Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent.
Speaker 3: Coverage that is possible.
Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means
Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 4: But enough with that, Let's get to the show.
Speaker 1: Immigrants, we'll add seven trillion with eighty dollars to the
Speaker 1: gross domestic product of the United States over the next
Speaker 1: ten years, seven trillion dollars.
Speaker 5: You don't worry that bringing all these new people into
Speaker 5: the workforce, well, it might be good for the GDP
Speaker 5: depresses wages for Native born Americans.
Speaker 6: The Biden administration seems to only be tightening sanctions and
Speaker 6: expanding the Trump administration's kind of tough policy.
Speaker 1: I don't think that President Biden has gotten this right.
Speaker 1: I don't think the President Trump, President Obama, President Bush,
Speaker 1: or the presidents before them have.
Speaker 4: No one has been willing to take this on.
Speaker 5: According to Ice, the like seventy three thousand non citizens
Speaker 5: with the criminal history arrested just last year, aren't there
Speaker 5: pretty real concerns. That's just people who were arrested with
Speaker 5: criminal histories last year.
Speaker 6: Today's conversation is going to focus on immigration and the border,
Speaker 6: and for that we are joined by former Congressman Beto O'Rourke.
Speaker 3: Beto, thank you so much for joining us here.
Speaker 4: Nice to be with you.
Speaker 6: And I was just telling Emily before the program, you know,
Speaker 6: we were talking about you and I did my first
Speaker 6: interview with you when you were a city councilman back
Speaker 6: in El Paso, when you were pushing a we legalization resolution,
Speaker 6: and we actually have some footage of that we can
Speaker 6: put at the very end of this clip for people
Speaker 6: who can who will see both of us as much
Speaker 6: younger people. But here we are today and so thanks
Speaker 6: for joining us. We want to have a kind of
Speaker 6: wide ranging conversation that if people watch the entire thing,
Speaker 6: they can come away with kind of a broad understanding
Speaker 6: of both the the history of immigration, our immigration policy,
Speaker 6: our current border policy, and what different ideas there are
Speaker 6: around it, and then they can figure out for themselves
Speaker 6: where they stand on this. But you, as a city
Speaker 6: councilman and then a member of Congress from El Paso,
Speaker 6: this has been something that is just kind of inherent
Speaker 6: to policy making.
Speaker 3: I suppose that is that fair to say?
Speaker 6: Like, what is it what is it like to be
Speaker 6: a kind of a border city politician.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm speaking to you right now from Elpaso, which,
Speaker 1: with our sister city of Siula quad Is Chihuahua, Mexico,
Speaker 1: forms the largest binational community anywhere in the Western Hemisphere,
Speaker 1: perhaps the largest, or at least one of the largest
Speaker 1: anywhere in the world. It's about two and a half
Speaker 1: million people, two countries, two cultures, two languages, who come
Speaker 1: together in this one spot in the Chihuahuan desert, in
Speaker 1: the Rio Grande River Valley and do something absolutely extraordinary.
Speaker 1: We're far from the centers of power in our respective countries,
Speaker 1: like here in El Paso, I'm closer to the state
Speaker 1: capitals of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Chihuahua than i
Speaker 1: am to Austin, Texas, my own state capital eight hours away.
Speaker 1: So you thought Watts is similarly politically and geographically isolated.
Speaker 4: So there's this really beautiful.
Speaker 1: Symbiotic, interdependent relationship that we have had for as long
Speaker 1: as we have been communities. In fact, where I'm speaking
Speaker 1: to you from my living room here in Sunset Heights.
Speaker 1: Al Passo one hundred and ten years ago hosted a
Speaker 1: meeting between Pancho Villa and the Chief of Staff the
Speaker 1: United States Army General Hugh Scott, trying to address US
Speaker 1: Mexico US Mexico border issues, not too different from the
Speaker 1: role that Ol Paso could play today.
Speaker 4: So we really are at the.
Speaker 1: Epicenter of the US Mexico relationships, certainly the US Mexico border.
Speaker 1: All the dynamics positive and negative, whether it's the hundreds
Speaker 1: of billions of dollars of trade that flow through our
Speaker 1: ports of entry, the millions of legal, documented inspected crossings
Speaker 1: of people, of travelers, of workers, of students, of tourists,
Speaker 1: and then yes, the dynamic of unauthorized immigration, and significant
Speaker 1: challenges when it comes to our border, our immigration system,
Speaker 1: and the political dynamics that drive elections up and down
Speaker 1: the ballot, including the presidency in November. So al Paso
Speaker 1: in s WHA does our sister city hold a very
Speaker 1: special place. And that's why when I was on the
Speaker 1: city council in two thousand and nine and you interviewed me,
Speaker 1: we were working on drug policy because at the time set,
Speaker 1: Wadas was the deadliest city in the world bar none,
Speaker 1: in large part due to the United States drug interdiction,
Speaker 1: drug enforcement, drug militarization policies that it created such a
Speaker 1: premium for people to be able to cross things like marijuana,
Speaker 1: which seems quoint today, but back then people were literally
Speaker 1: willing to die or to kill for the ability to
Speaker 1: cross it into our community.
Speaker 4: So this is where it is all happening.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I'm really eager to get to that point,
Speaker 5: because when we talk about border and immigration, there's the
Speaker 5: economic concerns, there's a humanitarian sort of security, drug, all
Speaker 5: of those concerns. If we start with labor though in
Speaker 5: the economy, H five N one is just ripping through
Speaker 5: American dairy farms right now, and a lot of people
Speaker 5: might not have thought about this in the context of immigration,
Speaker 5: but there are so many migrant workers, a lot of
Speaker 5: them on humanitarian parole. Surely over the course of the
Speaker 5: last several years, we've seen big increases in that, and
Speaker 5: I wanted to ask betto about this. This excerpt from
Speaker 5: an article in Compact this week from Sorobramari, who wrote,
Speaker 5: farmers and ranchers who hire legal workers will struggle to
Speaker 5: compete against those who rely on soobs illegal serfs. The
Speaker 5: more the latter get away with, the more surf or
Speaker 5: slave life like labor becomes the norm across a whole sector.
Speaker 5: America's worst academic isn't an epidemic, is an addiction to
Speaker 5: cheap and vulnerable labor. It brings together unlikely bedfellows like
Speaker 5: the farm and ranch lobby and open border progressives in
Speaker 5: the White House and beyond. Carrying the addiction will require
Speaker 5: a similar pro worker alliance across partisan and regional lines.
Speaker 5: I thought this was a good question for you as
Speaker 5: someone who's also supportive of progressive causes on labor. It
Speaker 5: seems to me that there's tension there between you know,
Speaker 5: people who are concerned for workers and people who are
Speaker 5: concerned about the border. But how do you see that issue?
Speaker 5: And are you concerned about all of those workers now
Speaker 5: dealing with the outbreak of H five N one where
Speaker 5: they're on the front lines. It's probably not going to
Speaker 5: get into our food supply, but it may well get
Speaker 5: into their systems.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think this is a great point, and it is
Speaker 1: something that I'm concerned about. I read that expose the
Speaker 1: New York times led on immigrant child labor. Kids who
Speaker 1: are working as roofers, who are in slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants,
Speaker 1: who are doing some of the toughest, most dangerous, deadliest
Speaker 1: jobs in America. And they're twelve, and they're thirteen, and
Speaker 1: they're fourteen years old, and many of them are leaving
Speaker 1: these jobs maimed, mangled, or dead. In addition to that,
Speaker 1: you talk about this permanent second or third or fourth
Speaker 1: class of Americans that we have essentially created over the
Speaker 1: last many decades, growing comfortable with the fact that there
Speaker 1: are people who are struggling to come here, in many
Speaker 1: cases literally willing to die to get across the US
Speaker 1: Mexico border to work a job that, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: no one born in this country is willing to work.
Speaker 1: Many of these same jobs that I just listed earlier,
Speaker 1: working for substandard wages in some standard conditions, and again
Speaker 1: very often sacrificing their health or even their lives in process.
Speaker 1: We the consumer, ultimately, in some messed up way, is
Speaker 1: the beneficiary of this. It's lower costs, it's more abundance,
Speaker 1: it's less work for our kids or for us personally.
Speaker 1: But this is not sustainable, at least from the moral
Speaker 1: imperative as I see it, and it may not be
Speaker 1: sustainable for us economically going forward. The other side of
Speaker 1: this is that we're missing out on a massive, unrealized
Speaker 1: windfall if we could only find legal, safe, orderly channels
Speaker 1: for people to come here and work the jobs that
Speaker 1: were unable to fill. The last count that I saw
Speaker 1: is there are more than nine million of them in
Speaker 1: the United States economy. These nine million unfilled jobs exacerbate inflation,
Speaker 1: supply chain issues, the life and death of smaller communities
Speaker 1: that are dependent upon this labor. And here we have
Speaker 1: literally millions of people who are willing to work these jobs.
Speaker 1: So it is absolutely incumbent upon Congress, upon this President,
Speaker 1: upon both parties to change our immigration laws and certainly
Speaker 1: our work permission process to ensure that there's a legal
Speaker 1: way to do this. People come in from out of
Speaker 1: the shadows. There's no longer the unfair competition that no
Speaker 1: one except the corporations, the bosses, and ultimately perhaps the
Speaker 1: American consumer is good with. Certainly not the American worker,
Speaker 1: Certainly not the immigrant worker. We can fix this, but
Speaker 1: it's going to be a matter of political will and
Speaker 1: leadership from those who are in positions of power right now.
Speaker 6: We want to get to some of those fixes towards
Speaker 6: the back end of this conversation, So people that are
Speaker 6: curious about that, go ahead, fast forward there. I wanted
Speaker 6: to go backwards a little bit here and ask you
Speaker 6: about Kamala Harris's assignment that she was given by the
Speaker 6: by President Joe Biden go deal with root causes. She
Speaker 6: famously want of her efforts to keep immigration down was
Speaker 6: just to say don't come. But she was also supposed
Speaker 6: to address what they call these root causes. Now, often
Speaker 6: on this show we'll talk about the kind of the
Speaker 6: history of US interventions abroad. Some people think that that's
Speaker 6: just distracting from the current crisis that we're facing now
Speaker 6: and making excuses so you don't have to deal with
Speaker 6: the responsibility now. So I'm curious what you think the
Speaker 6: root causes of some of this immigration surge are. Is
Speaker 6: the history still relevant today or is that kind of
Speaker 6: some type of a cope And has Kamala Harris actually
Speaker 6: addressed any of these or from my perspective, seems like
Speaker 6: this administration is just maybe destabilized things further.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's absolutely a consistent through line, at least in
Speaker 1: the modern era of American policy in Latin America.
Speaker 4: You could go back to.
Speaker 1: Nineteen fifty four, for example, when the United States helped
Speaker 1: lead a coup against a fairly freely democratically elected president
Speaker 1: in Guatemala, a coolbar Benz Guzman. From nineteen fifty four
Speaker 1: forward after he was deposed in this US led coup,
Speaker 1: that country, for lack of a better phrase, has really
Speaker 1: been a political, a security, a civic basket case that
Speaker 1: has helped to exacerbate problems in Central America at the
Speaker 1: US Mexico border and with our immigration system. You can
Speaker 1: fast forward to the late nineteen seventies early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: to the civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador, to
Speaker 1: our relationship with Honduras, which many people referred to as
Speaker 1: essentially an undisclosed American aircraft carrier or base for American
Speaker 1: paramilitary sponsored operations in those two other countries, again further
Speaker 1: destabilizing that region, sending people fleeing by the hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands to the United States in the nineteen eighties, people
Speaker 1: who were often apprehended, imprisoned while in prison, picking up
Speaker 1: gang culture in US penal system, and in exporting that
Speaker 1: back to El Salvador, back to Honduras, back to Guatemala,
Speaker 1: back to Nicaragua, only to see that come back to
Speaker 1: us again in the two thousands leading up all the
Speaker 1: way today. The fix for this is one that I
Speaker 1: think is going to exceed the portfolio or the mandate
Speaker 1: or the authority given to.
Speaker 4: The Vice President.
Speaker 1: It's really going to have to involve a reorientation in
Speaker 1: the United States foreign policy. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: answer to this is, but I wonder if we looked
Speaker 1: at where the Secretary of State and where senior State
Speaker 1: Department officials spend the majority of their time physically, where
Speaker 1: they travel to in the world, where we are spending
Speaker 1: resources right now, where our attention, our focus is, and
Speaker 1: I would guess that Latin America, the Western hemisphere is
Speaker 1: pretty low on the list. Now, granted, you have Ukraine,
Speaker 1: you have Gaza, you have China, you have so many
Speaker 1: important places on the world, but none of them are
Speaker 1: literally physically and culturally and familiarly connected to us the
Speaker 1: way that the Americas are. And the longer that we
Speaker 1: choose because it is a choice to ignore the Americas
Speaker 1: or to only respond in crisis reactively, the longer we
Speaker 1: are going to have this conversation on shows like these
Speaker 1: about what's happening at the border, what's happening with our
Speaker 1: immigration system this moment, this issue begs for the kind
Speaker 1: of leadership that only the United States can provide, and
Speaker 1: that's presidential leadership that's convening the leaders of the Western
Speaker 1: hemisphere and looking at a migration crisis that is decades
Speaker 1: in the making and will require cooperation with all of
Speaker 1: the people and all the governments in this region, including
Speaker 1: governments that we don't like that much.
Speaker 4: I'll give you just one example.
Speaker 1: Venezuela has seen a diaspora of more than seven million
Speaker 1: people who have fled throughout the region. About five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand of them of those seven million, put this in context,
Speaker 1: have come to the United States. Countries much smaller than ours,
Speaker 1: like Columbia population of about fifty five million, have taken
Speaker 1: in millions of Ennsolonos. Other countries have taken in hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands and millions as well. So let's try to
Speaker 1: find a logical, rational, fair, cooperative way to handle this challenge,
Speaker 1: or we will continue to meet this at the border
Speaker 1: to the detriment of our country, of our politics and
Speaker 1: to the future that we could see if we were
Speaker 1: able to get a handle on this and make the
Speaker 1: most of those who want to come here and do
Speaker 1: better for themselves and do better for all of us.
Speaker 5: See it's interesting because I actually agree with a lot
Speaker 5: of what you've said on the root causes, and you know,
Speaker 5: going back to you know, we were talking about you
Speaker 5: cover our guns ourselves earlier, and I agree with a
Speaker 5: lot of that. But it's funny because when I look
Speaker 5: at what's happening today, and when I look at Big
Speaker 5: ag benefiting from this migrant work and the manufacturing sector
Speaker 5: benefiting from this migrant work, I also see the Biden
Speaker 5: border policies. This is from the Washington Post, the increases
Speaker 5: in humanitarian parole over the course of the Biden administration.
Speaker 5: I look at that almost as a way to or
Speaker 5: something that has destabilized a lot of these countries because
Speaker 5: they've created these pathways. I've talked to people, you know,
Speaker 5: when I was in matam Moros a couple of years ago,
Speaker 5: who described it as kind of a super highway through
Speaker 5: Central America, Latin America up to the American border in
Speaker 5: ways that are incredibly destabilizing every migrant pays cartels, so
Speaker 5: that's for each person, it's more money in the pocket
Speaker 5: of the cartels. So how do we design a border
Speaker 5: policy that's at once humanitarian but on the other hand
Speaker 5: is also understands that, you know, the easier it is
Speaker 5: to get humanitarian parole or a pathway to citizenship in
Speaker 5: the United States, the more people you're going to have
Speaker 5: flocking up through these countries that are already incredibly destabilized
Speaker 5: and need security in some ways. You know, you don't
Speaker 5: want to I want to end up subsidizing Buchala. You
Speaker 5: don't want to end up, you know, with the situation
Speaker 5: in Ecuador that Ran and I've talked about before. So
Speaker 5: it's so complicated. I'm curious how you think about that, Beto.
Speaker 1: You know, I see this perhaps a little bit differently,
Speaker 1: and that is I think the Biden administration was really
Speaker 1: responding to people who were already coming to this country,
Speaker 1: and many were coming and crossing in between ports of entry.
Speaker 4: They weren't able to get one of.
Speaker 1: Those coveted slots for an asylum interview. They weren't able
Speaker 1: to exceed the quota system that we have for visas
Speaker 1: for people who are coming from countries that are over subscribed.
Speaker 1: In other words, there was really no legal channel for
Speaker 1: people to come here, and those people, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: felt like they could not return to the country from
Speaker 1: which they had originally fled, and so taking their lives
Speaker 1: in their hands literally, they attempted to cross in between
Speaker 1: these ports of entry, you know, fording the Rio Grande
Speaker 1: River and trying to get through the razor wire that
Speaker 1: Governor Abbott has put up, or braving you know, the
Speaker 1: desert conditions in the summer in Arizona. What the Biden
Speaker 1: administration did with humanitarian prole was say, look, you are coming,
Speaker 1: and though we've told you not to come, you know,
Speaker 1: as Kamala Harris, Vice President, famously said when she went
Speaker 1: to Central America, you're still coming, and.
Speaker 4: You're putting your life at risk.
Speaker 1: You're creating, you know, potentially chaos at our border, and
Speaker 1: it's a real security and political challenge for the United States.
Speaker 1: We've got to do something about it. So we're going
Speaker 1: to give you a legal pathway to come here. This
Speaker 1: is through humanitarian prole and that was extended to folks
Speaker 1: who are coming from Haiti, who are coming from Nicaragua,
Speaker 1: who are coming from Cuba, and who are coming from
Speaker 1: Venezuela and Emily. When the Biden administration did that, illegal
Speaker 1: crossings undocumented crossing attempts dropped by more than ninety two
Speaker 1: percent for these populations. It may not be the perfect solution,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it is, but absent any action
Speaker 1: from Congress, this was about as much as a president
Speaker 1: could do to find that safe, legal, orderly path for
Speaker 1: those who are coming here. The other thing I would
Speaker 1: say is that you're absolutely right to focus on root causes.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're going to continue to manage this at
Speaker 1: the border through humanitarian parole or bigger walls or Concertina wire,
Speaker 1: or deportations or detentions, or we're going to work cooperatively
Speaker 1: with leaders and populations in the region to address the
Speaker 1: root causes in their economies, in the lack of the
Speaker 1: institutions that we take for granted in the United States
Speaker 1: that make civil society possible, security and safety, et cetera.
Speaker 1: We either work on that which is not easy, which
Speaker 1: is not sexy, which is a long term investment and
Speaker 1: prospect and diplomatically incredibly difficult, or we will continue to
Speaker 1: have this problem at our border and in our country.
Speaker 5: I have a quick follow up on that. I want
Speaker 5: to roll this video. We have this as ex.
Speaker 7: Two.
Speaker 5: This is a Red Cross worker in Mata Moroso years
Speaker 5: ago now, but he was talking about some of the
Speaker 5: causes of migration.
Speaker 7: My colleagues and I interviewed him. Let's roll this.
Speaker 6: Political divid in patrol meno drastic drum.
Speaker 5: People are being told in their home countries that there's.
Speaker 4: With President Biden. He has policies that are not as drastic.
Speaker 7: As as President Trump, and it's just causing a constant flow.
Speaker 4: Of people to arrive at the border.
Speaker 3: It was quiet, but once once Biden won, another wave
Speaker 3: of people arrived who thought that the border was going
Speaker 3: to open.
Speaker 5: So I found that interesting because to me and when
Speaker 5: I've talked to people, you've spent way more time in
Speaker 5: the border than I have. When I've talked to people,
Speaker 5: there was a consistent drum beat that people thought Biden
Speaker 5: was going to be more lenient. And as we saw,
Speaker 5: we can put ex. One, this is just crossings under
Speaker 5: Biden up on the screen. As we saw Biden take office,
Speaker 5: we did see an increase in illegal crossings. But now
Speaker 5: what we've seen is increase is also in humanitarian parole
Speaker 5: because people are being shifted away from I I think
Speaker 5: when Republicans talk about illegal immigrants right now, it's completely
Speaker 5: misnomer because a lot of this is actually authorized now,
Speaker 5: a lot of this is coming through humanitarian parole. So
Speaker 5: how is it possible to have a policy where you're
Speaker 5: getting people into the American economy to get it to
Speaker 5: where people are being treated humanly and fairly, but also
Speaker 5: not for that to be a pull factor that endangers
Speaker 5: people as they're being pulled up by cartels.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I think you make a good point,
Speaker 1: and I think common sense tells us that following Trump
Speaker 1: with his vicious nativist, anti immigrant rhetoric, having someone like
Speaker 1: President Biden, who is known for his empathy, who wants
Speaker 1: to get America back to its foundational values, including the
Speaker 1: acknowledgment that we are a nation of immigrants and refugees
Speaker 1: and asylum seekers from around the world, that that's going
Speaker 1: to have an impact on the prospective immigrant or asylum
Speaker 1: seekers decision on coming to this country. So a great,
Speaker 1: great point there, But in that graph that you just showed,
Speaker 1: there was also a pretty significant bump in twenty and nineteen.
Speaker 1: That's when Donald Trump, of course was president of the
Speaker 1: United States. And I just point that out because the
Speaker 1: dramatic increase that we saw in twenty nineteen, which was
Speaker 1: some of the highest numbers we had seen in many,
Speaker 1: many years, followed twenty eighteen, where you had a family
Speaker 1: separation policy where you had kids in cages, where you
Speaker 1: had some of the most fearful, hateful, racist rhetoric that
Speaker 1: we'd ever seen from an American president, and yet you
Speaker 1: saw the attempts increased dramatically in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4: From twenty twenty going forward, it's a little.
Speaker 1: Bit challenging to parse these numbers because you had Title
Speaker 1: forty two, which allowed border patrol agents to summarily deport
Speaker 1: without processing, people who are trying to enter this country,
Speaker 1: many trying to claim asylum. Those people were then free
Speaker 1: to try to cross again and again and again, and
Speaker 1: so you may have many crossing attempts that are representative
Speaker 1: of just a single person trying to cross multiple times.
Speaker 1: I guess this boils down to the fact that it
Speaker 1: has been decades, really since Ronald Reagan was a president
Speaker 1: of the United States, that we've had a comprehensive rewrite
Speaker 1: of our immigration, our asylum, our refugee and our border
Speaker 1: policies to match the conditions as they are today, to
Speaker 1: match the reality of our country right now, and certainly
Speaker 1: to match our values who we aspire to be, who
Speaker 1: we tell ourselves and the rest of the world that
Speaker 1: we are at the end of the day. And no,
Speaker 1: I don't think that President Biden has gotten this right.
Speaker 1: I don't think that President Trump, President Obama, President Bush,
Speaker 1: or the presidents before them have.
Speaker 4: No one has been willing to.
Speaker 1: Take this on and to put in the work and
Speaker 1: to expend the political capital necessary to get this done.
Speaker 1: I really think, Emily, it's going to take the next
Speaker 1: president to use everything they have in the first one
Speaker 1: hundred days of their administration to make this happen.
Speaker 4: The way that LBJ did with civil rights.
Speaker 1: In sixty four, the way that Obama did with the
Speaker 1: ACA in two thousand and nine, it's going to have
Speaker 1: to be. My hope is that it's President Biden his
Speaker 1: second term, doing everything he can with what he has
Speaker 1: to finally end this problem, this current crisis, and make
Speaker 1: sure that we have laws that correspond with our values,
Speaker 1: our reality, and the best interests of America.
Speaker 6: Obama's effort to do that during his term seemed to
Speaker 6: be to pretty much appease Republicans on enforcement in order
Speaker 6: to kind of win some capital, to get some comprehensive deal,
Speaker 6: none of which seemed to work. In the militarization that
Speaker 6: he advanced didn't seem to slow much. But I'm curious
Speaker 6: from your prosuctive you were serving in Congress then while
Speaker 6: Obama was engaged in that policy.
Speaker 3: What was Obama's policy like from your perspective, which parts
Speaker 3: of it worked, what.
Speaker 1: Didn't you know? I think that you're right. I think
Speaker 1: he was really trying to demonstrate this. This is me guessing.
Speaker 1: He didn't tell me this. I don't know this for
Speaker 1: a fact, but I think he and his administration we're
Speaker 1: trying to demonstrate just how tough they could be on
Speaker 1: the border and how strong they.
Speaker 4: Could be on security issues.
Speaker 1: You know, many people derided him as quote unquote the
Speaker 1: deporter in chief. At that point, he had deported under
Speaker 1: his administration more people from this country than any administration previously.
Speaker 1: There were these, you know, so called deportation camps that
Speaker 1: existed in places like Artesia, New Mexico. I visited one
Speaker 1: of them as a member of Congress. It's three hours
Speaker 1: from Malpasso, which is the closest big city to Artesia,
Speaker 1: meaning that asylum seekers, refugees, migrants who were stranded at
Speaker 1: these camps had little recourse to representation, to family, to help,
Speaker 1: to really anybody, including the media, even knowing that they
Speaker 1: were alive. And the the sense was among those migrants
Speaker 1: and some of the ICE staff that I talked to
Speaker 1: in Artesia that this was an effort to get people
Speaker 1: to quote unquote self deport to make conditions so miserable
Speaker 1: for them, but they'd go back to the country from
Speaker 1: which they fled and tell others in their hometowns not
Speaker 1: to make the attempt.
Speaker 4: That just doesn't work.
Speaker 1: We can be as cruel as we can imagine, and
Speaker 1: in Texas we've defied most people's imaginations. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not just the razor wire on the shores of the
Speaker 1: Rio Grande, submerged under the water level. It's not the
Speaker 1: floating buoy barriers with nets underneath designed to ensnare, entangle
Speaker 1: and drown migrants who are crossing. It's not just the
Speaker 1: fact that five years ago, in the entire i'll passive
Speaker 1: Border patrol sector all of West Texas, all of southern
Speaker 1: New Mexico, only six migrants died trying to cross in
Speaker 1: the US, and last year, one hundred and forty nine
Speaker 1: migrants died trying to cross into this country. It's the
Speaker 1: fact that we've quintupled border patrols spent over the last
Speaker 1: five years. We've more than tripled the size of ice,
Speaker 1: we are spending ungodly amounts of money, we are building walls,
Speaker 1: we are militarizing the border. You would think that doing
Speaker 1: all of that, with all of the death, all the misery,
Speaker 1: all the suffering that we are seeing, that numbers.
Speaker 4: Would plumb it. That's just not the case.
Speaker 1: And I think that should break through to both our
Speaker 1: brains and to our hearts, to show us that people
Speaker 1: aren't doing this for kicks. They're not coming here to
Speaker 1: steal our jobs or our kids place in school, or
Speaker 1: to freeload on free benefits and a social welfare system
Speaker 1: in the United States. They are leaving because they absolutely
Speaker 1: have no other choice but to do so.
Speaker 4: They're making the same decision.
Speaker 1: That you or I would make if faced with the
Speaker 1: same conditions. And I really do think we have a
Speaker 1: responsibility to figure out how to humanly address this issue.
Speaker 1: And yes, from the presence perspective, now without the help
Speaker 1: of cong Risk. That includes things like opening up more
Speaker 1: asylum appointments, more humanitarian parole, more work authorizations. But I
Speaker 1: take the points that both of you are making that
Speaker 1: we have to absolutely address the root causes of this
Speaker 1: work hemispherically with our partners and some folks that we
Speaker 1: don't like so much in the region. To address root
Speaker 1: causes or we're never going to get a handle on this,
Speaker 1: and that will be to the detriment of our country
Speaker 1: and politically, it's going to continue to be in albatross
Speaker 1: around the neck of any Democrat running for office, including
Speaker 1: the President, because the other side, cynically Donald Trump, who
Speaker 1: says the quiet part out loud all the time, they
Speaker 1: don't want a solution. You know, he infamously broke the
Speaker 1: border deal negotiated by Senate Republicans and the President because
Speaker 1: he wants to run on the problem. They can fit
Speaker 1: their solution on a bumper sticker, build the wall.
Speaker 4: Democrats actually have.
Speaker 1: To govern, and until we get this right, it is
Speaker 1: going to be very challenging for us politically, and that
Speaker 1: leads to all other problems or a number of other
Speaker 1: problems that we're going to continue to have in this country.
Speaker 1: So I don't think that there's a more important issue
Speaker 1: for the president to lead on and if he has
Speaker 1: majorities in his second term to actually get the job done.
Speaker 5: Actually, that's interesting because you don't see it. We keep
Speaker 5: going back on this. I feel like this is where
Speaker 5: the impasses. But you don't see it in that. You know,
Speaker 5: if you look at increased deaths or the humanitarian suffering
Speaker 5: people going through the Darien Gap and the Darien Gap
Speaker 5: they say they've seen massive increases, you don't think that's
Speaker 5: connected to the increase in humanitarian parole in the United States.
Speaker 5: And I asked that question again just because like you're
Speaker 5: talking to these people, is the world I mean, is
Speaker 5: so heartbreaking exactly because of what you said. It's what
Speaker 5: everyone would do in these situations when gangs are targeting
Speaker 5: your family and you know, you have so much more
Speaker 5: opportunity in the United States. You know, some of the
Speaker 5: Haitian migrants, you talk to them and they'll say, you know,
Speaker 5: they're doing okay in Brazil or somewhere like that, but
Speaker 5: what they want is the opportunity of the United States.
Speaker 5: But you don't see that as being connected to the
Speaker 5: Biden policy. To think Greg Abbott, Well, he would say,
Speaker 5: you know, I can put up as much razor wire,
Speaker 5: but unless the Biden administration decreases the humanitarian parole that
Speaker 5: it's given, or you know, does detention or remain in Mexico,
Speaker 5: people are going to keep coming because they're desperate. So
Speaker 5: those two things, you don't think they're completely correlated.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they're completely correlated, but I absolutely
Speaker 1: can see that that is a factor.
Speaker 4: Again, and I mentioned this earlier.
Speaker 1: If you know, we're moving from an administration where the
Speaker 1: president is describing asylum seekers as animals, calling them an
Speaker 1: infestation and invasion, as are all words that President Trump
Speaker 1: used inspiring a mass killer to come to all Pass
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen and murder twenty three people in the
Speaker 1: walmart here, claiming that he's repelling this invasion that he'd
Speaker 1: heard about from Donald Trump, of Hispanics who are coming
Speaker 1: to politically take over this country if that person is
Speaker 1: replaced by somebody who is not as hateful, not as violent,
Speaker 1: not as vicious, and says, yes, I want to get
Speaker 1: America back to its fundamental values. I want to treat
Speaker 1: people with the basic dignity and respect that they deserve
Speaker 1: could that be a factor.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, very happy to concede that.
Speaker 1: Very proud of the President, by the way, for representing
Speaker 1: that value in American history. But the reason I pointed
Speaker 1: out the significant spike in twenty nineteen under Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is that he was as cruel a president towards immigrants
Speaker 1: as we've ever had, and you still saw a dramatic
Speaker 1: increase in people trying to cross. The one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty nine deaths that I described earlier. Those are moms
Speaker 1: and little babies drowning in the Rio Grand River. These
Speaker 1: are people whose desiccated bodies were finding in the Chiuahuan desert,
Speaker 1: who died of dehydration and sun exposure. This is the
Speaker 1: most miserable way possibly to lose your life. One hundred
Speaker 1: and forty nine people who died just in this region
Speaker 1: from which I'm talking to you right now, I'm confident
Speaker 1: are an undercount, and I'm also confident that their deaths
Speaker 1: do not go unnoticed back in their home country. So
Speaker 1: we've got to ask ourselves, given all of that, why
Speaker 1: would someone still try to make this journey here? And
Speaker 1: I don't think it is just because there is a
Speaker 1: more generous humanitarian bargain to be had under President bid
Speaker 1: and I think they've they've really lost hope in being
Speaker 1: able to stay in their home country or being able
Speaker 1: to go to any other country, because, as I pointed
Speaker 1: out earlier, in a country like Colombia, they're absolutely beyond
Speaker 1: capacity to take any more. We've taken hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of Venezuelans and we're a three hundred and thirty five
Speaker 1: million person country. They've taken millions of Venezuelans and they're
Speaker 1: a fifty five million person country. You know, maybe a
Speaker 1: strategy is to help address capacity issues in these other countries. Hey, Columbia,
Speaker 1: what do you need to better process and retain and
Speaker 1: help put to work Venezuelans who can't return to their
Speaker 1: home country right now? And then, hey, region, how can
Speaker 1: we work together to address what is happening in Venezuela
Speaker 1: so people can come back home. I mean, just like
Speaker 1: those of us here in America, people are proud of
Speaker 1: their home countries. They love the hometown they come from,
Speaker 1: they miss their families. They're not leaving for kicks. This
Speaker 1: is an incredibly arduous, very often deadly journey, and many
Speaker 1: people want to come back home. Let's help them find
Speaker 1: a way to do that.
Speaker 6: What about the sanctions on Venezuela. We also see a
Speaker 6: lot of migration from Cuba recently, more people fleeing Cuba
Speaker 6: now than during the Marial, the famous Mariyal boat lift
Speaker 6: that gave this country scarface. The Biden administration seems to
Speaker 6: only be tightening sanctions and expanding the Trump administration's kind
Speaker 6: of tough policy towards them.
Speaker 3: What role do you think that plays.
Speaker 5: Well, and even back in coups like in Venezuela and
Speaker 5: other places.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Our foreign policy has really just been a disaster across
Speaker 1: the Americas, throughout the Western hemisphere. We are reaping what
Speaker 1: we have sown over decades. It's a combination of catastrophic disinterest,
Speaker 1: like literally ignoring what is happening right next door, and
Speaker 1: then when we intervene, it is reactively. Whether it's Reagan
Speaker 1: fighting the boogeyman of communism in Nicaragua, in El Salvador,
Speaker 1: whether it's a successive administrations that militarize the police forces
Speaker 1: throughout the Americas to fight our drug war on their turf.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that we represent about half or at
Speaker 1: least a quarter of the global demand for illegal drugs,
Speaker 1: and those drugs are going to transit through these places,
Speaker 1: and they're going to hollow out their institutions, their judiciary,
Speaker 1: their free press, their civil society. They're free and fair
Speaker 1: and democratic elections. I mean, we bear some culpability for this,
Speaker 1: and we should acknowledge that, and we should do what
Speaker 1: we can to make it right, while also acknowledging that
Speaker 1: it's not completely our burden to bear, and there's responsibility
Speaker 1: in these countries certainly as well and throughout the hemisphere.
Speaker 4: But I also want to make this point.
Speaker 1: We have so much to gain really if we can
Speaker 1: figure this out. I think the Congressional Budget Office estimates
Speaker 1: that over the last fifteen years, just asylum seekers and
Speaker 1: refugees have contributed about one hundred and twenty four billion
Speaker 1: dollars to the net positive after you subtract all of
Speaker 1: our costs to care for them or to process them,
Speaker 1: or to in any way handle them, one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty four billion dollars to the positive of the United
Speaker 1: States economy. Looking prospectively over the next decade, the numbers
Speaker 1: are even more dramatic. Immigrants, undocumented, legal, processed, citizen, permanent resident,
Speaker 1: and otherwise will add seven trillion with eight dollars to
Speaker 1: the gross domestic product of the United States over the
Speaker 1: next ten years, seven trillion dollars. One trillion dollars will
Speaker 1: net to federal, state, and local governments in taxa seats.
Speaker 1: These are net numbers. Now, imagine if we could get
Speaker 1: this right and provide safe, legal, orderly pathways for people
Speaker 1: to come here to work jobs that were otherwise unable
Speaker 1: to fill, to contribute to the success of our communities,
Speaker 1: especially small towns that I see across Texas that without
Speaker 1: the influx of immigrants, would otherwise dry up and die,
Speaker 1: and also our ability to realize our promise and our
Speaker 1: potential as a country that stands on the world stage
Speaker 1: that is comprised of people from the planet over.
Speaker 4: It really is the.
Speaker 1: Best thing going, and we lose this at our own peril.
Speaker 1: As you all know, we're not having enough kids in
Speaker 1: our families right now to replace the population in the
Speaker 1: United States, to pay into Social Security, to keep it solvent,
Speaker 1: to work all these jobs that I've been talking about
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 4: To Emily's point.
Speaker 1: We want to make sure that those who come here
Speaker 1: to work those jobs are doing these jobs above board
Speaker 1: and are competing on an equal, fair playing field and
Speaker 1: are out in the sunlight. And when we do all
Speaker 1: of that, when we have regular, controlled, legal, safe, orderly
Speaker 1: immigration or reports of entry, the real challenges that we
Speaker 1: have and I and I completely admit that we have
Speaker 1: some at our border, you know, illegal drug trafficking, illegal
Speaker 1: human trafficking, modern day slavery that is taking place in
Speaker 1: the Americas, it becomes much easier to focus on those
Speaker 1: challenges right now. Those are needles in the haystack of
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people who are coming here every month.
Speaker 1: We regularize the ability for those people to come here,
Speaker 1: address the root causes, so fewer people are coming in
Speaker 1: the first place, and we're going to be more effective
Speaker 1: at stopping the real threats that we face at the
Speaker 1: US Mexico border.
Speaker 5: And on the point about labor, from a macro perspective,
Speaker 5: it's hard for me to see how bringing in you know,
Speaker 5: two millions, So if we're taking the humanitarian parole numbers,
Speaker 5: most of those are most of those people get authorized
Speaker 5: work permits, a couple million people into the labor force.
Speaker 5: How that doesn't depress wages? There is competing research on that,
Speaker 5: but you don't worry that bringing all these new people
Speaker 5: into the workforce. Well, it might be good for the
Speaker 5: GDP depresses wages for native born Americans.
Speaker 1: No, I am concerned about that, and I think you
Speaker 1: raise a really important point in effect that is happening
Speaker 1: right now because we don't have legal pathways for people
Speaker 1: to come here and work above board, and they're being
Speaker 1: paid depressed wages underneath the minimum wage, which is already
Speaker 1: so low. In Texas it's seven dollars and twenty five
Speaker 1: cents an hour.
Speaker 4: Try feeding your family on one of those jobs.
Speaker 1: Now imagine if you're paid five bucks an hour or
Speaker 1: two bucks an hour, as some of these undocumented migrants are,
Speaker 1: and now imagine that you're an American born worker who's
Speaker 1: in the labor.
Speaker 4: Pool competing against that.
Speaker 1: It's really really tough to get by and incredibly unfair
Speaker 1: to Americans first and foremost. So you've just provided one
Speaker 1: of the most important reasons that we've got to find
Speaker 1: these safe legal pathways for people to come here and
Speaker 1: work within the law, to make sure that they're vetted,
Speaker 1: and also to make sure that they have a pathway
Speaker 1: that will allow them to escape, you know, a third
Speaker 1: place or second place level of citizenship ultimately, if they
Speaker 1: want to to become United States citizen and to enjoy
Speaker 1: the fruits.
Speaker 4: Of their labor.
Speaker 1: You know, they're literally helping to build this country up,
Speaker 1: and we want to make sure that they and their
Speaker 1: descendants are going to have a place and a future
Speaker 1: in this country. That's good for all of us. And
Speaker 1: as you know, that's the story of this country. That's
Speaker 1: the story of my ancestors fleeing famine in Ireland to
Speaker 1: come to this country, probably to work jobs that no
Speaker 1: one else would take, and then successive generations continue to
Speaker 1: contribute to the success of their cities, their communities, and
Speaker 1: their country.
Speaker 4: We want that to continue in America.
Speaker 1: That's the best part of our story as far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned.
Speaker 4: But yes, you're right, it has to happen legally.
Speaker 1: But to your point about demand, we have nine million
Speaker 1: unfilled jobs right now. It's absolutely one of not the only,
Speaker 1: but one of the drivers on inflation, one of the
Speaker 1: drivers of supply chain issues, and it's really holding back
Speaker 1: an economy that could go gangbusters if we could find
Speaker 1: a way to make the most of this unrealized labor
Speaker 1: pool that wants to come here to work these jobs.
Speaker 6: How do you respond to people who say, look, it's
Speaker 6: all well and good that we're a nation of immigrants,
Speaker 6: but we're just too crowded now. Rent is too high,
Speaker 6: housing prices are too high. We just can't take any
Speaker 6: more people. I'm sure you hear that. What's your response
Speaker 6: to that?
Speaker 3: When you hear it?
Speaker 4: It's funny.
Speaker 1: When I was running for governor here in Texas, I
Speaker 1: could point to the abysmal state of public education in Texas,
Speaker 1: or the fact that teachers are paid less than ten
Speaker 1: thousand against their counterparts nationally, talk about the power grid
Speaker 1: failure in twenty twenty one that killed seven hundred people,
Speaker 1: or the fact that two years after Uvaldy.
Speaker 4: We lead the nation in school shootings.
Speaker 1: The fact that we haven't expanded medicat or minimum wage
Speaker 1: is solo. I could make any of those charges and
Speaker 1: the governor would simply point to the border or raise
Speaker 1: the boogeyman of immigrants who are coming to take our jobs,
Speaker 1: or to rape our kids, or to kill our families.
Speaker 1: Until we address this issue, it will continue to be
Speaker 1: a distraction. And unlike the economy or inflation, these are
Speaker 1: things that we experience in day to day life. I
Speaker 1: know how much more milk costs than it did four
Speaker 1: years ago. I know what it costs to fill up
Speaker 1: my truck when I go to the gas station.
Speaker 4: You can't snow me on that. But immigration, unless you're
Speaker 4: an immigrant, unless.
Speaker 1: You work with immigrants, perhaps if you live in El
Speaker 1: Paso or Eagle Pass or Del Rio or Nogals, this is.
Speaker 4: Not something you experience on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1: This is something you are told how to feel about
Speaker 1: by people like Donald Trump or Greg Abbott, and they
Speaker 1: tell you to be afraid, and they incite so much
Speaker 1: of that hatred, so much of that violence, like we
Speaker 1: saw in El Paso, so much of that dysfunction that
Speaker 1: we see in Congress where you have a border security
Speaker 1: deal that Republicans could only dream of. Frankly, I was
Speaker 1: surprised that the President conceded to all of those to
Speaker 1: all of those demands.
Speaker 4: You know, until we solve this, that's going to be
Speaker 4: the problem.
Speaker 1: You all have seen that cartoon where you know, there
Speaker 1: there's three people at a table, and there's the American
Speaker 1: worker with his one cookie, and then there's the fat
Speaker 1: cat CEO of the corporation with the pile of cookies.
Speaker 1: And the CEO points to the immigrant. He says, that
Speaker 1: guy's trying to take your cookie. I think we have
Speaker 1: to focus on the challenges where they really are, hold
Speaker 1: people in positions of public trust accountable for the jobs
Speaker 1: they're doing or not doing.
Speaker 4: But Ryan to your point, you know, whether it's fair
Speaker 4: or not.
Speaker 1: Until we solve these challenges that we've been discussing the
Speaker 1: course of this program, it will continue to be a
Speaker 1: political problem and it will hold us back from addressing
Speaker 1: the very real challenges that we have throughout this country.
Speaker 5: One question on the security point, because according to ICE,
Speaker 5: there were like seventy three thousand non citizens with a
Speaker 5: criminal history arrested just last year. I feel like that
Speaker 5: does go beyond Nagallis and go beyond Egle Pass and
Speaker 5: up into different parts of the country. Obviously, there was
Speaker 5: the tragedy of Lake and Riley earlier this year, so
Speaker 5: there are and basically other parts of the border are
Speaker 5: saying there's this influx of Chinese migrants, and you know,
Speaker 5: there's people who are engaged in demonization, There's no question
Speaker 5: about it. There are people who are engaged in creating
Speaker 5: the Boogeyman's no question about it. But aren't there pretty
Speaker 5: real concerns you know, even if there's plenty of research
Speaker 5: that suggests immigrant populations have lower crime rates than native
Speaker 5: born populations, you're still bringing in some seventy three thousand people.
Speaker 5: That's just people who were arrested with criminal histories last year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're making the case for rewriting our
Speaker 1: immigration laws to ensure that there's that legal, safe, orderly
Speaker 1: pathway for people that we want to have in this country,
Speaker 1: and it will make us far more effective at being
Speaker 1: vigilant against those that we don't want in this country,
Speaker 1: people who have violent criminal histories, for example, or gang affiliations,
Speaker 1: or who are trafficking in fentanyl or in human beings.
Speaker 4: For that matter.
Speaker 1: Right now, that we have more than twenty thousand border
Speaker 1: patrol agents, that we're spending billions more than we ever have,
Speaker 1: And I think President Biden's budget for DHS, I think
Speaker 1: has got us almost twice the level we have for
Speaker 1: border patrol spending alone as what we had in the
Speaker 1: Trump administration. President Biden has deported I think, far more
Speaker 1: people than President Trump ever has. If we don't get
Speaker 1: to some kind of order, control, legal pathway for people
Speaker 1: to come here, we're going to continue to put these
Speaker 1: border patrol agents in this absolutely untenable situation of not
Speaker 1: being able to effectively interdict and stop the very real
Speaker 1: threats that we face. Now, all of what you laid
Speaker 1: out is a serious challenge in terms of those with
Speaker 1: criminal histories, I for one, am not too concerned whether
Speaker 1: someone is Chinese.
Speaker 4: Or Honduran, or Nigerian or anything else. That really does
Speaker 4: not matter to me.
Speaker 1: But it matters if they have a criminal history, if
Speaker 1: they pose a threat to this country. Let's make sure
Speaker 1: that we're more effective. We're only going to be more
Speaker 1: effective when we have control of our border. We're only
Speaker 1: going to get that when we have comprehensive immigration reform.
Speaker 1: And that's only going to happen when you have really
Speaker 1: strong leadership at the very top, when you're able to
Speaker 1: compel members of Congress to actually do their job, and
Speaker 1: where you have enough popular push from the people of
Speaker 1: this country to ensure that that there's that level of accountability.
Speaker 1: Otherwise we're going to continue to have this co again
Speaker 1: and again and again. And as a lifelong resident of Elpaso, Texas,
Speaker 1: I can tell you, going back to the to the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, I am super familiar with this conversation, and
Speaker 1: it's one of the more disappointing aspects of our political
Speaker 1: system in this country that we don't see the leadership
Speaker 1: and the political will to fix this, to get this right.
Speaker 1: For all of the moral reasons, all the economic, all
Speaker 1: the humanitarian, and all the security and safety reasons that
Speaker 1: you're bringing up right now, Emily.
Speaker 6: The problem from my perspective with a democratic position is
Speaker 6: that they seem to be kind of mimicking what the
Speaker 6: kind of center left Europeans did over the last ten years.
Speaker 6: You know, they had a migration crisis out of the
Speaker 6: Syrian War significantly, and right wing nativists made a huge
Speaker 6: stink out of it, and the center left parties said,
Speaker 6: we're basically, you know, as far right wing on the
Speaker 6: question of immigration as the right wing parties are, but
Speaker 6: we're just we're just a little bit nicer and friendlier
Speaker 6: about it.
Speaker 3: But they embraced a lot of the same kind of
Speaker 3: very tough policies.
Speaker 6: All this, all the studies in all the common sense
Speaker 6: shows that that did. That didn't work for the center
Speaker 6: left parties. They were they basically don't exist anymore and
Speaker 6: people have moved.
Speaker 3: You know, if you have a choice.
Speaker 6: Between yeah, then you know, mccron is the only one
Speaker 6: that's that basically has been able to hold on. Otherwise,
Speaker 6: at the right wing parties have pretty much been dominant,
Speaker 6: and it hasn't worked to appease them. It seems seems
Speaker 6: like Biden's attempt to do that probably goes the exact
Speaker 6: same direction, doesn't work, just just enables the right. But
Speaker 6: if I ask myself, okay, well what is the left
Speaker 6: position on immigration? Like I know what it is on
Speaker 6: climate change, I know what it is on healthcare, I
Speaker 6: know what it is on the economy generally, but what
Speaker 6: is it on immigration? So if if you were, let's say,
Speaker 6: running for president again and you're going to do a
Speaker 6: left wing democratic position of what of what Democrats are for.
Speaker 3: When it comes to immigration, not just what they're against,
Speaker 3: which is Trump being bad? What would that what would
Speaker 3: that kind of position be?
Speaker 6: And it's complicated, maybe it's too complicated to boil down,
Speaker 6: but I'm curious, you know, what what is the the
Speaker 6: left position in America on immigration?
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you raised this because you know, earlier
Speaker 1: I was mentioning, you know, the cruelty of the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: the rhetoric of Greg Abbott, you know, literally on the
Speaker 1: eve of the Old Passo shooting said Texans, we've got
Speaker 1: to defend ourselves. We have to take matters into our
Speaker 1: own hands. And then the absolutely, absolutely cruel way in
Speaker 1: which he has met this humanitarian challenge at our border.
Speaker 1: And you're absolutely right on the part of Democrats, at
Speaker 1: least nationally, it is a paler version of this, maybe
Speaker 1: uh you know, kinder or gentler in some way. But
Speaker 1: you have President Biden saying, give me the authority and
Speaker 1: I will shut the border.
Speaker 4: Down on on day one.
Speaker 1: You have the revival of detention, many of these detention
Speaker 1: camps run by the private prison industry here in Texas.
Speaker 1: You have a throttling of asylum and really new barriers
Speaker 1: and obstacles to people who are trying to apply for asylum.
Speaker 1: If you didn't apply, you know, in countries through which
Speaker 1: you transitd if you didn't use CBP one which has
Speaker 1: a very limited number of appointment slots, then you know
Speaker 1: there is no recourse for you whatsoever, which drives so
Speaker 1: much of that desperation.
Speaker 4: So Ryan, you're asking me, then, what's the positive side
Speaker 4: of that? I would love.
Speaker 1: To hear Democrats say immigration is one of the best
Speaker 1: things about this country. It is literally what has made
Speaker 1: us who We are, the dominant superpower in this world economically, culturally, militarily.
Speaker 4: You find a way to measure it.
Speaker 1: Immigrants have made it happen in this country, and we
Speaker 1: will continue to be a dominant country in this world,
Speaker 1: will continue to have a high standard of living, will
Speaker 1: continue to be a country that we can be proud
Speaker 1: of if we continue to find a way to legally
Speaker 1: in an orderly fashion and safely allow those from around
Speaker 1: the planet who want to come here to do better
Speaker 1: for themselves, who doesn't want to, but who also want
Speaker 1: to do better for all of us, which they have.
Speaker 1: Al Passo one of the safest cities in America, not
Speaker 1: despite but because we are a city of immigrants. I
Speaker 1: mentioned the hundreds of billions of dollars to the positive
Speaker 1: that refugees and asylum seekers have brought, the trillions of
Speaker 1: dollars that they will bring over the next decade. If
Speaker 1: we do not screw this up. This is a great opportunity.
Speaker 1: It's something that we should be proud of. It is
Speaker 1: something that we should be for. It is not something
Speaker 1: that we should be afraid of, defensive about feeling compelled
Speaker 1: out of fear or anxiety to agree with Republicans just
Speaker 1: to try to win the election or to do better
Speaker 1: in the polls.
Speaker 4: Voters can sniff that out.
Speaker 1: And if they can have the real thing, you know,
Speaker 1: real cruelty in Donald Trump, or they can have you know,
Speaker 1: some you know simulation of it from Democrats, they're going
Speaker 1: to take the real thing.
Speaker 4: I think we have an opportunity here. You know.
Speaker 1: President Biden as a candidate in twenty twenty defeated Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and the lines on this issue were actually a lot.
Speaker 4: Clearer than than they are now.
Speaker 1: Trump was, you know, family separation, he was kids in cages,
Speaker 1: he was cruelty at the border remain in Mexico. The
Speaker 1: Migrant Protection Protocols the most orwellian named American policy ever.
Speaker 1: President Biden said, let's get back to who we are
Speaker 1: as a country of immigrants. Let's treat these people who
Speaker 1: are coming here humanly.
Speaker 4: Let's protect the border.
Speaker 1: Let's make sure that we prioritize safety and security.
Speaker 4: But there's a much better way to do that.
Speaker 1: American voters, for whom immigration was one of the central
Speaker 1: issues in twenty twenty, as it was in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: as it will be in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: Chose President Biden on that basis.
Speaker 1: I think he has an opportunity to return to that
Speaker 1: right now, and it's not too late, and it's not
Speaker 1: news to anyone that he's really.
Speaker 4: Struggling with young voters right now.
Speaker 1: If instead of conceding the position to Republicans on these issues,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, in addition to making sure we
Speaker 1: manage the border better, address legitimate security concerns, manage the
Speaker 1: flow of people who are wanting to come here, I
Speaker 1: am going to fight for those dreamers to make sure
Speaker 1: that they have a pathway to citizenship. I'm going to
Speaker 1: do something about the eleven million undocumented who, to Emily's point,
Speaker 1: are working jobs here that no one else will at
Speaker 1: substandard wages that are a real threat and danger to
Speaker 1: the American worker.
Speaker 4: I'm going to get this right.
Speaker 1: Speak in aspirational, ambitious, strong terms.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: I think that would fire up a lot of young
Speaker 1: people right now who are looking for a reason to
Speaker 1: support President Biden in November.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I wish Democrats and Republicans had a more serious appetite,
Speaker 5: and you know, they were more willing to dismiss corporate
Speaker 5: interests on this question because now that as we've been
Speaker 5: talking about it reminds me it's sort of like my
Speaker 5: position on student loans, because I probably disagree with both
Speaker 5: of you on this, like I don't support student loan
Speaker 5: forgiveness unless there's also addressing the root cause is because
Speaker 5: then from my perspective, it thrusts us deeper and deeper
Speaker 5: into this cycle, into a vicious cycle. But the last
Speaker 5: question is kind of about that vicious cycle. I wanted
Speaker 5: to tee you and Ryan bothap Betze because you both wrote, written,
Speaker 5: and done a lot of work in drugs in the
Speaker 5: space of immigration and the border, and obviously fentanyl has
Speaker 5: become a huge concern for people looking at the border now.
Speaker 5: But just even going back decades of failed American drug policy,
Speaker 5: over the course of the Biden administration, there's been again
Speaker 5: an attempt to crack down a fentanyl obviously real problem.
Speaker 7: We all agree on that.
Speaker 5: But from the vantage point of people who have studied
Speaker 5: this again for decades, what do you make of the
Speaker 5: Biden era drug policy and as it pertains to migration.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I'll start and then I'm interested to hear
Speaker 1: what Ryan has to say on this. I think the
Speaker 1: announcement by the Biden administration that they're going to move
Speaker 1: forward on rescheduling marijuana is a great step in the
Speaker 1: right direction. It had more of a bearing on the
Speaker 1: US Mexico Board order when it was illegal in almost
Speaker 1: every state in the Union than it does today. So
Speaker 1: I don't know that that is addressing the border issue
Speaker 1: as directly anymore when it comes to fentanyl and other
Speaker 1: illegal drugs that are being transited across through our ports
Speaker 1: of entry, actually far more than in between our ports
Speaker 1: of entry. I think we get back to the core
Speaker 1: idea that if you know ninety nine percent of what
Speaker 1: comes into this country is inspected, is doing so legal,
Speaker 1: that there is an orderly safe pathway for people who
Speaker 1: want to come here apply for asylum or refugee status,
Speaker 1: or for temporary work permits, or through our green card system,
Speaker 1: or citizenship, or join a family member, a lot of
Speaker 1: ways to do this. If we can get that right,
Speaker 1: then our ability to interdict and stop the flow of fentanyl,
Speaker 1: for example, is going to be that much greater. Until
Speaker 1: we do that, Given the hundreds of thousands of undocumented crossings,
Speaker 1: the lack of control we have over our immigration system
Speaker 1: right now, this will remain the needle in the haystack
Speaker 1: that unfortunately and tragically is very difficult for us to uncover.
Speaker 1: I think the Biden administration is doing really the best
Speaker 1: they can with the resources and the authority and the
Speaker 1: appropriations that they have. But what they really need is
Speaker 1: a comprehensive fix, and that will require Congressional action.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think fentanyl has some unique elements to it
Speaker 6: because I think there's some significant amounts of China policy
Speaker 6: related to that. I don't think there's just I just
Speaker 6: think there's no way that that amount of fentanyl is
Speaker 6: being produced in China and exported to Mexico and up
Speaker 6: through the United States without China. You know, China knows
Speaker 6: what it's doing. Okay, they're they're they're looking the other
Speaker 6: way or or even worse, actively encouraging I think the
Speaker 6: ventanyl exporting.
Speaker 7: Let's say that about Amlo too though.
Speaker 3: Well is an interesting figure too.
Speaker 6: But and I'm curious for your take on this because
Speaker 6: as I've we both have covered the drug war, but
Speaker 6: uh for so many years and basically every South American
Speaker 6: and Central American country, like you said, the institutions are
Speaker 6: being just completely hollowed out and taken over by by
Speaker 6: drug cartels and by allies of drug cartels. Ecuador, just
Speaker 6: in the in the span of the Trump and Biden administration,
Speaker 6: went from one of the safest countries in South America
Speaker 6: to one of the most dangerous countries in South America
Speaker 6: as drug gangs are basically you know, taking the entire
Speaker 6: country over with the with the help of the US
Speaker 6: Ambassador to Ecuador, under both the Trump administration and and
Speaker 6: the Biden administration, it feels like, as in Washington, d C.
Speaker 6: You can get you can get psilocyba, and you can
Speaker 6: get you can get legal marijuana. Uh and with with
Speaker 6: with enough pro upper education and public health, I feel
Speaker 6: like you could actually make it so that people can
Speaker 6: get access to drugs that are currently illegal and that
Speaker 6: they use on a recreational basis, approach it from a
Speaker 6: public health perspective, and then basically shut down these cartels
Speaker 6: because you shut down their ability to exist, and then
Speaker 6: you give these South and Central American countries a chance
Speaker 6: to actually be democracies rather than completely controlled by these cartels.
Speaker 6: But there must be some advantage to the current situation
Speaker 6: for US foreign policy, because it just seems clear at
Speaker 6: this point that you've got to move in that direction,
Speaker 6: even though that isn't something you can really kind of
Speaker 6: say as a candidate today, I don't know, like, where
Speaker 6: do you come down on this as somebody kind of
Speaker 6: looking back.
Speaker 1: I think that's a much better answer and point than
Speaker 1: the one I made to Emily's question, because this really
Speaker 1: is where these two issues intersect. And Emily, I've read
Speaker 1: some of what you've written about how unwittingly certainly our
Speaker 1: current immigration system, our current border policies really serve to
Speaker 1: strengthen cartels, and much in the way that I described,
Speaker 1: you know, cartels placing a premium on the ability to
Speaker 1: cross marijuana back in the early two thousands when it
Speaker 1: was still illegal in the United States and people were
Speaker 1: willing to literally die.
Speaker 4: Or to kill for the privilege of being able to
Speaker 4: do that.
Speaker 1: These cartels are now making billions of dollars on the ability.
Speaker 4: To transit human beings into the United States.
Speaker 1: And if there is no legal pathway to come here,
Speaker 1: then perhaps the only recourse you feel, as a young
Speaker 1: mother with young kids who fears death in your home
Speaker 1: country is to pay you the thousands of dollars to
Speaker 1: these cartels. The tens of thousands in some cases to
Speaker 1: get yourself and your kids across, which by the way,
Speaker 1: may not work. You might end up dead in the
Speaker 1: attempt or on the other side. And I think the
Speaker 1: same is very true with our drug war. We have
Speaker 1: unintentional allowed and really supercharged these cartels in Mexico for sure,
Speaker 1: but Ryan pointed this out earlier. They kind of serve
Speaker 1: as almost a shadow or separate government at a local
Speaker 1: level and really in some cases on a national level
Speaker 1: throughout the Americas, and that is directly connected to United
Speaker 1: States policy, well intentioned going back fifty plus years to
Speaker 1: the initiation of the War on drugs, but with disastrous results.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars
Speaker 1: and drugs are not less likely to be in the
Speaker 1: hands of American citizens or even our kids, you know,
Speaker 1: tragically than they were before. But we have empowered these
Speaker 1: cartels to the detriment of the stability of these countries,
Speaker 1: which then exacerbates outbound flow of migrants who are like, look,
Speaker 1: this is a shit show where I am right now.
Speaker 1: I cannot stay here, cannot find a job, I cannot
Speaker 1: protect my family.
Speaker 4: I have no choice but to leave.
Speaker 1: So yes, these two issues come together in this way,
Speaker 1: and I think it really speaks to trying to find
Speaker 1: some common sense in the United States drug policy and
Speaker 1: addiction policy. We have the largest prison population on the
Speaker 1: planet and within the most heavily incarcerated country. Texas has
Speaker 1: the largest prison population in America. There are so many
Speaker 1: challenges that we could address if we took the drug
Speaker 1: war seriously, began to unwind it and replace it with rational, logical,
Speaker 1: humane policies that make us better and safer and also
Speaker 1: help to undercut the power and influence of cartels in
Speaker 1: the Americas.
Speaker 7: We can all agree on that. I think there you
Speaker 7: go perfect tell us.
Speaker 6: I would quibble with well intentioned, but that's fair enough.
Speaker 6: It doesn't actually and the intentions don't matter.
Speaker 4: It doesn't point take it better.
Speaker 7: Tell us what you're doing with power by people.
Speaker 1: We have a group in Texas that is focused on
Speaker 1: registering voters in a state that makes it hard to
Speaker 1: register than any other any in the Union. It's also
Speaker 1: the toughest state in the nation in which to vote,
Speaker 1: and I think that has a lot to do with
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, in twenty twelve, Obama lost
Speaker 1: Texas by sixteen. Hillary lost it by nine and then
Speaker 1: Biden lost it by only five.
Speaker 4: And a half.
Speaker 1: That's without any of those candidates spending a dime or
Speaker 1: a minute in the state of Texas.
Speaker 4: That's just the natural trajectory of our state.
Speaker 1: And so the millions of unregistered, especially young voters out
Speaker 1: there are seen as a threat by the Republicans.
Speaker 4: Who are in power.
Speaker 1: And whether you're a Republican, Democrat, independent, unaffiliated, hopefully you
Speaker 1: believe in free and fair, democratically decided elections. We're something
Speaker 1: less than a democracy right now in Texas. So our
Speaker 1: volunteers get certified as volunteer deputy registrars, a requirement under
Speaker 1: Texas law. Where there is no online voter registration, no
Speaker 1: automatic voter registration, no same day voter registration, you actually
Speaker 1: have to go out there, find the eligible, unregistered voters
Speaker 1: and take them through that process.
Speaker 4: And so our volunteers at Powered by People do that work.
Speaker 1: I'm really proud of everyone out there across the two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty four counties bringing new voters in and
Speaker 1: hopefully helping to overcome the serious voter suppression and voter
Speaker 1: intimidation that we see here in Texas.
Speaker 6: All Right, that also has a book out on paperback
Speaker 6: now called We've Got to Try, which is about the
Speaker 6: history in Texas of civil rights and voting rights movements, which,
Speaker 6: unlike most politicians book, I think actually sounds good.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm actually going to read this. Most politicians don't
Speaker 3: write their books.
Speaker 6: They just have some staff or write it and they
Speaker 6: have their campaign by Ted Cruz. Thats right, but thanks, yeah,
Speaker 6: thank thanks so much for joining us, very much appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and thank you all for focusing on immigration.
Speaker 1: I wish that more people were talking about this and
Speaker 1: doing it in the way that you're doing it by
Speaker 1: going into the root cause, is talking through what the
Speaker 1: solutions might be and getting beyond just the talking points
Speaker 1: and the slogan.
Speaker 4: So thank you so much.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 6: And if you guys caught this on YouTube, you can
Speaker 6: go to breakingpoints dot com subscribe to us. You can
Speaker 6: get an ad free probably if you listen to this
Speaker 6: whole thing, you got like eight different ad breaks. You
Speaker 6: don't want that, just get the premium version breakingpoints dot
Speaker 6: Com and you get an emailed to you on every
Speaker 6: Friday Friday, the Don Draper Breaking Points.
Speaker 3: Right, that's some great sales work, right exactly.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you so much better, and thank you to
Speaker 5: everyone for tuning in. That does it for us today, Ryan,
Speaker 5: I think we found more common ground than even I expected.
Speaker 5: Here's my perspective on Beta. You've known him for a
Speaker 5: long time. I think he's somebody one of the rare
Speaker 5: people who is genuinely thoughtful and not a robot, even
Speaker 5: though I disagree with him just about everything. Genuinely thoughtful
Speaker 5: and not a robot, and he kind of wants to
Speaker 5: break out of the politician shell, do you know what
Speaker 5: I mean?
Speaker 7: It's almost to me like if you ran.
Speaker 5: For Congress, right, And I know that's impossible to ambition,
Speaker 5: but I feel like there's sort of part of him
Speaker 5: that's trying to do both, and that's a really hard
Speaker 5: about something and have heterodot's opinions because everything doesn't fit
Speaker 5: perfectly into the Democratic party box. I feel like he
Speaker 5: was pretty careful not to be explicitly directly too critical
Speaker 5: of President Biden and Kamala Harris and people that he
Speaker 5: runs in similar circles with politically. But if he was
Speaker 5: something that was sort of outside of those circles, I
Speaker 5: don't know. I actually I'm not saying it's a bad thing.
Speaker 5: I genuinely appreciate it, because if you want to be
Speaker 5: able to do both, you have to.
Speaker 7: You have to be able to talk to both both worlds.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: I think he's still he's still careful in the sense
Speaker 6: that he doesn't want a headline that says, like Beto
Speaker 6: O'Rourke slam Biden Biden at the height of a presidential
Speaker 6: campaign against Trump. But it takes zero effort to read
Speaker 6: between the lines of what he's saying that he thinks
Speaker 6: that Biden is a failure when it comes to his
Speaker 6: border policies, that he's a paler version of Trump, and
Speaker 6: that that isn't the way to get there. But he
Speaker 6: also is willing to grant Biden the reality that he
Speaker 6: doesn't control Congress.
Speaker 3: Right now. The people are coming, so you have to
Speaker 3: do something.
Speaker 6: And so his argument is, look, if it's either they're
Speaker 6: coming in between the ports and dying by the thousands
Speaker 6: or given basically you know, asylum, so they you know,
Speaker 6: come in and boom, rubber stamp and kind of moved
Speaker 6: through into the system, it's better to have them going
Speaker 6: through the port of entry. But it's by no means
Speaker 6: an effective border policy. I still pessimistic that we'll ever
Speaker 6: get to one because good conversations aren't gonna necessarily, good
Speaker 6: conversations don't change the structural obstacles that we that we
Speaker 6: have here.
Speaker 3: But at least it gets it does get you closer
Speaker 3: at least.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And like I, you know, could have kind of
Speaker 5: going on some of those things, but it sort of
Speaker 5: we're ad an impasse because I don't think like Fundamentsalge, if.
Speaker 6: He's willing to acknowledge, he's like, look, yeah, Biden and
Speaker 6: his rhetoric and his and being not Trump does bring
Speaker 6: more people.
Speaker 7: Up, right.
Speaker 5: And what was interesting about that is he stopped at
Speaker 5: mostly Biden's rhetoric and without going into you know, he said,
Speaker 5: it's true that probably granting more people humanitarian parole has
Speaker 5: brought more people up. I just think the magnitude of
Speaker 5: the crossings that we've seen. It's true that there was
Speaker 5: an increase in twenty nineteen, but the magnitude of what
Speaker 5: we've seen under Biden.
Speaker 7: The Red crossworker that I talked to you there like
Speaker 7: that is.
Speaker 3: We're seeing a surge that is significant.
Speaker 7: It's not just COVID.
Speaker 5: It's almost impossible to say that that's just COVID or
Speaker 5: US coups in Venezuela, especially when you look at you know,
Speaker 5: we're opening up pathways specifically for Cubans and Venezuelans and
Speaker 5: Haitians and you see more. So there is clearly a correlation.
Speaker 5: And to me, the as I was even just having
Speaker 5: this conversation, which is one of the things I liked
Speaker 5: about the conversation, it does remind me so much of
Speaker 5: what I think about student loans, which is that like, yes,
Speaker 5: I think people have unfair debt. I think it was
Speaker 5: you know, in many cases working class people were basically
Speaker 5: like bamboozled by the bullshit system. Not to say they
Speaker 5: don't an agency, but that like this is your ticket
Speaker 5: to the middle class. We created a very narrow pathway.
Speaker 5: You have to have a degree for all of these
Speaker 5: different jobs. And until we fix the root cause. At
Speaker 5: the same time as maybe we create more lenient pathways,
Speaker 5: you're going to see more people dying in the Darien Gap.
Speaker 5: You're going to see more people dying in the desert,
Speaker 5: no matter what Biden or Greg Abbott do.
Speaker 6: Interestingly, the other parallel is that the reason you have
Speaker 6: a band aid student aid policy is because you can't
Speaker 6: get anything through Congress.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I actually what can the executive do?
Speaker 6: And they do something and the Supreme Courts like, ah,
Speaker 6: you actually can't even do that, Like okay, well that
Speaker 6: we're going to do it in pieces instead, So instead
Speaker 6: of like putting a band aid on whom, they put
Speaker 6: like a five different cut.
Speaker 7: Up band aids half the puzzle.
Speaker 6: So and it's the same situation with immigration, and it
Speaker 6: goes back to what we were saring on West Show,
Speaker 6: where the question becomes like can America actually do anything?
Speaker 6: Like do we have a political system that is capable
Speaker 6: of producing enough consensus to generate any policy in any direction?
Speaker 6: Because so many checks and balances and choke points were
Speaker 6: built into our system that it has always required some
Speaker 6: consensus and we don't really have that anymore. And so it's,
Speaker 6: like Beto said, the only chance of solving this seems
Speaker 6: to be Democrats take the House to send it and
Speaker 6: the White House and decide to put political capital into
Speaker 6: it in the moment they have that, or Republicans take
Speaker 6: all three and then you know, look out, like we'll
Speaker 6: see what they do.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I see you, guys. Both as like parallel gen.
Speaker 5: Xers, similar hair, similar interests in drugs and politics and
Speaker 5: one of you went into politics, one of you went
Speaker 5: into journalism.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: But again, like that's why it's written a couple of books,
Speaker 3: one on drug policies, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, his book on Texas is kind of like we
Speaker 5: got people like a Texas version of it, which is
Speaker 5: one of your books.
Speaker 3: He's a better skateboarder by far.
Speaker 5: But anyway, all that is to say it was pleasantly
Speaker 5: he's he's obviously, at least since I followed his career,
Speaker 5: he's always been a little bit more heterodox in your
Speaker 5: average Democrat. But because he was so feted, I think
Speaker 5: by a lot of people who saw him as someone
Speaker 5: who could get Democrats more power, I was just pleasantly
Speaker 5: surprised that he wasn't as boxed in as I guess
Speaker 5: I expected him to be. So it was a great conversation.
Speaker 5: I'm so happy we focused on the issue.
Speaker 3: I wish he'd one instead of Biden. Maybe they would
Speaker 3: have done something different, could have been interesting.
Speaker 5: Maybe maybe wouldn't have had the Arilanrie situation in Haiti.
Speaker 3: Oh no way, Yeah, who knows?
Speaker 7: Deep states? Deep Ryan?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true, Deep States, the deep state.
Speaker 5: George Sephanopolis, I don't know if you saw this this week,
Speaker 5: he said, the deep state is full of patriots, so
Speaker 5: the all right, well that does it for us on
Speaker 5: today's edition of the show. We will be back here
Speaker 5: next Friday, well next Oneesday with more next Friday, with
Speaker 5: more of this format.
Speaker 7: We're hoping to have some really good guests.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and watch your Yeah, we're hoping to confirm good
Speaker 3: guests for next week. They're very very close to that.
Speaker 3: Watch your inbox this weekend for update about Breaking Points.
Speaker 3: It's not a huge deal, but it's pretty it's pretty cool,
Speaker 3: pretty cool, pretty cool.
Speaker 7: We're excited about.
Speaker 3: It and that you will be like.
Speaker 4: This.
Speaker 6: It won't be I think as impactful as you're thinking
Speaker 6: to you yourself, and we hope it's not.
Speaker 7: Actually and you'll be back here what on Tuesday?
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. I'll be back here with Saga for
Speaker 3: a bro show on Tuesday.
Speaker 5: Bro Show Tuesday, Counterpoints back Wednesday, and Counterpoints back Friday.
Speaker 7: We'll see you then,