1: who want any reformed immigration law. Well, how do you
Speaker 1: think drump got elected? I mean, that's kind of what
Speaker 1: it amounts to, is that not even just the Democrats,
Speaker 1: but much of the Republican elite just doesn't take this
Speaker 1: issue seriously. And if that happens long enough, people are
Speaker 1: gonna find somebody else who will take it seriously. And
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Look, President, the idea of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump as president was a joke on The Simpsons
Speaker 1: years ago. Um. And so the fact that he came
Speaker 1: in and basically snatched the presidency out from both the
Speaker 1: Republican and the Democratic establishment tells you that there was
Speaker 1: an issue there that drew people to him in a
Speaker 1: way that the elites just had no idea of. Right,
Speaker 1: that's well said, and there are things the president says
Speaker 1: about immigration that I think are just clumsy and ham handed,
Speaker 1: and he creates more problems than he needs to create.
Speaker 1: But those of you who are constantly throwing around the
Speaker 1: r word racist about the president's policies and his fans.
Speaker 1: Seventy seven percent of people said this is a serious problem,
Speaker 1: and they were getting nothing from the people in d C.
Speaker 1: And then Donald Trump said, this is a serious problem.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do something about it. And that is not
Speaker 1: a difficult I mean, you don't need a degree in
Speaker 1: political science to understand that connection. I don't think the
Speaker 1: Democrats have learned that lesson. Quite frankly, some of the
Speaker 1: Republican elite hasn't either. But look at what we're what
Speaker 1: we're seeing at the border now. We are seeing last
Speaker 1: month almost a hundred thousand people who came up because
Speaker 1: of the loopholes in our law. If you bring a
Speaker 1: kid with you, or if you say the magic word
Speaker 1: of asylum or both, I fear for my life, they
Speaker 1: let you go into the United States. Now you won't
Speaker 1: get your If you apply for asylum, you'll almost certainly
Speaker 1: be turned down because these people simply don't qualify. Some do,
Speaker 1: but very few. But who's gonna go looking for you.
Speaker 1: Ice has enough trouble finding the criminals they wanted the
Speaker 1: port let alone an ordinary schmo who got turned down
Speaker 1: for asylum. So that you would think the Democrats would
Speaker 1: come to the president say, look, we disagree on a lot,
Speaker 1: but this this really is an emergency. Let's so let's
Speaker 1: get together and work on it. They're not doing it.
Speaker 1: They hate Trump so much they refuse even to do
Speaker 1: something that's in their own interests. Because if this continues
Speaker 1: at the border for another year, it's gonna keep getting
Speaker 1: worse and worse. There's a limit to what the president
Speaker 1: can do with the current laws. This is going to
Speaker 1: blow up in the Democrats face potentially. Mark Coran is
Speaker 1: the executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies. I've
Speaker 1: suggested many times that I don't think either party is
Speaker 1: at all serious. I mean, the party elders that the real,
Speaker 1: you know, pilots of the ship. I don't think they're
Speaker 1: serious at all about solving immigration problems because I think
Speaker 1: they'd prefer to have the issue. Do you agree or
Speaker 1: to what extent do you disagree? Yeah? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean I don't think that much forethought involved in it.
Speaker 1: I think it's more that they're unwilling to take the
Speaker 1: steps necessary. They're they're kind of um stuck in a mindset.
Speaker 1: You know, give me, you're tired, you're poor. This must
Speaker 1: be great, and we don't want to think too much
Speaker 1: about it. And if we take certain steps, our business
Speaker 1: constituents are gonna be angry, or in the Democrats, they're
Speaker 1: left wing constituents are gonna be angry. And so I
Speaker 1: don't think it's quite as premeditated as you suggest. I
Speaker 1: think it's just an uncomfortable issue politicians wish would just
Speaker 1: go away. So it's not dishonesty, it's cowardice your defense,
Speaker 1: probably a little bit of both. Okay, all right, I
Speaker 1: think we can compromise on my My other theory, Mark
Speaker 1: is that if you could assemble fifteen randomly selected Americans,
Speaker 1: put them in a room within forty eight hours, they
Speaker 1: could have reasonable immigration reform. I mean they wouldn't get
Speaker 1: down to the brass tacks and the sub paragraphs and
Speaker 1: the rest of it, but they could design an immigration
Speaker 1: system that would make sense and be very very popular. Probably,
Speaker 1: But you know Congress is capable of that sometimes. What
Speaker 1: I think the real problem is the real problem I
Speaker 1: think in that we face now with the Gang of
Speaker 1: Eight bill from years ago and before that under Bush
Speaker 1: where they pushed that big amnesty. The problem was a
Speaker 1: complete lack of trust that the elites will follow through
Speaker 1: on their promises because the point always is, look, we're
Speaker 1: gonna amnesty the people who've been here for a long time,
Speaker 1: and that's a sympathetic argument. I kind of get that,
Speaker 1: especially if they've been here a long time. They're not
Speaker 1: murderers and rapists. The question is not amnestying the people
Speaker 1: here now. The questions are we're gonna have another amnesty
Speaker 1: five or ten or fifteen years from now because we
Speaker 1: didn't enforce the rules. No one trusts the promises that
Speaker 1: the politicians are going to enforce the rules starting tomorrow.
Speaker 1: What about the doctor recipients. I'm actually kind of a
Speaker 1: squish on the DOCTA thing. The problem is if you
Speaker 1: just give them their green cards, you know, you legalize them,
Speaker 1: because look, these are kids are growing up here. There's
Speaker 1: an argument for that. Do we make sure there's not
Speaker 1: another DOCTA five years from now, because any deal like
Speaker 1: that has to have some enforcement measures to try to
Speaker 1: limit the likelihood of future DOCA is happening, and has
Speaker 1: to have some offset or pay for because if we're
Speaker 1: gonna give eight hundred thousand, seven hundred thousand green cards
Speaker 1: extra once to people, there needs to be eight or
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand fewer green cards for other people. These
Speaker 1: people are getting a special deal. Why would we be
Speaker 1: basically increasing immigration just to give them an amnesty. Are
Speaker 1: there any racists at the Center for Immigration Studies or
Speaker 1: would you tolerate any racists within your organization? Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: You know, you're really doing a poor job of of
Speaker 1: being a monster hard But so you're you're fine with
Speaker 1: the DOCCA kids staying. You're okay with a path to
Speaker 1: citizenship as long as they're serious enforcement in the future.
Speaker 1: I just I'm really I'm underwhelmed. I'm doing white supremacy
Speaker 1: all wrong here, bad at it. I'm telling you, as
Speaker 1: we've said to the audience so many times, if you
Speaker 1: are a good person and you have a reasonable, um
Speaker 1: an ethical, a patriotic attitude toward immigration and legal immigration,
Speaker 1: don't let anybody call you a racist. Don't be bullied,
Speaker 1: Do not be bullied into silence. Yeah, that's become a
Speaker 1: whole lot less stinging now. I mean especially, I mean
Speaker 1: the Southern Poverty Law Center for Instances put us on
Speaker 1: their hate group list right after President got inaugurated. Nothing
Speaker 1: changed with us. It was just a political decision on
Speaker 1: their part. They're on my You're a Joke list? Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and the thing is there on more and more people's
Speaker 1: You're a joke list. Yeah so Mark re correan has
Speaker 1: to uh do another interview with some of our esteemed colleagues. Mark,
Speaker 1: we could talk to you all day. We sure appreciate
Speaker 1: the time. It's always a pleasure. Happy to do it. Thanks,
Speaker 1: well done. More to come Armstrong and Getty Show