The Migrant Crisis, Biden’s Border Policy, and America’s Immigrant Legacy

0:01 what is the current state of immigration in the US uh well what we have now is an unmitigated man-made disaster um and I say man-made because uh it was deliberate policies uh of of this Administration that that created um not necessarily the source of the problem but the the the flow and the speed and the rapidity of it um and it's unmitigated in the sense that uh the the president has elected not to use his

0:32 executive powers uh to to end it um I don't think he could ever no president could ever 100% uh seal the border so that no one ever got in illegally um but if you take the the average number of people that showed up uh were encountered at the border illegally under previous administrations it might average you know 50,000 uh in a bad year uh and now we're Lo we're looking at 250,000 a month um so uh it it is a uh a

1:02 chaotic uncontrolled situation um unfortunately there's there's no bipartisan will uh to pass any kind of legislation that would control the Border you've got just completely opposing views right now I think the left the leftward part of the democratic party is running immigration policy for them um and I think the Republican Party generally has soured on compromise because they've they've had it force-fed to them for three and a half years um this this uh wreckage at the border so

1:32 I've never seen it politically as ugly as it is today um the the root causes of of of migration really haven't changed all that much in my lifetime there's more people for sure the population's grown um but it's not as if you know Latin America or Asia or Africa were ever you know well-governed universally or as if there were never hurricanes and floods and and you know other uh natural disasters so I think the sort of natural conditions um

1:59 haven't changed as much as as the the policies of of the politicians in charge and and what exactly has changed because I I I don't has there been a any I don't believe there's been any legislation to pass that changed things between the prior Administration in this one so how could we go what what is the actual things that have changed that would lead 50,000 did you say per year to um I believe it it was 50 I mean

2:30 I could get you uh exact numbers but it might be yeah about 50,000 a year we were seeing you know a few thousand a month showing up maybe a few a dozen a day but now we're seeing thousands per day you know sometimes up to 10,000 a month and uh you know sorry a day um and over 250 I think the worst month was like 350,000 back in December of uh of of 2023 so so really help me understand

2:59 what policy change would lead to such a Monumental increase I mean that that is like a that is a staggering increase it doesn't seem like just the executive Branch's policies like what does that mean well I mean there's an absolute clear line between the policies uh of the Biden Administration uh in particular uh and the numbers that we're seeing so I'll give you some examples um

3:29 previous presidents in the P I've worked for uh Republicans and Democrats in my career there was a a fairly Universal agreement that the job of the executive branch uh they swore an oath to defend and and uphold the Constitution and that means enforcing the laws and there was disagreement about what those laws should be uh there were there were always uh Democrats who were pushing for amnesties occasionally Republicans too for political reasons uh you had uh

3:54 Republicans some of them uh particularly the libertarian side the sort of Chamber of Commerce people wanting higher numbers of of legal immigrants to do to do jobs that they needed filled um but but no one really debated that you had to try to enforce the laws that were in place occasionally that got difficult because there would be a rush uh at the border for one reason or another some you had that Mariel crisis with the Cubans you've had Haiti unfortunately

4:20 melts down about every decade um on schedule um but you know the Clinton Administration The Carter Administration even the Obama Administration uh by and large did not believe that they had the ability to uh wave law and allow everybody into the country Obama famously said uh you know I it's not as if I can wave a magic wand and and change the law I have to follow the law the way it's written um president Trump when he was faced with uh a a a surge at

4:50 the border enacted some policies that uh took away the sort of immediate benefit that people coming to the border illegally want and you have to remember that of the population that shows up at the border uh the vast majority are there for job they live in countries that are less wealthy than the US where there are fewer opportunities maybe bad government uh and they want to come here and get a job you can't blame them for

5:12 for wanting that very few of them are actually fleeing uh for reasons that would allow them political Asylum under our law which is based on the Geneva Convention of of 1951 so when you have people showing up what do they want they want to get in to the country they want to be able to stay they want want to be able to send money home they want to be able to work and then they want to bring

5:33 their families to join them they want those five things so if you give them those five things uh word gets out and they're going to come and stay and they don't really care about the mechanics of it the policies you know the Asylum process what matters to people coming for economic reasons is can they get in work stay send money home and eventually send for their families so uh the Trump Administration made an effort to send

5:56 the signal out that yes of course uh we our laws haven't changed and people can claim Asylum uh under under certain circumstances but we are not going to release every single person who shows up and says that they're fleeing political persecution into the country uh into a backlog that's now upwards of three million cases that could last 10 15 years before a decision is made and even when it's made they're unlikely to be deported because by that time they've

6:22 got kids um and roots and there'll be multiple appeals and we know that once people are released into the country the percentage that are deported even with a valid uh order from a judge goes plummets down from like 98% if they're detained down to you know 20% for for individuals and as low as 2% for unaccompanied children so the Trump Administration enacted something called remain in Mexico the migrant it wasn't called remain in Mexico it's called the

6:48 migrant protection protocols but people uh know it as remain in Mexico and what that said was if you come to the border illegally and you claim Asylum you say you I can't go home to uh uh you know ven waya or Cameroon because I will be persecuted by the government we said okay you can Lodge your application and we'll let you go through with it you'll have your day in court and you're hearing but you have to wait in Mexico

7:10 outside the United States until we decide your case because if we let you in then you've already got the five things you want and then you might not bother to show up for the second hearing and that happens all the time people come in under the pretext of claiming for Asylum claiming Asylum they are released into the country I call it process parole and punt uh and they're released in into the mayorcas migration machine they get a ticket to go to New

7:34 York or Chicago or La they get a notice to appear in court maybe a month three months six months down the line uh half of them don't bother to show up to that first hearing because they've already got what they wanted and they know they don't really have an asylum claim uh some of them bother to show up for the first hearing but then uh not the second or the third or they keep showing up until it becomes obvious that they're

7:53 not going to win their case and then they they stop showing up and sometimes they even show up for the final case the judge says you're Ed removed uh and they say thank you very much and then they go home and no one ever comes to pick them up to remove them there are 7.4 million cases on Isis this is Immigration and Customs enforcements non-detained docket that means people in deportation proceedings who are just running around

8:16 the country uh perfectly happy working doing whatever it is they want to do so you know this system has been overwhelmed the the legal uh immigration system and the Asylum system have just been crushed by by a wave of economic migrants because President Biden undid the migrant protection protocols he said stop building the wall uh he said I will not uh detain children I will release everybody so you had family groups showing up with children you had the

8:45 same children being recycled you know several times through the system there no effort really stop go back for a second when you say children being recycled through the system what do you mean by that well at one point uh they were trying to do they were doing DNA tests um I worked overseas doing Visa interviews and the fraud level is unbelievably High people would show up and say this is my kid um and if you did

9:09 a DNA test it was one way to be sure that they were or they weren't and just the mere threat that you're going to do a DNA test will convince some people it's not worth you know wasting uh the time and taking the taking the gamble but they stopped doing that so you would have a a so-called family show up and now some of them actually were mother father kid uh but sometimes it was an uncle or a c cous or just a relative

9:30 that the cartel would put together into a package because uh the there's a court decision called Flores is kind of a long story but it it means that the the government cannot detain uh children for longer than about 21 days and if you're traveling with a child uh the same judge that decided that in 2015 said anyone who's a family member or traveling with that child gets into that package so they're released in 21 days so it became

9:55 a huge incentive to to travel with a child and they are uh many instances of of Customs and Border Protection or border patrol recognizing a kid and saying wait a minute I I just saw that kid two days ago um and so that's what I mean by by recycling um you know I wouldn't say that's a majority of cases but it definitely happens child trafficking uh is is one of the easiest ways uh to get into the United

10:21 States what happens to these children who are who are packaged together with either family members or even non-family members I mean it it your the Mind goes quickly to pretty dark places when you talk about K kids that are being used as a as a tool well if if the children are coming in with their actual families then you would hope that the families are going to take care of them through whatever immigration processes they go through um

10:52 there's a a Court decision in the US that says that all public schools have to basically accept all children regardless of immigration status so the kids and they'll get federal health care benefits and various other things so the ones that come in in legitimate families at least from a Health and Welfare point of view are probably fine uh the ones who are much more vulnerable are those who come in as minors uh the so-called uac's unaccompanied Alien Children and I

11:18 think uh so far the number under President Biden is it's approaching 500 uh uh I'm sorry 500,000 so we're talking about half a million unaccompanied children some of them a few of them are actually over 18 and just claiming to be under 18 let's say they're gang members from MS13 or trende aragua and they want to get in under the easier regime um we've seen that happening but a lot of them are actually minors and and what

11:44 happens is they they go into uh the if they are from contiguous countries so that's Mexico and Canada they can be expelled they can be removed just like uh adults but if they are from anywhere further south uh there's nowhere further north of Canada on this continent but if they're from Central America Venezuela Colombia then they are released into uh the Department of Health and Human Services office of refugee resettlement and this uh agency is originally well is

12:13 still in charge of actual Refugee resettlement meaning people who've gone through the the actual formal American Refugee process overseas and then they try to give them uh a head start housing you know hook them up in the neighborhood and and get them on their way to becoming Americans but they've kind of been SHO bned into this responsibility because no one else was able to take it on uh and they essentially release these children to ideally a family member but if they

12:39 can't find one then just some adult to whom the kid claims to have some kind of relationship um and unfortunately some of those relationships are not good we're talking about kids working in meat packing plants uh prostitution um you know backbreaking labor that our law forbids uh maybe to pay off the the loan that their family took out to get them here um or or for other you know nefarious purposes so what's happening to to the unaccompanied children is is

13:06 one of the sadder results of this of this border crisis I want to take a step back and and hear your the how you paint the bigger picture of immigration in America more his like from a historical perspective so um I you know we met a while you know earlier this year and we we we were talking about this issue and um you know and I tend to be more like pro-immigration you could say I'm a

13:34 delusional libertarian type but um you know aren't we a nation of immigrants isn't this just America being America and you know send us your your unwashed masses and and all of that like isn't letting even even in sheer volume numbers isn't just like what happened at Ellis Island at the turn of the century where you have boats filled with Italians and Irish and

14:05 and uh you know etc etc Place what's happening now in the bigger context of you know the history of immigration in in America well I I had a slide on this for for one of the presentations that I give and I wish I could remember the exact figure uh but the number that came in Ellis Island uh per day uh was significantly smaller than the number that's coming in illegally now over the Border per day um

14:33 and if you look at the entire number that came in to Ellis Island over all the years that it was open I believe it's fewer than were encountered at the border just under the Biden Administration alone so you know the population of the world in let's say 1880 was less than half of what it is now you couldn't just get on a plane and fly to Nicaragua and walk your way up uh to to the US border so the mechanics of

14:57 immigration are much much easier the populations of uh just give you an example my my grandmother was born in India and when she was born the population of India was about 300 million people and now the population of India is about 1.5 billion people so it's gone up by five times I've been there it's a wonderful country in many ways but it it is full uh you see people living in ways that no American would ever contemplate living uh you know I

15:24 remember getting up at 5:30 in the morning wants to catch a train out of New Delhi and uh lining the railroad tracks going out for about 2 miles were people taking their morning dump because that was the only place they could go like every 5T there was someone squatting down and I just thought wow this is a really crowded City so the the demographics of the world have changed enormously and while I absolutely I think everybody on my side of this

15:49 debate who's in favor of enforcing the laws uh agrees that immigration is a part of US history and a part of our future and is by and large a good thing for the country uh we also accept the reality that the demand for entry into the US exceeds the supply and you know I I think I love drinking wine and sometimes I drink too much but if you have a glass of wine or a couple glasses

16:11 uh at dinner uh that's that's probably just fine but if you have two or three bottles at breakfast that that long term's going to catch up with you and I think immigration is the same thing it's a good thing um but you can have too much of a good thing and I I I was listening to uh the the bill Mars Show last week and he he was trying to pin down his guests to to uh you know what

16:30 what would be too many like is there a point at which there are too many people coming in to the United States and he basically concluded that any answer short of infinity made you a racist and a xenophobe um but the reality is you know this Society is complicated and there are limits to what we can absorb in the space of a year uh or even 10 years if you look at our schools if you look at our hospitals if you look at our

16:54 services when you're talking about people who are generally speaking low skill I'm talking about illegal immigrants low skilled um and and don't speak English and may have healthare needs they tend to take a lot more services in the beginning then they then they contribute so there are I think just logistical and societal limits to the number of people that can be absorbed um I think if you go down the you know the ultra libertarian route the

17:19 sort of uh you know my my KO friends on the other side of this would say let them all in eventually it sorts out and they're absolutely right but I don't think it sorts out until you know we start to look like Caracus or Kolkata um and I'm not sure that most Americans are willing to take that hit to their standard of living so I want to challenge that but I want to understand it because I I I am not as doctrinaire

17:43 as my libertarian friends at Ko on this I'm I I don't I don't feel like I understand it well enough um you know in real terms like being physically in these places and seeing what happens when millions of people come into the country country and gather together it seems like Europe uh Europe has handled this in in with different ways than the US in that immigrants there seem to end up in ghettos um is there something about the

18:15 the way the US integrates people even at this scale that's better than other countries better than your like better than France you go to France and you're Muslim and you basically get shunted to a ghetto and end up being in this you know culturally like separated environment that's my impression is that true like how do we do at absorbing even with the challenge of the volume how do we do at absorbing immigrants relative to other

18:46 countries uh well I I could kick back a little bit on the on the France part because I I lived there for you know about eight years um but in the United States we had a couple of real advantages first of all we're we're huge and we were not settled uh in in the first what 150 years to any degree you know the the native population was for uh through disease and and warfare wiped out uh from the high of maybe 20 million

19:12 down to you know a fraction of that um and so a lot of the country was sort of wide open for farming for settlements so you had communities of you know Germans and swedes and Danes and uh Eastern European Jews and Italians and whatever that would just you know go off to various parts of of the country um start their own community ities and then eventually sort of integrate and we did in the beginning have uh I wouldn't you

19:33 know ghettos that term from from Venice where where they had a special Island where where all the all the Jews lived but we use that term to mean a it's kind of pejorative a group of people of one ethnicity but let's just call them an ethnic Enclave um I had a a one of the guys working at my school when I was a kid uh he' grew up in a part of Trenton New Jersey um that was a Little Italy

19:53 everybody was Italian people spoke Italian they ate Italian food uh they went to Catholic Church um then his son uh became a a screenwriter out in Hollywood uh so that that's just a little tiny microcosm of what tended to happen you know people with the exception of the Amish and maybe the hidic Jews who are still very much uh together most people uh after a generation or two they may have started in an all Irish or all German or all

20:19 Italian neighborhood but they they grew up they got jobs they went other places in the country and they mixed up and they integrated and I still think that for is powerfully at work you're seeing that in the the so-called Hispanic Community which of course is a very varied Community um with nothing in common other than the census decided to to put them in the same category back in the 70s but you see people from the second and third generation um from

20:44 Latin America going all over the country and doing whatever it is that they want to do so I think that's a powerful engine that we have um Europe is constrained by demography uh by by geography as well as demography it's it's pretty much all settled so if you come in from you know Algeria or Morocco in the 1960s 7s and up to today um it's not like you can just start a village in the middle of nowhere you've got to go

21:06 somewhere and you tend to go where you know people where they speak your language and you start there U but there are plenty of uh French immigrants who've who've you know made it out of of wherever they started and and settled all over the country um but I do think we have an advantage uh it's also part of our culture we we believe that we're a country of immigrants that's what our history tells us and so there's a

21:28 positivity to it that may not be there in European countries that have had to struggle for nationhood maybe had a couple Wars over it and uh still see themselves as an ethnically distinct people if you like this clip we've got so much more where that came from so be sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and ring the bell so you won't miss our new videos as they come out each week