Speaker 1: O.
Speaker 2: Let you know, USA listener, it's Mariino Hosam. I know
Speaker 2: that you're interested in the issue of immigration because you
Speaker 2: want to cut through and know what's real. So we're
Speaker 2: going to share an episode with you today from our
Speaker 2: colleagues at Future Hindsight. It's going to give you the
Speaker 2: full historical and complicated picture of our broken US immigration system,
Speaker 2: which by the way, has not been updated since the
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties. Host Mila Atmos is joined by Aaron Reichlin Melnick,
Speaker 2: the policy director at the American Immigration Council, which is
Speaker 2: a nonprofit organization that looks to strengthen our country by
Speaker 2: shaping immigration policies and practices. They're going to talk about
Speaker 2: why they see the only cure to the challenge around
Speaker 2: immigration is comprehensive immigration reform coming from Congress. So here
Speaker 2: you go. Take a listen.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas
Speaker 1: about civic life and democracy and turns them into action
Speaker 1: items for you and me. I'm Nila Atmas. Democracy is
Speaker 1: not a spectator sport, so we're here to bring you
Speaker 1: an independent perspective about border rhetoric. Getting the full attention
Speaker 1: of the media what's actually going on to help us
Speaker 1: better understand American immigration policy and the kind of comprehensive
Speaker 1: reform that would be necessary to render a functional system.
Speaker 1: We're joined by Aaron Reichlan Melnick. He's the policy director
Speaker 1: at the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit organization that strives
Speaker 1: to strengthen the United States by shaping immigration policies and
Speaker 1: practices grounded in evidence, compassion, justice, and fairness. Welcome erin,
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: We all know that immigration in the US is deeply dysfunctional,
Speaker 1: and we also know that there are no easy answers.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's so complex that it's safe to say
Speaker 1: that most Americans really don't have a firm grasp on
Speaker 1: what's happening. So justice at the stage, how would you
Speaker 1: describe a state of play when it comes to immigration.
Speaker 3: I mean, the most important thing for people to know
Speaker 3: is that we haven't changed our immigration law since the
Speaker 3: nineteen nineties. Our legal immigration system dates back to November
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one, month before the first website went online,
Speaker 3: and our current border enforcement and asylum system dates back
Speaker 3: to nineteen ninety six, at a time when the Macharena
Speaker 3: was the hit dance craze still sweeping the nation.
Speaker 1: Wow. So if we think about the history of immigration
Speaker 1: policy as being long and complicated, is this really the
Speaker 1: main problem that it's old and outdated?
Speaker 3: That is a large part of it. So there are
Speaker 3: some sort of systemic issues of how the system was designed,
Speaker 3: ideas we had twenty seven thirty three years ago about
Speaker 3: how a system should work that have proven to be
Speaker 3: incorrect over the last quarter century. And then there's also
Speaker 3: the question of resources. Do you provide enough funding to
Speaker 3: the system to ensure that it is working as intended?
Speaker 3: And the answer is no. Congress hasn't provided enough resources
Speaker 3: to the system, so it isn't working as intended. But again,
Speaker 3: even if it was working as intended, some of the
Speaker 3: ideas that people had twenty five years ago, you know,
Speaker 3: over a quarter century ago, just didn't turn out to
Speaker 3: be correct, and we need to tweak those as well.
Speaker 1: So let's unpack those. What are the ideas that were
Speaker 1: incorrect and then what were the intentions.
Speaker 3: I mean, one of the great examples is the flaws
Speaker 3: with our legal immigration system. In nineteen ninety, Congress set
Speaker 3: the number of visas that would be available in any
Speaker 3: given year with an expectation about how many people should
Speaker 3: be coming to the United States to benefit the country.
Speaker 3: Those numbers have proven inadequate, but they are staturee ratory caps.
Speaker 3: It is illegal to grant more visas beyond those certain numbers.
Speaker 3: So as of today, there are more than four million
Speaker 3: people waiting who have been approved for visas but can't
Speaker 3: get them because they're in twenty to thirty or forty
Speaker 3: or even longer year waiting times just to get legal status.
Speaker 3: There are people today who have been approved for a
Speaker 3: visa who cannot get that visa because they will die
Speaker 3: of old age first because there are so many people
Speaker 3: in line in front of them. And that's in part
Speaker 3: because of the system Congress designed. They massively underestimated the
Speaker 3: demand in short, and they made a couple of sort
Speaker 3: of structural decisions that exacerbated it, including, for example, that
Speaker 3: one country can only get seven percent of the global
Speaker 3: visas in any given year. So that means that some
Speaker 3: countries India, China, Mexico, and the Philippines, where there are
Speaker 3: large amounts of immigrants from those countries approved for visas,
Speaker 3: get stuck in these backlogs because every year they can
Speaker 3: only get set percent of the pretty small number of
Speaker 3: visas that are being handed out, but they apply and
Speaker 3: are granted for way more than seven percent. And that's
Speaker 3: why Indian nationals in particular weight in backlogs that are
Speaker 3: routinely twenty to eighty years long.
Speaker 1: Twenty to eighty years. I'm sorry, that's ridiculous. Well, I
Speaker 1: want to backtrack here a little bit, because are you
Speaker 1: saying that the ideas that were wrong were the concept
Speaker 1: that you should limit the numbers or is it that
Speaker 1: there's a different idea that they got wrong.
Speaker 3: Well, that's part of it. Is the first is that
Speaker 3: they need to update the numbers, you know, again because
Speaker 3: they came up with this idea of like, what does
Speaker 3: the United States need in terms of numbers of people coming?
Speaker 3: And they came up with these ideas again before the
Speaker 3: World Wide Web existed, when the Soviet Union was still around,
Speaker 3: in this Cold War era, pre modern internet world that
Speaker 3: doesn't exist anymore, and of course, what our economy needs,
Speaker 3: who is coming and from where? We didn't know the time.
Speaker 3: We could have predicted some things about how the Internet
Speaker 3: was going to go, but we got a lot of
Speaker 3: it wrong, and we didn't predict that, for example, there
Speaker 3: would be a massive need for STEM workers coming from
Speaker 3: countries like India and China, and we set a bunch
Speaker 3: of visa numbers without being aware of that demand that
Speaker 3: was going to quickly become a big thing within a
Speaker 3: few years when the dot com boom happened in the nineties.
Speaker 3: Already within ten years after this law was passed, the
Speaker 3: backlogs were starting to grow significantly. And now we are
Speaker 3: in this point where there are Indian nationals graduating with
Speaker 3: master's degrees with PhDs from American universities today who find
Speaker 3: that they may have no realistic way of ever living
Speaker 3: here permanently, and they have to literally enter a lottery
Speaker 3: to hope that they get one of the very limited
Speaker 3: slots of h one BB's as available, or eventually they
Speaker 3: just give up and go to Canada or the United
Speaker 3: Kingdom or some other country that has a legal immigration
Speaker 3: system which can be amended more rapidly. You know, right now,
Speaker 3: Canada is eating our lunch when it comes to immigration
Speaker 3: because they have a flexible system that can be updated
Speaker 3: rapidly in response to changes in labor demands. We don't
Speaker 3: have that in the US. We literally have this system
Speaker 3: that was created in nineteen ninety and that just by
Speaker 3: and large has not been updated since that point. So
Speaker 3: by losing out on the flexibility to respond to changes
Speaker 3: in demand, changes in labor needs throughout the United States,
Speaker 3: we are losing out on the world's best and brightest.
Speaker 3: And we're also sending a message, you know, tying this
Speaker 3: back into what's going on at the border, that the
Speaker 3: only way to get here legally is to come to
Speaker 3: the border and ask for asylum, which is not how
Speaker 3: our legal immigration system should incentivize people.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, I definitely want to talk about the border
Speaker 1: and asylum seeking, but let's go at this from the
Speaker 1: other side. We know that there's no silver bullet, and
Speaker 1: we know that Congress needs to take action. So how
Speaker 1: do you and the American Immigration consul envision comprehensive immigration
Speaker 1: policy reform? Because obviously, you know, it's been thirty four
Speaker 1: years since things have changed. Canada is eating our lunch.
Speaker 1: But what would it look like to have something that
Speaker 1: actually is adaptable to your point into the future and
Speaker 1: really looks at all the nooks and crannies that we
Speaker 1: need to address.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the number one thing is we have
Speaker 3: to do a big approach here. Yes, small scale change
Speaker 3: is a good idea, and I don't want to discourage
Speaker 3: small scale change because there are a number of small
Speaker 3: fixes that can be made to fix obvious problems in
Speaker 3: the system. One great example of this is backlogs. Is
Speaker 3: I've mentioned all of these backlogs lead to situations where
Speaker 3: people who are here on visas who bring their children
Speaker 3: over as dependents. If they have to wait twenty years
Speaker 3: to get a visa, their children who they bring here
Speaker 3: legally grow up in the United States and then age
Speaker 3: twenty one, their status is a derivative of their parent
Speaker 3: expires and they have to leave. So these are kids
Speaker 3: who grow up in the United States on visas here legally,
Speaker 3: and this is a group that calls themselves documented dreamers,
Speaker 3: and estimate there is about two hundred thousand kids in
Speaker 3: the country who basically have to self deport when they
Speaker 3: turn twenty one. And Congress can fix that. There's bills
Speaker 3: out there, so you can do these small fixes, and
Speaker 3: I think Congress should do small fixes. But if you
Speaker 3: really want to solve the bigger problems, you have to
Speaker 3: do something together. You have to look at what is
Speaker 3: driving people to come to the border, and that is
Speaker 3: both what's going on around the world, but it's also
Speaker 3: the failures of our legal immigration system and the ways
Speaker 3: in which the parts of the system do not function
Speaker 3: together as a coherent whole to give people real viable
Speaker 3: alternatives if they want to ever come to the United States.
Speaker 3: You know, most people say, why don't they just get
Speaker 3: in line, But the reality is, for the overwhelming majority
Speaker 3: of people around the world, no line exists. It's a
Speaker 3: myth that there is a line that they can even
Speaker 3: get in. The closest thing is the Diversity Visa Lottery,
Speaker 3: which twenty two million people applied for last year for
Speaker 3: fifty thousand slots. If you are one of the lucky
Speaker 3: fifty thousand out of those twenty two million who manage
Speaker 3: to get a visa, congratulations, that's your only way to
Speaker 3: come here. But for most of the rest of the world,
Speaker 3: unless you are the best in the brightest, and then
Speaker 3: even if you are the best in the brightest, there
Speaker 3: are still obstacles. So we really have to look beyond
Speaker 3: the lens of just the US Mexico border and tackle
Speaker 3: this as a more comprehensive whole. But that's sort of
Speaker 3: just my pitch for comprehensive in general. So like the
Speaker 3: specifics here, one, we need to fund the asylum system.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that is the key. We don't
Speaker 3: have enough asylum officers. We don't have enough immigration judges.
Speaker 3: We don't have enough people to enforce immigration law, even
Speaker 3: if we want to do that. We don't have enough
Speaker 3: people to deliver decisions. We don't have enough staff at
Speaker 3: the courts. We don't have enough staff in the legal
Speaker 3: immigration system at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. We
Speaker 3: don't have enough staff at US consulates abroad. Just systematically,
Speaker 3: the adjudication process, either for people who cross the border
Speaker 3: irregularly or for people applying for benefits is broken. Six
Speaker 3: to seven to eight year weights are now common in
Speaker 3: immigration court just to have a claim heard, and that
Speaker 3: is in part because of the high volume of people crossing.
Speaker 3: But this is not a new problem. These numbers have
Speaker 3: been rising pretty much every few years for the last decade,
Speaker 3: and despite the alarm bells ringing about the need for
Speaker 3: more funding, Congress continues to dribble out ten percent increases here,
Speaker 3: fifteen percent increases. They are rather than going big and
Speaker 3: bold beyond that the legal immigration system, we really do
Speaker 3: need to rethink these static caps and these seven percent
Speaker 3: country quotas that are creating these huge backlogs. Know, one
Speaker 3: way to do this would be simply say no one
Speaker 3: can wait in a backlog beyond the set number of years.
Speaker 3: There's one proposal out there that would say if you've
Speaker 3: been waiting for ten years or visa again, these are
Speaker 3: for people who are approved, that just says, all right,
Speaker 3: you just get it at ten years. So you could
Speaker 3: do something like that. You could just cap it and
Speaker 3: say after a certain point, everybody just gets the visa
Speaker 3: after you've been waiting for that long enough, you can
Speaker 3: increase the number of visas. I think that's very necessary
Speaker 3: given again how much bigger the US population now is
Speaker 3: than it was thirty years ago, and that is part
Speaker 3: of the reason why you need to sort of increase
Speaker 3: the immigration numbers to keep up with increasing demands for labor.
Speaker 3: And then at the border, we really do need to
Speaker 3: think through both alternate pathways to drive people away from
Speaker 3: the border and again ways to deliver a decision on
Speaker 3: whether or not someone gets to stay or has to
Speaker 3: go in a reasonable period of time, not five six years.
Speaker 1: Right, right, So tell us a little bit more about
Speaker 1: how the asylum process works, because I think this is
Speaker 1: a source of great confusion because people popularly think that
Speaker 1: you can show up at the border and ask for asylum,
Speaker 1: but actually you can also do that in your country
Speaker 1: of origin. So what are the steps? In broad strokes,
Speaker 1: just people have an idea of like, who are these
Speaker 1: people who apply for asylum, and what's the process, how
Speaker 1: long does it take, and what can we expect and
Speaker 1: if you're funding it, what does that mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a brief correction here, you actually can't apply
Speaker 3: for asylum in your country of origin asylum. Asylum is
Speaker 3: a protection that is only available to people who are
Speaker 3: physically present in the United States.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the correction.
Speaker 3: This is distinct from refugee status, which you can apply
Speaker 3: for outside of the United States. Both are about determining
Speaker 3: whether someone is a refugee. Asylum is about basically this
Speaker 3: idea of we won't send you back, and refugee status
Speaker 3: is we will agree that you're a refugee and take
Speaker 3: you in as part of an international process. So refugee
Speaker 3: processing in the Western Hemisphere is done in collaboration with
Speaker 3: the United Nations High Council on Refugees. They identify people
Speaker 3: who are potential refugees. Those people are then referred to
Speaker 3: the United States, screened by refugee officers, they go through
Speaker 3: several extensive rounds of vetting, security vetting, and then after
Speaker 3: all of that process is over, which can take upwards
Speaker 3: of two to three years depending on where people are,
Speaker 3: then they enter the United States legally as having already
Speaker 3: been granted refugee status. They're already on a path to
Speaker 3: a green card, and then after they get their green card,
Speaker 3: on a path to a citizenship. By contrast, asylum is
Speaker 3: for people who come to our borders or come on
Speaker 3: a visa and say I'm here, I'm in the US,
Speaker 3: please don't send me back, I am a refugee, and
Speaker 3: then it's up to the system to determine whether they
Speaker 3: actually do meet the legal definition of a refugee. This
Speaker 3: process happens a wide variety of different ways, and this
Speaker 3: is part of the confusion. There's really no one standard
Speaker 3: process that actually occurs. So in theory, how it works
Speaker 3: for somebody who is supposed to come to the border
Speaker 3: is they come to the border, they turn themselves into
Speaker 3: a border patrol agent or go to a port of
Speaker 3: entry and ask for asylum and say I fear persecution
Speaker 3: in my home country. At that point, they are supposed
Speaker 3: to be referred for what's known as a credible fear interview,
Speaker 3: which is like an initial screening to determine whether their
Speaker 3: claim meets a very easy threshold bar does it pass
Speaker 3: the smell test. Basically, if they pass that screening, which
Speaker 3: is supposed to happen in like seven to fourteen days,
Speaker 3: then they get referred to immigration court where they have
Speaker 3: to file an asylum application in front of an immigration judge.
Speaker 3: The judge then decides whether or not to grant that
Speaker 3: person asylum. If they lose at any stage of that process,
Speaker 3: then they can be deported. Now, the problem is is
Speaker 3: that breaks down a lot in practice because of these
Speaker 3: resource constraints that I mentioned before. Credible fear exam interview
Speaker 3: is the best example of this. In order to carry
Speaker 3: out those credible fear interviews that initial smell test, you
Speaker 3: need to have enough asylum officers to do those. Basically,
Speaker 3: an asylum officcer can usually do about one a day,
Speaker 3: maybe two a day if it's particularly fast. So if
Speaker 3: you don't have enough asylum officers, you can't put people
Speaker 3: through these credible fear interviews and right now there's less
Speaker 3: than a thousand asylum officers. The bid administration is doing
Speaker 3: more asylum credible fear interviews than any administration has ever
Speaker 3: done in the past, and that works out to about
Speaker 3: four hundred a day. There are more than four hundred
Speaker 3: a day people crossing the border. So what happens in
Speaker 3: those circumstances, well, what happens is the same thing that
Speaker 3: happened in Obama and a Trump and now under Biden.
Speaker 3: If you can't do the credible fear interview, then your
Speaker 3: second option is to simply release the person and send
Speaker 3: them directly to the immigration's judge, so they skip the
Speaker 3: credible fear stage and go straight to the judge where
Speaker 3: they can file an asylum application, and then the judge
Speaker 3: can decide to grant or deny. As of now, there's
Speaker 3: three million cases in the immigration court stage and people
Speaker 3: end up waiting five six years. All of this is,
Speaker 3: of course solvable if you just give the system the
Speaker 3: resources it needs to function. But Congress doesn't even fund
Speaker 3: the asylum officers. They're actually paid for by fees that
Speaker 3: people pay in for regular immigration benefits like green cards
Speaker 3: or citizenships or visas. Those fees paid for by users
Speaker 3: go to fund asylum officers, because again, in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 3: Congress created this process. They decided that it should not
Speaker 3: be funded by Congress, it should be funded by fees
Speaker 3: because at the time they thought, well, this is probably
Speaker 3: only going to be a few thousand people a year,
Speaker 3: and so we don't really want to spend a bunch
Speaker 3: of money on this when it's going to be a
Speaker 3: pretty small amount of the work that this agency does
Speaker 3: on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1: Uh huh wow. Yeah, so things have changed. Things have
Speaker 1: changed a lot since nineteen ninety six, for sure, and
Speaker 1: the funding model doesn't work. But let's talk about the
Speaker 1: numbers at the border, because of course people talk about
Speaker 1: if you believe Fox News that the borders are open,
Speaker 1: that there are droves of people crossing and smiling drugs,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. And you've just described the situation
Speaker 1: with asylum officers and how underfunded it is and really
Speaker 1: why people end up getting released in order to go
Speaker 1: to immigration court. But if you were to have a
Speaker 1: conversation with somebody who is on the right it this
Speaker 1: person will not believe that the border is not open.
Speaker 1: What would you say how would you describe the situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the border is not open, But of course the
Speaker 3: fundamental difficulties of having a discussion about that is that
Speaker 3: there's no agreement on what it means to have an
Speaker 3: open border. If you ask me, an open border is
Speaker 3: one that any person can simply walk across with no problem,
Speaker 3: without having to do anything. And for that, I would
Speaker 3: point to the border between states. New York and New
Speaker 3: Jersey have open borders with each other. There are no
Speaker 3: checks when I cross between the two of them, or
Speaker 3: you know, between any state in the United States. No
Speaker 3: one is checking my passport, nobody is confirming whether or
Speaker 3: not I have a right to cross, and you could
Speaker 3: see similar things in the Schengen Zone. In Europe there
Speaker 3: are external border controls, but inside Europe there are open borders.
Speaker 3: You can go from France to Germany without having to
Speaker 3: get your passport checked, and that is open borders. What
Speaker 3: isn't open borders, you know, I would argue, is the
Speaker 3: situation we have today where people cross and then are
Speaker 3: placed into an enforcement system. Some people who cross had
Speaker 3: the immigration laws immediately enforced on them. They are rapidly deported,
Speaker 3: thousands of people every single month, But because of these
Speaker 3: resource constraints. Other people get shunted into this long term system,
Speaker 3: you know, in order to figure out whether or not
Speaker 3: they can stay permanently or not. And to me, that's
Speaker 3: not an open border. That's a system that has broken down.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, we have to keep in
Speaker 3: mind this idea that every single people person crossing is
Speaker 3: let in. That's just not true. Tens of thousands of
Speaker 3: people are sent back to Mexico every month. Under the
Speaker 3: Biden administration and the Trump administration, the Title forty two
Speaker 3: Health Policy was in effect for three years, over two
Speaker 3: point five million times. Border officials carried out expulsions of
Speaker 3: people under that authority, which ended in May twenty twenty
Speaker 3: three when the COVID nineteen Public Health Emergency expired. And
Speaker 3: so this is not an open border when you over
Speaker 3: millions of people being sent back to Mexico. But of
Speaker 3: course not everyone was. And there are some people who
Speaker 3: say the border is open so long as a single
Speaker 3: person can cross and be released. And I think that's
Speaker 3: what makes this conversation so challenging. There are just these
Speaker 3: fundamental disagreements about what should happen. I would say, when
Speaker 3: someone crosses our border, and expresses a fear of persecution.
Speaker 3: We have to have a system to figure out whether
Speaker 3: or not they are bonafide refugees, because we know that
Speaker 3: people cross our borders in these situations. That I mean
Speaker 3: in the nineteen eighties, during death squads in Guatemala and
Speaker 3: El Salvador, during indigenous genocide in Guatemala, the Reagan administration
Speaker 3: turned away ninety seven to ninety eight percent of all
Speaker 3: people from those countries who were seeking asylum because geopolitically,
Speaker 3: it was a bad thing for the United States to
Speaker 3: admit that our allies in Central America were persecuting people.
Speaker 3: So we basically encouraged our government to turn away genuine
Speaker 3: bonafide refugees who were fleeing death squad And because we
Speaker 3: haven't forgot that lesson, we built these protections into the
Speaker 3: law for a reason, the fundamental realities you don't know
Speaker 3: if a country is collapsing necessarily or for genocide is
Speaker 3: about to occur until after it happens, and there are
Speaker 3: people who leave before it happens. And this is in
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty eight, we turned away Jews fleeing Nazi Germany
Speaker 3: because at the time we thought, well, they might be
Speaker 3: German spies and because there were a number of anti
Speaker 3: Semites in the FDR administration. But the reason they gave was,
Speaker 3: we can't take all these German Jews fleeing Germany because
Speaker 3: some of them could be Nazi spies, and maybe some
Speaker 3: of them were, like I don't think there's any evidence
Speaker 3: of that, fleeing and particularly pretending to be Jews. But
Speaker 3: the reason is, you know, at the time, there wasn't
Speaker 3: this idea. Nobody knew that the Holocaust was happening. People
Speaker 3: were certainly giving a lot of alarm bells about it.
Speaker 3: But so we created this asylum system post World War
Speaker 3: two because we recognized it's not just about what happens
Speaker 3: during the Holocaust, it's what happens in the years before that,
Speaker 3: when people start leaving and saying I will be secuted
Speaker 3: if you send me back. Don't send me away, don't
Speaker 3: turn me away, because we did that prior to World
Speaker 3: War Two for Jews, and so we said never again,
Speaker 3: and we created this international system of asylum protections so
Speaker 3: that people can just show up at a border and say,
Speaker 3: if you send me back, I will be killed. And
Speaker 3: it's not a perfect system, obviously not, and there are
Speaker 3: ways in which we can improve it and make it better.
Speaker 3: But I don't think it's the system that we should
Speaker 3: get rid of, Whereas there are many people who say,
Speaker 3: I just think it's time for us to move away
Speaker 3: from this concept. If you are facing persecution, just go
Speaker 3: to whatever country's closest to you. Don't come to our borders,
Speaker 3: you know, don't do any of this. So if any
Speaker 3: person gets released, then that means it's an open border,
Speaker 3: and I just don't think that's true. But this is
Speaker 3: why we have such challenge having these conversations, because I
Speaker 3: think we aren't having these bigger conversations about asylum, about
Speaker 3: you know, what do we do in a world of
Speaker 3: increased global displacement, And I think those are the conversations
Speaker 3: we should be having. You know, what does it mean
Speaker 3: to be the United States a nation that has traditionally
Speaker 3: held itself out as a place of refuge in the
Speaker 3: modern world. Is this a national ambition that we should
Speaker 3: abandon or is this a national ambition that we should
Speaker 3: double down on? And there, I think where the conversations
Speaker 3: get most interesting, because then people can really start talking
Speaker 3: about their real concerns about this. How do we make
Speaker 3: this system work? How do we uphold American values?
Speaker 1: Since you have just mentioned the larger displacement realities in
Speaker 1: the world that are contributing to migration flows everywhere to Europe,
Speaker 1: from North Africa or Africa or the Middle East, how
Speaker 1: does the US fit into what's happening globally?
Speaker 3: We are in a global displacement crisis. What's happening at
Speaker 3: the US Mexico border is not unique to the United States.
Speaker 3: There are tens of thousands of people crossing the Mediterranean
Speaker 3: in small boats every single year. Hundreds died. You know,
Speaker 3: when these boats sink. They're landing in Greece and Italy
Speaker 3: and other countries that are not run by democrats, that
Speaker 3: are not run by liberals. In the United Kingdom, there
Speaker 3: are thousands of people crossing the English Channel in small boats,
Speaker 3: to the point that this has become the defining political
Speaker 3: crisis in the United Kingdom is what to do with
Speaker 3: the small boats, what to do with immigration. So the
Speaker 3: idea that the United States is unique in this challenge here,
Speaker 3: this is something unique to President Biden just misses this
Speaker 3: broader point. People are on the move and migration is
Speaker 3: easier than it's ever been. Not only are people being
Speaker 3: forced out of countries due to wars and famine and
Speaker 3: climate change and political instability, but the act of leaving
Speaker 3: has become easier than ever thanks to changes in technology.
Speaker 3: Social media means that people can see images of their
Speaker 3: compatriots who've gone to other countries splashed on their Instagrams
Speaker 3: and tiktoks and telegram, what have you, and WhatsApp in particular,
Speaker 3: So now diaspora stories are making their way back home
Speaker 3: more easily than ever. And then the travel itself is
Speaker 3: easier than ever because people can fly cheap. You now
Speaker 3: have translation apps. You know, before, if you were someone
Speaker 3: from China and you needed to walk from Ecuador to
Speaker 3: the United States or a hitchhike from Ecuador to the
Speaker 3: United States, as people do today, the difficulty if you
Speaker 3: didn't speak Spanish was enormous. But today you can literally
Speaker 3: speak into your phone and have it perfectly translate converse.
Speaker 3: Not perfectly, but like close to perfectly translate conversations back
Speaker 3: and forth between Mandarin and Spanish without much difficulty, in
Speaker 3: a way that you never could do before, and that
Speaker 3: has made the process of traveling easier than ever. Beyond that,
Speaker 3: we also have to keep in mind that nations around
Speaker 3: the world who are hostile to US foreign interests are
Speaker 3: also recognizing this fact and have decided to sort of
Speaker 3: encourage migration because they know it quite frankly annoys US
Speaker 3: as a nation. Venezuela, and Nicaragua, Ecuador all are countries
Speaker 3: in which the United States has strong diplomatic disagreements with,
Speaker 3: and Ecuador, for example, has made it so that virtually
Speaker 3: any person in the world can fly to Equity. You
Speaker 3: don't need a visa. You can just show up at
Speaker 3: the airport and Ecuador and they'll wave you into the country,
Speaker 3: and that is a stopping off by Nicaragua is now
Speaker 3: doing the same. In November twenty twenty one, Nicaragua started
Speaker 3: letting Cubans fly to Nicaragua without a visa for the
Speaker 3: first time, and that set off a mass exodus, with
Speaker 3: tens of thousands of Cubans leaving their country, which was
Speaker 3: at the time, you know, in increasingly economically dire straits
Speaker 3: and political instability following the COVID pandemic. So tens of
Speaker 3: thousands of Cubans left and went to Nicaragua and some
Speaker 3: stayed there, some went to Costa Rica, and a lot
Speaker 3: of them went north to the United States. And so
Speaker 3: this is both a diplomatic issue and it's an issue
Speaker 3: of you know, the modern world and getting smaller and
Speaker 3: smaller than ever.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about the tensions around having exclusionary immigration
Speaker 1: laws and at the same time being this country that
Speaker 1: prides itself on being a place of refuge and where
Speaker 1: everybody can pursue the American dream. And since we are
Speaker 1: a pro democracy podcast, what is the case for fixing
Speaker 1: immigration for a country that believes in practice, in democracy
Speaker 1: and in being a place of refuge.
Speaker 3: I firmly believe that the United States gets it strength
Speaker 3: from the fact that anyone can be an American.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: That is to me a core thing that makes this
Speaker 3: country work. We believe that if they can contribute and
Speaker 3: become part of the community, they can become American. You know,
Speaker 3: on social media, I see all the time pictures going
Speaker 3: viral and people becoming US citizens waving the little American flag.
Speaker 3: It is like, if you've ever been to a naturalization ceremony,
Speaker 3: it's such a joyous environment and I like encourage people
Speaker 3: to do that any time.
Speaker 1: I'm a naturalized American.
Speaker 3: So you know exactly, it is a joyous moment, but
Speaker 3: it's of course it's a complicated moment for everybody going
Speaker 3: through it. The feelings are not that simplistic. That said,
Speaker 3: I do think we derive our strength in this country
Speaker 3: from the fact that anyone can come here and become
Speaker 3: an American. We've got multiple members of Congress who are
Speaker 3: themselves immigrants. We've had Secretaries of States who are immigrants.
Speaker 3: We've had Cabinet members who are immigrants. You know, this
Speaker 3: is something that we draw our strength from. And yet
Speaker 3: our immigration policies have frequently been exclusionist. We had explicitly
Speaker 3: racist immigration laws in effect from nineteen twenty four to
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty five, and before then we had the extraordinarily
Speaker 3: racist Chinese exclusion acts from eighteen eighty one onward. Then,
Speaker 3: you know, our first federal immigration laws ever were exclusionists.
Speaker 3: The Naturalization Act of seventeen ninety, which was in effect
Speaker 3: until nineteen fifty two, said that only free white persons
Speaker 3: could naturalize, and so for the first nearly one hundred
Speaker 3: and seventy five years of our country, we restricted naturalization
Speaker 3: only to free white persons. There's actually extremely interesting Supreme
Speaker 3: Court precedents about what it meant to be white. Were
Speaker 3: Asians white? Our Mexicans white, Our Caucasian Aryans you know
Speaker 3: from northern India? Are they white? Under the race science
Speaker 3: was at the time. These are all legal case that
Speaker 3: had to be brought because of these restrictions. But in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty five, we passed, in my opinion, the most
Speaker 3: important immigration law you know in modern history, which basically
Speaker 3: got rid of these racial origins of our immigration system
Speaker 3: and said, for the first time, America is open to
Speaker 3: anyone who can go through and navigate this legal process.
Speaker 3: We will not turn away people based on where they
Speaker 3: come from. And it was part of the Civil Rights era.
Speaker 3: It came within the same time as the Voting Rights
Speaker 3: Act and the Civil Rights Act. It was part of
Speaker 3: this recognition of the United States as a multi racial democracy.
Speaker 3: And so I think we have to acknowledge the exclusionary
Speaker 3: tactics that our laws have adopted in the past, but
Speaker 3: lean into this view of the United States as a
Speaker 3: country that anyone can become a US citizen, anyone can
Speaker 3: become American, and make that our guiding vision going forward.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Here here we talked about Congress already a little
Speaker 1: bit about how Congress needs to take action and I
Speaker 1: think this conversation would not be complete to talk about
Speaker 1: the bill that failed in the House but of course
Speaker 1: passed and the Senate. What was in it? What did
Speaker 1: you like about it? What did you not?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Senate by partisan bill. It's a complicated bill
Speaker 3: to talk about because it's a complicated bill. It was
Speaker 3: a product of compromise. I think our biggest concern was
Speaker 3: it wasn't a comprehensive bill. It was a border enforcement
Speaker 3: only bill that kicked a lot of other cans down
Speaker 3: the road by saying, you know, oh, we'll just only
Speaker 3: do border It did represent a very real, serious efforts
Speaker 3: to tackle with what changes can you make to the
Speaker 3: system to make it function. Unfortunately, as a product of
Speaker 3: that compromise, it ended up more complicated than it should be,
Speaker 3: to the point where it might not have worked. And
Speaker 3: I think that that hampered it to some extent. But
Speaker 3: certainly it was a very significant increase in border enforcement.
Speaker 3: But it also came with the resources, and I think
Speaker 3: that is something that has sort of gone not talked
Speaker 3: about as much. It would have led to the hiring
Speaker 3: of thousands of new asylum officers, over one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty new immigration judges, more funding for processing people, more
Speaker 3: funding for supporting state and local communities. Basically, this sort
Speaker 3: of massive infusion of funding that is necessary for a
Speaker 3: system that's buckling under its own weight, and that in
Speaker 3: and of itself would have made a hugely positive difference. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: the discussion very quickly got derailed into a bunch of
Speaker 3: largely inaccurate talking points. You heard some people saying, oh,
Speaker 3: it required four thousand people to be allowed into the country,
Speaker 3: a date that flagrantly falls. What it said is that
Speaker 3: when border crossings rise above a certain level, at that point,
Speaker 3: the border gets shut down and they stop letting people
Speaker 3: ask for asylum, though they would still have allowed some
Speaker 3: people to ask for a slightly harder to win form
Speaker 3: of protection known as withholding of removal, which offers fewer
Speaker 3: benefits and it's more difficult to obtain. So it's not
Speaker 3: that nobody would get asylums screenings for protection, it's just
Speaker 3: far fewer people would get screenings for protection, and it
Speaker 3: would have sort of allowed the US government to simply
Speaker 3: turn people away, potentially sending them to Mexico, though no
Speaker 3: one ever answered the question of whether Mexico gave the
Speaker 3: approval for this, and if Mexico said no, then this
Speaker 3: bill's practice of simply sending back to Mexico obviously couldn't happen.
Speaker 3: You can't do that without Mexico's permission. But I think
Speaker 3: broadly speaking, it was a serious effort to address these challenges,
Speaker 3: and even if it didn't get the balance exactly right,
Speaker 3: it's great that people were having serious conversations about it. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: it's very very, very very hard to have serious conversations
Speaker 3: about immigration policy today in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: Well, since it was just a border bill primarily, which
Speaker 1: I didn't fully understand until you just explained it. What's
Speaker 1: the role of states in securing the border? The state
Speaker 1: of Texas past Senate Bill four which aimed to take
Speaker 1: matters in its own hands. But I think this bill
Speaker 1: is very poorly understood. What was this bill meant to achieve,
Speaker 1: what's the controversy and how do you expect this to
Speaker 1: play out in the long term.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Texas SB four is an attempt by Texas to
Speaker 3: create its own immigration system, and I think it should
Speaker 3: be properly understood that Texas wants to enforce immigration laws
Speaker 3: and carry out deportations on its own without the federal government.
Speaker 3: Being involved, and that's not allowed. The US Constitution is
Speaker 3: pretty clear on this, well, at least as has been
Speaker 3: interpreted for the last century and a half, that immigration
Speaker 3: is a federal authority, and Texas's bill has a lot
Speaker 3: of weird things in it because it's not a federal bill.
Speaker 3: For example, under the bill, a Texas judge could order
Speaker 3: someone who is seeking asylum to walk back into Mexico
Speaker 3: at threat of twenty years in state prison if they
Speaker 3: say no, even if the person is already in the
Speaker 3: process of applying for asylum with the federal government and
Speaker 3: the federal government has said that they can stay. So
Speaker 3: you would have a system where you could have the
Speaker 3: federal government saying no, no, no, this person can stay
Speaker 3: and go through a prim and the state saying, if
Speaker 3: you don't leave, will throw you in prison for twenty years.
Speaker 3: And because we have a supremacy clause, the federal government
Speaker 3: wins out in that circumstance. And this sort of threatens
Speaker 3: to throw a ton of confusion into it s before
Speaker 3: also allows state law enforcement across the state to arrest
Speaker 3: people that they suspect across the border illegally, even if
Speaker 3: they've been here for decades, so you can have it
Speaker 3: go after long term on documented immigrants, even though it's
Speaker 3: not just people at the border, but broadly speaking, you
Speaker 3: know why did Texas do this. It's because Texas wants
Speaker 3: to be the people who can arrest people, send them
Speaker 3: to jail for crossing the border illegally, and deport them
Speaker 3: because they think the federal government isn't doing it enough.
Speaker 3: They've poured ten billion dollars into Operation Loan Star over
Speaker 3: the last three years, ten billion dollars, and the end
Speaker 3: results has been basically no net reduction in migration across
Speaker 3: the border at all. And I think even if they
Speaker 3: were allowed to put this law into effect, I think
Speaker 3: they would very quickly find that, as the federal government
Speaker 3: has found over the last twenty years or really fifty
Speaker 3: years of trying to patrol the border, it's just not
Speaker 3: that easy. You know, when you look down at what
Speaker 3: they've done with the barbed wire and the razor wire,
Speaker 3: that represents about one to two percent of the Texas
Speaker 3: Mexico border total. So yeah, you can spend billions of
Speaker 3: dollars and have a National Guard troop every five feet
Speaker 3: along the border if you're covering about five six miles
Speaker 3: or ten miles of the border, but Texas is nine
Speaker 3: hundred miles of border with Mexico, and it is not
Speaker 3: something that scales as easily when you're not doing it
Speaker 3: in a major metro area, which is where they're doing
Speaker 3: it now. They're doing it in the city of Eagle
Speaker 3: Pass and the city of Brownsville and the city of
Speaker 3: El Paso. Well, okay, that's that's again all well and
Speaker 3: good when you're five minutes from the nearest major highway,
Speaker 3: But if you're doing it fifty miles from there in
Speaker 3: farmland or mountains, it is just not as easy to
Speaker 3: patrol the border as Texas is trying to pretend they're
Speaker 3: doing here, And you can't do the kind of policies
Speaker 3: at scale, you know, even if you can like physically
Speaker 3: shut off one percent of the Texas Mexico border, it's
Speaker 3: the other ninety eight percent that's the concern. And the
Speaker 3: United States actually found out on the federal level in
Speaker 3: the nineteen nineties. The big thing was Operation Hold the
Speaker 3: Line in nineteen ninety four because at the time people
Speaker 3: were crossing in the really easy sections. We didn't really
Speaker 3: have any border walls at the time, so people were
Speaker 3: crossing in San Diego in Olpaso and Nogaules, Arizona, like
Speaker 3: within a mile of the regular border crossing points in
Speaker 3: the middle of cities. And what the US found is
Speaker 3: you can close off those areas. It's not too difficult
Speaker 3: to do that, and you put up walls, you know,
Speaker 3: you flood the area with border patrol agents, and people
Speaker 3: stop crossing in those those narrow, smaller areas. But what
Speaker 3: happened was everybody just started going to the mountains and
Speaker 3: to the more dangerous spots of crossing, and crossings didn't stop.
Speaker 3: And so Texas I think, if they ever did get
Speaker 3: a chance, would become the dog that caught the car.
Speaker 3: They would find out that you know, what might be
Speaker 3: really easy if you throw billions of dollars at it,
Speaker 3: which is shutting off this one to two percent of
Speaker 3: the border, becomes a lot harder when you're trying to
Speaker 3: go everywhere else.
Speaker 1: Now that we know we really need comprehensive immigration reform,
Speaker 1: what are two things an everyday person can do to
Speaker 1: advance something comprehensive. Do they go to their elected representative
Speaker 1: or what is it that people can do?
Speaker 3: I think there's there. I'll focus on two things. One, yes,
Speaker 3: talking to your representative, let them know that, you know,
Speaker 3: more funding for the system, more funding to make the
Speaker 3: system work, and really moving away from this border only
Speaker 3: idea of the system. If all you're doing is looking
Speaker 3: at the US Mexico border and you're not looking at
Speaker 3: anything else in the immigration process, you're not going to
Speaker 3: solve the broader problems. People aren't going to come to
Speaker 3: the US Mexico border if they do have a viable
Speaker 3: path to come here legally. Nobody's going to throw themselves
Speaker 3: into the hands of smugglers if they could just get
Speaker 3: in an actual line, you know, if there was a
Speaker 3: line to stand in. But there isn't, and so people
Speaker 3: do end up in those circumstances. So contacting your representatives
Speaker 3: and asking them to not just what's happening in the border,
Speaker 3: but the between ten and a half and fifteen million
Speaker 3: undocumented immigrants in the country, finding a path for them
Speaker 3: to adjust their status, pay a fine. You know, this
Speaker 3: is very very popular among the American public, is give
Speaker 3: people a path to legal status that requires them to
Speaker 3: go through a system, pay, get background checks, do whatever
Speaker 3: it has maybe, but you know, get their papers right.
Speaker 3: That's very very popular among the American public, But we
Speaker 3: aren't having that conversation in DC anymore because all we're
Speaker 3: doing is talking about the border. And so I think
Speaker 3: that's part of it. It's contacting a representative and let
Speaker 3: them know it's not just the border. You care about
Speaker 3: other things. And the other thing I think is to
Speaker 3: model inclusion and welcoming in your communities. People want to
Speaker 3: feel welcomed. They want to understand that when they arrive
Speaker 3: in this country they can become American, they can go
Speaker 3: through a process. And it is about presenting a positive
Speaker 3: vision of immigration in the United States and modeling that
Speaker 3: in your personal life, whether that's volunteering for local organizations,
Speaker 3: talking to local politicians, about finding ways for new arrivals
Speaker 3: to get professional licensing if they're taking certain jobs, you know,
Speaker 3: things along those lines. Welcoming policies which are applicable both
Speaker 3: to new immigrants coming here through the legal immigration system
Speaker 3: and to people who are waiting in these six, seven,
Speaker 3: eight year asylum backlogs, because as they go through this process,
Speaker 3: they are they have permission to be here. Eventually they
Speaker 3: often get permission to have a work permit. So until
Speaker 3: we get rid of these backlogs, we have to deal
Speaker 3: with the reality that these are people, These are people
Speaker 3: who want to work, These are people who want to contribute.
Speaker 3: They didn't come here to sit around in a shelter.
Speaker 3: But one of the reason they are sitting around in
Speaker 3: a shelter is because Congress in nineteen ninety six decided
Speaker 3: to make it illegal for asylum seekers to get a
Speaker 3: work permit until six months after they apply for asylum.
Speaker 3: So literally we say, you've gotten here. All you have
Speaker 3: is the clothes on your back. You've sold every possession
Speaker 3: you have to make the journey here. Oh and by
Speaker 3: the way, and when you get here, you're not allowed
Speaker 3: to legally work for months. Getting people to model like
Speaker 3: better ways to get people through those initial months of
Speaker 3: a new country. You don't speak the language all, but
Speaker 3: all you want to do is keep your head down
Speaker 3: and work and find a way to support yourself while
Speaker 3: you go through this process. Finding ways that communities can
Speaker 3: help people get to self sufficiency is something that I
Speaker 3: think the average person can help with, whether it is volunteering,
Speaker 3: donating food, donating clothes, talking to local politicians, you know,
Speaker 3: building support for seeing this as not just a challenge,
Speaker 3: but as an opportunity for communities.
Speaker 1: MM hmm, yeah, good advice. So here's my last question
Speaker 1: looking into the future. What makes you hopeful.
Speaker 3: You know, building off of that last thing, I'm hopeful
Speaker 3: because there are still people every single day who get
Speaker 3: up and they go and they volunteer and they help people.
Speaker 3: In the immigrant rights movement, you come across the most
Speaker 3: selfless people that you've ever met. You Know, people often
Speaker 3: say like, well, why don't you host these, you know,
Speaker 3: immigrants in your house therapy people who do that. There
Speaker 3: are people who take in new arrivals who don't have
Speaker 3: anywhere to sleep and let them use the spare bedroom
Speaker 3: for a few weeks while they get on their feet
Speaker 3: or for longer, who make new friends, who help children
Speaker 3: who are caught up in this thing that their parents
Speaker 3: are going through, who help them feel welcome, who bring
Speaker 3: them toys, who help them get integrated into school. And
Speaker 3: what makes me optimistic is the way that you know,
Speaker 3: we're ten years into this. In many ways, this increase
Speaker 3: in asylum seekers under the Obama administration, there are people
Speaker 3: who have been volunteering for the last ten years, and
Speaker 3: there are new volunteers. They're coming in every day to
Speaker 3: take part in welcoming the people to this country, and
Speaker 3: also you know, who believe in treating everyone like a
Speaker 3: person and recognizing, sure, some people do bad things, let's
Speaker 3: not pretend that otherwise. Obviously, there are bad actors, but
Speaker 3: the overwhelming majority of people crossing today are everyday folk
Speaker 3: who want safety and security for themselves and their loved ones.
Speaker 3: And I'm optimistic because I still see so many people
Speaker 3: coming forward and keeping that humanity in mind about who
Speaker 3: these people are, you know, and not seeing them as
Speaker 3: some scary monolith here to come to steal all of
Speaker 3: our you know, to murder everybody. Obviously, again, yes, of
Speaker 3: course there are bad people, but in any group of
Speaker 3: sufficient size, US citizens, immigrants, lawful, unlawful, what have you,
Speaker 3: there'll be some bad actors. But the overwhelming majority of
Speaker 3: people are just people who want to make a better life.
Speaker 3: And we can extend our hands and welcome. And it
Speaker 3: makes me optimistic to know that there are still people
Speaker 3: who do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here here, that is indeed very hopeful. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much, Erin for joining us on Future Hindsight. It
Speaker 1: was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1: Ann right Land. Melnick is the policy director at the
Speaker 1: American Immigration Council. Before I go, first of all, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening. If you like this episode, you'll
Speaker 1: love what we have in store. Be sure to hit
Speaker 1: that falla button on Apple Podcasts or the subscribe button
Speaker 1: on your favorite podcast app so you'll catch all of
Speaker 1: our upcoming episodes. Thank you. Oh and please leave us
Speaker 1: a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts. It seems
Speaker 1: like a small thing, but it can make a huge
Speaker 1: difference for an independent show like ours. It's the main
Speaker 1: way other people can find out about the show. We
Speaker 1: really appreciate your help. Thank you. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Zach Travis and me. Until next time, Stay engaged.
Speaker 1: This podcast is part of the Democracy Group