Speaker 1: Well whiskey, come and take my pain, the money, my
Speaker 1: brain whiskey.
Speaker 2: Why think alone when you can drink it all? In
Speaker 2: with Ricochet's three Whiskey Happy.
Speaker 1: Hour, join your bartenders Steve Hayward, John You and the
Speaker 1: International Woman of Mystery Lucretia.
Speaker 3: Where they laps it up and David ain't you busy?
Speaker 2: On the should tap got a giving well.
Speaker 1: Happy new year everybody, and since it's a new year,
Speaker 1: welcome to the new and improved three Whiskey Happy Hour.
Speaker 1: Since it is a new era with Donald Trump coming in,
Speaker 1: we thought we'd make some changes to our format, some modest.
Speaker 2: Ones, and also we're going to have our own logo.
Speaker 2: There won't be the power Line Show anymore.
Speaker 1: It's going to be just the three Whiskey Happy Hour
Speaker 1: anchored at our political Questions substack in Ricochet and I
Speaker 1: will be resuming the old power Line interview show, but
Speaker 1: I'll discuss that on another podcast over there. So in
Speaker 1: the meantime, what we're going to do is three or
Speaker 1: four formats. Will continue to rotate the hosts as we've
Speaker 1: always done, but we'll also do either a show where
Speaker 1: we each spring one topic a week that's on our mind.
Speaker 1: Or as we're going to do this week, we're going
Speaker 1: to do most of the show about a single issue,
Speaker 1: and today it's going to be immigration, because it's popped
Speaker 1: up so many times in recent weeks that now we
Speaker 1: want to try and go through it with some degree
Speaker 1: of additional detail, and then we'll wrap up in our
Speaker 1: usual way. But so real quickly, here a lot in
Speaker 1: the news. I know you guys have things on your mind. Lucretia,
Speaker 1: what's what's the top story on your mind this week?
Speaker 4: Well, you just put it down at the bottom, but
Speaker 4: it is a top story on my mind because actually
Speaker 4: my daughter happens to live not too far from the fires,
Speaker 4: which you know, I don't know if you guys have
Speaker 4: been in fires. I've been in them several times, and
Speaker 4: you know that they can, in fact move quickly and
Speaker 4: all of that. But I really did think she was
Speaker 4: way out of it, except that they've just done nothing
Speaker 4: to contain any of the big fires. And she did
Speaker 4: receive I sent these guys the thing she received, the
Speaker 4: evacuation notice that thank god, it turns out that it
Speaker 4: was a mistake by the La County, so that I
Speaker 4: bring that up because Steve wanted to kind of there's
Speaker 4: not much to be said about the devastation and the
Speaker 4: horrors other than the DEI business. And I think a
Speaker 4: little bit of we need to throw some shade at
Speaker 4: Gavin Gruesome because what an idiot he is. And I hope,
Speaker 4: I really hope that out of this god awful tragedy.
Speaker 4: I am not trying to politicize it, per se. I'm
Speaker 4: not saying this is a republican versus democratic thing, but
Speaker 4: it is a progressive liberal thing versus a more common
Speaker 4: sense approach to running a state and running communities. I
Speaker 4: hope that this helps to destroy d as the principal, primary,
Speaker 4: first order priority of government of politicians. I hope it
Speaker 4: does that. I am assuming all of our listeners are
Speaker 4: perfectly well equated with that. Sorry, I'm gonna say it.
Speaker 4: That big fat black woman, gay lesbian whatever she is
Speaker 4: who says she doesn't you know, sure she can't carry
Speaker 4: out somebody's husband, but he shouldn't have been into the
Speaker 4: fire in the first place. And it's just it's sickening.
Speaker 4: These people are so arrogant and entitled. Sorry, Steve, that's
Speaker 4: all right.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm perfectly happy to pull the size it I
Speaker 1: think it should be by the way, for a lot
Speaker 1: of listeners may not know what you're referring to about
Speaker 1: the emergency evacuation warning. Lucretia and John you may not
Speaker 1: have heard about this.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but he sent it to him. I
Speaker 2: did well, said well, so for listeners who didn't.
Speaker 1: Los Angeles County, which is what nine million people, they
Speaker 1: sent out a county wide evacuation notice when it was
Speaker 1: only meant for a couple of specific neighborhoods, but instead
Speaker 1: they sent it to the entire population. So you get
Speaker 1: this emergency message that you're supposed to leave. Well, really,
Speaker 1: nine million people are supposed to leave LA County. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's obviously ludicrous, but it took him a while to
Speaker 1: correct it, and clearly somebody fell down on the job.
Speaker 2: Look, here's the thing to look for. You say you
Speaker 2: don't want to politicize it, or you know, that's.
Speaker 1: A rare, rare gesture of generosity on your partner of
Speaker 1: creatia A Look.
Speaker 4: Steve, and people lost everything. So I mean, at some
Speaker 4: point you can't be white.
Speaker 2: Let me finish here.
Speaker 1: Please imagine that this was Ron Desantus, this was happening
Speaker 1: to you know how it'd be playing out. And that's why,
Speaker 1: by the way, the contrast of the aftermath will be important.
Speaker 1: Florida recovers quickly from hurricanes. They rebuilt things quickly, they're
Speaker 1: torn down. Meanwhile, in California, my prediction, and here's the
Speaker 1: thing to track going forward, is how long is it
Speaker 1: going to take people to get permits just to demolish
Speaker 1: their ruined homes? In Malibu the last big fire in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen took some people up to a to get
Speaker 1: their demolition permit just to clear their rubble off and
Speaker 1: then to get a building permit to replace their house. Well,
Speaker 1: only a quarter of the houses that were burned down
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen, so it's what seven years later now
Speaker 1: have been rebuilt. This happened twenty years ago in Santa
Speaker 1: Barbara when a big fire blew through. In other words,
Speaker 1: the bureaucrats get hold of this, and I predict by
Speaker 1: the way that Alta Dina, which you know, five thousand
Speaker 1: structures are destroyed, the planners are going to want to
Speaker 1: do a whole new zoning plan. They're going to want
Speaker 1: to do the fifteen minute city model. And that's because
Speaker 1: these progressives are incorrigible. That's in my mind, as big
Speaker 1: a scandal as the incompetence of preventing a runaway fire
Speaker 1: like this one is that's my marker to lay down
Speaker 1: for now, and that should be politicized, because the contrast
Speaker 1: between Florida and California and handling natural disasters is pretty
Speaker 1: glaring and obvious.
Speaker 2: John, Sorry, I.
Speaker 3: Don't think it's politicization at all to demand competent government
Speaker 3: by the people we elected. One is Lucretia just listed
Speaker 3: all the such just a scratch the surface of the
Speaker 3: insanity of policy in the state. Right How we building
Speaker 3: a high speed train in the middle of the desert,
Speaker 3: and we spend a lot of money billions on homelessness
Speaker 3: projects and DEI initiatives, and what's not been built in
Speaker 3: the last ten years a single dam, single equity, and
Speaker 3: there's a there's a whole plan. There is a whole
Speaker 3: master plan about how to improve the water system in
Speaker 3: the state to save water because it rains like hell
Speaker 3: in the winter, and get it down to southern California.
Speaker 3: So one the voters voted for these idiots who are
Speaker 3: in government like Newsom, and they voted for this mayor,
Speaker 3: Mayor Bass, And so I think it's in company us
Speaker 3: to demand results. I mean, this is why the I
Speaker 3: was just reading Federalist number sixty nine and seventy seventy
Speaker 3: one seventy two the other day, and right, the executive
Speaker 3: is concentrated in one person, so we know who to
Speaker 3: hold accountable if they failed to exercise energy. And you're
Speaker 3: not seeing energy right now, So say one more point
Speaker 3: and the offices. I think Steve's completely right. Okay, we're
Speaker 3: going to have whatever is necessary to stop the fire.
Speaker 3: Then the real question is going to be the rebuilding.
Speaker 3: And this is where you're going to see whether executives
Speaker 3: elected by the Democratic Party are up to the job
Speaker 3: or they're going to cave to environmentalists. Because there is
Speaker 3: something California law called the Emergency Act, and under the
Speaker 3: Emergency Act, the governor California can waive all those permit requirements.
Speaker 3: He could say this fire in LA which it is,
Speaker 3: is an emergency, unprecedented emergency, and I'm going to waive
Speaker 3: all permit requirements, all rebuilding requirements. I am going to
Speaker 3: suspend judicial review, suspend the court, suspend all these laws
Speaker 3: that allow any environmental group to stop any building project
Speaker 3: in the state. Note for any reason. This is, I said,
Speaker 3: I said, real test because remember there was a huge
Speaker 3: earthquake when Governor Wilson was governor and right where Free
Speaker 3: collapsed and the state was up and running in less
Speaker 3: than a year. Yeah, those homes got rebuilt. I will
Speaker 3: I will be amazed if Governor Newsom is willing to
Speaker 3: declare an emergency, allow full scale rebuilding and basically say environmental,
Speaker 3: let's go harass somebody else.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I have two points on that, not disagreeing with
Speaker 4: either one of you. The first one is is that
Speaker 4: you know, you'd think that anybody looking at this situation
Speaker 4: would look at Governor Newsom and say, what a what
Speaker 4: a moron he is? We know that part of the
Speaker 4: that that it's not even that they need to build
Speaker 4: new reservoirs. The Pacific Palisades Reservoir was empty. Why because
Speaker 4: of the as everybody knows that stupid fish. Nobody, but
Speaker 4: I mean, he's part of that. The interesting thing, though,
Speaker 4: is that Governor Newsom's own wineries are doing quite well.
Speaker 4: Water runs to his wineries, you know, So at what
Speaker 4: point are people going to figure out that. The reason
Speaker 4: I say this I saw on Twitter some guys said, oh,
Speaker 4: I feel so bad for Governor Newsom. He only makes
Speaker 4: two hundred and forty six thousand dollars. ZERI to just quit.
Speaker 5: Well, you know he's.
Speaker 3: The Getty family. The fire's about to burn down the
Speaker 3: Getty Museum and the Getty Villa. Then we'll see the people.
Speaker 4: Uh, that's probably enough to say about it now, Steve.
Speaker 4: It's it's you know what it tried to Oh, I
Speaker 4: know what it was, Steve. Real quick point I have
Speaker 4: for you or question the traffic congestion that happened as
Speaker 4: a result of people trying to get out on Pacific
Speaker 4: Coast Highway. You and I have been on Pacific Coast
Speaker 4: Highway in horrible traffic on more than one occasion, and
Speaker 4: I can't even imagine how awful that must have been
Speaker 4: to watch, to be on PCH and watch, you know,
Speaker 4: the Embers flying at one hundred miles down. Do you
Speaker 4: think they'll do anything about that?
Speaker 1: Well, actually, the real jam up wasn't on pH as
Speaker 1: much as it was on Sunset Boulevard and Te Mescal Canyon.
Speaker 2: Those are the only two major arteries out of Pacific Ulisades.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know both those roads real well. I used
Speaker 1: to well a million years ago, used to haul mail
Speaker 1: to the post office a Pacific Palisades. So I know
Speaker 1: that downtown that now no longer exists.
Speaker 2: Uh, And so.
Speaker 1: That was the problem, is too many people trying to
Speaker 1: get out and abandoning their cars.
Speaker 2: It's just a you know, complete catastrophe. Yeah, you know, I.
Speaker 4: Just was a question for you.
Speaker 1: Well, but I mean again, one of the things I'm
Speaker 1: going to watch is whether the California Coastal Commission behaves
Speaker 1: as it usually does. I mean, of all those houses
Speaker 1: along the water that burn down, which is a lot
Speaker 1: of them, it's really staggering.
Speaker 2: But let's shift gears.
Speaker 1: John, I wake up in the morning and see you
Speaker 1: and your co author, John, is it a Della Hunty
Speaker 1: Robert Delahunty saying the Monroe Doctrine is back baby in Panama?
Speaker 1: What I was shocked at Panama, John, You is Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: I lost track of the Panama Canal stuff I had forgot,
Speaker 1: and that we had passed reservations. I think partly at
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan's instigation when he opposed the treaty in the
Speaker 1: seventies reserving the right to secure the neutrality of the
Speaker 1: canal in time of conflict.
Speaker 2: Or other conditions. And then also certain provisions expired in
Speaker 2: the year two thousand, you said, I lost track of
Speaker 2: that anyway, But bring our listeners up to date quickly.
Speaker 3: Well, everybody knows Donald Trump has been talking about taking
Speaker 3: the canal back. He's been talking about well, he's not
Speaker 3: ruling out invading Greenland. He's been talking about making Canada
Speaker 3: the fifty first state, which I would be against.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But.
Speaker 3: I was trying to figure out what explains all this,
Speaker 3: and what explains it is Trump is reinvigorating the Monroe doctrine.
Speaker 3: And actually we have been asleep at the wheel for
Speaker 3: twenty years at least while the Chinese have expanded their influence.
Speaker 3: And one thing I didn't know until I started looking
Speaker 3: into this Panama Canal issue is that our military has
Speaker 3: been complaining about what the Chinese are up to do
Speaker 3: up to in the Panama Canal zone. So, as I
Speaker 3: understand it, the ports at either end of the canal
Speaker 3: are run by Chinese companies, and as we know, the
Speaker 3: Chinese as we saw, I don't know if we're talking
Speaker 3: about it. We saw the oral arguments yesterday in the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court about TikTok. The Chinese government is very happy
Speaker 3: to use Chinese companies to achieve their national security ends.
Speaker 3: The people like Lucretia and her buddies call this hybrid threats,
Speaker 3: where these Chinese companies are both civilian but also have
Speaker 3: a ulterior military rule too. And so I think Trump's
Speaker 3: perfectly within his rights to say the United States has
Speaker 3: every right to return to the canal zone and take
Speaker 3: it back if the Panamanians don't secure the neutrality of
Speaker 3: the zone, and if there's two Chinese companies controlling the
Speaker 3: ports at either end, that doesn't sound to me like
Speaker 3: neutral Greenland. This is another thing. I think Greenland's also
Speaker 3: really interesting. People probably don't realize this, but in at
Speaker 3: the beginning of World War two, Franklin Roosevelt basically invaded
Speaker 3: Greenland because you may remember, right the Danish were actually
Speaker 3: sympathetic to the Nazis, and if you look at the map,
Speaker 3: Greenland is how you control the roots between here and
Speaker 3: Great Britain. So Roosevelt just sent something like twenty thousand
Speaker 3: troops to Greenland. And so whether we say we possess
Speaker 3: it or whether we buy it or not, I think
Speaker 3: it's inevitable where we're gonna have to have some large
Speaker 3: bases we already have. I think there's a major space
Speaker 3: force base there. I think we're gonna have to have
Speaker 3: more bases there now. The Greenlander I don't even know
Speaker 3: what they call them. We call them Greenlanders or Greenees
Speaker 3: or Landers or whatever, and I don't know what you
Speaker 3: know out of the Danes. I barely can locate Denmark
Speaker 3: on the map. It's such an inconsequential country right now.
Speaker 3: They can't defend Greenland sooner or later. Again, this is
Speaker 3: part of the Monroe doctrine. We have to control the
Speaker 3: Western hemisphere. If you look at the map, Greenland is enormous,
Speaker 3: enormous body in the or hemisphere.
Speaker 4: There's more than that, John, My sense of it is
Speaker 4: is that Denmark is sort of sits on any any
Speaker 4: movement by anybody in Greenland to say go for the wraw,
Speaker 4: the rarer earth minerals or they yeah.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: So that's one of the reasons why the Greenlanders, I
Speaker 4: think is what you call them, have been so welcoming,
Speaker 4: excuse me, have been so welcoming at least to Donald
Speaker 4: Trump Junior when they came the other day. You know,
Speaker 4: they're they're actually excited at the prospect of the opening
Speaker 4: up that would happen if they got out underneath Denmark's thumb.
Speaker 3: There's only fifty thousand people live there.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well back, why do they get to decide how
Speaker 7: that how that land mass is used for the you know,
Speaker 7: And this is the funny thing. People are like, oh boy,
Speaker 7: you know, you know, we're talking about attacking another NATO country.
Speaker 7: NATO should be happy we do this, if we go
Speaker 7: over and establish who spaces in Greenland.
Speaker 2: It's because we want.
Speaker 3: To protect Europe. Yeah, the whole point of it is
Speaker 3: to support NATO and also the Arctic Circle. This is
Speaker 3: the thing. I'm all for global warming here. That means
Speaker 3: Greenland might actually become grown. As it does. Greenland is
Speaker 3: a mess right in the middle of the Arctic Circle
Speaker 3: where China and Russia are gonna, you know, try to
Speaker 3: infringe on our control of the Western hemisphere. Now that
Speaker 3: that puts aside all the fighting we have in the
Speaker 3: Party about how interventions we should be in Asia and Ukraine,
Speaker 3: I think all of us agree that the United States
Speaker 3: cannot have any competitors in North and South America.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know all of us, but most of
Speaker 4: us smart people do. I just two quick Ones, Steve
Speaker 4: One is there was a joke going around. John won't
Speaker 4: remember this because he would have been too young, but
Speaker 4: you might a joke going around that Teddy Roosevelt goes
Speaker 4: to visit Jimmy Carter. Oh, the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 4: And I'm not going to remember. I'm going to have
Speaker 4: to make up some of the middle parts just to
Speaker 4: get to the punchline. But he's asking Jimmy Carter why
Speaker 4: Jimmy Carter has done so many stupid things things basically,
Speaker 4: you know, why have why have the Russians invaded Afghanistan?
Speaker 4: You know, just you know, the Soviets, on and on
Speaker 4: and on, and Jimmy Carter tries to explain, he tries to,
Speaker 4: you know, give us whatever, and finally the joke ends.
Speaker 4: Something on the next thing, you're going to tell me,
Speaker 4: You're you're going to give away the Panama Canal.
Speaker 1: You remember that, ill, It's probably better told when it's told accurately.
Speaker 4: But my second question for you guys is, while I
Speaker 4: don't disagree with anything, I thought that was a great article,
Speaker 4: by the way, and I have heard Laura Richardson in
Speaker 4: person at a thing I was at talk about Panama
Speaker 4: just the way you described it, John, just so you know,
Speaker 4: General Richardson anyway. My second question though, is how much
Speaker 4: of this is designed right now, because he has not
Speaker 4: taken office yet, as a kind of distraction, you know,
Speaker 4: the the laser pointer for the cat, just to kind
Speaker 4: of not allow any one of the many issues he's
Speaker 4: got to move forward on, including his appointees, to become
Speaker 4: central in the national media narrative. I mean, he could
Speaker 4: have waited to talk about Greenland or Panama, or even
Speaker 4: Canada for that matter until he got into office, and
Speaker 4: he had to know that some of these things would
Speaker 4: be highly controversial and get people all spun up. So
Speaker 4: I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that, Yeah.
Speaker 2: John or me? I think you asked you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I can try it and then get us
Speaker 1: out with just one quick observation.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's perfectly obvious that Trump floods
Speaker 1: the zone, so to speak. And the amazing thing to
Speaker 1: me is that his opposition has still not figured this
Speaker 1: out or figured out some disciplined way to respond to it. Instead,
Speaker 1: they bite for everything he throws out there, and some
Speaker 1: of these things, it looks like he's serious about. I mean,
Speaker 1: Reuter's is reporting here over the weekend that the I
Speaker 1: guess it's the Prime Minister of Greenland, whoever their chief
Speaker 1: executive is, with their sort of semi dominion status under Denmark,
Speaker 1: wants to talk to Trump. So this is all sounding
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. And the final thing I'll say, though,
Speaker 1: back to your the fundamental point John, on the Monroe
Speaker 1: doctrine is, let's not just only mention China a little
Speaker 1: factoid many people don't know. Lucretia probably does, maybe you
Speaker 1: do too. There have been for many years now, I think,
Speaker 1: going back to maybe fifteen years ago, a direct flight
Speaker 1: every week from Tehran to Caracas, Venezuela.
Speaker 2: What's that about?
Speaker 3: That is?
Speaker 1: It's not about that, It's not about oil and oil trading.
Speaker 1: That is about a lot of other bad stuff.
Speaker 2: And I think we can speculate what that is pretty easily.
Speaker 1: So there's lots of reasons to reinvigorate the Monroe doctrine
Speaker 1: besides just China. So with that, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: ad break for one of our sponsors, and then we'll
Speaker 1: be back and get to our main subject.
Speaker 2: Don't go away, everybody, all right, Over the last couple
Speaker 2: of episodes.
Speaker 1: We talked briefly about immigration, and you know it's this
Speaker 1: is going to be, you know, the first issue, one
Speaker 1: of the first issues Trump tangles with on his first
Speaker 1: day in office.
Speaker 2: John, I think we have to have a fight with
Speaker 2: you about some of this.
Speaker 1: I think you have correct my summary. I'm sure maybe
Speaker 1: it's too crude, but maybe not that you still I
Speaker 1: think have the old fashioned pro immigration view. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna let you start. We're gonna do this, by the way, listeners,
Speaker 1: in three parts. We're gonna talk from the general to
Speaker 1: the specific. We're gonna start generally about how should we
Speaker 1: think about immigration these days? Let me put the question
Speaker 1: to you in that neutral fashion, John, and let you
Speaker 1: go first.
Speaker 3: Well, you're not arguing with me, you're arguing with America,
Speaker 3: and the both of you have already exercised. You've already tried,
Speaker 3: even though I've convinced you that you were wrong, that
Speaker 3: you could succede, because you've succeeded from the power Line
Speaker 3: blog and created this new independent podcast through the secession,
Speaker 3: which I don't think exists either. So I think this
Speaker 3: is I'd like to think the debate between us is
Speaker 3: a question of degree and not principle. I think I
Speaker 3: don't think maybe you guys think this. I don't think
Speaker 3: you guys would say there should be no immigration, and
Speaker 3: I don't think there should be open borders and unlimited immigration. Okay,
Speaker 3: the question is really because our I mean, it's a
Speaker 3: I don't mean it to be, you know, just a
Speaker 3: simple motto. But our country is country of immigrants. Everybody
Speaker 3: here was it either is or descended from immigration, and
Speaker 3: so the question is really just how much immigration we
Speaker 3: should have? I mean, I think that's the real question.
Speaker 3: I think right now, if I remember correctly, we have
Speaker 3: about one million. We make about one million new citizens
Speaker 3: a year. We have about the estimates are we have
Speaker 3: anywhere from eight to twenty million illegal aliens in the country,
Speaker 3: although I don't know if that takes into account the
Speaker 3: Biden years, where you know, we're getting up to over
Speaker 3: two million illegal aliens a year under Biden. So the
Speaker 3: question to me is, right, we have to control the border.
Speaker 3: I don't think anybody sensible is saying that we should
Speaker 3: have open borders. You have a control border. And then
Speaker 3: the question is really, how how many of these people
Speaker 3: do you want to make legal aliens who can like
Speaker 3: who have green cards or make citizens. I would actually
Speaker 3: say million a year seems awfully small to me. In
Speaker 3: a country of three hundred and fifty million people, which
Speaker 3: we are, I would be all in favor of saying
Speaker 3: no items. I see to me, that's the good deal
Speaker 3: is let's spend more on border and border enforcement and
Speaker 3: then immigration control, and then increase the number of legal aliens.
Speaker 3: Legal aliens and citizens are sounding like two million, I
Speaker 3: would double it. I think even one million is too small.
Speaker 3: I think we could easily triple it. Then the question
Speaker 3: is how much do you want to spend how many
Speaker 3: resources do you want to spend on catching and removing
Speaker 3: illegal aliens who are here? Well, and that's again a
Speaker 3: question of degree, right, right, that's just a question of degree.
Speaker 3: I would say, obviously we should get rid of the
Speaker 3: worst people first, which would be fat the question.
Speaker 2: Let me let me ask one clarifying question.
Speaker 1: Then I'm going to turn lucretia loose on you, and
Speaker 1: so you know, put on your flat jacket.
Speaker 2: It's aside from just.
Speaker 1: The numbers, John and the question of how many can
Speaker 1: we have a disorb at a time, and in terms
Speaker 1: of old fashion assimilation, which is what led to our
Speaker 1: immigration pause one hundred years ago. But it's also the
Speaker 1: not all immigrants are created equal, in the sense that
Speaker 1: it's very hard to immigrate here from Europe. You know,
Speaker 1: we establish these very tight quotas on European immigration in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty five Immigration Reform Act, and.
Speaker 2: We've opened it up to anybody who can get here.
Speaker 1: And then the chain immigration right, if you manage to
Speaker 1: get here and get yourself a green card and citizenship,
Speaker 1: you can bring in your relatives.
Speaker 2: And so I've known Europeans who would love.
Speaker 1: To come to America and they can't. They can't get visas,
Speaker 1: they can't get green cards. But it seems to be
Speaker 1: very easy if you're from Latin America and parts of Asia.
Speaker 2: So that's one question.
Speaker 1: And I think, by the way, this may have been
Speaker 1: on purpose back in the day sixties. I think that
Speaker 1: the same people who said the Civil Rights Act wouldn't
Speaker 1: mean racial quotas also said that act would not change
Speaker 1: the ethnic composition of America, and I think they lied
Speaker 1: on both of those. But you see, the question I'm
Speaker 1: asking John is a different question, which is then, well,
Speaker 1: well not different, but the next question, which is then
Speaker 1: what kind of regime would you have right. So if
Speaker 1: you're going to accept that we're going to have a
Speaker 1: certain number of immigrants, so I actually wouldn't make it
Speaker 1: country based at all. I would make it some kind
Speaker 1: of economic skill slash contribution to the country system where,
Speaker 1: for example, we have so many shortages in different areas
Speaker 1: like medicine, for example.
Speaker 3: Would I would let in like everybody wants to be
Speaker 3: a doctor or registered nurse from any country should have priority.
Speaker 3: We have a huge shortage of doctors in this country,
Speaker 3: engineers people who can add to the country. So I
Speaker 3: wouldn't you know, I wouldn't do it. I think country
Speaker 3: quota system doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: Okay, hold that thought, John, because that's actually a part
Speaker 1: of the part two of our discussion here.
Speaker 2: But meanwhile, I want to get Lucretia in on the
Speaker 2: main question here.
Speaker 4: That's not the question, John, It's not a question of numbers,
Speaker 4: it's not That's not the question at all. The question
Speaker 4: is what does the country need from immigration. It's not
Speaker 4: about our altruism for refugees, for the anything like that.
Speaker 4: I know there's this big lady in the harbor who
Speaker 4: says all of that, But earlier generations understood that immigration
Speaker 4: is good for the country properly curtailed. And I don't
Speaker 4: care about whether there are sixty percent or eighty eight
Speaker 4: percent white people. What I care about is that every
Speaker 4: immigrant comes here, and it's just like your parents were
Speaker 4: and my grandparents were, John who said, my kids are
Speaker 4: going to learn English, my kids are going to be
Speaker 4: pro American, my kids are going to believe in the
Speaker 4: exceptionalism of America. And the problem with immigration today primary
Speaker 4: whether it's I probably wouldn't go so far as to
Speaker 4: argue that h one B visa holders are are anti American.
Speaker 4: But in god awful Bakersfield, Steve, yesterday there was a.
Speaker 3: Picture of a.
Speaker 4: Protest against the upcoming deportation of illegal immigrants, and they
Speaker 4: were lining the streets with their freaking Mexican flags. If
Speaker 4: that isn't the proof that we should get rid of
Speaker 4: every single person who came here illegally, starting with the
Speaker 4: worst and going all the way to the end, I
Speaker 4: don't know what is. We don't allow any more illegal immigration,
Speaker 4: and then we fix our legal immigration system entirely so
Speaker 4: that we bring in the people that are needed in
Speaker 4: industries that we can't fill. I have no problem with that.
Speaker 4: I think the one visa. I'll leave aside. We're going
Speaker 4: to talk about it. But we only bring in people
Speaker 4: who want to be here, not because they want to
Speaker 4: be on welfare, not because they want all the benefits
Speaker 4: that are offered. We bring them here because they want
Speaker 4: the chance to work hard and make something of themselves.
Speaker 4: There's there are dozens of immigrant groups that are like that.
Speaker 4: The Vietnamese groups I know in my small area, and
Speaker 4: that even that I knew in Orange County. That's how
Speaker 4: they think about things, and they end up being conservative.
Speaker 4: We shouldn't be embarrassed to say we don't want people
Speaker 4: coming to this country who don't who don't accept American exceptionalism.
Speaker 4: You can go to France, you can go to those
Speaker 4: other places. You'll never be French America and be an
Speaker 4: American because you believe in the principles of America. And
Speaker 4: that's the question, in my opinion, if you can't start share,
Speaker 4: you have no business discussing immigration.
Speaker 3: I don't see how that leads to immigration policy. So
Speaker 3: would you have some kind of test about because I mean,
Speaker 3: there's a huge desire to come to the United States, right,
Speaker 3: so there's like twenty I mean, I'm sure if we
Speaker 3: had an open border, we'd have like fifty sixty million
Speaker 3: people would show up. I mean, there's a huge demand
Speaker 3: to come in. And I'm sure most of those people,
Speaker 3: if you ask them, would say, yes, I'd like to
Speaker 3: be an American. So I don't understand. So you did
Speaker 3: say at one point that yes, you would use immigration
Speaker 3: to fill areas of high economic need. Right, so we
Speaker 3: agree there. Then in addition to that, right, what are
Speaker 3: you going to do? You're gonna say we will only
Speaker 3: let in people who want to be Americans. I don't
Speaker 3: know whether that's actually possible in terms of political in
Speaker 3: terms of government policy, as opposed to culture. The real
Speaker 3: problem is that we have this you know, multicultural and look,
Speaker 3: we we've talked about on the show that maybe we've
Speaker 3: already passed peak wocism, but we were living in this
Speaker 3: culture where you know, in our universities and our immediasone
Speaker 3: have promoted this view the uh, you know, that's against
Speaker 3: the melting pot theory. And maybe I totally agree with
Speaker 3: you that that you know, have the melting pot theory
Speaker 3: and assimilation this approach is the best way to proceed.
Speaker 2: I don't think that.
Speaker 3: I don't know if the federal government can mandate that
Speaker 3: through immigration that until they do so, you would just
Speaker 3: say stop all immigration until right until who does what,
Speaker 3: until who does what? Till who does what?
Speaker 1: The compromise position is until we have absorbed and assimilated
Speaker 1: the very I think we're at once again up at
Speaker 1: our highest level of non native born population, which is
Speaker 1: what we got up to in the nineteen twenties when
Speaker 1: Congress said, okay, we got to put stop to this
Speaker 1: for a while, and that stayed that way, and of
Speaker 1: course the World Wars stopped a lot of traffic, of course,
Speaker 1: But look, I think so I think there's two questions
Speaker 1: underlying this.
Speaker 2: Once an empirical question.
Speaker 1: Is it costing us more than we benefit economically from
Speaker 1: the immigrants and the just for you know, I'm very
Speaker 1: skeptical that that it's an economic benefit. I used to
Speaker 1: be very pro immigration and think it was, but I'm
Speaker 1: more skeptical now. And it started to be gosh, thirty
Speaker 1: years ago under Governor Wilson, when George Borjas, the economist,
Speaker 1: was running the numbers and saying, hey, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: it's not so clear cut. But then the culture question, John,
Speaker 1: to sharpen your point is the irony here is and
Speaker 1: this is slightly contrary to Lucretia's point is a lot
Speaker 1: of immigrants, not all of them, And I want to
Speaker 1: come back to that point. A lot of immigrants are
Speaker 1: arguably more patriotic than native born Americans. I mean, look where,
Speaker 1: you know, people go to elite universities and read Howard
Speaker 1: Zinn learn to hate their own country. Whereas a lot
Speaker 1: of immigrants still come here for the old fashioned reason
Speaker 1: that they do want to participate in the American dream.
Speaker 1: They take the idea of the citizenship test seriously, and
Speaker 1: many of them I think are better citizens. But the
Speaker 1: final point that blends the first two together is this.
Speaker 1: You know, we keep hearing about the border. Who's crossing
Speaker 1: the border. It's well a lot of Africans and Middle
Speaker 1: Easterners who are obvious having to get here well through Venezuela.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: But the point is it's not as many Mexicans as
Speaker 1: it used to be, which, by the way, was predicted
Speaker 1: by a bunch of Stanford economists thirty years ago. They said,
Speaker 1: Mexico finally starts to grow and get a middle class.
Speaker 1: The Mexican surge across the border will ebb and so
Speaker 1: now it's being brought in from other places who and
Speaker 1: by the way, the Mexicans they may not speak English
Speaker 1: when they get here and maybe not for a long
Speaker 1: time afterwards, but there at least come from a Christian culture,
Speaker 1: unlike the Middle Easterners who are coming here and who
Speaker 1: are making the immigration problem much worse in Europe I think,
Speaker 1: by the way, than it is here in terms of
Speaker 1: crime and total lack of integration with the society.
Speaker 2: So I don't have the good answers for those except
Speaker 2: to say.
Speaker 1: That that Lucretia has got to be at some level,
Speaker 1: right do we have to call a halt on this
Speaker 1: until I.
Speaker 2: Don't think he is going on.
Speaker 3: I don't think she's proved that point at all, the
Speaker 3: idea that we would have zero immigration, because I'm not
Speaker 3: I'm not finished. So you want to have zero immigration
Speaker 3: because you feel that American culture is not assimilationist enough,
Speaker 3: and so until American culture becomes assimilationists, you're gonna cut
Speaker 3: the world. You're gonna cut the United States off from
Speaker 3: immigration patterns in the world. That is insane. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's really that is really like, how would you even
Speaker 3: measure how would you even measure when the country becomes
Speaker 3: multi you know, has done us done away with multiculturalism enough?
Speaker 3: And do you want the federal government running around deciding
Speaker 3: whether we have enough multiculturalism or not in the country
Speaker 3: and then adjusting immigration levels to that. I think that
Speaker 3: is Actually I don't I'm not convinced that the immigration
Speaker 3: policies of the nineteen twenties and on were the best
Speaker 3: things for the country. I mean, I'm not sure. I'm
Speaker 3: not sure that's how happening story. It's this is a
Speaker 3: this is a time when people in the United States said,
Speaker 3: we've got too many Italians, Irish and Eastern Europeans in
Speaker 3: the country, and that's why they cut them off. It
Speaker 3: wasn't because of Asians and Africans and Mexicans that immigration
Speaker 3: got cut off in the twenties and thirties.
Speaker 1: All Right, we've laid out our positions here on the
Speaker 1: general scene. Let's take a quick ad break and come
Speaker 1: back and zero in on just the economic aspect of
Speaker 1: this and the H one B visa.
Speaker 2: So don't go away, listeners, We'll be right back. All right.
Speaker 1: We're back with one of the subsets that we brought
Speaker 1: up briefly. A couple of weeks ago to no conclusion,
Speaker 1: and we probably won't conclude today. But a big issue
Speaker 1: right now is the H one B visas, and it's
Speaker 1: caused this as Lucretia observed this big split in Trump
Speaker 1: world between high tech people like Elon Musk and Vivic
Speaker 1: Ramaswami and some.
Speaker 2: Of Trump's new friends in Silicon.
Speaker 1: Valley who like to have a lot of these H
Speaker 1: one B skilled worker visas for things like computer coders
Speaker 1: and software engineers and so forth, and the immigration of
Speaker 1: heartliners would say no, that ought to be in the
Speaker 1: pot of things we think about restricting now. I have
Speaker 1: seen conflicting reports on what the numbers are, whether the
Speaker 1: need can be filled from the population in the country,
Speaker 1: whether H one B visas are being used to depress wages. Oh,
Speaker 1: and there's also the fact that if you're here in
Speaker 1: H one B visa and Apple decides I don't need
Speaker 1: you anymore, you have to go back home. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's never it's not a well maybe not. But
Speaker 1: the point is, it's not a general writ to enter
Speaker 1: the country to work in an industry.
Speaker 2: For any employer.
Speaker 3: It's tied to the job.
Speaker 2: It's tied to the job tied to an employer. It's
Speaker 2: almost like being an indentured servant. Anyway, I think.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can paw around and try to find
Speaker 1: some facts, and so.
Speaker 3: I think the facts are these. So I was off
Speaker 3: by an order of magnitude. So because I'm looking at
Speaker 3: both a anti immigration website and the US you know,
Speaker 3: ice numbers, and they actually the same. So they both
Speaker 3: say that there's sixty five thousand, h one B visas
Speaker 3: granted a year, plus another twenty thousand are additional for
Speaker 3: people getting events degrees in the US, So if you
Speaker 3: get like a PhD in engineering, that doesn't count. That's above,
Speaker 3: so you have I think there's eighty five thousand a year,
Speaker 3: and then it says there's an exception for for people
Speaker 3: who go to universities, so those don't count. These are
Speaker 3: people who work. So again, to me, this is much
Speaker 3: more symbolic than real because we're talking again a country
Speaker 3: three hundred and fifty million people. We're talking about two
Speaker 3: to three million, well more than one million people get
Speaker 3: to become citizens. We've got the estimates range from I
Speaker 3: think eight to twenty million illegal aliens in the country,
Speaker 3: and we're killing overselves over a program that's just talking
Speaker 3: about eighty five thousand visas. That's like, that's not even
Speaker 3: a drop in the bucket. I mean, this is such
Speaker 3: a small number. Plus and then second, my second point is,
Speaker 3: you know, I think it's good to have a visa
Speaker 3: program that tries to get people to fill gaps we have.
Speaker 3: I would I would again would every doctor, every nurse,
Speaker 3: every PhD in computer size. I mean, I would give
Speaker 3: it to every kind of highly skilled advanced degree person
Speaker 3: that we can get to move to the country, especially
Speaker 3: but not limits, but especially in the areas where we
Speaker 3: have huge shortages, and I think we have a lot
Speaker 3: of them. We don't we I mean, part of it
Speaker 3: is the fault of us in the higher education. I
Speaker 3: mean I don't know why there aren't more medical schools
Speaker 3: in the United States. You know, I don't know why
Speaker 3: there aren't more engineering.
Speaker 4: Slots for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or right, wire system isn't training more doctors if
Speaker 3: we have such huge shortages to when we're Americans, right,
Speaker 3: Americans have to go to these weird Caribbean medical schools
Speaker 3: and come back and provoke wars like the invasion of
Speaker 3: Grenada to arrested them. But you're right, like we I mean,
Speaker 3: partially that's our fault, right, But if we have these
Speaker 3: shortages in these areas of dire need, I don't see
Speaker 3: what's wrong with giving visas to get people to come
Speaker 3: fill those and maybe they eventually do. As Lucretian maybe right,
Speaker 3: they maybe they don't leave when they're visus over. They
Speaker 3: want to stay. I think they would want to stay.
Speaker 3: But these are people, I think, who are adding to
Speaker 3: the economy.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I think Trump once said, I think
Speaker 1: he did that we ought to staple a green car
Speaker 1: to every graduate of an engineering program or higher education
Speaker 1: in America.
Speaker 2: That the problem I have here.
Speaker 1: I think this is where I'm closer to Lucretia's point
Speaker 1: on this is does seem to be a sort of
Speaker 1: a corrupt angle to this. It's used predominantly by you know,
Speaker 1: the high tech industry and so forth.
Speaker 2: I do remember universities, well, so I do. Well.
Speaker 1: I remember, if you go back fifty years ago, my
Speaker 1: dad used to hire a lot of engineers, you know,
Speaker 1: for his aerospace company. And he would tell these great
Speaker 1: stories about he'd get in an Indian or a Pakistani
Speaker 1: or a Turk always a young person's getting out of college,
Speaker 1: and my dad would ask him the same question, well,
Speaker 1: why don't you know you came here for an engineering education.
Speaker 1: Why don't you want to go back home? And they
Speaker 1: all said the same thing, Oh my god, I don't
Speaker 1: want to go back to that bleephole country, as Trump
Speaker 1: would put it.
Speaker 2: And he would hire a lot of them, and they
Speaker 2: were good.
Speaker 1: But the point is they weren't there under He was
Speaker 1: never hiring anyone on an H one B visa or
Speaker 1: any special thing there.
Speaker 2: I don't know what. I don't know how it was.
Speaker 4: You have to know, you talk. It must not happen
Speaker 4: a long time ago. I verify this.
Speaker 1: I was about to say before you interrupted me, that
Speaker 1: the system work differently back then.
Speaker 2: I don't know how, but those days you could.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 4: I deal with this all the time. And by the way,
Speaker 4: one of the things, one of the corruptions of the
Speaker 4: H one B visa thing is that you have to
Speaker 4: be able to prove before you can get that visa
Speaker 4: that you tried to hire an American citizen. And couldn't
Speaker 4: you know how that works in academia. I don't know
Speaker 4: obviously how it works in the tech world. But you
Speaker 4: just have to show that this person you make up
Speaker 4: some sort of area of expertise or sub area of
Speaker 4: expertise and say this person has it, and then you
Speaker 4: get to hire them. There are obviously plenty of other
Speaker 4: PhDs out there that you could be hiring from America.
Speaker 4: That's the scam, and you can pay them less, and
Speaker 4: you know, there's all of these other issues that come
Speaker 4: along with it. So it's fine if you want to
Speaker 4: sort of sugarcoat it. John is in, Oh, we're such
Speaker 4: a wonderful country, we need it. How often are we
Speaker 4: going to fail to fix our medical school system or
Speaker 4: our engineering school system and the fact that it's not
Speaker 4: turning out enough because we're just giving an easy out
Speaker 4: to employers. How about instead an employer starts an internship
Speaker 4: program with an engineering program. I mean, there's all sorts
Speaker 4: of things that these quick fixes make not worth the
Speaker 4: time that they might have to do. If those shortages
Speaker 4: continued and weren't filled by people from other countries, that
Speaker 4: would be my argument.
Speaker 3: On the other side, are there American computer science PhDs
Speaker 3: and American mts running around unemployed in the United States
Speaker 3: because their job was taken away by someone of the
Speaker 3: H one B visa Really? Yep, you find fine. I
Speaker 3: just don't maybe like Luigi Manzoni's your poster boy, because he.
Speaker 4: Is somebody who had an adjunct for us, who was
Speaker 4: who was a computer scientist.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's anecdotal evidence, maybe there's one or two cases,
Speaker 3: but on the whole, eighty five thousand this is what
Speaker 3: we're talking about, eighty five thousand highly skilled people coming
Speaker 3: in the country. I think the reason why it's different
Speaker 3: than what Steve's memory is is because because we have
Speaker 3: this I think stupid system where you have these country quotas,
Speaker 3: this allows you, this gets you out from the country quota.
Speaker 3: So that's why I think a lot of the engineers
Speaker 3: you see coming over on H one B visas are
Speaker 3: Indian and Chinese because the quotas for those countries are
Speaker 3: so over subscribed already. I mean I had a friend
Speaker 3: who got married to an Indian woman and he told
Speaker 3: me that, you know, if you don't have any job
Speaker 3: skills and you want to come in as an Indian,
Speaker 3: the waiting list is like five to ten years to
Speaker 3: come to Nice's just on a normal visa. So that's
Speaker 3: what this is is That's why you know it's like
Speaker 3: a shortcut. Yeah, look, look crechees right, that there's always
Speaker 3: the possibility that short term fix just kicks the can
Speaker 3: down the road and is a disincentive to fixing the
Speaker 3: problem more generally. But that's actually stuff I would rather
Speaker 3: have the federal government do. I would rather have the
Speaker 3: federal government think about how can we expand medical training,
Speaker 3: how do we get more Americans to go into engineering,
Speaker 3: Like maybe the Federal Garment just that we're going to
Speaker 3: pay for the tuition of any you know, American who
Speaker 3: wants to go to engineering school. Again, well agree, you know, wait,
Speaker 3: this is not this. I don't think letting an eighty
Speaker 3: five thousand people a year to take these kind of
Speaker 3: jobs is going to you know, discourage the Federal Garment
Speaker 3: from doing what it needs to do. If we just
Speaker 3: have leadership who's interested in doing it.
Speaker 2: Let's let's get out this way.
Speaker 1: We did once before encourage an expansion of stem fields
Speaker 1: after the spot neck panic in nineteen fifty eight, right,
Speaker 1: and that was successful. I think the second thing is,
Speaker 1: like I say, we're not going to get to the
Speaker 1: bottom of this amongst the three of us. But let's
Speaker 1: go back to what you brought up the last segment, John,
Speaker 1: which is some reform proposals. Now you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: skills based immigration slots.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm for that.
Speaker 1: Although it does require a certain amount of a central
Speaker 1: planning mentality that I dislike on hyaking grounds. The other
Speaker 1: alternative not mentioned is I think the one. Is it
Speaker 1: Richard Epstein or someone like you who says we ought
Speaker 1: to have an auction.
Speaker 2: System, you let people bid to come to this country.
Speaker 2: I think actually for skills right.
Speaker 3: I think that Milton Friedman might have thought of that first.
Speaker 3: Very freedomass Yeah, I mean that makes total sense from
Speaker 3: efficiency perspective, because people will bid, and bidding their price
Speaker 3: will depend upon how much money they think they'll make
Speaker 3: when they come here, and how much money they make
Speaker 3: when they come here is a sign of how much
Speaker 3: the economy needs them.
Speaker 1: I think that's the way many countries do it that way.
Speaker 1: I think Canada is something like that. I know Australia does, and.
Speaker 3: Canon Australia have skills based I don't know if they
Speaker 3: have a pure auction system, but there's a point system
Speaker 3: where they look at right, you know, like did you
Speaker 3: go to college, what kind of job would you do?
Speaker 3: What are your skills? I'd all be a favor of that.
Speaker 3: I just don't. But I mean, you know, we can
Speaker 3: have a million or two million enter a year, but
Speaker 3: just make it a point based system rather than country based.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, okay, all right, let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: for a sponsor.
Speaker 2: Then we're going to come back and get onto.
Speaker 1: The really hot button issue, birthrights citizenship. So don't go away, folks,
Speaker 1: all right, birthright citizenship. I think the Trump administration wants
Speaker 1: to bring up this issue. It's thought to be settled,
Speaker 1: and I think you think it is settled, John, I
Speaker 1: think Lucretian, I think it is. Not my dumb joke
Speaker 1: on this is the one case most often mentioned from
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 2: Is the Wong Kim arc case, which I think was
Speaker 2: wrongly decided. But I think it's matter.
Speaker 3: Listeners, don't ever take Steve with you to a Chinese restaurant.
Speaker 3: You might you might not leave a why okay, the
Speaker 3: way he mispronounces all right, there's two.
Speaker 1: There's two issues here, I think. And then Lucreatia, you
Speaker 1: come in and tell me what I've left out or
Speaker 1: or a sharper way to put it.
Speaker 2: One is. Oh, first of all, I will give you
Speaker 2: this fact.
Speaker 1: We're one of the few countries that has unrestricted birthright citizenship.
Speaker 1: There's no European country that does not qualify it. You
Speaker 1: you have to be either have a mother or father
Speaker 1: who was already a citizen. That's not to be both parents,
Speaker 1: or you have to have been a long term resident
Speaker 1: of the country. The only countries that allow unlimited birthrights
Speaker 1: citizenship are all here in the western hemisphere.
Speaker 2: The United States, Canada, and.
Speaker 1: All of our South American countries except for Columbia does
Speaker 1: not allow birthrights. At least that's the information I can find. Second,
Speaker 1: another of the argument, John, is that clause in the
Speaker 1: fourteenth Amendment that says all persons born and naturalized or
Speaker 1: naturalized comma. But the key phrase is the next one.
Speaker 1: And subject to the jurisdiction thereof, I mean the jurisdiction
Speaker 1: of the United States, shall be citizens. Now, as I
Speaker 1: understand that, the argument was that subject to the jurisdiction
Speaker 1: thereof means the obvious exclusion for say, children.
Speaker 2: Who were born to diplomats, people who.
Speaker 4: Actually Indians on reservations, who had sovereign governments.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, the point is, and.
Speaker 4: The debates, by the way, and occupying.
Speaker 1: Army right, and if occupying armies. Right, Well, so here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Here's a case of where you know, what's
Speaker 1: is it the sixth or seventh Amendment that says all
Speaker 1: civil trials over twenty dollars shall have a right to jury.
Speaker 2: Trial Seventh Amendment?
Speaker 1: Right, And you said that twenty dollars, that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's any trial these days, right, And so that's sort
Speaker 1: of an archaic thing that was never adjusted for value
Speaker 1: and so forth, because twenty dollars in seventeen eighty seven
Speaker 1: was real money. Okay, in eighteen sixty eight, it was
Speaker 1: hard to get here. You couldn't fly here. You had
Speaker 1: to take a boat.
Speaker 2: That was not easy. It was expensive.
Speaker 1: And so as a practical matter, the number of people
Speaker 1: who could come here to have a child, to have
Speaker 1: an anchor baby, as we call it now, was pretty small.
Speaker 1: Now you can hop on a plane and the Chinese
Speaker 1: do this. And by the way, the figures out of
Speaker 1: COVID are very revealing on this. The number of Chinese
Speaker 1: born in California fell dramatically during COVID because of all
Speaker 1: the restrictions, and now they're back up again because that's
Speaker 1: very popular for Chinese mothers to have their babies in
Speaker 1: Orange County. And it seems to me that back to
Speaker 1: point number one, if you're not controlling who gets citizenship,
Speaker 1: you are as well as crossing the border, you are
Speaker 1: losing an aspect of sovereignty. And that's why I think
Speaker 1: that clause needs to be reasserted. We can talk about
Speaker 1: Wong kim Ark, I can bring up a couple of
Speaker 1: other cases. There's one obscure case Walter Burns like to
Speaker 1: talk about, but I'll stop there, Lucretia.
Speaker 2: What have I left out?
Speaker 4: Well, the real point is a subject to its jurisdiction
Speaker 4: becomes almost a superfluous phrase unless you take it more seriously.
Speaker 4: Subject to its jurisdiction. Citizenship is different from being a subject.
Speaker 4: And you know, if you're born in England you are
Speaker 4: for life, you owe allegiance to the king. The United
Speaker 4: States is the first one to actually talk about citizenship,
Speaker 4: and then the first time that the Constitution actually defines it,
Speaker 4: of course, as in the fourteenth Amendment. Right, And it's
Speaker 4: very clear what's happening there. John took me to task
Speaker 4: last week because I wouldn't recognize what the fourteenth Amendment
Speaker 4: was designed to do when it came to stopping discrimination
Speaker 4: and privileges and immunities, that it was all about the
Speaker 4: newly freed slaves. Of course, the Fourteenth Amendment citizenship clause
Speaker 4: was designed to guarantee to the newly freed slaves that
Speaker 4: their citizenship in the United States was assured. And that's
Speaker 4: why it says shall be citizens of the United States
Speaker 4: primary and of the state wherein they reside, derivative or secondary.
Speaker 4: So you could not deny citizenship as the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: had done to Dread Scott, denying that he could be
Speaker 4: a citizen of the United States, and then making citizenship
Speaker 4: in the state in which a person resides dependent upon
Speaker 4: the fact that they are already a citizen of the
Speaker 4: United States, and that cannot be denied to them. That's
Speaker 4: what it's supposed to do. When again you took me
Speaker 4: to task last week saying the fourteenth Amendment is only
Speaker 4: designed to do this, so you can't add to it,
Speaker 4: I want to know why you would add to it here.
Speaker 4: It was meant to do something very particular. It wasn't
Speaker 4: meant to say that if you can sneak into the
Speaker 4: United States by hook or by crook any way, you
Speaker 4: possibly can illegally and have a child here that child
Speaker 4: automatically becomes a United States citizen. That's a ludicrous, ludicrous
Speaker 4: interpretation of the fourteenth Amendment.
Speaker 3: Well so ludicrous that it's the Supreme Court's interpretation, and
Speaker 3: it's the interpretation of the country for well, I'm not done.
Speaker 3: I'm not done, and the country for the last two end,
Speaker 3: the country for the last two hundred years. So my
Speaker 3: understanding of the history is that before the Fourteenth Amendment,
Speaker 3: people who were born here were citizens, right, that we
Speaker 3: did have territorial birthright citizenship. Steve is right. There is
Speaker 3: a difference the countries that came now, the Roman law system,
Speaker 3: Western Europe, much of the world are ones that have
Speaker 3: the rule of what they call you sanguineous. Your citizenship
Speaker 3: depends on your blood, who your parents are citizens of.
Speaker 3: The common law countries are the ones that are different.
Speaker 3: The United States can it's a British rule and it's
Speaker 3: called use not citizens. I'm not finished.
Speaker 4: But you can't mix that up.
Speaker 3: That's where the rule comes from. Now we might have
Speaker 3: changed it now that we're a republic rather than a monarchy,
Speaker 3: but the rule in origin comes from Britain, and by
Speaker 3: practice we kept that in effect in the that's just
Speaker 3: I'm just describing the history. Unless you have discovered historical
Speaker 3: evidence lucretia that has been never discovered before by anybody
Speaker 3: that we were actually running around and using the European
Speaker 3: rule for the period of the country before the fourteenth Amendment,
Speaker 3: this will be a great surprise because my understands the
Speaker 3: historical practice in that period is that people, Now we
Speaker 3: didn't have federal immigration law on this perier, so we
Speaker 3: didn't have illegal aliens, and legal people just came and
Speaker 3: if you had a child here, your child became a citizen.
Speaker 3: That was just the rule that was followed in the
Speaker 3: United States world. Now, the problem is dread Scott. Dread
Speaker 3: Scott denied citizenship to blacks, slave or free, and they
Speaker 3: were all born in the United States, obviously, so the
Speaker 3: fourteenth Amendment makes perfect sense to me. It reverses the
Speaker 3: rule of dread Scott and just restores the principle of
Speaker 3: if you're born here, you're a citizen. It would be
Speaker 3: strang I actually think it would be really weird reading
Speaker 3: of the fourteenth Amendment to say it overturns dread Scott
Speaker 3: and changed the principle of how you became a citizen,
Speaker 3: not to where you're born, but to the status of
Speaker 3: your parents, which would have the effect of narrowing actually
Speaker 3: the rule of citizenship from what it was before the
Speaker 3: Civil War for everyone else other than blacks. I don't
Speaker 3: think that makes sense of the history of the period.
Speaker 3: And then the one other thing is I think this
Speaker 3: jurisdiction language is is just a minor qualification. It says
Speaker 3: under international law at this time, there was this principle
Speaker 3: that if you were born on the territory of another country,
Speaker 3: you were not a citizen in that country. If you
Speaker 3: were right, you were there as the child of diplomats,
Speaker 3: you're there as the child of occupying arm actually, you know,
Speaker 3: because this was a big problem in the old days,
Speaker 3: occupying armies having children. And then I argue with John
Speaker 3: Eastman about this. He claims, I'm not sure about this.
Speaker 3: I'm also not clear sure whether it should matter that much.
Speaker 3: But he claims that another exemption was for temporary visitors
Speaker 3: like that you could be like passing through the country
Speaker 3: on a trip and you happen to have your kid
Speaker 3: in the United States. You did not. That's also not
Speaker 3: subject to the jurisdiction thereof. But I don't think subject
Speaker 3: to the jurisdiction thereof means that this is a different
Speaker 3: way of saying your parents both have to be citizens. Now,
Speaker 3: this is just one point on the policy. I again,
Speaker 3: I think this is something that's more symbolic than real
Speaker 3: in terms of importance, because I'm trying to find it's
Speaker 3: very unclear. I'm trying to find the data on actually
Speaker 3: how many people become citizens this way. So what we're
Speaker 3: talking about is how many people, how many babies are
Speaker 3: born on our territory to illegal aliens, because that's the
Speaker 3: only people who would benefit. So the only study I
Speaker 3: see from Pew says that this peaked around two thousand
Speaker 3: and four, two thousand and five, around three hundred looks
Speaker 3: like three hundred and seventy thousand a year, and the
Speaker 3: last time a lot, but last time they looked at it.
Speaker 3: But the last time after that it started declining pretty rapidly,
Speaker 3: and by twenty fourteen it was two hundred and seventy
Speaker 3: five thousand a year, And I think, look, it's going down.
Speaker 3: The number of babies Americans are having is going down.
Speaker 3: This again is another question. I think it's I think
Speaker 3: it's a great strength of the United States that we
Speaker 3: should have a large growing population when the rest of
Speaker 3: the industrial world is shrinking. And I just don't think
Speaker 3: as a matter of policy, putting aside the property in
Speaker 3: the fourteenth Amendment, that it makes sense for us to say, no,
Speaker 3: we don't want all these you know, two hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty thousand. Say it's two hundred thousand. Now, there's not
Speaker 3: a lot of people out of a country of three
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty million people.
Speaker 2: So all right. I did.
Speaker 1: By the way, notice John, in the Wong kim arc
Speaker 1: case from the eighteen nineties that the court relied a
Speaker 1: lot on English.
Speaker 2: Common law, which surprised me. I never read the case.
Speaker 2: So that is the curiest thing.
Speaker 3: That's just where the rule comes from, because it is
Speaker 3: different than the.
Speaker 1: Well okay, well, well that's a long subject. That leave
Speaker 1: that asiph from what I want to pose a hypothetical
Speaker 1: though to you, John, I mean that case, it seems
Speaker 1: to me, is tricky because it turns on the fact
Speaker 1: that Wong kim Ark's parents had lived and conducted business
Speaker 1: in the United States.
Speaker 4: For legal residents, not illegal.
Speaker 3: Okay, they didn't have that concept, but.
Speaker 2: They didn't have citizen This is back during the.
Speaker 4: Era there were citizens. They were legally here.
Speaker 3: That doesn't matter though, well, but that, but there is
Speaker 3: this for your reading, for your reading.
Speaker 2: There's this wrinkle to it though, which it does.
Speaker 4: All right, Sorryry, but wait before you go on, Steve,
Speaker 4: come on, this is an important point. A legal resident
Speaker 4: of the United States is subject to the jurisdiction of
Speaker 4: the United States.
Speaker 3: Well, and illegal alien is too. I mean they're both
Speaker 3: subject to the same sets of laws while they're here.
Speaker 4: An illegal alien came without any any allegiance to the laws.
Speaker 4: They broke the laws to get here. Illegal as the
Speaker 4: permission of the United States to be here.
Speaker 3: Jurisdiction means they are subject to the laws here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can be here illegally or legally, you're still you
Speaker 3: can't commit murder. You're still a subject to the jurisdiction
Speaker 3: state laws when you're here. Doesn't matter your stenus is well.
Speaker 1: In the Long cam Art case, one of the things
Speaker 1: about that I thought was curious is that that was
Speaker 1: during the era you had the Chinese exclusion laws, when
Speaker 1: Chinese and many states in the country were excluded from
Speaker 1: eligibility for citizenship. Now I may have had legal status
Speaker 1: and they're conducting a business, but I thought that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Their kid gets citizenship and they don't. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: all very strange. The hypothetical is going to ask you,
Speaker 1: is this. It's not quite a hypothetical, John, but you'll
Speaker 1: see where I'm going with this. The case Walter Burns
Speaker 1: likes to point through from the fifties.
Speaker 2: Is Shaughnessey versus the United States. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you know it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty obscure. It's never included in the immigration cases.
Speaker 1: Shawnessy was Hungarian, went home. He'd been living for twenty
Speaker 1: five years in Buffalo, married to an American woman, traveled
Speaker 1: to Hungary because his mother was dying. So it's like
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty. When he applied for visa to come back,
Speaker 1: he was denied intrigue into the country because our state
Speaker 1: department said he was a security risk. Now I don't
Speaker 1: know why I never took out citizenship, but you know,
Speaker 1: the laws are all sort of goofy er back then,
Speaker 1: and he never was allowed back into the country. And
Speaker 1: by the way, they never disclosed anywhere.
Speaker 2: And you can't find out why was he deemed a
Speaker 2: security risk because because you know Cold War, behind the
Speaker 2: Iron Curtain, no one knows.
Speaker 3: He was a member of the Communist Party when he.
Speaker 1: Was well, I don't know, but the point is is
Speaker 1: that here's a guy I been living.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Hypothetical is this suppose the Trump administration said, we deem
Speaker 1: every person crossing the border illegally to be a security risk,
Speaker 1: and therefore we wish to exclude them and deport them
Speaker 1: from the country.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't that be that that's actually what they did when
Speaker 3: they first took office in twenty seventeen they issued that
Speaker 3: travel ban. Yeah, they have full authority to say anybody
Speaker 3: who comes from this country is cut We're just going
Speaker 3: to cut off immigration entirely to these countries for national
Speaker 3: security grounds. I don't think you could go as now
Speaker 3: the court said, we defer, you know, enormously to the
Speaker 3: president about national security threats.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't think that they could get away with we
Speaker 3: cut off all immigration like the Crucia was suggesting from
Speaker 3: the world. I think there does have to be, you know,
Speaker 3: some discrimination between the countries that are secure threats or not. No,
Speaker 3: I agree with you, Steve Shaughnessy. I didn't understand. I
Speaker 3: actually understand the case differently. I actually thought Shaughnessy basely
Speaker 3: stands for the idea you don't have a right to
Speaker 3: come into the United States. The country can stop you
Speaker 3: from coming in. It doesn't owe you an explanation or hearing.
Speaker 3: It just blocks you at the border. We like, just
Speaker 3: coming to the border doesn't mean you're in the country yet.
Speaker 3: And so that's I mean, that's what I always took
Speaker 3: Shaughnessy to mean. But I still yeah, but you're a hype.
Speaker 2: That was right.
Speaker 3: I think if suppose you lived here a long time
Speaker 3: and then you left and you weren't a citizen, and
Speaker 3: you tried to come back in, Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 3: the United States owes you any right to come back in.
Speaker 3: It's allowed to stop you if it wants for national
Speaker 3: security reasons. Oh, Congress has said. Congress has given the
Speaker 3: authority to the president.
Speaker 1: Okay, we need to get out. Will you can see
Speaker 1: that we are the we and you know a couple
Speaker 1: other countries, like in Latin America are the outliers on
Speaker 1: birthright citizenship.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, most of the world follows this citizenship
Speaker 3: follow Yeah. Yeah, I'm actually glad that. I'm proud of
Speaker 3: the fact the United States doesn't follow that.
Speaker 4: What you should have said that all of the abuse
Speaker 4: of the system that you do. But there's something on
Speaker 4: the order one point eight million miners living in the
Speaker 4: United States born to parents' illegal immigrants. One point eight million.
Speaker 4: The problem is that you haven't even brought up, John,
Speaker 4: is that because they become citizens, they are automatically eligible
Speaker 4: for welfare for et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: And that's the reason that it's a magnet. If you
Speaker 4: stopped that and you stopped illegal immigration, fix those things,
Speaker 4: fix the welfare system, fix the legal immigration system, and
Speaker 4: then start over. That's what I would say. But right now,
Speaker 4: the second and third order consequences of illegal immigration are
Speaker 4: devastating to this country, and if we don't do something
Speaker 4: about it very soon, we won't have a country left
Speaker 4: to have a culture of American excts, because there won't
Speaker 4: be enough of it left.
Speaker 3: The children, these one point eight million kid miners who
Speaker 3: are fining the very fabric of the country. I mean,
Speaker 3: come on, let me put it like, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of the problems are not being created by these children.
Speaker 3: They're being created by the Americans who are born here
Speaker 3: and their families. Has been our long time have introduce
Speaker 3: as crazy woe culture, these children are not the threat.
Speaker 1: Let me let me put it this way, and then
Speaker 1: have to draw us to a conclusion because we're running
Speaker 1: out of time. By having it this way, John, people
Speaker 1: select who are citizens are going to be.
Speaker 2: We're not selecting horror citizens. You're going to be.
Speaker 1: We sacrifice a basic element of sovereignty by having unlimited
Speaker 1: birth right citizenship.
Speaker 2: That's my point of view about the matter. And if
Speaker 2: it doesn't bother you, well you just have a higher threshold.
Speaker 3: If something's just not that many people. I don't think
Speaker 3: they I don't think they're consuming huge amounts of welfare,
Speaker 3: Social Security and all these benefits programs are going to
Speaker 3: go bankrupt. But it's not because of illegal aliens, all right,
Speaker 3: because of your baby boom generations bankrupting when I'm not
Speaker 3: getting any social security. But it's not because we legal aliens.
Speaker 3: It's because you're a huge generation won't control your outrageous
Speaker 3: spending on yourselves.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll be back in a minute with the wrap, folks.
Speaker 2: We're not going to get to the end of it today.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 1: We're back having solved all the world's immigration problems. But
Speaker 1: it is time for us to get out. So Lucretia,
Speaker 1: which Babylon Bees called out you today or any other
Speaker 1: satire source to cheer up our.
Speaker 4: I'll just go to the Babylon b don'ta smelt Fish
Speaker 4: Association reiterate support for Gavin Newsom. Okay, we didn't get
Speaker 4: to talk about this, nor about my disgust with the
Speaker 4: United States Supreme Court and especially Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett,
Speaker 4: but I'll read it anyway. Shameful activist liberal judge releases
Speaker 4: another felon onto streets of New York City.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love that. That's great.
Speaker 4: And then I actually, I have to tell you this
Speaker 4: one came out a day or so ago, and I, uh,
Speaker 4: it's still their their their central headline. And I chastised
Speaker 4: old Seth for reminding him that he's supposed to be
Speaker 4: a satire site, not a news website. Nation gets preview
Speaker 4: of Gavin Newsome presidency, and of course you know it's
Speaker 4: a horrible pure of the devastation, right, not funny. Sorry,
Speaker 4: it's just so funny.
Speaker 2: Oh. I was gonna finish him. But that's okay, I hope.
Speaker 4: So we didn't talk about this either, about Zuckerberg and
Speaker 4: censorship and John Robert's despicable part in all of that. Either,
Speaker 4: uh this week maybe next week, FBI arrests hackers who
Speaker 4: reprogrammed Mark Zuckerberg. That one actually has been pretty funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, think about it.
Speaker 4: Did you guys see that? Garth Brooks and Trisha yearwould
Speaker 4: saying imagine.
Speaker 2: At that's that's gonna be my exit line.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, so I'll leave that one alone, right, news
Speaker 4: masures fire victims. He'll be prepared next time now that
Speaker 4: he knows water's useful in fighting fires.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, one last one just totally off the off.
Speaker 4: The makes no sense in context, but I'm read it
Speaker 4: anyway because I think it's funny AI to be trained
Speaker 4: on Reddit to make sure it never becomes too intelligent.
Speaker 2: Boy, that's that's certainly true. All right, John, we still
Speaker 2: are old ways.
Speaker 3: All right. We'll still do our old one for the
Speaker 3: next two weeks. Yeah, I always drink your whiskey.
Speaker 5: Meat.
Speaker 3: That's going to stay. Let's go Brandon, which I think
Speaker 3: people will look back twenty years is going to say,
Speaker 3: what the hell is that even about? That's right, Let's
Speaker 3: go Brandon. And then Steve, what's your new tagline for
Speaker 3: the rest of the Biden administration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, in the spirit of the Jimmy Carter Memorial Service,
Speaker 1: imagine there's no Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: It's easy if you try.
Speaker 3: I don't get it.
Speaker 6: So you worship Anthem's approved by your device, and I
Speaker 6: had your range for you to time to decide.
Speaker 5: So smile for me like a smile for everyone else.
Speaker 5: And it gets easy with beliefs, but you've never helped.
Speaker 5: You've got your range, I've.
Speaker 2: Got Ricochet joined the conversation