Overcoming the Divide: Nonpartisan Politics
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Overcoming the Divide: Nonpartisan Politics
Dissecting U.S. Immigration and Open Borders with Jon Cooper: Debates, Policies, and National Identity
Join the enlightening conversation with John Cooper, the firebrand host of "The Left Wing," as we navigate the turbulent waters of U.S. immigration policy. Together, we dissect the historical precedents and economic forces that shape today's immigration debates. From the economic repercussions of open borders to the philosophical quandaries of birthright and cultural assimilation, our discussion with Cooper is a no-holds-barred examination of one of the most contentious issues facing modern America.
This episode peels back the layers of cultural exposure, challenging preconceived notions and fostering a dialogue that could reshape how you view the melting pot that is the United States.
Wrapping up with a look at current policies and their real-world implications, we critically assess the rallying cries for stricter controls and the realities of labor demand. With a nod to the potential of respectful, constructive conversations, we aim to inspire our listeners to engage in debates that are as informed as they are impassioned. So tune in, as we and our guest Jon Cooper strive to ignite a conversation that doesn't just scratch the surface, but seeks to uncover innovative solutions for our nation's immigration challenges.
Music: Coma-Media (intro)
WinkingFoxMusic (outro)
Recorded: 12/22/23
Hello everyone. Thank you for tuning in today. This episode is the first of 2024, so I hope everyone's having a great new year thus far. Today's episode explores the case for an open immigration system, the merits, the historical trends and anecdotes and concerns. If you ever wondered about open borders and who's advocating for that, we'll look no further, as it's all covered today. This conversation is with special guest John Cooper. John is a left-wing political content creator. He started on TikTok and has since expanded his content to Instagram threads and YouTube. He also runs a talk show on YouTube called the Left Wing, which features various left-wing politicians, activists and creators discussing current events. His goal is to break down complex concepts into easily understood language and to never be degrading to the other side while doing so. If you enjoy this conversation, all I ask is that you share it with a friend, but also subscribe. Thank you, welcome to the show, john. Happy to have you.
Speaker 2:Happy to be here, Dan. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Of course, and before jumping into this first question, now that I think of it, I think it's good for the audience to have an understanding of how this came to be and what this conversation and say, quote unquote the Bay is going to be really about, which is immigration.
Speaker 1:But, john, you want to run this popular account on both Twitter and Netflix, every on YouTube channel called Counterpoints, which is a populist left-wing account that provides perspectives on both sides, but also the left-wing side.
Speaker 1:Obviously, that's the position you take in a number of issues. But on one of your videos I saw that you're offering, say, both perspectives, and I thought you know someone else could provide that perspective with more justice, say more validity, and you were kind enough to you know, indulge and set this up. So, one, I thank you for that, because going in the conversations with someone that you may not agree with is not always fun or you may not be, like, so willing to. So I definitely commend and thank you for that. And then, two, it's just good for the audience to know that when you're going into a conversation that you're certainly unsure about how the other person may feel, it's always good to have that mutual respect. And I think, john, I'll establish that and look forward to this kind of first question, which is, when thinking about the current immigration, say, policy and how things are going in the United States, what comes to mind? What do you think some pain points are and what would you recommend as some alleviation to those pain points?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, first of all, you know to just agree with what you said there because I think it's more important than anything we'll discuss today is you're completely correct. When you approach someone who you disagree with, it's very important to be respectful to you know, understand that they're coming from a completely different background than you are, and I always try and convey that and what I do in the minute and a half TikToks I make the nuance cannot always be there all the time, so I appreciate the opportunity to have a more in-depth conversation about these things. In terms of what is going on right now, you know, I'll just, you know, come forth and say I'm a advocate for open borders.
Speaker 2:I think that one of the problems, the big problems that we have in this country, is that we are being flooded with illegal immigrants, and that is a problem. I do recognize a problem when you have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, not millions, over time, people come across the border that you just can't account for. That's not a good thing for a country. My solution to that is to greatly reduce the barriers to entry so that there's no longer an incentive for people to come illegally. Essentially, we're putting people, you know, an average period of two years.
Speaker 2:In some countries it can be up to 10. And we're telling them okay, either you have to wait years and years and years in this country that may or may not be safe, that does not have economic opportunity for your family, or come over illegally, you know, and those are the two options that we're presenting to people, or don't come at all. But although a lot of these people don't view that as an option, right? So what are we going to do about it? When we put those barriers to entry, we incentivize people to come in illegally. I don't think that those barriers to entry are worth it. I think that would be better to have those people just come in, become documented, start living and working here, paying taxes, starting a family, all of those good things. And really, what's stopping that from happening is our own dedication to spending billions of dollars to stop them.
Speaker 1:From your perspective too, which I think is kind of interesting, because this is what people on the free market right would advocate for as well. You know open-bore policy for boost the economy, boost innovation and have a larger labor market. But does that not concern you, the labor piece of it, for example, with a larger labor market, that there may be less incentive for any kind of established wages past a certain point when you can get cheaper labor. In essence, and to quickly, I guess, provide a historical anecdote to this, we saw this in England when Ireland had the Great Famine between 1846 and 1852, there was a number of migrants that emigrated from Ireland to England, and this caused a lot of tension between the classes in England and Ireland, and who were ultimately served was the British aristocracy. And Karl Marx, funny enough, was a huge critic of this as well, even detailing it to his American friends and letters. So I am curious about your concerns on that, if there are any.
Speaker 2:So I think you brought up a great point there that there are. You know you introduced me as a left-wing person, but I think this is one of those issues where the left kind of claims it for ourselves. But it is also a very right-wing issue. When you think of limiting government interference, like borders, we think of them as just an innate part of our country, but they are the government restricting freedom of movement. It's a massive government restriction, and part of that is the labor market. Now there's kind of, I guess, two questions here when it comes to the labor market. One is does this immigration actually reduce native wages?
Speaker 2:And we've seen many, many economists come forward, including I forget his first name, but Card this is his last name. He won the Nobel Prize two or three years ago for studying this issue and finding that immigration doesn't actually have a net negative impact on the wages of native workers, and that is because when people come here and they start working here and they start making money here, they also start spending money here, and so because they are here and spending that money, it generates more demand here for labor and so there are more jobs and wages to go around. The alternative to this is those people doing the same or similar jobs back in their country and us outsourcing our labor. And to me, the way that I see it, the border actually really only helps those companies, like those companies that you're talking about, that are outsourcing their labor to other countries where they can pay people less. If all of those skilled laborers come here to do the same job and, of course, not every job is funded like farming we can only do here like Zerzlan, but we're talking in general here.
Speaker 2:What I have seen is that often what happens is the companies end up lobbying for immigration restrictions because they want to have their labor force over in Nicaragua, over in Mexico, over wherever it is where there's a lower cost of living and they can pay them pennies.
Speaker 2:Instead, if they come here, not only are they making more money and that's generally a good thing, in my opinion but they're also more likely to spend their money here. So instead of all of that money just being outsourced and then coming back here, it's being put back into the American economy, and so that is why I view the labor issue as not so much of an issue. And on top of that, by the way, it's usually only a short term issue because long term, those immigrants have families and every single one of us eventually had an immigrant who made them be here. So unless you think that those immigrants who built this country, as most people agree on, didn't provide an actual value to this country and their labor, I don't see why the immigrants who are coming over now would be any different. I would rather them have generations of their family working here than working in Mexico, where American companies are going to export my job and pay them less to do it there.
Speaker 1:I think that's a fair point. Some times, though, you do see the children of immigrants being disproportionately poorer than the immigrants say themselves, or compared to second generation children of other families, and this is something that Ray Haan Salam goes into, who authored a number of books, one being the case against open borders from the son of an immigrant, and what he speaks to is that we don't really have the infrastructure in place to support, say, economic mobility for a lot of these immigrants coming in, and that's where I think a large concern would come to, when we speak about borders and when we speak about mass migration, is we may be providing them a job, but what job is that and what living conditions are they living in? So, for example, in California, which has the highest poverty rate across the United States, there's also a 6% workforce estimated 6% of their labor market is undocumented immigrants. So I think my point being here is, as well as what kind of guarantees are we actually providing them? And, secondary, are we actually doing a net harm to these other nations that they're coming from, such as Nicaragua or Mexico, for example?
Speaker 1:I mean, you look at Ethiopia. This is another random country in Africa, but there's more practicing physicians in Chicago today than there are in all of Ethiopia of 80 million. So that's my concern is a brain drain. So if you comment from like the economic point of view, you could say that maybe it's a net benefit to the United States, which I'm not sure if it is, if we're not able to really provide the infrastructure for economic mobility for these people. But I would also argue that it's not a net benefit really for the rest of the world, either when there is no economic opportunity or if there is very little of it, there's no really development of their workforce there and they're all just leaving.
Speaker 2:So brain drain, I'll put it this way I feel like all of the issues that you just listed are secondary issues that are exacerbated by open borders, not necessarily an issue that open borders directly would be causing. For example, you mentioned how we don't have the infrastructure here to handle that, and I actually agree. I think if we snapped our fingers and said open borders tonight, that would be a mistake because we don't have the processes in place, the infrastructure in place to be able to just handle that influx all at once. But that's a problem with infrastructure, not with immigration. Like to say, okay, we need to limit immigration because we don't have the infrastructure, well, that's just like to me kicking ourselves in the nuts because why not just build the infrastructure then, like that would be the solution to that problem. To me, not limiting immigration, brain drain is also a legitimate issue, like brain drain in many countries is a legitimate issue, especially poor ones, and that's a more difficult one to solve. However, I mean there have been many, many studies on the economic impacts of labor mobility, of open borders, and I what is the specific one? I believe, yeah, this one from the journal the BE Journal of Macronutics Economics, by Paul Klein and Gustavo Ventura estimates that open borders globally and I'm not just talking in America, but globally if we had open borders, it would add $100 trillion to the global economy, and most of that would be in the global south, more poor regions.
Speaker 2:And the reason for this I mean, if you're, if anyone in your audience, is a fan of free market economics, it's kind of the same thing is that all of all of these borders are just needless restrictions on the labor market. If you look at basically any trade restriction, any tariff, it generally produces a lower net overall global GDP because of that tariffs existence. It might provide some protectionism to the home state, home state, home country, right but overall the net impact is just a lower, a less efficient production. Because if someone can do a job but they are not allowed to, because they're not allowed to move to the location that job needs to be done, well, then that job then goes to someone else who doesn't deserve it as much and that person might even be paid more. So we have to pay more for less productivity, right. So, really, like, if you're a free market economist, it should be pretty obvious why loosening restrictions on the labor market globally would have positive net impact on the global economy.
Speaker 2:Is that going to cause some brain drain in certain areas, especially in the short term?
Speaker 2:Yes, but if you I mean if you look at like the history of this I mean before World War I we didn't really have borders in the same way we do now, like we didn't really limit immigration to the same level, and part of that was just we didn't have the ability or manpower to like guard the entire American border, but we basically had migrants going between America and Mexico all the time and they would come here, they do summer work and then they'd go back home spend the money there.
Speaker 2:The net impact of this is that when people come here from Nicaragua, from wherever, they're going to make more money and a lot of that money is going to go back home to their family in the poor country. They're not just going to keep it all here, and while we would want them to, that money going back is more money than they're ever going to be able to make over in Nicaragua. So that also increases demand now in Nicaragua, increases the amount people are able to pay for doctors in Nicaragua, and so it increases the incentives for people to stay in Nicaragua and be doctors, is it completely painless? No, but neither is the system we currently have.
Speaker 1:I think that's interesting. But if you look at Mexico, for example, like eight years post NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement that wages dropped by 22% even though worker productivity increased by over 40%, and I don't think it's exactly clear cut that this is a net positive. And I will also point out that there is contrary, conflicting evidence on whether mass migration lowers or decreases wages for, say, that native population that you're pointing out. And to the point of, in the early pre-World War I, before World War, I happened and there wasn't really established processes and offices to own this kind of task. I would also point out that there wasn't really mobility for people to get around, such as cars, transportation, infrastructure, roads, and now that has obviously changed and the economic opportunity, say landscape, has changed post World War II, especially America becoming the major superpower. So I think that's fair.
Speaker 1:But what Well question I guess I beg to ask is what like merits does the open borders case have? Do you think like? Do you usually approach it from a labor point of view, or do you think there's a moral one as well? Where do you usually follow that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think you can approach it from both directions. Like that, that labor, that economic thing, I would consider more of a obviously a right wing position like less, more freedom of movement, more, less restrictions on the labor market, that sort of thing. And from just a pure dollars and cents perspective and this has been proven time and time again immigrants, either illegal or illegal, generate more tax revenue than they consume in benefits over the course of their lifetime. And you know, as I mentioned before, it's not just them, it's, however, many generations of their family are now here and generating tax revenue that wouldn't have been here otherwise, and so that will impact us 50 years, 60 years, 100 years from now. But to me it just doesn't make fiscal sense to spend billions of dollars to keep people out of this country who we know, on average, are going to give us more money than they're going to take from us, Assuming that we're able to have the infrastructure in place to be able to handle that influx. It seems stupid to me to spend our money stopping people from giving us their money. And you know some people will say no, that's not true, they're not going to be a net drain on society. And to that. I just say do some research, you know. Look that up and see if it's true. You know, I'm sure you can find some conflicting studies to what I'm saying, but that is what I have been able to understand from what I've read.
Speaker 2:The philosophical argument, I also think, is a more interesting argument to have, because to me I feel like that. The economic argument is pretty simple. It's hey, we should bring more people into this country. So the demographic argument we're not replacing our population and we need immigrants to do that that's a whole other story though. But the philosophical argument I always think of it like this I didn't do diddly squat to get an American citizenship.
Speaker 2:I was just lucky enough that my parents happened to get laid at the right time in the right place, right, and I didn't do anything to deserve the right to live here, to deserve the right to work here. Same thing goes for every person who was born somewhere else. Like to me, a restriction on immigration is denying someone a right based on their nationality, which is always morally wrong to me. I don't think that just because you're born in a certain place means that you should be denied the right to live and work here. It really doesn't make sense to me from a philosophical perspective, as much as it doesn't make sense to me from an economic one either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, following up on that. So how do you approach a state being able to regulate and control their own borders then? For example, as you correctly pointed out when you first opened up, was that there are hundreds of thousands like in August of this past year, over 300,000 illegal entries, illegal immigrants entering the country. So where do you fall down? On the state being able to regulate that? On putting a certain number to that and I also think it's fair to call out to that when people come here, they may not want to come here, but they may not want to come here because they love America, but rather they want to get away from the lack of economic opportunity in their home country, which I think is a fair kind of concern.
Speaker 1:Back in 2015, there was this concerning poll but you see this across the Middle East and just different cultures overall of how they feel about women's rights, how they feel about LGBTQ rights and how that is a concern for different cultures coming in and not really wanting to assimilate or have it be a melting pot, but rather they just they leave because they feel like they need to. And I'll reference a specific poll too. There's one in Brinn back in 2015 where they were asking their British Muslim population how they felt about pretty much LGBTQ community but mainly gay people, and they said, well, do you feel that is okay for a gay person to be a teacher? And almost 50% voice and percent no. So someone can compare them like, oh, the low approval ratings for that you could see maybe something in the Republican Party or in that like say the far you know part of that. But my point being is is there concern with the lack of even like a cultural assimilation or wanting to be a part of this country?
Speaker 2:Yeah. To that I would say no, and for a couple of reasons. One, because wanting to be a part of this country wasn't a requirement for me to become a citizen. Needing to assimilate this culture wasn't a requirement for me to become a citizen. I didn't have any culture, I didn't care about this country whatsoever when I became a citizen. I was just crying Right Like that's that? So like? To me, that was never a distinction we made for Native American citizens. Why would we make that distinction for citizens from other places?
Speaker 2:You know that that seems like an unfair disadvantage, replacing on other people based solely on their nationality. But that doesn't necessarily mean even if I think philosophically that's wrong it doesn't necessarily mean there won't be any problems due to issues with cultural assimilation. And to that I'll say we've had these issues for the entire history of our country. We, you know we have. As for most of our country's history again, we didn't have closed borders like we do now. We just kind of let anyone come here.
Speaker 2:Basically, I mean when we sat in Ireland existed to, just, you know, shove through thousands and thousands and thousands of immigrants and there was totally problems with cultural assimilation with. You know, that's why Chinatown exists, that's why, you know, little Italy exists, like there's the places where all those immigrants came to and ended up being, and then we're here for generations. But you see, over time that kind of just takes care of itself. People have their kids and they're born here and they're Americans and they assimilate into this culture and before we know it, oh cool, they're just Americans now, just in the same way that I'm not an Irishman, I'm an American, right, and that is a self-solving problem. That might cause some conflict in the short term, but I think that the cost of the long-term cost of that isn't worth it. And I also don't think that, you know, if people think differently than we do, that's not necessarily a bad thing, like you know.
Speaker 2:Again, to kind of go back to the conservative side, make the conservative argument, it's the market, free marketplace of ideas. You know, if they don't want to assimilate, that's fine. They don't have to. I don't have to assimilate. Native-born Americans don't have to assimilate. We create our culture. It's a constantly changing melting pot, as you said, and if we stop ingredients from entering that melting pot, well, that's ruining the melting pot. So that's how I feel about it.
Speaker 1:I think it's fair points. I think it's also fair concerns when people who actively don't really want to come here but yet do and I think we may just have a fundamental disagreement where you're bringing up that you were born here, that you weren't really tested, you have to, like you know, feel about. You don't have to give your beliefs on how you feel about any specific issue. That makes sense, I think from a state point of view or just from a nationally point of view. It could be concerning when people are just leaving and wanting to come and they may be not wanting to be a part of the country but rather just leaving X place and instead of trying to maybe remedy that or be more so, put out a solution. Where America is developing countries playing in economic aid, we're just inviting in, we're pretty much having open borders and not having any limit on our immigration policy.
Speaker 2:My question to that is always why do like? How do I put this? I feel like there is a default in America that we need an immigration policy, we need to cap the amount of immigrants. But my excuse me, sorry, my genuine question to that is why, you know, why is it bad if our culture changes? Why is it bad if we have totally new ideas To me? I don't think America stands for anything. I think America the whole concept to me of America is freedom, is we get to create. This is an experiment, we get to create with it whatever we want. And so I think there's this default to oh, america is good.
Speaker 2:For a lot of Americans, what we have here is good and other people bringing new ideas is bad, because we're America, we're the best and we are better than those people who are coming over here and trying to change our culture. But to me, I think that that's a very limiting perspective. Like I want to be challenged constantly. I come on this show knowing that you're not going to agree with me, because I want to put my ideas to the test. I want to talk and I want to hear other ideas and see if they're better than mine, and I feel like that's how successful people operate. It's the unsuccessful people who never want to hear anyone's ideas, who want to only surround themselves with yes men, and I think you apply that to a state level. The best thing we can do is let the different parts of the culture compete and just continue to transform constantly, as fast as possible, in order to be at the best country that we can be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think it's a fair point. I think it's a fair point. I think it's more or less just a concern and it's not more. It's less a culture and more or less a resentment of a place, like if, for example, this may come off as this Cal's argument, but it's really not Israel, for example, once or suggests at one point that they want to move the Palestinians or that a United States should take in the Palestinians, like all of them which I disagree with for a number of reasons, but there will be no concerns is that, you know, the United States is closely tied to Israel and there's a lot of animosity outside between those two populations.
Speaker 1:We were to take in a culture or not culture, because maybe we were taking people that just simply it's not about like they have different beliefs Maybe I approach this in the wrong way but simply just have a resentment towards the quote unquote West or that state. I think you're possibly putting your, your population, in a certain way that's undermining their safety, and I think you could make that case, and I think not that I agree with Trump's like quote unquote Muslim ban, but there was a case where these people may not want to come here and they may actually just actively not like Americans, are not like X, and you may be okay with, like you know, those people coming here, but it's less about ideas and more so just a map for me concerns about how someone may just simply feel about like American themselves, and I'll close. I'll close with this too, because this is something that we, han Salam, makes and his book for a case against open borders from, like the son of an immigrant's perspective and he says, like places in Sweden when they had, when immigration was more welcome, say there no-transcript, they still saw more or less a distinction in living in, say, the native Swedish population and the immigrants. And he quoted this as a curated diversity where you could put a sign up on your window and saying, no, we welcome all, but no one in your neighborhood is going to really be like of welcome all because no one can buy into it. Immigrant, like coming in recently, is not going to be able to afford that property.
Speaker 1:So I think it's just much easier said than done, and I don't say it's be callous or them anti-immigration, it's just more of a concern about the well-being of the population here when there could be no someone coming in from a different part of the world that doesn't really like you but feels like they need to escape that place, understandly so, say.
Speaker 1:But this is where they just need to go and to ensure to close that out, like with the curate diversity, as he called it, like you can get as much as you want of it.
Speaker 1:And you see that almost all the time, like I feel like here in the States, like oh, there's this new Lebanese place or there's new Japanese place, but the minute you don't want that, say quote unquote diversity, you can just like go back, you can just go back to your neighborhood. And this is not for everyone, but a lot of people probably have that lifestyle that they have as much diversity in their life as they want and no more. So I know there's a couple of points, but I want to lay that out more in a succinct manner of like it's not, I guess, a lack of culture but lack of just simply anti-American sentiment and, like I said, maybe I am originally put that in the best way, but that's where it's the less of ideas and just more so just active, like hatred or resentment, for, say, understandable reasons too, of what has happened in the past.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and that was a lot of points. I'm going to try to respond to all of them, but if I miss one, I'm not trying to dodge the question.
Speaker 1:You're fine, you're totally fine.
Speaker 2:First of all, this is more of just an offshoot, but I think it's interesting to be said is that you know, you brought up Israel and there's a lot of conflict over there right now and has been ever since Israel was created as a state. Now, why was Israel originally created as a state? Well, there was a lot of Jews in Europe specifically, that weren't safe there because a lot of people didn't like them. And they're like oh, where do we take the Jews after the Holocaust? And all of the European countries give it. I don't want them. And America? If you look at polls from the time, only 18% of Americans said yes to the polling question of should we allow Jewish refugees, you know, after World War II. And so we're just like, oh well, the UK was like, well, we own that strip land over there, we'll give it to them and we'll just get out of there. And we see the problem that that has caused. You know, one way or the other that has caused a lot of conflict. And if the Americans had just brought in that Jewish population, we've seen. You know, jewish people have been relatively pretty darn safe here and we haven't had any issues like that. I don't think we would have here if we had accepted that Jewish population at the time, right, so I think that is kind of a counter example to the example in and of itself.
Speaker 2:But anyway, moving past that, I wish I'd prepared this specific study. I don't have it popped up so I don't have a name for it, but I do know that I don't know if it was the American or the British military, but when they started desegregating the military right, allowing, you know, black, especially specifically this is on ships like black Navy men on ships with white Navy men Everyone was like, oh well, it's never going to work. Well, they put those people out on ships, they returned and they did before and after like hey, how do you feel about this? And they found time and time again that the ships, the white people on ships with black people on them, were less racist afterwards than the white people who were segregated by themselves. Yes, there was definitely conflict on a lot of those ships because of the you know the cultural differences, the racial divides, all of that. But I mean you can look at this time and time again.
Speaker 2:When you have diversity, when you experience personally, firsthand, someone else's culture, you gain more respect for it. You see it with. You know, the LGBT community, like people who you hear this all the time were like, oh, I didn't understand it until I had my granddaughter or whatever. You know, I saw it personally and how it was, whatever. When people are exposed to different cultures, they become more accepting of them. And so, yeah, you're right, there's totally issues with you know. So I don't remember exactly what you thought about it. Selective segregation, where you know, I think I remember when I even when I went to college here in New York, of all places, you know, I was shocked by how darn segregated the college was, because it just seemed like all the black guys, all the black people hung out, all the Asian people hung out, and all the white people hung out, and every once in a while Ming-Wen at a frat party, right. And so you do have some selection bias. That is always going to be apparent. But the thing is, you know, if you think that's a problem, well then, forcing. You know, lack of diversity isn't going to help. You know those people aren't going to become more accepting of multiculturalism when the whatever group of people isn't here. They're only going to get more accepting of multiculturalism with direct exposure to other cultures and over time, that lessons.
Speaker 2:Look at Italians in America. They used to basically be a minority. I mean, basically they were a minority group, like people were very racist against Italians. Now Italians are just America. There's white, you know, but they didn't always just be considered white. So and that's because of just they were here. Generations went by and now it's just all assimilated. Italians still have their own culture. They still have, you know, you could go to an Italian family. There's still differences between Irish family, you know, black family, between whatever, but over time they assimilate. I don't think that someone coming over here and hating America is necessarily a problem, because I know many Americans that hate America. I'm not too fond of America. I love my country, but to me, like I don't like where my country is going, I don't like where my country is right now.
Speaker 2:I don't like my government and so like to say, oh well, this person shouldn't be here because they hate America. Well, they're only going to hate America more if we don't let them come here. They want to be here.
Speaker 1:You know, like that's not going to solve the problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say two things there, and I feel like it's becoming more of an obscure point because most of our migration is coming from, like, the Southern atmosphere Guatemala, venezuela, and they're you know Venezuela specifically. You know they're trying to escape, like, say, socialism or just what's happening there in that specific government with Maduro. But I'll close this with two things, because I think you make compelling arguments, but none of them I'm not speaking. The culture and something that you said, like you're not too like fond of America, like, did America like kill your father? Did America kill your brother? You know whether you're speaking to a drone strike through our campaign there in the Middle East. That's what I'm speaking to.
Speaker 1:And the Southern border, and I think we probably agree on this point. The Southern border is very, uh, pan-tropical at this point, to say the least, and that that's that's. That's that's what I'm saying is a concern of mine. Like, uh, there was a poll recently in, uh, Tunisia I probably not pronounce that correctly, uh, but you know country, northern Africa, and Biden has 6% approval rating there. That's not really an indication in and of itself, but I'm saying is, in essence, it's less about culture, and that's why I think my original point maybe might have been a little misguided, but more so about how the United States had the government specifically has prosecuted different campaigns in certain regions of the world and has created this all around resentment, and that is something that I would say would be a concern where someone may just want from national security reasons, but may just simply it's not more so.
Speaker 1:I don't like America, like I simply have this absolute resentment and hatred for Americans Cause I think what you're speaking to, you only the United States government, and I don't think a lot of people are a fan of the United States government, but there may not be that distinction or delineation between the two.
Speaker 1:And no American bomb or just anything that happens to your family, friends, loved ones that support by America say that's going on Israel right now with um or Gaza, uh, through Israel by American, uh, tax payer dollars, like essentially American subsidizing that.
Speaker 1:So that's that's what I'm saying. I have concerns with and it's not to say like I don't care about those people, I don't want those people to be well, but more so that I don't think we should just be so cavalier in taking people in. That's, that's my point when it comes to it, and we should have more of a former or formal immigration process and what you see, too, is with this um with immigration and how it's being broken and why it's taking years as the process people is when it comes to like a lack of judges, so I kind of like pivot over there too, but I would like to give you less word on that as well, when it's not so much about culture, and more so are just about how America United States government specifically has prosecuted different military campaigns and a lot of people now have suffered as a as an unfortunate byproduct of that or direct result.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I agree with that statement. Um, where, where I disagree is is the conclusion that it's leading to, because I feel like it should lead to the opposite conclusion, where, kind of, like I said earlier, how, not enough infrastructure is the real problem, open borders with just exacerbate that. The real problem is us making so many people hate us with our military decisions and you know that that's a whole other debate that we'll spend hours and hours on. But, like, if we're making people hate us and then we're not letting them into this country because we're afraid they hate us, that's just going to make them hate us more. Like, if the problem is them hating us, uh, the best way to make them not hate us is to welcome them into our house and treat them with kindness.
Speaker 2:The if we, if I, were to personally accidentally blow up someone's house uh, even if it's getting for a completely justified reason, I don't know there was a terror cell attacking me and I had to blow up a house and I accidentally hit someone else's house I guess, I don't know, I'm John Wick, like there's I would feel the moral obligation to be like oh, I'm so sorry I destroyed your house. I have a spare room. Please stay with me as long as you need. What, while you get your own place to live? Like that would be, like the like I feel, like most Americans would agree with that. Like that would be the you'd feel more obligation to help that person. So the government, in my opinion, should operate the same way.
Speaker 1:But what if that miss? Like playing in that same example. But if that you know, missile that blow up actually killed someone in that household, you know they're not going to want anything to do with you but nonetheless they may have. If you're the only house left standing or they opportunity to go somewhere, they may have to and they may hold animosity towards you and I don't know if much is going to change that. And that's kind of like a like a point.
Speaker 1:I guess there may just be a funnel to screw me out, just to screw with kindness. I don't just screw with being welcome people opening arms. This is more so in pass and I I guess I pulled that from my point of view Like if you destroyed my home, kill family member of mine, like, yeah, I may come into country, I'm never going like to enjoy Americans, I'm never going to like Americans and no, that may be okay. Like I accept that. I just don't think those people should be prioritizing the immigration process. To be honest, maybe they should, maybe because we have a more obligation. I just I think there's just specific concerns with that. But, as I mentioned, I I also believe that that it's not the main thing that's happening with migration right now like the major concern but nonetheless is still like a concern when you have a border, that's just wide open.
Speaker 2:And you know I to clarify my position here. You know you said there should be some formal process, and I agree with that. And again, I don't think we should just have anyone can come anytime they want, not declare it. Like I think people should enter through a legal port of entry, I think that they should become documented, they should let the government know they're going to be here, they should let the government know where they intend to move to. All of that is good and there should be some sort of background check, like I agree we don't want a known terrorist just to come into this country. Like I totally agree with that. But like that should be, however long it takes. Like if we let them in this country for tourism, we can let them in this country to live here. You know, like the to me that's the way it looks.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, most illegal immigrants they didn't cross the border illegally, they legally crossed the border through a port of entry on a work visa or something similar, and then just overstayed their visa and never left. And so, like that is, if you're concerned about illegal immigration, that is how the majority of illegal immigrants end up being here. And I will say, like to answer the thing about. You know they might have animosity towards you. Sure, 100% agree.
Speaker 2:However, there's no evidence that immigrants are any more dangerous to Americans than Americans are. In fact, immigrants, both legal and illegal, have lower rates of violent crime than the native-born population. You are far more likely to be killed by domestic terrorists than you are ever going to be killed by a foreign terrorist. If we are setting the bar for who gets to be here and who doesn't, based on danger to the American population, it would make far more sense to kick out babies who are born here and to only allow immigrants. That's obviously absurd, but it kind of highlights the issues with the position of keeping people out of here because we feel like they might be dangerous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, and I wouldn't advocate for kicking people out more. So You're concerned when you have an open border and people may just need to come here out of necessity and they just simply. I see what you're saying. It's a fair point, but more or less a concern when you know, I'd say, government prosecutes military campaigns in a certain way and then there's obviously going to be a lot of animosity from that and it's not the best thing to cultivate, I would say, a thriving commuring nation.
Speaker 2:But that's been the case forever. The US military has been that way for a long time, but we stole Texas from Mexico. We have done many, many bad things for a very long time and yet we look back at all the past generations of immigrants and go well, I'm glad they came here and I feel like fast forward. 150 years from now you'll feel the same way about established Mexican families who have been here for three, four, five generations. It'll just take that time to get there.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So and I want to get more into that open borders process or just like the process you believe. Because when you go about that and when you think about that do and you say there should be a process, do you almost think there's impracticality to that as well. And if there are, say, 300,000 people going through that process a year and you agree there should be a process, do you almost see that as this wish list item rather than a practicality that could be established just more so out of the workforce that's allotted, like, such as immigration judges.
Speaker 2:So, again, I think this is more of a second order thing, but I think of all of the problems with open borders, that's the easiest to solve, like the do we have enough schools? Do we have enough roads? Do we have enough houses? As much as those are problems that I think can be solved there. It takes some time to solve those problems right. Do we have enough judges? Do we have enough people processing immigrants? A, if we make the process a hell of a lot easier, it'll take less time to process any one immigrant, and so that kind of solves the problem there. But even so, if we need to hire more people, cool, hire more people.
Speaker 2:And me, as I said earlier, immigrants generate more tax revenue than they consume in benefits. If we're stopping them from living here because we don't want to spend more on processing them, that would be like a store not hiring another employee because they don't want to spend the money on wages when that employee's the wages are going to generate more revenue because the demand is there. Like, that's my answer to that. I can just hire more judges, you know. Hire more social. Maybe we don't need like full on sitting US judges. We could just do this with social workers. Again, the specific nitty gritties of exactly how this is pulled off from a bureaucratic standpoint, that is not my expertise, but I do think that of all of the problems to solve, that is probably the easiest.
Speaker 1:I would say. I would say at the moment there is just an active effort to try and alleviate that. I think there's about 650 immigration judges that sit across 69 courts or districts and they're processing hundreds of thousands each year and that's just an issue. It's like I guess you said bureaucratic, but none like that's the exact problem. That's like bureaucratic in a way. So even going if you were to agree with open borders from a practical standpoint of establishing it, not like a reason not to pursue it, I guess in your mind I was curious on how you thought about getting that done from when there obviously need to be more budget allotted or different policy changes but that's fair and not to really, I guess, think to that depth or granular detail when it isn't even being put really forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. To me, the generalized answer to that question is whatever money we spend on extra judges or extra bureaucrats to handle this, we're going to make up in tax revenue because we get zero revenue if they don't come here and we get literally infinite revenue over the course of the rest of time, at least until their entire family leaves America. And it would be dumb to kick ourselves and cut off that future revenue because we don't want to spend a little like we're the richest country on earth. We can afford it. It's an investment that is going to have a high ROI.
Speaker 1:So when you think of like this and just the American population, how do you like contend with that? Just recent polling from a Harvard Harris poll that 70% of voters, including over 50% Democrats, 55% Democrats believe that the current administration should impose quote new, stricter policies to reduce the flow of people into this country. Where do you kind of fall in line there?
Speaker 2:Where do I fall in line? Where?
Speaker 1:Yeah, where do you kind of like find yourself thinking about that, that overall the American population wants stricter policies? Do you think they just don't understand it? Or do you think like open boards policy or what? How do you approach that?
Speaker 2:I think it's more so. They don't understand it, sort of thing. I think it is a result of propaganda, because when I sit down and have these conversations with people, as much as you know, I don't have 100% success rate at, you know, getting them to a grid, open borders. I do tend to have a lot of success with this argument of at least pushing people closer, because there's a lot of dumb things I think everyone can recognize.
Speaker 2:There's dumb parts of immigration system that could be, like you said, with the bureaucrats, like we're imposing needless bureaucracy and it's stopping us from processing the amount of immigrants that we really need to be able to process if we ever want to stop the flow of illegal immigration, and so like there are a lot of parts of this where I feel like the American people, like if you ask the average American, they probably wouldn't tell you that an immigrant is less likely to commit a violent crime than a native born American.
Speaker 2:And that's just because of propaganda, Like that's just a factually accurate claim or inaccurate claim that a lot of Americans agree with. So I think that it's really you know, that's one of the reasons I talk about it a lot is I want to put these ideas out there because, as much as I don't expect necessarily the American population to move all the way to open borders in my lifetime at least I do think that the correct answer is to loosen the immigration restrictions, lessen the bureaucracy, increase freedom of movement and collect more tax revenue. And I think that that is a answer that a lot of conservatives would also arrive at if it weren't for anti-immigrant propaganda and just not having their facts straight.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's anti-immigrant like some of, it's definitely anti-immigration. Yeah but I think it's something that you brought up earlier and it's the chaos with it. Like just seeing tens of thousands of people, just as past Monday, 12,000 people are in the country illegally, just like that's chaos. But no, no, no, no, I didn't mean to cut you off.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, but like just it is chaos.
Speaker 2:I agree that it is chaos. Like I completely agree, I don't want it happening this way either. But there's two options, right, because we've generated the demand. Like the demand to come to America is here and part of that is our own doing guys Like come, get the American dream or the land of immigrants. Like we have put this propaganda out into the world to get people to want to come here and so we can't let go like, oh well, how dare they want to come here? Like we told them to.
Speaker 2:In a way, we have that Statue of Liberty who says something about it on her plaque, right, like that's, that's the reason they're coming here. We're not going to stop them from wanting to come here. They're going to keep trying. Right, so we can handle it in one of two ways we can spend more money to keep them out, or we can let more of them in legally, because the only difference between an illegal and a legal immigrant is what we say how many hoops we expect them to jump through to become legal.
Speaker 2:I would rather, if they're going to come here anyway, and we're already spending billions of dollars on this issue. So, like, how much more money is it going to take to stop these hundreds of thousands of people more than we're already spending. You know, like, like. Either we spend all more, more, more, more, more billions to keep them out or kick them out once they're here, or we give them the option to enter through a legal port of entry, become documented, come here, pay more taxes because as much as illegal immigrants do pay taxes, a lot of them don't because they're afraid of getting deported and just do it legally. Give them an option to do it legally in a reasonable amount of time and you'll see those 10,000 immigrants probably 9,950 of them are going to choose to come here legally if they had the option to do so. Because why wouldn't they? That makes hell of a lot more sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and something to go back to that we said originally too, which was the infrastructure in place. I think a lot of people also have concerns with them just becoming part of the quote, like welfare state they're seeing, like New York City, like Eric Adams said, by 2025 they'll spend more than I want to say 12 billion. I want to say housing, I'm sure, other commodities and many for these people, and I think that's a fair concern, and something I would. I guess that comes to mind for me too, is that you know, as is, we have a massive homeless population and we have, you know, covid's amount of people dying from overdoses. Like we have our own domestic problems that require government attention and funding and a number of people that would need, say, assistance in some capacity. Are we really in a place to extend that to people that are just like coming over here willy-nilly and when low quote, unquote, low skilled labor, that already is just kind of we have like surplus.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean there's two parts of that. One, we don't have a surplus of a lot of labor that immigrants do. We don't have a surplus of agricultural workers, 75% of which are immigrants and half of those are undocumented. We don't have a surplus. I mean we have a very tight labor market right now, like there's a lot of opportunity for employment and we aren't having a problem with people not being able to get jobs right now. And I look at it like this as I said before, immigrants generate more tax revenue than they consume in benefits and, yes, a lot of that revenue is on the tail end of their lives and generated by their children, but it's still a net positive in the long term.
Speaker 2:So, as long as we have the money to be able to weather that storm, right now we have the capital to invest, which we do. Again, richest country in the world, if any country can do what we can, we might as well invest that money now because it's going to pay off in the long run. Like, again, unless you're sitting here and saying, oh well, the 10th generation of Italian immigrants, whatever the generation we have right now I don't know what the number is, but like, unless you're saying, oh, they didn't pay off. We overall lost money on the Italians. There's no reason to expect that we wouldn't also gain money on the Mexicans, on the Hondurans, on the El Salvadorians. You know there's over time, it's just an investment that is going to pay off. So, yeah, it's going to cost us money, but that's not money just earned. That's money invested, invested in a workforce that I don't know if you've ever met any immigrant laborers, but are extremely productive, with incredible work ethics.
Speaker 2:And the children of immigrants first generation, children of immigrants are pretty much the most productive demographic in American society because they have that immigrant work ethic from their parents, with the American education, mindset and opportunities, social opportunities and cultural assimilation to let them be very productive in life. So to me, yeah, we have plenty of problems, but immigrants are a way to solve those problems more often than not, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think nine has pushed back. But when that comes to mind too, it's the delineation there between, like, the legal immigration that a lot of people see, which is just pulling through certain like spots, and then also comparing that to actually legal immigration, which I think both of us in agreement for, of actually having more streamlined process, to say the least. But when you don't have that, it may be we're just kind of going to start to grieve more and certain things, but when you don't have that, I think you also see just no processes or systems in place to have any establishment of where these people are going to live, or they also have no idea. I think this is.
Speaker 1:I think you make a point as well when you're saying, like they pay more taxes and I'm just curious on, like because of their children and on the back of their lives, but if we don't have anything in place for them at this moment, then I don't know. Like that's kind of like speculative, I feel, as if because if they're being housed by the state and it's their low skill, then where do they really? Where is there really opportunity, I guess, for them to end, say, their children to get enrolled in school? If they're undocumented. They're pretty much just living in hotels, and that's a concern I think a lot of people have as well, that it doesn't seem like it's being taken care of, and so they bankrupt cities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, the cities aren't going to again. We're I've said this multiple times but we are the richest country in the world. We have plenty of money to invest in people and when you invest in people it tends to pay off. And I think that if you look at again the Italian immigrants that came in on Staten Island, like they basically got a stamp, they told them their name and they're like, okay, get off the boat, come in. There was no plan for them whatsoever, they just kind of set them off into New York and yeah, no, that did cause a lot of problems and we should probably have a better system for, you know, integration and setup and all of that.
Speaker 2:I think we're going to back in the what was that? The twenties, right, if I remember correctly, and so. But if that worked out, you know, I see no reason why, with better technology, with more money, why that would not work out this time. It's speculative, but it's speculative based on all of the history that we've had that Allowing immigrants usually pays off, because none of us would be here if it didn't and America is one of the richest countries in the world.
Speaker 1:It's not yeah, it's not, he's just immigrants. I almost want like steer away from like I'm coming off of this, like the anti-immigrations, more or less the anti-illegal Immigration that's currently occurring, at least from my position, and then the concern with open borders, if there was just no limit on that whatsoever. So that's how I kind of approach it. But when there's something that you mentioned that I want to quickly touch on to St Staten Island, it's got to elude my mind.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it was just, it was Charlie.
Speaker 1:Nibbigrance the yeah, they eventually got here. It was just there, it was just there. But what? What was it?
Speaker 2:I mean, I hate when that happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a decent point, but I think, irrespective of any of that, I was going to say the richest country in the world. That's that there was. I think it's also a concern is like an unfair burden on the American taxpayer and I know you've mentioned that. You know they pay their taxes on the back end or just through different means, but nonetheless, if the government's going to obviously say spend more money, then that can come at some amounts of inflation and that just once again comes get the taxpayer, the American taxpayer.
Speaker 1:So it's not like immigration versus anti-immigration, just valid concerns about the amount of people that you let in during a given timeframe, as well as the amount of government assistance that population will need during any given timeframe as well, and that obviously differs based on where they come from and what skills and background they're bringing over.
Speaker 1:Someone who is immigrating from, say, bangladesh and has a you know, co-education or speaks English, is going to have a much easier time assembling and kind of moving their way up through social mobility than someone who is just kind of coming from somewhere else, say Guatemala, and doesn't really have, didn't really have any of those opportunities, unfortunately, and they're just kind of being like thrown out there and like, and that begs the question how much assistance are they going to need and how much? You know spending is like it's almost like the trade off there and how fair really is as well. If you were, I think you made a great point earlier with like marking the land without opportunity. That's something that the buying campaign kind of really advertised and campaigned on quite a bit, and it may almost be like a false, like promise to a certain extent.
Speaker 1:But I don't want to say like a false promise, but more so misleading. They are come here and just like make bank, Whereas it's. For example, California has a pretty high undocumented labor force and also has like the highest poverty rate because it is so expensive like to live there and the United States isn't recently cost of living state.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, first of all, with Biden, biden does definitely sell a false bill of goods when it comes to immigration, because if you look at Biden's immigration policy and I know a lot of Republicans are going to disagree with this, but it's really true, it's not all that dissimilar from Trump's like. It's pretty darn close. He kept title 42 for longer than he needed to eat. In fact, he thought in court to be able to keep it. If you look at a lot of the policies, basically they're just like slightly more humane versions of what Trump was doing. And still you have Republican politicians and pundits calling you know, saying that Biden is letting open borders happen to like someone who actually have a case or open borders. I'm like, oh no, he's not. I wish he was. And I always say like well, if we're going to get called, we're going to get called open borders supporters, no matter what we do, us Democrats. And so like we might as well do it and try it out, because it's not like we're going to lose political capital over it. But to go back to your point and I think you didn't say it this time, but you alluded to it when you said it last time that the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants and I hear that a lot. You know it's like I'm not against immigration, I'm against illegal immigration. Right, and I'll agree with that, you know. But and I think that you know, at the very least you would move towards less restrictions, less bureaucracy, at least tying things up.
Speaker 2:And you know, if you look at, is it fair to the American taxpayer?
Speaker 2:Okay, so we have an undocumented immigrant here, right, and again, we have a couple options.
Speaker 2:We can a allow them to keep being here undocumented, which is basically what we're doing now, and they're going to be less likely to pay taxes than if we allowed them to get documented, which I think everyone can understand. The reasons why for that? Well, 50% of undocumented immigrants still pay taxes, but that's a whole other thing. So, like, if we're talking about what's more fair to the American taxpayer, our current position or just letting them become documented letting them become documented is only going to be beneficial towards Americans, and the only way that kicking them out would be beneficial is if kicking them out cost us less than the benefits they are consuming, which it doesn't, and also they end up generating the tax revenue later in life. So, like, it's like from a pure dollars and cents perspective, what's fair to the American people? I think it's unfair to the American people that we are spending taxpayer dollars to stop people from being able to live, work here and pay taxes. I think that is the what is unfair.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I would delineate those two, though I think you're approaching that from like a reactive place, though, like and that's something that goes more to amnesty than illegal immigration. They could be, a quote, illegal immigrant, but letting that person stay is more or less like an amnesty approach, rather than saying, going into illegal immigration, where I would have to be more of a proactive approach on it, such as, say, reducing their bureaucracy in just a process itself. So it doesn't seem like such a like whirlwind to enter this country, but to actually having secure borders, and that sounds so vague, right, like, was that even mean? But I think it means funding, say the United States customs and or patrol to the extent they may or may not need it, having enough agents, having actual, say what's the word I'm looking for? Construction where it's necessary, where it's like not possible to be staffed 24, seven or on, and there are weak points. So I think that is where I think I would draw more in the line of where I fall down. It's not kicking people out who have been here for years and trying to like that's not that's.
Speaker 1:I mean, you can make an argument for it and there may be like I'm sure there's some good points there, but I that's not where I fall on, like the legal immigration part, when I approach as legal immigration, more or less having secured borders and ensuring that what's happening now is not repeatedly occurring and at least may you probably think the same.
Speaker 1:This with this is reducing some of those bureaucratic barriers that a lot of people see. But I know if you did do that and this is more speculative if you did do that that would still look like oh it's, it's not as hard, now let's just go through, like legally, like I only know if that would be the rationale in certain people's cases, like when you have, say, different organizations one say being the cartel making a humongous profit and no revenue off of a business, basically just trafficking people from through the United States border, whether they just give that up just because it's easier now. So I think, regardless if you approach open borders or whatever, like you you still need a secure border, irrespective of how you may like fall on it. But I'm curious on your thoughts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think you bring up a good and valid point there with the cartels, and I don't know where you personally stand on a on drug policy, but in my mind it's good to have legal drugs that are. Insistence on prohibition for drugs creates demand for an illegal drug market and the cartels profit Boku bucks off of that, and a lot of you know more libertarian leaning conservatives will totally be able to understand this that by doing so, we give the cartels the power that they have. If we were to legalize drugs in this country, the cartels wouldn't be nearly as powerful. There'd be less violence. There'd be less human trafficking.
Speaker 2:Same thing with our restrictions on immigration. We create a black market by not allowing a legal option to obtain a thing that people are always going to seek. You know, people again, just like drugs. We can't just snap our fingers and pray to God that people are just going to stop using drugs. We can't just snap our fingers and pray to God that people from these impoverished nations aren't going to want to come here to better their lives, better the lives of their family. We can't do that. That's just unreasonable expectation. And so what can we do? Well, we can legalize it. We can give a easy, simple process for people coming over here. They will be incentivized to do so because, a they don't have to worry about being deported and, b because they don't have to worry about being deported, they will get paid more.
Speaker 2:If you've ever spent time talking to undocumented immigrants, they'll tell you that yeah, no, they often get worse wages, they often have more abusive working conditions because they're undocumented and they are afraid that they will be deported.
Speaker 2:In fact, there was a recent trial that concluded forget exactly the company, but it was part of the food process supply chain for a lot of big producers like Kroger, and I think Sam's Club was one of them.
Speaker 2:But they had illegal immigrants who they basically put in a compound and said well, if you don't do what we say, we're going to deport you. And they scare them to death and essentially got slave labor out of it and it's like, yeah, if you give people the option to come here legally in a reasonable amount of time I'm saying a couple months to a year I think it's possible to process them that fast. I think way more people are going to just decide hey, I'm not going to risk it with the cartels, I'm just going to come over legally. I'm going to get a plane ticket, come in through the port of Miami, completely bypass the cartels, declare myself as an immigrant, become documented and just do my job. And what are the cartels going to do about that? Stop them at the airport? They're not, and they're going to have less money because one of their business opportunities just dried up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. My only thing I pointed out was once it's like assuming it's taking position reactively, like once they're already here. Now they can't, they're out of fear, they won't report these poor working conditions or look for different opportunity or allow abuse of employer to manipulate them. That's, once again, all reactive after the fact.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm interested as to why that distinction matters to you, because in my mind it's like okay, whether they're here or they're on the Mexican side of the border and they just want to be here. They're the same person to me.
Speaker 2:It's just different stages of the person and like, yeah, no, I totally agree, let's loosen the restrictions, let more people come in here, cool. But like we're still going to have people who are here undocumented, and what are we going to do about that? We're still going to have people who want to get in here. What are we going to do about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's all the same problem to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, I think they're. I would say they're different, like something amnesty is different from having stricter border or tighter borders. Like I would say that one could be for amnesty for no X amount of people who meet this criteria and then also advocate for a tighter border where you're reducing that, where you're reducing allowing illegal immigration to continue and flow.
Speaker 2:So I would say those are the I still feel like you're not answering the why here. Why are those two things? For me it's like okay, all you should have to do is declare you want to become a documented immigrant, wait for whatever you know, minimal bureaucratic process needs to be done to do a background check and make sure everything's cool, clean to go, and then boom you are in America and you're allowed to live here.
Speaker 1:Well, that's, and whether you do that from.
Speaker 2:New Mexico or Mexico. It's the same process. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I see what you're saying. I think it's just the chaos in between that Like when you see American property owners having feeling worried about these just random strangers walking through the property, crossing on the Texas border or Arizona where there's an influx there, Like I don't think that's fair to them whatsoever. So that's the concern I have is more as the chaos that occurs in between and it's not all just like lovely, like people as well. Like this past, the fiscal year of 2023, I want to say that there was over 35,000 people apprehended that had, like prior criminal backgrounds and or convictions or outstanding warrants. So that's what I'm saying Like so if you actually had an established process, you would avoid that Like I'm not to the point that they say open bores, but I mean I do see the merits of actually having, like, if you reduced a bureaucracy maybe a minimum, reducing the bureaucracy, allowing people to come through a more streamlined way then you you kind of void a lot of that in between of saying the wrong people going through, people like prior convictions the criminal convictions I'm saying are on terrorist watch list which has occurred in 2023.
Speaker 1:And then also the chaos and pointing their own selves at risk. I think it's a little selfish or not selfish, but a little role that this keeps happening, that people maybe have to go through the rivers and they are pointing their own selves at risk. It may not cruel, but it's just like wrong that they have to go through the rivers to cross and then point their own selves at risk May wrong again isn't the right word, but nonetheless they're pointing them livelihoods at risk when they're doing this. So that's why I don't like. I don't like it from, maybe, a security point of view, and they're also just people are just pointing themselves at risk. So I'd be like if there's another way to do that, just through a more streamlined immigration in general, regardless of how many people you align on or admitted and granted permanent visas is a different issue, but I think it's the chaos in between that kind of I would say I take issue with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you're kind of coming to the point and the reason why I think that a lot of Americans would be much closer to my position if they knew all the facts of. Yeah, I agree, the chaos is bad. The chaos is caused by our current system. Placing more restrictions isn't going to reduce the chaos because these people are willing, as you said, to take dangerous treks across these rivers. I mean, you were. You know Texas put up those.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you saw, but they put up like buoys with barbed wire on them and people are getting stuck in it and doing all this. And it's like if these people you'd have to pay me a lot of money to swim across the Rio Grande, go through barbed wire buoys and get to the other side You'd have to pay me an ungodly amount of money to willingly do that to myself. So like if we just gave them an option to go through Miami, you know, to go to go through a legal port of entry. They would prefer to do that than going across the border in all of these random locations and going through people's property. Like that's what they would prefer to do. 99, unless they are genuinely a terrorist who wants to come here and kill us. That's what they want to do or they're smuggling drugs.
Speaker 2:You know, there's really the only the two options that, like why would they ever choose to cross the Rio Grande if they could just come here the same way I do when I come back from vacation, right? Like that's, that's what you're describing right now is what I advocate for with open borders. Like open borders would be the absolute minimal possible barrier to entry, which would be pretty much what we give to tourists, right? And then, like. You're probably at some level a little less, a little more restrictive than that, but probably closer to that than what we currently have right now which is why I think these conversations are very valuable.
Speaker 1:They are they are and we're probably where we don't agree is the no limit whatsoever. I think when you bring up the economic point, we haven't spent too much time on this, but just looking at different heavens, like it's, it's conflicting. Like there's certain libertarians, three market libertarians, that make the argument that you do, compelling argument, and there's others, and then there's historical presence as well and I guess maybe not. Well, I don't know. I actually didn't look at the United States, which was a little silly, but in other areas, in other places such as UK, where it does create animosity when it's on like a large scale and between working class and kind of only serves the larger corporation in the end, or just a larger, say, entity or group, really a more wealthier group. And I think that's where that's not somewhere I'm sold on, where, like that's, it's abundantly clear that that would be the right option, coming, having complete open borders from an economic point of view especially, um, as you said, there is a tight labor market at the moment and Allowing just countless people to, you know, come here legally, that I don't know if that would just simply undermine the Working person and allow them, like in certain employers, to offer less wages Overall. And there is argument that, oh well, they, like these people who are working there now, like Americans, would be the trainers and now be managers, but Once again, it's just that part just doesn't compel me the same extent, but to your point, to somewhere where I think we do agree on is the lack of the not lack, but rather the Kind of unbearing bureaucracy that currently exists serves no one. It serves absolutely no one.
Speaker 1:I think something if you were able, as you said, figure out the workforce issue in regards to immigration judges, allotting the proper resources and Allocating the bandwidth like necessary to support what we, at least currently are dealing with, and then looking into Possibly expanding that, that would, um, that could be of benefit, that could be of use, I think, to everyone, everyone who's trying to come here, and I would say, like, somewhere where I may disagree as well, though, is the remain in Mexico policy, where I think that was not a bad policy because at least it gave If you had the remain in Mexico policy, where which is basically for people listening where you're applying for asylum, but you're doing it in Mexico or in a different country of like that's not the United States, Whereas a lot of times, people you know they. They get apprehended by board patrol and then they apply For asylum after the fact of like getting here if they're crossing legally. But I just I mentioned that if you had the Remain.
Speaker 2:Let me correct you there if they're, if they're seeking asylum, they didn't cross illegally, so it's legal to cross to seek asylum, which is one of the conflicts. When it comes to the remaining Mexican, yeah well.
Speaker 1:So if you the so this is where I guess I would like meet you halfway is if you had the remain in power and won't remain in Mexico esque policy, where they were applying for asylum in the United States, and I would say illegally, because I think a lot of people applying for asylum are not doing an awful like actual, like grounds that meet asylum grounds, which is basically the same thing for refugees, which is like due to fear, fear of being persecuted, like a vague feeler of being persecuted, and that's defined as there's like a few number of definitions meet it, but basically because of your race, gender, religion. But that's why I'd say illegally, because I honestly wouldn't validate a lot of those asylum claims based on those grounds. I would say they're more economic. But anyway, I'll close with this and that is that if you had something that had you're applying, not yet in the United States, but had more streamlined process, as you said, like two, a few months to a year, I think that would be a nice kind of meet in the middle there.
Speaker 2:Or I would. I would agree to that every day and twice on Sunday.
Speaker 1:And, like I said, probably like the amount I just not sold on, I think a lot of like there are like valve concerns with a labor market and what that would do to a working class, but and then also Obviously a number of other concerns, but I think that's probably the biggest one that like would still come to mind where there's like kind of more sufficient evidence that that could be Dutch from now.
Speaker 2:And we talk a lot in this country about what partisanship and all that.
Speaker 2:But I think that if you ever heard a horseshoe theory of, like you go far enough left, refer to right, you start to see things melt together a little bit, and I think what we've discussed here is one of those things where problem with immigration, problem with the welfare state, a lot of the problems like I have problems with them too, and I think the solution is also to just reduce government bureaucracy.
Speaker 2:Give people what they need without as many barriers as possible. Give them as many barriers to entry. You know, that's why I support things like universal health care, universal space, income, things like that, and I'm sure that a lot of people think I'm crazy for that. But you know, if you look at these things, a lot of times I we kick ourselves in the balls to stop people from getting things we don't deserve and we end up paying more for it than if we just gave it to everyone. And I think there's a lot of situations like that where the left and the right can look to come and come together and go like, ok, this doesn't make any sense. What can we agree on? And I think we could maybe, maybe make some progress as a country if we do things that way.
Speaker 1:Well, something in least regards to health care is that a lot of people are just coming to the conclusion that, like health care being tied to your employer is kind of ridiculous and limits, you know, economic opportunity and sense, because you're afraid to lose your job and because your health care is tied to it. So I'm afraid to start that business and entrepreneurship innovation. So yeah, I think that's somewhere where the left and right kind agrees in that regard. But I were pushing like an hour and a half. I just want to say, john, if I want to give you the floor for last thoughts, anything that may, we didn't get to but would still like to speak on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I mean, I think we did a good job with immigration here.
Speaker 2:I'm sure there's a couple tidbits that we left on the table, but I think people kind of understand. You know the position from both sides of your side and my side and I think the one thing to reemphasize is what we started this with is you know, we didn't necessarily come here agreeing on this. I genuinely didn't really know necessarily. I knew you disagreed with me, but I didn't even know your position coming in here and we were able to just talk for an hour and a half. Neither of us got upset one time and we were able to come to an agreement on a position that is closer to what both of us want than the one that is currently being taken into effect. And I think if more people no matter where you are on the political spectrum if more people did that and were willing to have these sort of just, respectful, not yelling, not arguing, but just conversations about what we want and why, I think the American people could start coming up with a lot better solutions than the politicians in Congress are coming up with right now.
Speaker 1:For sure. Well, once again, John, thank you again for coming here and it's for everyone listening. Thank you for taking this lesson. I hope you enjoyed it and appreciate the conversation. All right, Take care everyone.
