Podcasts about Immigration Act

Today on The Midday Report, host Tshidi Madia – standing in for Mandy Wiener – unpacks the major stories making headlines. Forty-nine white Afrikaners, now classified as refugees, are en route to the United States as part of Washington’s resettlement programme. The Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Ronald Lamola, is set to brief the media on South Africa’s G20 Presidency. In the courts, controversial televangelist Timothy Omotoso faces charges under the Immigration Act, while the sexual harassment inquiry into Eastern Cape Judge President Selby Mbenenge resumes today. All this and more. Listen live - The Midday Report with Mandy Wiener is broadcast weekdays from noon to 1pm on 702 and CapeTalk.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Various political parties together with religious groups have gathered outside the East London Regional Court in the Eastern Cape televangelist, Timothy Omotoso is expected to make his court appearance. Omotoso was arrested at the weekend on charges of contravening the provisions of the Immigration Act. FSakina Kamwendo spoke to SABC reporter, Sidima Mfeku...

In this week's episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, guest host Jessica Vaughan, the Center's director of policy studies, discusses the intersection of immigration policy and municipal finance with Ed Grebeck, a veteran credit market risk expert. About one-third of all municipal bonds issued in 2024 and outstanding through 2024 are from sanctuary jurisdictions, concentrated in large cities and states, such as California, New York, and Massachusetts.Vaughan and Grebeck explore the fiscal implications of sanctuary policies and the need for comprehensive risk assessment in municipal finance. The absence of truly objective bond ratings or comprehensive risk assessments for sanctuary jurisdictions may place investors, particularly individual investors, who own a significant share of this market, at a disadvantage. Sanctuary policies can impose significant burdens on taxpayers, potentially affecting a municipality's fiscal health and its ability to meet financial obligations. Key discussion points include:Why are credit ratings important?Do sanctuary policies compromise a city's creditworthiness?Why might credit rating agencies overlook political risks associated with sanctuary jurisdictions?How does the influx of illegal immigrants strain public resources and affect taxpayers?Would legislative measures, like Rep. Nancy Mace's "No Tax Breaks for Sanctuary Cities Act", address these concerns?In the closing commentary, Vaughan presents the findings from her most recent report on sanctuary jurisdictions, identifying the states and localities that have the most egregious non-cooperation policies leading to the release of tens of thousands of criminal aliens.HostJessica Vaughan is the Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestEd Grebeck is a veteran credit market risk expert.RelatedSanctuary MapWhich Sanctuary Jurisdictions Have Released the Most CriminalsNo Tax Breaks for Sanctuary Cities ActContact Details for Ed GrebeckIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

This week's episode of Parsing Immigration Policy features a discussion of a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies, which reveals that both immigrant and U.S.-born women are having fewer children than they did 15 years ago. Based on data from the 2023 American Community Survey (ACS), collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, the report finds that although immigrant women continue to have somewhat higher fertility rates than their U.S.-born counterparts, the gap is small.Guest Steven Camarota, the Center's Research Director and co-author of the report, highlights a critical reality: Immigration, while adding to population growth, does not significantly slow the aging of the population or reverse declining birth rates.The podcast's second guest, Center Resident Scholar Jason Richwine, provides some evidence that immigration may actually reduce the fertility of the U.S.-born, reducing or potentially erasing immigration's small positive impact on overall U.S. fertility.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestsSteven Camarota is the Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies.Jason Richwine is a Resident Scholar at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedThe Fertility of Immigrants and Natives in the United States, 2023Jobs Americans Will Do: Just About All of ThemImmigration in Trump's First 100 DaysIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

A year ago, the great American historian Adam Hochschild came on KEEN ON AMERICA to discuss American Midnight, his best selling account of the crisis of American democracy after World War One. A year later, is history really repeating itself in today's crisis of American democracy? For Hochschild, there are certainly parallels between the current political situation in the US and post WW1 America. Describing how wartime hysteria and fear of communism led to unprecedented government repression, including mass imprisonment for political speech, vigilante violence, and press censorship. Hochschild notes eery similarities to today's Trump's administration. He expresses concern about today's threats to democratic institutions while suggesting the importance of understanding Trump supporters' grievances and finding ways to bridge political divides. Five Key Takeaways* The period of 1917-1921 in America saw extreme government repression, including imprisoning people for speech, vigilante violence, and widespread censorship—what Hochschild calls America's "Trumpiest" era before Trump.* American history shows recurring patterns of nativism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and scapegoating that politicians exploit during times of economic or social stress.* The current political climate shows concerning parallels to this earlier period, including intimidation of opposition, attacks on institutions, and the widespread acceptance of authoritarian tendencies.* Hochschild emphasizes the importance of understanding the grievances and suffering that lead people to support authoritarian figures rather than dismissing their concerns.* Despite current divisions, Hochschild believes reconciliation is possible and necessary, pointing to historical examples like President Harding pardoning Eugene Debs after Wilson imprisoned him. Full Transcript Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. We recently celebrated our 2500th edition of Keen On. Some people suggest I'm mad. I think I probably am to do so many shows. Just over a little more than a year ago, we celebrated our 2000th show featuring one of America's most distinguished historians, Adam Hochschild. I'm thrilled that Adam is joining us again a year later. He's the author of "American Midnight, The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis." This was his last book. He's the author of many other books. He is now working on a book on the Great Depression. He's joining us from his home in Berkeley, California. Adam, to borrow a famous phrase or remix a famous phrase, a year is a long time in American history.Adam Hochschild: That's true, Andrew. I think this past year, or actually this past 100 days or so has been a very long and very difficult time in American history that we all saw coming to some degree, but I don't think we realized it would be as extreme and as rapid as it has been.Andrew Keen: Your book, Adam, "American Midnight, A Great War of Violent Peace and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis," is perhaps the most prescient warning. When you researched that you were saying before we went live that your books usually take you between four and five years, so you couldn't really have planned for this, although I guess you began writing and researching American Midnight during the Trump 1.0 regime. Did you write it as a warning to something like is happening today in America?Adam Hochschild: Well, I did start writing it and did most of the work on it during Trump's first term in office. So I was very struck by the parallels. And they're in plain sight for everybody to see. There are various dark currents that run through this country of ours. Nativism, threats to deport troublemakers. Politicians stirring up violent feelings against immigrants, vigilante violence, all those things have been with us for a long time. I've always been fascinated by that period, 1917 to 21, when they surged to the surface in a very nasty way. That was the subject of the book. Naturally, I hoped we wouldn't have to go through anything like that again, but here we are definitely going through it again.Andrew Keen: You wrote a lovely piece earlier this month for the Washington Post. "America was at its Trumpiest a hundred years ago. Here's how to prevent the worst." What did you mean by Trumpiest, Adam? I'm not sure if you came up with that title, but I know you like the term. You begin the essay. What was the Trumpiest period in American life before Donald Trump?Adam Hochschild: Well, I didn't invent the word, but I certainly did use it in the piece. What I meant by that is that when you look at this period just over 100 years ago, 1917 to 1921, Woodrow Wilson's second term in office, two things happened in 1917 that kicked off a kind of hysteria in this country. One was that Wilson asked the American Congress to declare war on Germany, which it promptly did, and when a country enters a major war, especially a world war, it sets off a kind of hysteria. And then that was redoubled some months later when the country received news of the Russian Revolution, and many people in the establishment in America were afraid the Russian Revolution might come to the United States.So, a number of things happened. One was that there was a total hysteria against all things German. There were bonfires of German books all around the country. People would take German books out of libraries, schools, college and university libraries and burn them in the street. 19 such bonfires in Ohio alone. You can see pictures of it on the internet. There was hysteria about the German language. I heard about this from my father as I was growing up because his father was a Jewish immigrant from Germany. They lived in New York City. They spoke German around the family dinner table, but they were terrified of doing so on the street because you could get beaten up for that. Several states passed laws against speaking German in public or speaking German on the telephone. Eminent professors declared that German was a barbaric language. So there was that kind of hysteria.Then as soon as the United States declared war, Wilson pushed the Espionage Act through Congress, this draconian law, which essentially gave the government the right to lock up anybody who said something that was taken to be against the war. And they used this law in a devastating way. During those four years, roughly a thousand Americans spent a year or more in jail and a much larger number, shorter periods in jail solely for things that they wrote or said. These were people who were political prisoners sent to jail simply for something they wrote or said, the most famous of them was Eugene Debs, many times the socialist candidate for president. He'd gotten 6% of the popular vote in 1912 and in 1918. For giving an anti-war speech from a park bandstand in Ohio, he was sent to prison for 10 years. And he was still in prison two years after the war ended in November, 1920, when he pulled more than 900,000 votes for president from his jail cell in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.So that was one phase of the repression, political prisoners. Another was vigilante violence. The government itself, the Department of Justice, chartered a vigilante group, something called the American Protective League, which went around roughing up people that it thought were evading the draft, beating up people at anti-war rallies, arresting people with citizens arrest whom they didn't have their proper draft papers on them, holding them for hours or sometimes for days until they could produce the right paperwork.Andrew Keen: I remember, Adam, you have a very graphic description of some of this violence in American Midnight. There was a story, was it a union leader?Adam Hochschild: Well, there is so much violence that happened during that time. I begin the book with a graphic description of vigilantes raiding an office of the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, taking a bunch of wobblies out into the prairie at night, stripping them, whipping them, flogging them fiercely, and then tarring and feathering them, and firing shotguns over their heads so they would run off into the Prairie at Night. And they did. Those guys were lucky because they survive. Other people were killed by this vigilante violence.And the final thing about that period which I would mention is the press censorship. The Espionage Act gave the Postmaster General the power to declare any publication in the United States unmailable. And for a newspaper or a magazine that was trying to reach a national audience, the only way you could do so was through the US mail because there was no internet then. No radio, no TV, no other way of getting your publication to somebody. And this put some 75 newspapers and magazines that the government didn't like out of business. It in addition censored three or four hundred specific issues of other publications as well.So that's why I feel this is all a very dark period of American life. Ironically, that press censorship operation, because it was run by the postmaster general, who by the way loved being chief censor, it was ran out of the building that was then the post office headquarters in Washington, which a hundred years later became the Trump International Hotel. And for $4,000 a night, you could stay in the Postmaster General's suite.Andrew Keen: You, Adam, the First World War is a subject you're very familiar with. In addition to American Midnight, you wrote "To End All Wars, a story of loyalty and rebellion, 1914 to 18," which was another very successful of your historical recreations. Many countries around the world experience this turbulence, the violence. Of course, we had fascism in the 20s in Europe. And later in the 30s as well. America has a long history of violence. You talk about the violence after the First World War or after the declaration. But I was just in Montgomery, Alabama, went to the lynching museum there, which is considerably troubling. I'm sure you've been there. You're not necessarily a comparative political scientist, Adam. How does America, in its paranoia during the war and its clampdown on press freedom, on its violence, on its attempt to create an authoritarian political system, how does it compare to other democracies? Is some of this stuff uniquely American or is it a similar development around the world?Adam Hochschild: You see similar pressures almost any time that a major country is involved in a major war. Wars are never good for civil liberties. The First World War, to stick with that period of comparison, was a time that saw strong anti-war movements in all of the warring countries, in Germany and Britain and Russia. There were people who understood at the time that this war was going to remake the world for the worse in every way, which indeed it did, and who refused to fight. There were 800 conscientious objectors jailed in Russia, and Russia did not have much freedom of expression to begin with. In Germany, many distinguished people on the left, like Rosa Luxemburg, were sent to jail for most of the war.Britain was an interesting case because I think they had a much longer established tradition of free speech than did the countries on the continent. It goes way back and it's a distinguished and wonderful tradition. They were also worried for the first two and a half, three years of the war before the United States entered, that if they crack down too hard on their anti-war movement, it would upset people in the United States, which they were desperate to draw into the war on their side. Nonetheless, there were 6,000 conscientious objectors who were sent to jail in England. There was intermittent censorship of anti-war publications, although some were able to publish some of the time. There were many distinguished Britons, such as Bertrand Russell, the philosopher who later won a Nobel Prize, sent to jails for six months for his opposition to the war. So some of this happened all over.But I think in the United States, especially with these vigilante groups, it took a more violent form because remember the country at that time was only a few decades away from these frontier wars with the Indians. And the westward expansion of the United States during the 19th century, the western expansion of white settlement was an enormously bloody business that was almost genocidal for the Native Americans. Many people had participated in that. Many people saw that violence as integral to what the country was. So there was a pretty well-established tradition of settling differences violently.Andrew Keen: I'm sure you're familiar with Stephen Hahn's book, "A Liberal America." He teaches at NYU, a book which in some ways is very similar to yours, but covers all of American history. Hahn was recently on the Ezra Klein show, talking like you, like we're talking today, Adam, about the very American roots of Trumpism. Hahn, it's an interesting book, traces much of this back to Jackson and the wars of the frontier against Indians. Do you share his thesis on that front? Are there strong similarities between Jackson, Wilson, and perhaps even Trump?Adam Hochschild: Well, I regret to say I'm not familiar with Hahn's book, but I certainly do feel that that legacy of constant war for most of the 19th century against the Native Americans ran very deep in this country. And we must never forget how appealing it is to young men to take part in war. Unfortunately, all through history, there have been people very tempted by this. And I think when you have wars of conquest, such as happen in the American West, against people who are more poorly armed, or colonial wars such as Europe fought in Africa and Asia against much more poorly-armed opponents, these are especially appealing to young people. And in both the United States and in the European colonization of Africa, which I know something about. For young men joining in these colonizing or conquering adventures, there was a chance not just to get martial glory, but to also get rich in the process.Andrew Keen: You're all too familiar with colonial history, Adam. Another of your books was about King Leopold's Congo and the brutality there. Where was the most coherent opposition morally and politically to what was happening? My sense in Trump's America is perhaps the most persuasive and moral critique comes from the old Republican Center from people like David Brooks, Peter Wayno has been on the show many times, Jonathan Rausch. Where were people like Teddy Roosevelt in this narrative? Were there critics from the right as well as from the left?Adam Hochschild: Good question. I first of all would give a shout out to those Republican centrists who've spoken out against Trump, the McCain Republicans. There are some good people there - Romney, of course as well. They've been very forceful. There wasn't really an equivalent to that, a direct equivalent to that in the Wilson era. Teddy Roosevelt whom you mentioned was a far more ferocious drum beater than Wilson himself and was pushing Wilson to declare war long before Wilson did. Roosevelt really believed that war was good for the soul. He desperately tried to get Wilson to appoint him to lead a volunteer force, came up with an elaborate plan for this would be a volunteer army staffed by descendants of both Union and Confederate generals and by French officers as well and homage to the Marquis de Lafayette. Wilson refused to allow Roosevelt to do this, and plus Roosevelt was, I think, 58 years old at the time. But all four of Roosevelt's sons enlisted and joined in the war, and one of them was killed. And his father was absolutely devastated by this.So there was not really that equivalent to the McCain Republicans who are resisting Trump, so to speak. In fact, what resistance there was in the U.S. came mostly from the left, and it was mostly ruthlessly silenced, all these people who went to jail. It was silenced also because this is another important part of what happened, which is different from today. When the federal government passed the Espionage Act that gave it these draconian powers, state governments, many of them passed copycat laws. In fact, a federal justice department agent actually helped draft the law in New Hampshire. Montana locked up people serving more than 60 years cumulatively of hard labor for opposing the war. California had 70 people in prison. Even my hometown of Berkeley, California passed a copycat law. So, this martial spirit really spread throughout the country at that time.Andrew Keen: So you've mentioned that Debs was the great critic and was imprisoned and got a considerable number of votes in the election. You're writing a book now about the Great Depression and FDR's involvement in it. FDR, of course, was a distant cousin of Teddy Roosevelt. At this point, he was an aspiring Democratic politician. Where was the critique within the mainstream Democratic party? Were people like FDR, who had a position in the Wilson administration, wasn't he naval secretary?Adam Hochschild: He was assistant secretary of the Navy. And he went to Europe during the war. For an aspiring politician, it's always very important to say I've been at the front. And so he went to Europe and certainly made no sign of resistance. And then in 1920, he was the democratic candidate for vice president. That ticket lost of course.Andrew Keen: And just to remind ourselves, this was before he became disabled through polio, is that correct?Adam Hochschild: That's right. That happened in the early 20s and it completely changed his life and I think quite deepened him as a person. He was a very ambitious social climbing young politician before then but I think he became something deeper. Also the political parties at the time were divided each party between right and left wings or war mongering and pacifist wings. And when the Congress voted on the war, there were six senators who voted against going to war and 50 members of the House of Representatives. And those senators and representatives came from both parties. We think of the Republican Party as being more conservative, but it had some staunch liberals in it. The most outspoken voice against the war in the Senate was Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin, who was a Republican.Andrew Keen: I know you write about La Follette in American Midnight, but couldn't one, Adam, couldn't won before the war and against domestic repression. You wrote an interesting piece recently for the New York Review of Books about the Scopes trial. William Jennings Bryan, of course, was involved in that. He was the defeated Democratic candidate, what in about three or four presidential elections in the past. In the early 20th century. What was Bryan's position on this? He had been against the war, is that correct? But I'm guessing he would have been quite critical of some of the domestic repression.Adam Hochschild: You know, I should know the answer to that, Andrew, but I don't. He certainly was against going to war. He had started out in Wilson's first term as Wilson's secretary of state and then resigned in protest against the military buildup and what he saw as a drift to war, and I give him great credit for that. I don't recall his speaking out against the repression after it began, once the US entered the war, but I could be wrong on that. It was not something that I researched. There were just so few voices speaking out. I think I would remember if he had been one of them.Andrew Keen: Adam, again, I'm thinking out loud here, so please correct me if this is a dumb question. What would it be fair to say that one of the things that distinguished the United States from the European powers during the First World War in this period it remained an incredibly insular provincial place barely involved in international politics with a population many of them were migrants themselves would come from Europe but nonetheless cut off from the world. And much of that accounted for the anti-immigrant, anti-foreign hysteria. That exists in many countries, but perhaps it was a little bit more pronounced in the America of the early 20th century, and perhaps in some ways in the early 21st century.Adam Hochschild: Well, we remain a pretty insular place in many ways. A few years ago, I remember seeing the statistic in the New York Times, I have not checked to see whether it's still the case, but I suspect it is that half the members of the United States Congress do not have passports. And we are more cut off from the world than people living in most of the countries of Europe, for example. And I think that does account for some of the tremendous feeling against immigrants and refugees. Although, of course, this is something that is common, not just in Europe, but in many countries all over the world. And I fear it's going to get all the stronger as climate change generates more and more refugees from the center of the earth going to places farther north or farther south where they can get away from parts of the world that have become almost unlivable because of climate change.Andrew Keen: I wonder Democratic Congress people perhaps aren't leaving the country because they fear they won't be let back in. What were the concrete consequences of all this? You write in your book about a young lawyer, J. Edgar Hoover, of course, who made his name in this period. He was very much involved in the Palmer Raids. He worked, I think his first job was for Palmer. How do you see this structurally? Of course, many historians, biographers of Hoover have seen this as the beginning of some sort of American security state. Is that over-reading it, exaggerating what happened in this period?Adam Hochschild: Well, security state may be too dignified a word for the hysteria that reigned in the country at that time. One of the things we've long had in the United States is a hysteria, paranoia directed at immigrants who are coming from what seems to be a new and threatening part of the world. In the mid-19th century, for example, we had the Know-Nothing Party, as it was called, who were violently opposed to Catholic immigrants coming from Ireland. Now, they were people of Anglo-Saxon descent, pretty much, who felt that these Irish Catholics were a tremendous threat to the America that they knew. There was much violence. There were people killed in riots against Catholic immigrants. There were Catholic merchants who had their stores burned and so on.Then it began to shift. The Irish sort of became acceptable, but by the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century the immigrants coming from Europe were now coming primarily from southern and eastern Europe. In other words, Italians, Sicilians, Poles, and Jews. And they became the target of the anti-immigrant crusaders with much hysteria directed against them. It was further inflamed at that time by the Eugenics movement, which was something very strong, where people believed that there was a Nordic race that was somehow superior to everybody else, that the Mediterraneans were inferior people, and that the Africans were so far down the scale, barely worth talking about. And this culminated in 1924 with the passage of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act that year, which basically slammed the door completely on immigrants coming from Asia and slowed to an absolute trickle those coming from Europe for the next 40 years or so.Andrew Keen: It wasn't until the mid-60s that immigration changed, which is often overlooked. Some people, even on the left, suggest that it was a mistake to radically reform the Immigration Act because we would have inevitably found ourselves back in this situation. What do you think about that, Adam?Adam Hochschild: Well, I think a country has the right to regulate to some degree its immigration, but there always will be immigration in this world. I mean, my ancestors all came from other countries. The Jewish side of my family, I'm half Jewish, were lucky to get out of Europe in plenty of time. Some relatives who stayed there were not lucky and perished in the Holocaust. So who am I to say that somebody fleeing a repressive regime in El Salvador or somewhere else doesn't have the right to come here? I think we should be pretty tolerant, especially if people fleeing countries where they really risk death for one reason or another. But there is always gonna be this strong anti-immigrant feeling because unscrupulous politicians like Donald Trump, and he has many predecessors in this country, can point to immigrants and blame them for the economic misfortunes that many Americans are experiencing for reasons that don't have anything to do with immigration.Andrew Keen: Fast forward Adam to today. You were involved in an interesting conversation on the Nation about the role of universities in the resistance. What do you make of this first hundred days, I was going to say hundred years that would be a Freudian error, a hundred days of the Trump regime, the role, of big law, big universities, newspapers, media outlets? In this emerging opposition, are you chilled or encouraged?Adam Hochschild: Well, I hope it's a hundred days and not a hundred years. I am moderately encouraged. I was certainly deeply disappointed at the outset to see all of those tech titans go to Washington, kiss the ring, contribute to Trump's inauguration festivities, be there in the front row. Very depressing spectacle, which kind of reminds one of how all the big German industrialists fell into line so quickly behind Hitler. And I'm particularly depressed to see the changes in the media, both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post becoming much more tame when it came to endorsing.Andrew Keen: One of the reasons for that, Adam, of course, is that you're a long-time professor at the journalism school at UC Berkeley, so you've been on the front lines.Adam Hochschild: So I really care about a lively press that has free expression. And we also have a huge part of the media like Fox News and One American Network and other outlets that are just pouring forth a constant fire hose of lies and falsehood.Andrew Keen: And you're being kind of calling it a fire hose. I think we could come up with other terms for it. Anyway, a sewage pipe, but that's another issue.Adam Hochschild: But I'm encouraged when I see media organizations that take a stand. There are places like the New York Times, like CNN, like MSNBC, like the major TV networks, which you can read or watch and really find an honest picture of what's going on. And I think that's a tremendously important thing for a country to have. And that you look at the countries that Donald Trump admires, like Putin's Russia, for example, they don't have this. So I value that. I want to keep it. I think that's tremendously important.I was sorry, of course, that so many of those big law firms immediately cave to these ridiculous and unprecedented demands that he made, contributing pro bono work to his causes in return for not getting banned from government buildings. Nothing like that has happened in American history before, and the people in those firms that made those decisions should really be ashamed of themselves. I was glad to see Harvard University, which happens to be my alma mater, be defiant after caving in a little bit on a couple of issues. They finally put their foot down and said no. And I must say, feeling Harvard patriotism is a very rare emotion for me. But this is the first time in 50 years that I've felt some of it.Andrew Keen: You may even give a donation, Adam.Adam Hochschild: And I hope other universities are going to follow its lead, and it looks like they will. But this is pretty unprecedented, a president coming after universities with this determined of ferocity. And he's going after nonprofit organizations as well. There will be many fights there as well, I'm sure we're just waiting to hear about the next wave of attacks which will be on places like the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation and other big nonprofits. So hold on and wait for that and I hope they are as defiant as possible too.Andrew Keen: It's a little bit jarring to hear a wise historian like yourself use the word unprecedented. Is there much else of this given that we're talking historically and the similarities with the period after the first world war, is there anything else unprecedented about Trumpism?Adam Hochschild: I think in a way, we have often had, or not often, but certainly sometimes had presidents in this country who wanted to assume almost dictatorial powers. Richard Nixon certainly is the most recent case before Trump. And he was eventually stopped and forced to leave office. Had that not happened, I think he would have very happily turned himself into a dictator. So we know that there are temptations that come with the desire for absolute power everywhere. But Trump has gotten farther along on this process and has shown less willingness to do things like abide by court orders. The way that he puts pressure on Republican members of Congress.To me, one of the most startling, disappointing, remarkable, and shocking things about these first hundred days is how very few Republican members to the House or Senate have dared to defy Trump on anything. At most, these ridiculous set of appointees that he muscled through the Senate. At most, they got three Republican votes against them. They couldn't muster the fourth necessary vote. And in the House, only one or two Republicans have voted against Trump on anything. And of course, he has threatened to have Elon Musk fund primaries against any member of Congress who does defy him. And I can't help but think that these folks must also be afraid of physical violence because Trump has let all the January 6th people out of jail and the way vigilantes like that operate is they first go after the traitors on their own side then they come for the rest of us just as in the first real burst of violence in Hitler's Germany was the night of the long knives against another faction of the Nazi Party. Then they started coming for the Jews.Andrew Keen: Finally, Adam, your wife, Arlie, is another very distinguished writer.Adam Hochschild: I've got a better picture of her than that one though.Andrew Keen: Well, I got some very nice photos. This one is perhaps a little, well she's thinking Adam. Everyone knows Arlie from her hugely successful work, "Strangers in their Own Land." She has a new book out, "Stolen Pride, Lost Shame and the Rise of the Right." I don't want to put words into Arlie's mouth and she certainly wouldn't let me do that, Adam, but would it be fair to say that her reading, certainly of recent American history, is trying to bring people back together. She talks about the lessons she learned from her therapist brother. And in some ways, I see her as a kind of marriage counselor in America. Given what's happening today in America with Trump, is this still an opportunity? This thing is going to end and it will end in some ways rather badly and perhaps bloodily one way or the other. But is this still a way to bring people, to bring Americans back together? Can America be reunited? What can we learn from American Midnight? I mean, one of the more encouraging stories I remember, and please correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't it Coolidge or Harding who invited Debs when he left prison to the White House? So American history might be in some ways violent, but it's also made up of chapters of forgiveness.Adam Hochschild: That's true. I mean, that Debs-Harding example is a wonderful one. Here is Debs sent to prison by Woodrow Wilson for a 10-year term. And Debs, by the way, had been in jail before for his leadership of a railway strike when he was a railway workers union organizer. Labor organizing was a very dangerous profession in those days. But Debs was a fairly gentle man, deeply committed to nonviolence. About a year into, a little less than a year into his term, Warren Harding, Woodrow Wilson's successor, pardoned Debs, let him out of prison, invited him to visit the White House on his way home. And they had a half hour's chat. And when he left the building, Debs told reporters, "I've run for the White house five times, but this is the first time I've actually gotten here." Harding privately told a friend. This was revealed only after his death, that he said, "Debs was right about that war. We never should have gotten involved in it."So yeah, there can be reconciliation. There can be talk across these great differences that we have, and I think there are a number of organizations that are working on that specific project, getting people—Andrew Keen: We've done many of those shows. I'm sure you're familiar with the organization Braver Angels, which seems to be a very good group.Adam Hochschild: So I think it can be done. I really think it could be done and it has to be done and it's important for those of us who are deeply worried about Trump, as you and I are, to understand the grievances and the losses and the suffering that has made Trump's backers feel that here is somebody who can get them out of the pickle that they're in. We have to understand that, and the Democratic Party has to come up with promising alternatives for them, which it really has not done. It didn't really offer one in this last election. And the party itself is in complete disarray right now, I fear.Andrew Keen: I think perhaps Arlie should run for president. She would certainly do a better job than Kamala Harris in explaining it. And of course they're both from Berkeley. Finally, Adam, you're very familiar with the history of Africa, Southern Africa, your family I think was originally from there. Might we need after all this, when hopefully the smoke clears, might we need a Mandela style truth and reconciliation committee to make sense of what's happening?Adam Hochschild: My family's actually not from there, but they were in business there.Andrew Keen: Right, they were in the mining business, weren't they?Adam Hochschild: That's right. Truth and Reconciliation Committee. Well, I don't think it would be on quite the same model as South Africa's. But I certainly think we need to find some way of talking across the differences that we have. Coming from the left side of that divide I just feel all too often when I'm talking to people who feel as I do about the world that there is a kind of contempt or disinterest in Trump's backers. These are people that I want to understand, that we need to understand. We need to understand them in order to hear what their real grievances are and to develop alternative policies that are going to give them a real alternative to vote for. Unless we can do that, we're going to have Trump and his like for a long time, I fear.Andrew Keen: Wise words, Adam. I hope in the next 500 episodes of this show, things will improve. We'll get you back on the show, keep doing your important work, and I'm very excited to learn more about your new project, which we'll come to in the next few months or certainly years. Thank you so much.Adam Hochschild: OK, thank you, Andrew. Good being with you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The Center for Immigration Studies hosted a panel discussion examining how immigration is used as a political, economic, and strategic tool by governments, non-state, and sub-state actors worldwide. Whether through mass migration crises, policy-driven border surges, or the manipulation of refugee flows, immigration has become a powerful geopolitical weapon and a means of waging hybrid warfare. Examples have included Cuba's use of the Mariel boatlift in 1980 or the more recent efforts by Belarus to coordinate illegal immigration to the EU.This panel explored the concept of immigration warfare – how immigration is leveraged to gain political leverage; influence legislation, elections, and the economy; shape public opinion; and even destabilize a country. Discussion also covered how nations can respond to this growing challenge. The discussion is an activity of the International Network for Immigration Research (INIR), a collaboration among independent policy organizations on three continents sharing the perspective that each sovereign nation has the right to pursue its chosen immigration policies.Mark Krikorian, the Center's executive director and host of Parsing Immigration Policy, moderates this rebroadcast of the Center's panel.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestsViktor Marsai is the Director of the Migration Research Institute in Budapest.Phillip Linderman is a Retired senior Foreign Service officer from the State Department and a Board Member of the Center for Immigration Studies.Eric Ruark is the Director of Research of Numbers USA.RelatedPanel Press ReleasePanel VideoPanel TranscriptC-Span CoverageIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

Former Czech President Václav Klaus joins the Center for Immigration Studies podcast to discuss migration, national identity, and the importance of the nation-state. An economist and longtime advocate for national sovereignty, President Klaus challenges prevailing European views on immigration, multiculturalism, and the European Union.Key highlights:Reconciling free market economics with the necessity of limited immigration and secure borders.Differentiating between individual migration and mass migration.Arguing that low birthrates do not justify increased migration.Explaining mass migration as being demand-driven, caused by politics and social policies.Critiquing labor importation as a policy failure that undermines citizens' motivation to work.Emphasizing the importance of national borders and criticizing the Schengen Agreement.Distinguishing between migrants and legitimate refugees as opposed to distinguishing between legal and illegal migrants.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestFormer Czech President Václav KlausRelated"Europe All Inclusive: Understanding the Current Migration Crisis"Václav Klaus' personal websiteIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

In this week's episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, National Review's Andy McCarthy and guest host Andrew Arthur, the Center's fellow in law and policy, examine the erosion of legal norms – from immigration enforcement to judicial power – and what this means for how our system of government is supposed to work under the Constitution.Prosecutorial Discretion:McCarthy traces how the Obama and Biden administrations transformed prosecutorial discretion from a tool used on a case-by-case basis into a broad and categorical policy of declining to enforce immigration laws. What was once a resource-based allocation judgment has become, in his view, an unconstitutional end-run around Congress.The Courts as a Political Battleground:With Congress “not doing its job,” McCarthy highlights how activist groups race to friendly judges for nationwide injunctions. He warns the resulting judicial overreach allows unelected judges, often handpicked by advocacy groups, to override elected officials and block policies nationally, replacing democratic accountability with judicial activism. SCOTUS's large emergency docket caseload is a symptom of the resulting dysfunction.The Rise of Progressive Lawyering:McCarthy contrasts originalism, which examines and respects the Constitution's original meaning, with progressive lawyering, which he sees as driven by social outcomes rather than legal process. This shift, he contends, threatens democratic governance.Deportation and Due Process:The two legal experts address Trump-era deportation efforts using both the foreign policy grounds for removal and the Alien Enemies Act. McCarthy, who supports broad executive authority, explains that even aliens have constitutional protections.HostAndrew Arthur is a Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestAndrew McCarthy is a Senior Fellow at the National Review Institute and Contributing Editor at National Review.RelatedAndrew McCarthy articles at National ReviewSupremes Uphold Due Process While Handling Trump Win in Venezuelan Deportations CaseWhat is 'Shocking' to J.D. Vance Should Shock - and Anger - You, TooTrump Admin Wins First Alien Enemies Act Skirmish before SCOTUS - or Did ItSCOTUS Chief Stays District Order for Alien Deported Due to 'Administrative Error'Tren de Aragua, Alien Enemies Act, and 'State Secrets Privilege'Intro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

The Protea Magistrate's Court in Soweto has transferred the case against a man accused of raping and murdering a six-year-old girl, to the High Court in Johannesburg. Twety-four-year-old Mozambican national, Pethe Simiao was arrested last year and was charged with the kidnapping, rape, murder of the girl who disapppeared shortly before her remains were found. Simiao has also been charged with contravening the Immigration Act. SABC reporter, Lerato Makola filed this report....

This week's episode of Parsing Immigration Policy discusses the Trump Administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a rarely-used provision in U.S. law passed in 1798 that gives the president the authority to swiftly remove citizens of countries of wartime foes or countries who have made a “predatory incursion” into our territory. Last month, President Trump issued a proclamation invoking the AEA to apprehend, restrain, secure, and remove certain documented members of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua (TdA).Guest host and CIS Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan interviews George Fishman, CIS Senior Legal Fellow, who has been writing about the possible use of the AEA since 2023. Three main questions are highlighted during the podcast:How are individuals identified for deportations via the AEA?What legal protections do those targeted for deportation via the AEA have?Who determines whether the administration has met the statutory requirements for the AEA's use?In her closing commentary, Vaughan discusses the recent statewide implementation of the 287(g) partnership program for immigration enforcement in Florida.HostJessica Vaughan is the Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestGeorge Fishman is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedTrump Deploys the Alien Enemies Act Against Venezuela and Tren De AraguaTren de Aragua, the Alien Enemies Act, and the ‘State Secrets Privilege'Alien Enemy Validation GuideThe 287(g) Program: Protecting Home Town and HomelandIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

In this week's episode of Parsing Immigration Policy podcast, Center for Immigration Studies analysts discuss the legal and policy implications of the Mahmoud Khalil case.Khalil, a Palestinian/Syrian/Algerian green card holder, was involved in pro-Hamas protests when a graduate student on a nonimmigrant visa at Columbia University. DHS charged Khalil under Section 237(a)(4)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which renders deportable any noncitizen “whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”CIS's Andrew Arthur and George Fishman review the facts of the case, analyze the constitutional and legal questions of what they predict will be a potential test for future efforts to remove noncitizens who support terrorism, and offer predictions. Four main questions are highlighted:Is this a free speech case? Can a noncitizen be removed for speech or action supporting a terrorist organization?Is this a foreign policy case? How does the government define “serious adverse foreign policy consequences”?What are the judicial precedents? How will courts balance foreign policy concerns against constitutional rights?Will this case set clearer lines on what a non-citizen can and cannot do? There is a need for the law to settle the spectrum of rights that apply to a spectrum of status. Will this be the case that will provide legal clarity?As the case moves through immigration court and on to federal district court and beyond, the Center for Immigration Studies will continue providing expert analysis on its broader implications for immigration enforcement and national security.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration StudiesGuestsAndrew Arthur is a Resident Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.George Fishman is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedFor more analysis, see our topic page: The Case of Mahmoud KhalilIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

Fieldwork undertaken by the Center for Immigration Studies reveals a border now under control, offering clear evidence that the border crisis was never an unstoppable force but rather the result of policy decisions.Last week the Center sent analysts to the Border Patrol's San Diego Sector and across the border to Tijuana, and to the El Paso Sector and across the border to Juarez. These two border sectors had some of the heaviest migrant traffic over the last few years, but now the numbers have plummeted.Center researchers Andrew Arthur and Todd Bensman join Parsing Immigration Policy to discuss what they saw and what policies are making the difference, and three tools in particular:Infrastructure – Expanded fencing and additional concertina wire have been added.Manpower – Border Patrol agents are forward-deployed, no longer being pulled off the line for processing migrants.Criminal Prosecutions – Not only are apprehended migrants no longer being released, but illegal entry is increasingly being handled as a criminal offense, with first-time illegal-crossers facing up to six months in a federal penitentiary.In his closing commentary, host Mark Krikorian, the Center's executive director, explains the Alien Enemies Act, enacted in 1798, which is now in the headlines due to the Trump administration using it as the basis for the swift deportation of a group of Venezuelan gang members. The law can only be triggered by a declared war, an invasion, or a predatory incursion by a foreign nation or government. Its application faces legal challenges and will likely reach the Supreme Court.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration StudiesGuestsAndrew Arthur is a Resident Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.Todd Bensman is a Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedA Border 'Peace Dividend'Eye-Popping February CBP Numbers Show How the Border Has Changed under TrumpThe 225-year-old 'Alien Enemies Act' Needs to Come Out of RetirementTrump Prepares to Use of the Alien Enemies ActIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

The latest episode of the Center for Immigration Studies podcast series features a discussion between guest host Marguerite Telford, the Center's Director of Communications, and Steven Camarota, the Center's Director of Research. Camarota's interview highlights a recently released analysis that examines the size and growth of the foreign-born population in the January Current Population Survey, the first government survey to be adjusted to better reflect the recent surge in illegal immigrants. The analysis finds that the foreign-born or immigrant population (legal and illegal together) hit 53.3 million and 15.8 percent of the total U.S. population in January 2025 — both new record highs. Telford and Camarota continue the discussion, hitting topics both in the analysis and those effected by immigration stock and flow, including population projections, employment, education levels, assimilation, and more.HostMarguerite Telford is the Director of Communications at the Center for Immigration StudiesGuestSteven Camarota is the Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedForeign-Born Number and Share of U.S. Population at All-Time Highs in January 2025The Declining Education Level of Newly Arrived ImmigrantsWorking-Age, but Not Working, 1960 to 2024Intro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

This week's episode of Parsing Immigration Policy reminds listeners of the threats that made President Trump's recent Executive Order, "Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats," necessary. The Center for Immigration Studies maintains a comprehensive database detailing examples of preventable federal government vetting failures which resulted in the entry of individuals who posed a threat to national security. Todd Bensman, the Center's national security fellow, has recently added new cases into the database, highlighting the need for the improvement of U.S. vetting processes. “The Center's database offers valuable insights for preventing future threats,” said Bensman. “I hope this crucial tool for understanding past failures will be useful to the Trump administration's renewed robust security vetting efforts.”Key Highlights:Purpose: The database identifies fail points in the complex immigration security screening system, providing insights for homeland security agencies and congressional overseers to strengthen future vetting processes.Analysis: Each entry includes an after-action report detailing what went wrong, offering lessons to improve future vetting procedures. Users can access all primary research materials used in the analyses.Notable Cases Highlighted: The database contains over 50 entries revealing the entry of foreign threat actors, including a Brazilian ex-police officer who had committed mass murder; a Bosnian war criminal who ran prison camps and was involved in brutal interrogations, torturing, and the killing of inmates; and an Egyptian student who was involved in a plot to bomb the Israeli embassy.Historical Context: The 9/11 attacks prompted a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration vetting processes. The year 2008 was chosen as the starting date for collecting vetting failure cases on the assumption that the first series of 9/11 visa vetting reforms would have fully vested by then and because significant new process improvements were implemented that year.In his closing commentary, Mark Krikorian, the Center's executive director and podcast host, highlights President Trump's success in securing the border, achieving the lowest level of apprehensions recorded in history. Will this administration and future administrations stay vigilant?HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration StudiesGuestTodd Bensman is a National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedDatabase: National Security Vetting FailuresEgyptian Student Added to CIS National Security Vetting Failures DatabaseAfghan Evacuee Added to CIS National Security Vetting DatabaseBrazilian Mass Murderer Who Slipped through U.S. Vetting Three Times Is Added to CIS DatabasePanel: A New Database of Vetting FailuresCommonplace: They Said It Couldn't Be DoneThe Greatest Mass MIgration Border Crisis in U.S. History Is OverIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

The latest episode of the Center for Immigration Studies podcast series features guest host Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman in conversation with Jaeson Jones, a leading expert on Mexican cartels and a border correspondent.This timely discussion highlights the recent designation of six Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) by the Trump administration and the multifaceted approach by all levels of government that this permits, allowing the U.S. to combat the cartels in sync with the Mexican government.Key topics covered include:Evolution of Mexican Cartels: Exploration of how Mexican cartels, now in 65 countries around the world, have transitioned from organized crime syndicates to parallel governments in Mexico, exhibiting extreme violence and governmental infiltration.Advocacy for FTO Designation: Discussion on Jones' rationale for advocating for the FTO designation, emphasizing the need for enhanced legal frameworks to effectively combat the rapid and violent operations of cartels.Strategic Framework Post-Designation: Analysis of the comprehensive approach required to dismantle cartel networks, underscoring the necessity for coordinated efforts across all branches of government.Implications of FTO Status: Examination of the potential outcomes of the FTO designation, including:Revocation of visas for individuals associated with designated cartels.Inclusion of cartel affiliates on no-fly lists.Enhanced capabilities to target and seize financial assets linked to cartel operations.Addressing Fentanyl Trafficking: Strategies to combat the smuggling of fentanyl, focusing on disrupting supply chains originating from countries such as China, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, and addressing the corruption within Mexico that facilitates these operations.Game Changer: Prediction by Jones – With the FTO designation, the number of lives we can now save is unprecedented.In his closing commentary, Bensman highlights the recent agreement between Mexico and the United States, in which Mexico will deploy 10,000 additional troops to the border, and the United States will assist in intercepting American guns that end up in cartel hands. However, Bensman notes a lack of reliable evidence supporting the claim that most of the cartels' firearms come from U.S. gun stores. The cartels have, for years, equipped themselves with military-grade weapons from Mexico's own corrupt military and from the armories of corrupt officials in Central American and South American nations.HostTodd Bensman is a National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestJaeson Jones is an expert on Mexican cartels and a border correspondent.RelatedJaeson Jones WebsiteJaeson Jones on XAmerican Guns Are Not to Blame for Mexico's Cartel ProblemIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

In the latest episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Victor Davis Hanson, a Hoover Institution fellow, discusses the changes in U.S. immigration policy under President Trump with Mark Krikorian, the Center for Immigration Studies' executive director. The discussion begins with acknowledging how the political landscape for Trump 2.0 differs greatly from the first Trump administration, giving President Trump maneuvering room to make major immigration policy changes.Key topics include:Border Enforcement & Deportation:A comparison of President Trump's 2021 and 2025 immigration policies.The wisdom of Trump's “worst first” deportation strategy.Over the last four years the composition of the illegal immigration population has changed to include a larger number of nationalities besides Mexicans. Will this weaken the cohesive lobbying effort to fight deportations?Birthright Citizenship & Legal Challenges:Trump's executive order addressing birthright citizenship.Predictions on the potential Supreme Court battle and legislative efforts.U.S.-Mexico Relations & Economic Impact:Mexico's shifting stance on immigration.Mexican public opinion turns against mass migration.Trump's potential tariff and remittance restrictions as leverage.Immigration & Fertility Rates:Declining U.S. birth rates and state-level trends.Can immigration raise the national fertility rate and achieve replacement level?Immigration's impact on native fertility.In his closing commentary, Mark Krikorian, the podcast host, highlights a new Center report, The Declining Education Level of Newly Arrived Immigrants, which finds a decline in the education level of newly arrived (the past three years) immigrants. The decline, which added greatly to the low-income population, is in stark contrast to the steady improvement in the education level in the years prior to the border surge.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestVictor Davis Hanson is a Fellow at the Hoover Institution.RelatedVictorHanson.comTrump Issues Birthright Citizenship Executive OrderThe Declining Education Level of Newly Arrived ImmigrantsIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

How fascinating is the Daman Kumar case? How would you like to be Chris Penk, the minister in charge of making the call as to whether to deport people? In a way this is a singular example of what the Americans deal with millions of times over. There seems to be no dispute 18-year-old Daman's parents are overstayers. Daman was born here and New Zealand is his home. So does he get deported and do his parents get deported? If you follow the law the answer seems simple - yes they do. It's not Daman's fault his parents broke the law. And that's the birthers debate in America. The illegals come across the border, they have a child, the child is an illegal and yet it is not their fault. It is their home, it is the only country they know, a Democratic administration gives you leniency and a Republican one not so much. There are, as there always are, questions around how you can be here as an overstayer for so many years. Also, I assume these are decent people. If they were criminals or reprobates the decisions would be a lot easier. So a family who work, contribute to the country, call it their own and want to stay. There's no shortage of emotion in the argument. I am sure part of their issue is at some point they technically became overstayers and they feared getting caught after a week, or a month, or a year. So do you come clean and tidy your affairs up, plead for leniency and hope for the best, or do you try your luck? Surely in doing what they did, they must have known the game at some point, for some reason, would be up? Or maybe after 8, 9,15, or 21 years, maybe they put it to one side. Maybe they would never be found out. So, what to do? Section 378 of the Immigration Act says the minister can, apparently, do anything he likes. It's easy to say "let them stay", but then you set a precedent. That's the trouble with power jobs and big decisions - they're hardly ever simple. It may well be the hardest thing Penk ever does, unless he lets them stay. That would be easier, and make you feel good – probably with minimal push back. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The latest episode of Parsing Immigration Policy highlights the diplomatic initiatives supporting U.S. border security that have been undertaken by the Trump administration. Phillip Linderman, a retired State Department senior Foreign Service Officer and a Center for Immigration Studies board member, discusses actions recently taken by President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that promote structured and lawful migration and seek to put an end to the global migration chaos.Key points:International Cooperation on Deportations – Countries such as Colombia, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Mexico have agreed to accept the return of their citizens, signaling a shift in regional migration policies.Changing U.S. Policy – The U.S. has fundamentally changed its stance, no longer encouraging unchecked migration but instead promoting legal and orderly processes.Diplomatic Leverage – The threat of tariffs and the use of tools such as Section 243(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which allows the U.S. to suspend visas for countries refusing to accept deportees, has proven effective in securing cooperation.Mexico's Role – Mexico has agreed to deploy 10,000 Mexican National Guard troops to combat human trafficking and drug smuggling at the border.El Salvador's Role – Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has offered to accept U.S. deportees of any nationality.Gitmo's Role – Trump will open Guantanamo Bay to alien detainees.Economic & Political Factors – Countries reliant on remittances, such as El Salvador and Venezuela, are having to balance economic interests with security cooperation.Global Implications – The discussion explores the idea of an international migration summit and the need for updated legal frameworks outside traditional organizations like the UN.HostJessica Vaughan is the Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestPhillip Linderman is a retired State Department senior Foreign Service Officer and a Center for Immigration Studies board member.RelatedEl Salvador, Guatemala deals key to Trump deportation promisesTrump Tariffs and Border SecurityMigrants Sent to Gitmo, India, and Potentially VenezuelaColombia's President Tests Trump on Migrant Returns, Quickly Backs DownTrump Dares to Send Criminal Aliens Back to Their New Home, Down by the (Guantanamo) BayState Department Can Lead on Fighting Illegal Immigration and Promoting Border SecurityIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

The latest episode of “Parsing Immigration Policy” highlights skilled immigration policies, their impact, and ways to improve the legal immigration programs. Featuring Dr. Norman Matloff, emeritus professor at UC Davis and a leading expert on the H-1B visa program, this episode breaks down how current policies are reshaping the U.S. labor market, undercutting American workers, and benefiting major tech companies at the expense of bringing the true “best and brightest” to the U.S.Key topics covered:The H-1B Visa System: Why America's leading tech companies, like Intel and Google, are more harmful than the “body shops” that contract out cheap foreign labor.The Green Card Process: The green card process is badly flawed. How sponsorship by big tech artificially expands the workforce, limiting opportunities and lowering wages for Americans.The Myth of “Best and Brightest”: The reality behind claims that H-1B visa holders are exceptional talents—and how companies game the system. How can true talent be identified.Age Discrimination & Wage Suppression: How H-1B policies favor entry-level workers, leading to lost expertise and lower salaries in STEM fields.Foreign Students & Green Cards: Are we admitting too many? How universities exploit foreign student labor and what changes are needed.Fixing the System: Ideas for reform, options explored include limiting green cards to top PhDs, implementing merit-based testing, numerical caps on studentsHostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestNorm Matloff is an emeritus professor at UC Davis.RelatedHow the H-1B System Undercuts American WorkersNorman Matloff on the H-1B Program and Related IssuesWhy Legal Immigration Numbers MatterDoes America Need More Foreign Tech Workers, NoTo Get the ‘Best and Brightest' H-1B Workers, the US Must Reform the ProgramMusk Is Right About H-1BsA Look Behind the Curtain at One H-1B Body ShopIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

Immigration was a defining issue in Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and within his first week in office, he took swift action to fulfill his promises. In this week's episode of Parsing Immigration Policy podcast, Center for Immigration Studies experts analyze the nine immigration-related Executive Orders issued in his first week in office, shaping the direction of U.S. immigration policy.Andrew Arthur, Fellow in Law and Policy, and Elizabeth Jacobs, Director of Regulatory Affairs and Policy, provide an in-depth breakdown and analysis of these executive actions and their broader impact on immigration policy.As the administration continues to roll out new immigration policies, the Center for Immigration Studies will provide ongoing expert analysis and updates.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestsAndrew Arthur is a Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.Elizabeth Jacobs is the Director of Regulatory Affairs and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedBullet summaries of the nine executive ordersAdditional CIS research and analysis on these policiesIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

In this captivating episode of Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live, Dave Bowman takes us on a thought-provoking journey through the legal, historical, and cultural ramifications of birthright citizenship. This discussion dives into the heart of the 14th Amendment, unpacking its revolutionary impact on defining citizenship in the United States, while tracing its origins back to the Reconstruction Era. With his signature mix of wit and analytical insight, Dave explains the challenges and controversies surrounding the interpretation of the citizenship clause. From its role in overturning the infamous Dred Scott decision to its enduring implications in modern debates on immigration, the episode lays bare the struggles of a nation reconciling its foundational ideals with its ever-evolving demographics. Bowman also highlights key moments in the legal battles, including the landmark Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which cemented the principle of jus soli—citizenship by birthright. Listeners are treated to an engaging exploration of the broader cultural and geopolitical impacts of U.S. immigration policy, such as the exclusionary Immigration Act of 1924 and its unintended consequences, including strained international relations with Japan. Bowman challenges listeners to consider the long-term implications of revisiting this issue, raising essential questions about the balance between legal precedent, constitutional interpretation, and the nation's values. This episode isn't just a lesson in history—it's a masterclass in connecting the past to the present, reminding us why understanding history is crucial for navigating today's challenges. Whether you're a history enthusiast or just curious about the roots of today's debates, this discussion offers a fresh and insightful take that shouldn't be missed.

As President Donald Trump and Border Czar Tom Homan begin their promised deportations, the latest episode of Parsing Immigration Policy discusses immigration detention - a key element in immigration enforcement. Andrew Arthur, the Center's Fellow in Law and Policy and a former immigration judge, details the purpose, history, and availability of immigration detention resources.Key Points:Civil, Not Criminal: Immigration detention is not a punishment but is instead a safeguard to ensure that aliens appear in court and for removal.Historical Context: Detention provisions trace back to at least the Immigration Act of 1903, steadily expanding from inadmissible aliens being detained at the ports of entry to include those entering illegally as well as for criminal aliens.Growing Need: With over 1.4 million individuals awaiting removal and a 34% no-show rate in immigration court, expanding detention capacity will become crucial to President Trump's immigration-enforcement efforts.Detention Options: ICE facilities, private contractors, and state prisons and county jails can all house detainees. The episode examines Biden-era restrictions aimed at restricting detention space.Alternative Space: From utilizing military bases to reinstituting “Remain in Mexico” policies, the new administration should not have a problem finding adequate detention space. HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestAndrew Arthur is a Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedGAO: One-Third of Immigration Court Aliens are No-ShowsU.S. Senate Testimony: Remain in MexicoIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

In this episode of our Cross-Border Catch-Up podcast series, Patty Shapiro (shareholder, San Diego) and Kate Thompson (associate, Stamford) discuss recent updates to employment laws in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Kate kicks off the episode by highlighting amendments to Norway's Working Environment Act, which went into effect on July 1, 2024. These amendments enhance employee rights and require detailed employment contracts. Patty and Kate also review changes to Denmark's Posting of Workers Act and the Immigration Act, which will impact foreign service providers. These changes require new documentation uploads to the Danish register by 2025 and 2026. The episode concludes with a discussion about Sweden, where the new EU Blue Card Directive, effective January 1, 2025, aims to attract highly qualified workers by offering flexible employment and residency options.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) hosted a panel to discuss the importance of immigration numbers, legal and illegal, and their impact on wages, the labor market, and the future of the American workforce. This timely panel, "Beyond the Border: Why Legal Immigration Numbers Matter," builds on the social media debate sparked by Elon Musk's recent comment highlighting the need for more legal immigration and seeks to heighten awareness of the impact of legal immigration – both high-skilled and low-skilled.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestsIntroduction by: Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas)Steven Camarota, Director of Research, CIS (slides)Michael Lind, Fellow at New America and author of, among others, Hell to Pay: How the Suppression of Wages is Destroying America.Hal Salzman, Rutgers University, specializing in STEM labor markets and workforce development. (slides)RelatedPanel Press ReleasePanel TranscriptPanel Video Steven Camarota's PresentationHal Salzman's PresentationOped by Hal Salzman: Two Simple Reforms Can Make H-1B Visas Great AgainIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

This week's episode of Parsing Immigration Policy focuses on the Center's new three-part investigative series, which documents the first known terror attack in the United States committed by an illegal border-crosser. The series, titled “First Blood: Anatomy of Border-Crosser's Chicago Terror Attack”, uncovers the details of the October 26, 2024, attack in Chicago, highlights the lack of media and law enforcement coverage it received, and proposes solutions to address the national security and community safety risks stemming from the Biden border crisis.Mauritanian national Sidi Mohammad Abdallahi, who crossed the U.S.–Mexico border illegally in March 2023, targeted Orthodox Jewish residents, police officers, and paramedics in Chicago in an act of jihad supporting Hamas. Abdallahi's subsequent suicide in custody prevented a trial and further obscured the case.This week's guest and series author, Todd Bensman, traveled to Chicago to learn more about the alarming incident and to remind the country that a border-crossing terrorist, often dismissed as a hypothetical fantasy, has, in fact, struck on U.S. soil. Bensman conducted the first-ever interview with the initial target of the attack, an Orthodox Jewish man walking to attend worship services.“Abdallahi's attack is a wake-up call for a nation grappling with border security and counterterrorism challenges,” said Bensman. “There is a need for further investigation into his activities, associates, and motivations. Key agencies, including the FBI and DHS, must clarify their roles and reveal how this incident was allowed to unfold on their watch.”In his closing commentary, host Mark Krikorian discusses the recent House of Representatives passage of the “Laken Riley Act”, which would expand the categories of aliens whom DHS is required to detain to include those convicted of, arrested for, charged with, or who have admitted to committing “any burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting offense”, as those terms are defined in the jurisdiction where those acts are committed.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestTodd Bensman is the Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedPart 1: First Blood - Anatomy of Border-Crosser's Chicago Terror AttackPart 2: Mystery Terrorist - The Unknown Life and Violent Times of Illegal Border-Crosser Sidi Mohammed AbdallahiPart 3: The Remedies - How to Lower the Risk of New Terror Strikes by Border-Crossing Islamist ExtremistsIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

A version of this essay has been published by Open Magazine at https://openthemagazine.com/columns/shadow-warrior/I have been thinking about the ongoing vilification of Hindus in the media/social media for some time, e.g. the Economist magazine's bizarre choice of Bangladesh as its country of the year while Bangladeshis are genociding Hindus. The simplest way I could account for it is as the very opposite of Milan Kundera's acclaimed novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. There is some karma at play here, and it is very heavy.The nation of immigrants, or to be more precise, its Deep State, is apparently turning against some of its most successful immigrants: law-abiding, tax-paying, docile ones. Irony, while others go on murderous sprees. In an insightful article in Open magazine, Amit Majmudar explains Why They Hate Us.There has been an astonishing outpouring of pure hatred against Indians in general, and Hindus in particular, on the Internet in the wake of Sriram Krishnan's seemingly accurate statement that country caps on H1-B visas are counterproductive. But this was merely a spike: for at least a year, Hindus have been vilified and name-called as “pajeets” and “street-shi**ers” on the net.It is intriguing that in 2024, both Jews and Hindus have been targeted: Jews by the extreme left on Gaza, and Hindus by both the extreme left and the extreme right, on what is, basically, a non-issue. H1-B is a very minor issue compared to, say, the wars and the US national debt.In fact, the H1-B brouhaha may well turn out to be a medium-term plus for India if it compels young Indians to seek employment at home. It will of course be a minus for the million-plus Indian-origin individuals who are in line for Green Cards, given the per-country cap of 9800 per year: mathematically, it will take them over a century to gain permanent residence.From the host country's point of view too, it is necessary to distinguish between generally desirable immigrants who contribute to the national wealth, as opposed to others who are a net burden on the exchequer, as I wrote recently.On reflection I attribute the withering assault on Hindus to four things: racism, religious bigotry, economics and geo-economics, and narrative-building.Presumably, all this had something to do with British colonial propaganda, which painted India as an utterly horrifying and pestilential country. Motivated and prejudiced imperialists ranging from James Mill to Winston Churchill were considered truthful historians. And it continues. I mentioned above the Economist magazine's baffling decision to certify Bangladesh's Islamist reign of terror.In another instance, in the Financial Times, a British chess correspondent (a nonagenarian named Leonard Barden), was underwhelmed by D Gukesh's staggering feat of becoming world champion at a teenager, and seemed to suggest that a) Gukesh won because his opponent Ding Liren of China was ill, b) Gukesh would have lost to either of two Americans, Caruana and Nakamura (both immigrants to the US, incidentally) if they had been in the fray. Barden, who probably remembers imperial times, also seemed to think poorly of the emerging Indian challenge in chess. These Anglosphere prejudices affect Americans.I also have some personal experience of American racism, as someone who went to the US on a student visa, got his Green Card and stayed on for twenty years before returning to India. A factor in my return was alienation, and the feeling of being an unwanted outsider, engendered by casual racism, even though on the face of it, I had a great life: good job in Silicon Valley, nice house, dream car. Obama's and Biden's regimes did nothing to change that feeling. Trump's second coming may not either.RacismIn general, I find Americans to be very nice people, gregarious, friendly and thoughtful: I had a number of good friends when I lived there. But I also think that racism is inbuilt into the culture (after all, it has not been that long since Brown v. Board of Education, Bull Connor, Jim Crow, George Wallace; and earlier the Asian Exclusion Act).There have been many acts of discrimination and racism against Hindus (although the term “Hindoo” [sic] included Sikhs and Muslims as well). See, e.g., the serious anti-Indian riots in Bellingham, WA in 1907 when “500 working class white men violently expelled Hindoo migrants from the city”. (both images courtesy @Hindoohistory on Twitter).Another remarkable story was the saga of Bhagat Singh Dhind, a Sikh, who was granted US citizenship three times, only to have it be taken away twice. The first time, in 1913, it was because, although ‘Hindoos' are Caucasians, they are not white. The second time, because the Supreme Court ruled in 1923 (US v Bhagat Singh Thind) that it would retrospectively cancel the citizenship of some 77 naturalized ‘Hindoos' based on the 1917 Immigration Act.The “Barred Zone” provision in that 1917 Act denied citizenship to Indians and Southeast Asians by making a large swathe of territory in Asia verboten. Curiously, Japanese, Koreans and some Chinese were exempt. Iranians, some Afghans (and some Baloch, if you look at the map closely) were deemed white. So far as I know, that is still the working definition of “white” in the US. (source: qz.com)There were real human costs: there is the sad story of Vaishno Das Bagai, a San Francisco businessman, who was rendered stateless after denaturalization, and seeing no way out (he was a Ghadar Party activist against British rule in India) committed suicide.Anyway, Dhind, evidently a persistent fellow, got his citizenship a third time because he had served in the US Army in World War I. Third time lucky: his citizenship was not revoked again.After the Luce-Celler Act of 1946, 100 Indians and 100 Filipinos a year were allowed to immigrate to the US, with the prospect of future naturalization as US citizens. Race based limitations were replaced with a quota system by the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (aka McCarran-Walter Act), but it still retained significant caps based on national origin; that Act also introduced the H-1 category for skilled immigrants.As a result of all this, the number of Indian immigrants to the US (e.g. nurses) started going up. The general euphoria surrounding the Civil Rights Movement also conferred a certain respect upon Gandhi, because Martin Luther King reportedly was inspired by his non-violent techniques of protest.But that did not mean US blacks made common cause with Indians, because often unofficial ‘minority quotas' were achieved by bringing in Indians and Chinese, which in effect meant blacks did not get the jobs they legitimately spilled their blood for.I was one of those who went through the ‘labor certification' process in the 1980s, when it was relatively easy to get a Green Card because there were very few Indians applying. The trickle became a flood after the Y2K issue when a lot of Indians arrived on H1-Bs.I personally experienced mild forms of public racism, for instance from Latinos in New Jersey calling me a ‘dot-head', to an unseen voice shouting “No Indians wanted here” when I was being shown apartments in NJ. This was around the time Navroze Mody was beaten to death in Hoboken, NJ by ‘Dotbusters'.Later, there were whites asking if I were leaving the country when I walked out of a mall with a suitcase in Fremont, California. When I said yes, they expressed their approval.Religious bigotryThe death of former US President Jimmy Carter at the age of 100 is a reminder of the power of fundamentalist Christians in the US. He was a faithful member of the Baptist Church, and in his eulogies, he was praised as a simple and decent man who upheld his Christian beliefs.But the impression of Baptists, and American evangelists in general, in India is vastly different. They were implicated in the story of the fervid young American man who attempted to evangelize the famously hostile tribals of North Sentinel Island. They promptly shot him dead with arrows for his pains.The result of Christian conversion in India has often been negative, contrary to pious platitudes. It has created severe fissures in society, turning family members against each other. The net result of conversion has been to create separatism.Verrier Elwin, a missionary, converted large numbers of people in the Northeast of India, and the result has been calls for a separate Christian nation in that area. Sheikh Hasina, before being deposed, claimed that there were plans afoot for a Christian “Zo” nation, for Zo/Kuki/Mizo/Naga converted tribals, to be carved out of India and Bangladesh.There are precedents, of course: the Christian nations of South Sudan (from Sudan) and East Timor (from Indonesia).The Indian state of Manipur which has seen a lot of conversion recently, is also troubled, with armed Kuki Christian terrorists killing Hindu Meiteis. .The bottom line is that the very precepts of Abrahamisms, of an exclusive god (or god-equivalent), an in-group out-group dichotomy, and the demonization of non-believers as the Other, are antithetical to the Hindu spirit of inclusivity and tolerance.Hindumisia or Hindu hatred is rampant in the West, and increasingly on the Internet. The evolution of this hostility can be seen in a taxonomy of monotheistic religions:* paleo-Abrahamisms: Zoroastrianism, Judaism* meso-Abrahamisms: Christian, Islamic religions* neo-Abrahamisms: Communism, Fascism, Nazism, DMK-ism, Ambedkarism, and so onThe arrival of Christians in India was far from peaceful; the historical record shows that the Jesuit Francis Xavier was proud of his idol-breaking. Claude Buchanan made up lurid tales about his alleged encounters with Hindu practices; William Bentinck and his alleged abolition of sati were lionized far beyond reason, because sati was a very isolated practice.The continued deprecation of Hindus by Christians can be seen vividly in Kerala, where Christians are considerably more prosperous than Hindus (data from C I Issac, himself a Christian and a historian). Here's an American of Kerala Christian descent hating on Hindus, perhaps unaware that “Thomas in India” is pure fiction, and that Francis Xavier, the patron saint of Christians in India, was a fanatic and a bigot. ‘Syrian' Christians of Kerala who claim (without proof) to be ‘upper caste' converts discriminate harshly against ‘lower-caste' converts to this day. Hardly all ‘children of god'.Incidentally, there may be other, political, considerations here. This woman is apparently married into the family of Sydney Blumenthal, which is part of the Clinton entourage, i.e. Democrat royalty. Tablet magazine discussed the ‘permission structure' used by Democrats, especially Obama, to manufacture consent. Hindus may be getting ‘punished' for supporting Trump.I personally experienced Christian bigotry against Hindus at age 10 in Kerala. My classmate Philip (a local Malayali) told me casually: “All your gods are our devils”. Reflexively, I told him, “Your gods are our devils, too”, although no Hindu had ever told me Christian gods were devils.Others have told me identical stories from places like Hyderabad. This meme likely came from Francis Xavier himself. It may well be taught to impressionable children as an article of faith in church catechism.Francis Xavier invited the Inquisition to Goa, and many, if not most, of the victims were Hindus. Here's an account from Empire of the Soul by Paul William Roberts:“The palace in which these holy terrorists ensconced themselves was known locally as Vadlem Gor – the Big House. It became a symbol of fear… People in the street often heard screams of agony piercing the night… Children were flogged and slowly dismembered in front of their parents, whose eyelids had been sliced off to make sure they missed nothing. Extremities were amputated carefully, so that a person would remain conscious even when all that remained was a torso and head. Male genitalia were removed and burned in front of wives, breasts hacked off and vaginas penetrated by swords while husbands were forced to watch”.Below is a tweet by another American presumably suffused with Christian compassion. I am reminded of a Kerala Christian woman repeatedly trying to convert a Scheduled Caste friend, using similar memes denigrating Kali. Finally, my friend got fed up and asked her: “You worship the mutilated corpse of a dead Arab stuck on a stick. And that's better?”. Her jaw dropped, and she blubbered: “But… but, that's a metaphor”. My friend retorted: “Then realize that Kali is a metaphor too”. Not much self-awareness on the part of the would-be converter.Therefore, the religion factor, of Hindus being the ultimate Other, cannot be overstated. There is basically no way to reconcile the Hindu world view with the Christian. Dharma is incompatible with Abrahamisms/Semitisms. And no, it's not Jimmy Carter who's relevant, it's Francis Xavier.Economics and Geo-economicsThere is a serious issue with the engineering community in the US, which has nothing to do with the H1-B program. Engineers have been unable to unite, create a cartel, keep their numbers low and value to the consumer high, and bargain to keep salaries high. This is a signal failure on the part of the US engineers, and blaming others isn't going to solve the problem.Consider, in contrast, doctors (and to a lesser extent, nurses). They keep their numbers very low, successfully portray their contribution to society as very high, and keep out foreign doctors as much as possible: the result is that their salaries are astronomical (a recent Medscape survey suggests that the top-earning specialty, Orthopedics, earns an average of $568,000 a year. And that's the average).In contrast, according to Forbes in 2023 the highest-paid engineering specialty, Petroleum Engineering, earned only $145,000, and in fact wages had actually declined. Even much-ballyhooed software engineers ($103,000 ) and AI engineers ($128,000) make very little. And lest you think H1-B depresses wages, there are almost no H1-B petroleum engineers. The bottom line is that engineering is not a high-income occupation in the US. Why? No syndicate.How about nurses? According to a report, Nurse Anesthetists make an average of $214,000.And there are plenty of Indian-origin doctors and nurses in the US. Why does this not create a hue-and-cry? The answer is two-fold: one, the scarcity value, and two, those in medicine have created a narrative, and the public has bought it, that their services are so valuable that the nation must spend 20% of its GDP on what is, by objective measures, pretty poor outcomes in health: ranking tenth out of 10 in high-income countries, at very high cost.There have been grumbles about the helplessness of American engineers for years: I remember forty years ago some guy whose name I forget constantly complaining in the IEEE's email groups about immigrant engineers enabling employers to lower the salaries they pay.In addition, engineers regularly go through boom-and-bust cycles. They have no leverage. I remember after a boom period in the 1970s, unemployed aerospace engineers were driving taxis. If there is another ‘AI winter', then we'll find unemployed AI engineers on the street as well, despite massive demand right now.It is true that there may be subtle intricacies, too. The US companies that contract out their positions to H1-B engineers may well be paying prevailing wages, say $60 an hour. But there are middlemen: big IT services companies who take on the contracts, and provide ‘body-shopping' services. They may well be severely underpaying the actual engineers at only, say, $35 an hour, in a bizarre revivification of ‘indentured labor', i.e. wage slavery. It is difficult for those on H1–Bs to change employers, so they are stuck.There is a larger geo-economic angle as well. The US likes being the top dog in GDP, as it has been since 1945. Unfortunately, through the fecklessness of all Presidents from Nixon onwards, they have somehow allowed China to ascend to a strong #2 position. At this point, I suspect the Deep State has concluded that it would be impossible to dislodge China, given its manufacturing clout.I wrote a year ago that a condominium with China may well be the best Plan B for the US. Let us consider what has happened to the other countries that were at the top of the economic pyramid: Germany and Japan.The 1985 Plaza Accord whereby the US dollar was depreciated led to a Lost Decade for Japan, which has turned into a Lost Four Decades; that country which was booming in the 1980s lost, and never regained its momentum.Germany was doing pretty well until the Ukraine War and the arrival of the Electric Vehicle boom. But at this point, it has more or less lost its machine tools business, its automobile business; add its social and political views, and its future looks grim.If this is what has happened to #3 and #4, we can expect that an aspiring #3, namely India, will face a concerted effort to ruin it. It is in the interests of both the US and China to suppress a potential competitor, especially when there is the tiresome mantra of “India is the fastest growing large economy in the world”.The Bangladesh coup, which benefits both the US and China by creating a massive new war front on India's East, is therefore possibly the result of a tacit collusion between the Deep State and the CCP. Similarly, the sudden spike in anti-Hindu rhetoric and this H1-B hoo-haa may well be financed by Xinhua, and it clearly benefits the Democrats, as it has driven a wedge between Christian fundamentalist MAGA types and other Trump supporters. It also puts the Indian-origin and/or Hindu members of Trump's team on notice: they better self-censor.Even immigrant Elon Musk, not to mention Vivek Ramaswamy, Kash Patel, Jay Bhattacharyya, and the non-Indian Hindu Tulsi Gabbard, are all in the firing line of the Deep State. Even though the IEEE has been moaning about depressed engineering salaries for half a century, it is curious that this became a cause celebre just days before Trump's accession to the Presidency.Narrative-buildingThere was a sobering incident in New York's subways on December 22nd, when a woman, now identified as 61 year old Debrina Kawam, was set on fire by an illegal immigrant, Sebastian Zapeta, from Guatemala, who had been deported earlier but came back to the US. I saw a video purportedly of her burning to death, shockingly without screaming, rolling on the ground to douse the flames, or anything else. She just stood and burned, as Zapeta fanned the flames.A New York City subway policeman walked by. The people who were busy capturing the footage on their smartphones did not intervene or help. It reminded me of Kitty Genovese, a 28 year old woman who was raped and stabbed to death on March 13, 1964, in full view of onlookers in the apartment block where she lived in Queens, New York. Nobody bothered to intervene as she died, screaming.It is really odd when people refuse to get involved in helping a dying person. There's something morally wrong here, and it should have been worth exploring in the very articulate media.Yes, Debrina Kawam's baffling story got widespread airplay immediately after it happened, but it died surprisingly quickly. Here's the Google Trends index of interest in that story.The big new story was H1-B, which shot up and displaced the subway murder story. Note the respective timelines: the Google Trends below is about H1-B. It is hard to believe this was an organic shift. It was “manufacturing consent” with placement aforethought.I wrote recently about how narratives are created out of thin air with the intent of manufacturing consent. The abrupt U-turn on Sheikh Hasina was one of the examples. Now the neat and abrupt switch from the NYC subway burning-alive also points to something that is deliberately planted to divert attention away from inconvenient questions.Let us now see how the H1-B narrative survives the New Orleans story of the son of immigrants, ex-soldier, and ISIS member driving a truck and ploughing into a New Year crowd, killing many. Of course, the narrative will carefully not say anything rude about the religion of the alleged perpetrator, because there will be… consequences.ConclusionThe furious drama and narrative about H1-B will subside soon; ironically, it may well be to the benefit of the Indian nation if this kind of propaganda reduces the attractiveness of the US for talented would-be Indian immigrants, who might stay on at home and build innovative companies. Canada and Britain have already ceased to be desired destinations.However, the underlying issues of racism, religious bigotry, economic warfare and astroturfed narrative are real and will not go away. These are danger signals about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for Indian migrants to the US, and that's a sad start to 2025.3450 words, Jan 2, 2025Here's the AI-generated podcast from NotebookLM by Google: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

In this year-end episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, experts from the Center for Immigration Studies discuss some of the defining immigration issues of 2024. From record-breaking numbers at the border to the administration's controversial policies and their impacts, Mark Krikorian, the Center's executive director, and analysts Andrew Arthur and Jessica Vaughan examine the events that shaped immigration policy this past year.Looking ahead, the panel explores what 2025 may hold:net-negative illegal immigrationincreased state legislation to restore integrity to the immigration systema push for amnesty for many here illegallypotential national security impact of Biden policiesincrease in legal immigration which will cause fireworks amongst the Trump coalitionWith immigration positioned to remain at the forefront of national discourse, this discussion offers valuable context for the road ahead.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestsJessica Vaughan is the Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.Andrew Arthur is the Resident Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.Intro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

This week's episode of Parsing Immigration Policy highlights the pivotal role regulations and litigation will play in shaping U.S. immigration policy under the Trump administration. The episode features Elizabeth Jacobs, the Center's Director of Regulatory Affairs and Policy, who talks through the top immigration regulatory moves and legal battles likely to occur during the Trump administration.Jacobs in conversation with podcast host Mark Krikorian, the Center's executive director, describes how the Supreme Court's recent decision overturning Chevron deference — once a cornerstone of judicial deference to agency interpretations — has reshaped the legal terrain. This landmark shift gives courts greater authority to scrutinize agency actions, making many Trump-era policies more likely to withstand judicial challenges.Key topics discussed include:Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA): The legal challenges surrounding this long-contested program, created through regulation, and its alignment with congressional intent.Optional Practical Training (OPT): How regulatory changes could curtail this massive guestworker program, created by regulation, that permits foreign nationals to work on student visas despite having completed their studies.Public Charge Rule: The potential return of Trump's 2019 definition to replace Clinton's definition created by memorandum that Biden returned to without public comment.Temporary Protected Status (TPS): The implications of Biden's expansions of the protection from removal afforded under TPS and how they may face rollbacks. The first battle could start in March when TPS for aliens from El Salvador will be up for renewal.National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA): The likelihood of the new administration challenging the 14 finalized rules impacting immigration enforcement — enacted under Biden and deemed exempt from NEPA requirements. A court ruling recently disagreed.Work Authorization Policies: Reforms targeting employment permits, including H-1B visa spousal work authorizations, which include fewer restrictions than the H-1B visa itself.As Krikorian notes, “The regulatory and legal battleground will be ground zero for immigration policy starting on January 20.”HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestElizabeth Jacobs is the Director of Regulatory Affairs at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedCourt Rejects Challenge to Work Permits for H1-B SpousesUSCIS Auto-Extends Work Permits for Many TPS BeneficiariesThis Week's Other Quasi-Amnesty: Biden Orders Expansion of Work Visa Options for DACAsIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

Hispanic voters, once considered a Democratic stronghold, are now a pivotal swing demographic in U.S. elections. In the latest episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Jim Robb, Vice President of Alliances and Activism at NumbersUSA, joins the Center's Executive Director, Mark Krikorian, to discuss this shift in voting trends and its implications for the future of American politics with the Center's Executive Director, Mark Krikorian.In the last two presidential elections, Hispanics, the fastest growing minority group in the country, have shown a notable move toward Republican candidates. Robb highlights the political journey of Hispanic voters, the factors driving the changes, current trends, and future expectations, including:In the recent presidential election, almost every demographic group moved toward Republicans.Economic concerns like inflation, followed by immigration, were cited as the top issues for Hispanic voters in the 2024 election.Traditional identities of class and economic interests trumped racial identity politics.The political journey of Hispanic Americans and African Americans, and how they vote, are very different.Populism and nationalism trends are reshaping party dynamics.Hispanic voting trends are a catastrophe for Democrats.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestJim Robb is the Vice President of Alliances and Activism at NumbersUSA.RelatedSlide Deck Immigration Campaign PollingWhy did Hispanics vote so heavily for Donald TrumpIs Demography Still Destiny after 2024Political Migrants: Hispanic Voters on the MoveHispanics' Voting Preferences on ImmigrationIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

In the latest episode of the Center for Immigration Studies' Parsing Immigration Policy podcast, host Mark Krikorian and CIS Fellow Andrew Arthur examine what a large-scale deportation effort might look like under the next administration. Using FY 2024 border statistics as a starting point, the episode highlights the logistical, political, and diplomatic challenges involved in cleaning-up the disaster the Biden administration has created by refusing to enforce the law.Key discussion points Include:Policy Shifts and Enforcement Challenges: Under the current administration, ICE has faced restrictions that limit detention and deportation capabilities. Arthur argues these limitations have enabled 1.4 million aliens under final removal orders to remain in the country.Logistics of Mass Deportation: The conversation explores how detention facilities, country jails, military bases, and expedited court proceedings could be leveraged, as well as the use of commercial flights for deportations.Diplomatic Complexities: Arthur outlines the challenges of, and solutions for, securing cooperation from home countries that do not accept their nationals to be returned, including using economic leverage or diplomatic incentives. There are hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens in the U.S. from recalcitrant countries, like Venezuela.Future Administrative Priorities: Arthur emphasizes that securing the border and reinstating ICE's operational authority will be critical first steps to enacting mass deportation.In his closing remarks, Krikorian highlights a recent blog post by CIS Fellow John Miano which discusses the executive branch's broad use of work permits to bypass congressional limits on immigration. By granting Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) to individuals without statutory eligibility, successive administrations have created a parallel immigration system, undermining legislative intent. Krikorian calls for statutory reform to ensure that Congress — not the executive branch — determines who is authorized to work in the United States.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestAndrew Arthur is the Resident Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration StudiesRelatedMass Deportation is Just Another Term for Immigration NormalcyThe Executive Branch Has Created Its Own Separate Immigration SystemIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

Today's podcast takes a deep dive into the left's dark-money networks and their impact on federal policy, particularly immigration. Our guest, Tyler O'Neil, managing editor of The Daily Signal and author of the upcoming book, The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government, discusses how left-leaning organizations have infiltrated and embedded their ideologies into the administrative state.Drawing from a chapter in his book on immigration, O'Neil explains the rise of the “immigration industrial complex,” where federal funds fuel non-governmental organizations (NGOs) advocating for open-border policies and facilitating the housing and transportation of illegal immigrants across the country. These NGOs have become financially dependent on government grants and contracts, which now far exceed private donations, creating a loop of influence and profit.“The Biden administration's open-border policies have amplified the unaccompanied minors phenomenon and expanded the reach of these organizations,” O'Neil notes. “What began with refugee resettlement has exploded into a sprawling network that thrives on taxpayer dollars, even bypassing Congress's authority in many cases.”Immigration industrial complex started with refugee resettlement, it then grew under the unaccompanied minor phenomenon caused Congress changing the law so that they could not be sent back unless they were from contiguous countries, Canada or Mexico. The organizations involved in resettling both of these populations started making a lot of money under the Biden administration.O'Neil offers practical solutions for the ordinary American to pushback against the “Woketopus” and its influence. From scrutinizing charitable donations and union dues to advocating for reforms that cut off taxpayer funding to activist NGOs, he outlines a roadmap for restoring balance in governance. Starving the beast is essential; reducing revenue streams weakens the influence of these organizations.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestTyler O'Neil is an author and Managing Editor of The Daily Signal.RelatedThe Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal GovernmentMaking Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law CenterTyler O'Neil's Twitter AccountTyler O'Neil's The Daily Signal Author PageIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

This week's episode of the Center for Immigration Studies podcast Parsing Immigration Policy features an in-depth discussion on the vital role the Department of State can play in combating illegal immigration and alleviating the enforcement burden. The episode revisits a previous panel hosted by the Center, which discussed Foggy Bottom and the Border: Harnessing the State Department to lead a U.S. foreign policy that fights illegal immigration and promotes border security, a Center report which includes key policy recommendations for the next administration.The topic gains fresh relevance as President-elect Donald Trump recently named Sen. Marco Rubio as his nominee for Secretary of State. Rubio's selection comes at a pivotal time when the Department of State's leadership could help shape U.S. immigration policy.The conversation highlights the need for the Department of State, the lead U.S. foreign affairs agency, to play a key role in tackling the current migration crisis. The panel explored how a coordinated approach within the next administration could empower State and other foreign affairs agencies to combat illegal immigration. From visa issuance and international diplomacy to integrating State Department activities with DHS, DOJ, and other federal and state authorities, the report underscores the potential of a “whole-of-government” effort to address border security effectively.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestsChristopher Landau is a Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico (2019-2021).Phillip Linderman is a Retired senior Foreign Service officer at the State Department and Board Member at the Center for Immigration Studies.Jessica Vaughan is the Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedReport: Foggy Bottom and the BorderPanel Press ReleasePanel VideoPanel TranscriptPRM: The Obscure State Department Bureau that Fosters Global Illegal MigrationIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

The Optional Practical Training program (OPT), which began as a post-graduation internship program, has evolved into the largest foreign worker program in the United States, authorizing work for years beyond graduation for foreign nationals on student visas. Notably, OPT was developed by DHS under pressure from Silicon Valley tech leaders looking for ways around worker protections built into the H-1B visa program.In the latest episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Jon Feere, the Center's Director of Investigations and former ICE Chief of Staff, examines the controversial OPT program. This timely discussion reveals the implications of the underregulated program that has allowed over half a million foreign students to work in the United States without work visas, impacting American employment and wages, national security, and Social Security and Medicare revenues.Key Points:Economic Impact: Employers hiring foreign students under OPT are exempt from paying Social Security and Medicare taxes, leading to an estimated $4 billion in annual lost revenue. This tax advantage can incentivize the hiring of foreign workers over Americans.Oversight Challenges: Over 7,400 schools certified by ICE to enroll foreign students rely on Designated School Officials (DSOs) to maintain and update records. These officials often face university pressure to ignore the required strict oversight.Fraudulent Practices: "Day 1 CPT" schemes allow students to work almost immediately upon arrival, undermining the educational purpose of their visas and enabling work without genuine educational intent.National Security Concerns: The unchecked growth of the OPT program poses significant national security risks, allowing foreign nationals to work for years in sensitive fields.Solutions: Limit the fields of study available to foreign students, and eliminate or significantly tighten up the OPT program to make it more manageable for DHS and less likely to have a significant impact on national security and the U.S. labor market.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestJon Feere is the Director of Investigations at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedBloomberg Investigates 'Elaborate Charade' Known as Day1 CPTOptional Practical Training for Foreign Students Now a $4 Billion Annual Tax ExemptionICE's Controversial Foreign Student Employment Programs Are Not Protecting WorkersForeign Student Fraud Case HIghlights Serious ProblemsIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

Immigration shifts political power in the United States – without a single immigrant having to vote.Seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and thus votes in the Electoral College are apportioned among the states based on each one's total population — not by the number of citizens or legal residents. The Center for Immigration Studies today released two reports explaining how this works, which are the subject of this week's episode of Parsing Immigration Policy.The first report examines how the enormous scale of legal and illegal immigration in recent decades has redistributed House seats and electoral votes to high-immigration states, which provides a net benefit to Democrats.The second report looks at congressional districts, and shows how immigration redistributes representation from districts comprised primarily of U.S. citizens to districts with large non-citizen populations. This too has a significant partisan dimension, but it has nothing to do with non-citizens possibly voting illegally.“Because of the way reapportionment and redistricting work, immigration, including illegal immigration, redistributes political power in Washington,” said Steven Camarota, the Center's Director of Research and lead author of both reports. He added, “This redistribution is directly proportional to the scale of legal and illegal immigration and exists independent of whether or how immigrants themselves vote.”HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestSteven Camarota is the Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedPress ReleaseEstimating the impact of legal and illegal immigration on apportionment and political influence in the U.S. House and Electoral CollegeHow Non-Citizens Impact Political Representation and the Partisan Makeup of the U.S. House of RepresentativesHow Many Non-Citizens Would Have to Vote to Affect the 2024 Presidential Election?Intro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

Recent Center for Immigration Studies field work reveals a growing crisis in the Mexican southern state of Chiapas. Why are thousands of migrants bottled up in this area near the Guatemala-Mexico border, and why are caravans forming but only moving within Chiapas? On-the-ground reporting by Todd Bensman, the Center's national security fellow, highlights the impact of the Biden-Harris administration's December 2023 deal with Mexico and the potential consequences leading up to and following the U.S. election.Key findings:Biden-Harris Agreement: In December 2023, the U.S. and Mexico reached a secretive deal to keep migrants in southern Mexico to reduce the appearance of a border crisis in the U.S. The deal has resulted in the Mexican military setting up roadblocks in the region, particularly around the border town of Tapachula, to slow the flow of migrants.Migrants Bottled Up: Bensman visited Tapachula, where an estimated 150,000 migrants are stranded, with 500 to 1,500 more arriving daily. The city is overwhelmed, with high poverty levels and unrest.Caravans and Military Escorts: Migrant caravans are forming, but they are not headed to the U.S. Instead, the Mexican military is escorting them to other cities within Chiapas to ease pressure on Tapachula. Bribes and mafias enable wealthier migrants to escape the blockade, but poorer migrants remain trapped.CBP One App: The U.S. extended access to the CBP One app, previously only usable in northern Mexico, to allow migrants in southern Mexico to schedule appointments for processing into the U.S. However, delays and limited access make it difficult for most to advance quickly.Upcoming Election Tension: Many migrants feel an urgency to reach the U.S. before a potential change in leadership. Those interviewed fear that a Trump win would mean a closed border and no benefits, while they believe a Harris win would maintain the status quo and provide access to benefits.In his closing commentary, Mark Krikorian, the Center's executive director and podcast host, contends that Mexican government's prevention of migrants from approaching the U.S. border is largely political and temporary. If the administration were serious about halting the migrant flow, they would support Panama's efforts at the Darien Gap, to prevent migrants from getting to southern Mexico in the first place. He highlights Bensman's recent fieldwork in Panama, where he explored the new president's initiatives to control migrant traffic through the Darien Gap. Despite the positive implications for the U.S., the Biden-Harris administration has been slow to provide the diplomatic and financial support promised to Panama.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestTodd Bensman is National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedCIS in the southern Mexican state of ChiapasDaily Mail Op-edInside ‘Zone 47': Biden's Ruthless Mexico Immigration Crackdown Is Working, but Media Won't Tie Him to ItRecent Sky-High Levels of Illegal Migration Are Dropping Fast — and Here's WhyPodcast: Investigating Panama's Efforts to Cut MigrationIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

In the latest episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, the Center examines how a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) program – originally designed for homeless veterans – has evolved into a controversial funding source for illegal immigrants.This program has received wide public notice in the wake of the two recent hurricanes and claims that FEMA is putting the needs of illegal aliens ahead of Americans suffering from natural disasters.Andrew Arthur, the Center's fellow in law and policy, walks the audience through the creation of an emergency food and shelter program in 1987 under President Reagan, its expansion and current role as a funding pipeline for NGOs and blue states to pay for the consequences of the Biden-Harris migrant crisis.Highlights:History of FEMA's Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP): Originally meant to provide relief to homeless Vietnam veterans and others, this program has expanded beyond its intended purpose.Shift in Focus: After more than 111,000 adult migrants with children and unaccompanied minors crossed the border illegally May 2019, President Trump requested additional funds to move migrant children out of Border Patrol custody. He ultimately received the money, but only in exchange for a $30 million expansion of EFSP for transporting and housing illegal migrants. His administration unsuccessfully tried to end the program in subsequent budget requests.Biden-Harris Administration Funding Surge: Under President Biden, regular EFSP grew, but a new line item also appeared called EFSP-H, for “humanitarian”, i.e., to facilitate the settlement of illegal border-crossers. It later morphed into the FEMA Shelter and Services Program (SSP). Funding grew from the original $30 million to $650 million in 2024 – a 20-fold increase in just a few years. Much of this money is directed to NGOs and local governments in blue states.Undermining Incentives for Policy Changes: The government creates disaster through bad policy, then requests and receives funding to cope with the disaster, which is funneled to NGOs which support the policies responsible for the disaster in the first place. This removes much of the incentive to address the illegal immigration problem or to push the federal government for policy changes.Reprogramming FEMA Funds: The podcast highlights DHS's ability to reprogram FEMA money from immigration support to disaster relief, raising questions about the prioritization of illegal immigration over natural disaster recovery.In his closing commentary, Mark Krikorian, the Center's executive director and podcast host, highlights the arrival and expansion of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, emphasizing that its establishment is a direct consequence of the Biden-Harris administration's policies.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestAndrew Arthur is a Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedMaking Sense of FEMAs Migrant Payment SchemesHow FEMA Distributes Moneys to Cope with the Surge of MigrantsMassive Spending Bill Includes $785 Million to Feed, House and Transport MigrantsIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

The latest episode of Parsing Immigration Policy examines a groundbreaking legal case that has set a new precedent for how immigration policies intersect with environmental law. Julie Axelrod, Director of Litigation at the Center for Immigration Studies, joins the conversation to discuss the federal court's landmark decision that holds the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accountable for violating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).The Center bought a case against DHS on behalf of a rancher in the first case to successfully apply NEPA — often regarded as the "Magna Carta" of environmental laws — to immigration actions. NEPA, enacted in 1970, mandates that federal agencies evaluate the environmental effects of significant actions, including their impact on human environments. Yet, immigration policies have never undergone such analysis, despite their direct influence on population growth and environmental conditions.Key HighlightsWhat is NEPA? Axelrod explains the origins of NEPA and its importance in shaping government decision-making. She emphasizes that NEPA requires agencies to "look before they leap" by conducting thorough environmental reviews before implementing actions that could affect the environment. While NEPA has long applied to policies regarding energy, agriculture, etc., immigration authorities have never been held to the same standard — until now.Why It Matters: The ruling underscores the environmental impacts of mass immigration, which contribute to population growth, urban development, and strain on natural resources. Axelrod points out that, paradoxically, environmental groups — which typically champion NEPA — have not pursued this angle, leaving the Center to lead the charge.Future Implications: The court's decision paves the way for future lawsuits that could hold the government accountable for immigration policies' environmental consequences.Remedies: The case will now move forward to determine appropriate remedies, with briefings scheduled for later this year. Axelrod highlights the need for future public engagement and hearings to assess how immigration impacts local communities and ecosystems.In his closing remarks, Mark Krikorian, the Center's executive director and host of the podcast, addresses the recent announcement that the U.S. government will not be renewing the parole of Haitians and Venezuelans who were let in unlawfully by the hundreds of thousands by the Biden-Harris administration. While this may seem like a tough stance, Krikorian explains that the decision is largely symbolic with no real impact and purely designed to influence the election.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestJulie Axelrod is the Director of Litigation at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedCIS Prevails in Challenge to Biden-Harris Immigration Actions50th Anniversary of NEPA: Five Decades of Ignoring Environmental Impacts of ImmigrationIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

As our centennial series continues, Madeline Hsu, professor of history and director of the Center for Global Migration Studies at the University of Maryland, and an editor of the 2-volume Cambridge History of Global Migrations (Cambridge University Press, 2023), A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered: U.S. Society in an Age of Restriction, 1924-1965 (University of Illinois Press, 2019), and the author of Asian American History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2016), examines U.S. law and policies from The Immigration Act of 1924 to the present.

This week we're traveling back to 1920s Minnesota with Sweet Land! Join us as we learn about immigrant marriages, German acceptance in Minnesota, English-only churches, and more! We also debut the new Tina Belcher Film Grading Scale, and award this film a respectable score of Two Butts. Sources: La Vern J. Rippley, "Conflict in the Classroom: Anti-Germanism in Minnesota Schools, 1917-19," Minnesota History 47, no.5 (1981): 170-83. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20178699  Tina Steward Brakebill, "From "German Days" to "100 Percent Americanism": McLean County, Illinois 1913-1918: German Americans, World War One, and One Community's Reaction." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 95, no. 2 (2002): 148-171. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40193520  Ehsan Alam, "Anti-German Nativism, 1917-1919," MNOpedia, https://www.mnopedia.org/anti-german-nativism-1917-1919  Becky Little, https://www.history.com/news/anti-german-sentiment-wwi  https://blogs.loc.gov/international-collections/2022/09/german-immigration-loclrblogint/  Mark Kuss, "Hey Man! Watch Your Language: Treatment of Germans and German Americans in New Orleans during World War I," Louisiana History 56, no.2 (2015): 178-98. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24396453  Paul Ramsey, ""The War against German-American Culture: The Removal of German-Language Instruction from the Indianapolis Schools, 1917–1919." Indiana Magazine of History 98, no. 4 (2002): 285-303. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27792420  Elizabeth Dorsey Hatle and Nancy M.  Vaillancourt, "One Flag, One School, One Language: Minnesota's Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s." Minnesota History 61, no. 8 (2009): 360-371. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40543955  Gary Marks, Matthew Burbank, "Immigrant Support for the American Socialist Party, 1912 and 1920," https://www.jstor.org/stable/1171437  "Go West, Young Woman! An Exploration of Mail Order Brides in America." Smithsonian, available at https://postalmuseum.si.edu/research-articles/go-west-young-woman Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill, "Armenian Refugee Women: The Picture Brides, 1920-1930," Journal of American Ethnic History (Spring 93) Marian L. Smith, "'Any Woman Who is Now or May Hereafter Be Married': Women and Naturalization, ca 1802-1940," Genealogy Notes 30, 2 (1998) Seema Sohi, "Barred Zones, Rising Tides, and Radical Struggles: The Antiradical and Anti-Asian Dimensions of the 1917 Immigration Act," Journal of American History (2022) Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Land IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0428038/ https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-nov-16-wk-movie16-story.html

A Harvard historian discusses how the impact of the Immigration Act of 1965 continues to reverberate in American society, and in particular what the US gained in becoming far more welcoming to Asian immigrants than ever before. And tour guides from Hungary, Poland, and Portugal update us on some of the profound political issues under debate in their countries, and what we Americans might learn from their experiences. For more information on Travel with Rick Steves - including episode descriptions, program archives and related details - visit www.ricksteves.com.

In the latest episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, the growing threat of transnational criminal organizations, how we got here, and potential solutions to address the issue. Guest host Jon Feere, the Center's Director of Investigation and former Chief of Staff of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is joined by retired U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Denver Field Office Director John Fabbricatore who shares insights from his new book De-Iced: America in the Era of Open Borders and Unchecked Immigration.Fabbricatore focuses on the Venezuelan transnational criminal organization “Tren de Aragua,” which has quickly established itself in the U.S., particularly in cities like Chicago and New York, and even in smaller cities like Aurora, Colorado. He explains how the gang, involved in human trafficking and drug smuggling, has been expanding rapidly since first arriving in the country in 2023.Drawing on decades of experience in immigration enforcement, Fabbricatore shares personal stories from his career, including the challenges of deporting criminals and the complexities of international law enforcement. He stresses the need for a stronger commitment to enforcing immigration laws to ensure public safety and national security.Key Points:Tren de Aragua has already established a foothold in the U.S., with an estimated 5,000 members. He warns that unless there is swift action, the gang's influence will only continue to grow.The challenges posed by sanctuary city policies hamper ICE's ability to tackle gang violence and organized crime: "Sanctuary policies protect criminals, not citizens."Fabbricatore criticizes the Biden-Harris administration's handling of immigration, particularly the abuse of parole programs, which he claims has overwhelmed the system. "Our system cannot handle the flood of illegal immigrants. The chaos being created now will eventually result in a push for amnesty."HostJon Feere is the Director of Investigations at the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestJohn Fabbricatore is a retired U.S. Customs and Border Protection Field Office Director.RelatedDe-Iced: America in the Era of Open Borders and Unchecked ImmigrationVenezuelan Gang Stirs Fears in Colorado's Third Largest CitySanctuary MapIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

Medicare, Pell Grants and the Immigration Act of 1965 were all passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Several important government agencies were formed too. In fact, some historians argue that LBJ’s Great Society agenda was the last major shift in the relationship between the executive branch and the U.S. economy. In this episode, how does legislation passed under President Joe Biden compare?

Medicare, Pell Grants and the Immigration Act of 1965 were all passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Several important government agencies were formed too. In fact, some historians argue that LBJ’s Great Society agenda was the last major shift in the relationship between the executive branch and the U.S. economy. In this episode, how does legislation passed under President Joe Biden compare?

The latest episode of Parsing Immigration Policy examines two key issues for the upcoming election: how former President Donald Trump might approach interior enforcement of immigration laws if elected, and the ideology behind the Biden-Harris policies that have led to the current border crisis.In a pre-recorded segment from a recent seminar, Andrew Arthur, the Center's fellow in law and policy, outlines what a return to normal immigration enforcement under a Republican presidency might look like.Key topics discussed include:Prioritizing Removals: How might Trump prioritize the removal of illegal aliens? Just for starters, the priority could be to find and remove the 99 aliens on the terrorist watch list who were released under Biden-Harris policies, followed by criminal aliens, and then the 1.29 million individuals already under orders of removal.ICE and Law Enforcement: ICE will be challenged due to staffing declines under Biden-Harris in ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division. But officers from the other main division of ICE, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), would help make up the shortfall.Sanctuary Policies and Criminal Aliens: How state and local police might handle criminal aliens under sanctuary policies.Detention and Deportation Logistics: The use of military bases and county jails for detention, commercial and charter flights for deportations, and potential obstacles from uncooperative countries are examined.E-Verify and Workplace Enforcement: Workplace enforcement, especially E-Verify, would likely play a critical role in Trump's approach.Our special commentary in this episode is the opening statement that Mark Krikorian, the Center's executive director, provided before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. He testified that the Biden-Harris administration's immigration policy is not the result of incompetence or failure but a deliberate ideological stance. Describing the current border crisis as the largest in U.S. history, he highlights the over 10 million encounters with inadmissible aliens since January 2021. The administration's approach bypasses legal limits set by Congress and is driven by a belief in unlimited immigration. This, according to Krikorian, represents a significant departure from U.S. law and poses a challenge to national sovereignty.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestAndrew Arthur is the Resident Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedGraph from Andrew Arthur's presentationMark Krikorian's TestimonyIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

The latest podcast episode from the Center for Immigration Studies highlights recent fieldwork conducted in Colombia and Panama. This episode explores the migration flow through the Darien Gap and examines new developments under Panama's leadership designed to manage the number of migrants traveling through this dangerous area en route to the U.S. border. Despite these initiatives carrying positive implications for U.S., the U.S. has been slow to provide the diplomatic and financial support promised to the Panamanian government.National Security Fellow Todd Bensman joins the podcast after returning from a lengthy trip to the Darien region. He shares how Panama's newly elected president, who took office on July 1, is working to close the Darien Gap to the massive surge of migrants. This region, a roadless jungle connecting Colombia and Panama, has become a strategic choke point for migrants traveling north to the United States. Many of the migrants come from Venezuela, Haiti and countries with high potential security risks. Last year, over 550,000 migrants made their way through the gap, a significant increase from previous years. So great had the volume become that Panama went from screening 90 percent of those passing through the country for terrorism or espionage before 2021 to less than 3 percent in 2024.Bensman emphasizes that the Darien Gap matters to U.S. national security as it's a transit point for migrants from over 170 countries, including those of terrorism concern. Panama's new president recognized this and moved swiftly to set up roadblocks, erect barbed wire, target smuggling networks and more. However, U.S. support, particularly financial backing for deportation flights, has been slow to materialize, allowing the flow to continue.Bensman also delves into the armed militia group that controls critical smuggling routes on the Colombia side of the Darien Gap and speaks about his exclusive CIS interview with the chief of Panama's National Border Service, Director General Jorge Gobea.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestTodd Bensman is the National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedProgress Report: Has Panama Closed the Notorious ‘Darien Gap' Mass Migration Route to the U.S. Border as Promised?Exclusive Interview: Panama Border Security Chief Says Many U.S.-Bound Terror Suspects Caught in Darien Gap RegionCIS at the “Darien Gap”, heart of the U.S. Border Crisis?Intro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

The Center for Immigration Studies has released a new episode of its Parsing Immigration Policy podcast based on a recent Center report, “Sen. Kamala Harris's Attempted Sabotage of Immigration Law Enforcement”, which examines then-Sen. Kamala Harris's immigration track record during her four years in Congress. Based on this comprehensive review of legislation that Harris either wrote or co-sponsored, the episode offers key insights into what immigration policies might look like under a potential Harris administration.George Fishman, the Center's senior legal fellow and podcast guest, says, “If Harris were elected on the same immigration platform she advocated in Congress, her policies would be far more extreme than those of the Biden administration or even the impeached Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. I have never seen anything so extreme.”Fishman discusses radical legislation authored or co-sponsored by Sen. Harris on the border, detention, deportations, asylum fraud, and the handcuffing of immigration enforcement officers – all examples of Harris's views on immigration policy. In his closing remarks, Mark Krikorian, the Center's executive director and the host of the podcast, highlights the recent presidential debate and missed opportunities by both candidates to clearly articulate their views on immigration.HostMark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.GuestGeorge Fishman is Senior Legal Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.RelatedSen. Kamala Harris's Attempted Sabotage of Immigration Law EnforcementIntro MontageVoices in the opening montage:Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comEric is a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, where he runs the new Centre for Heterodox Social Science. He's also an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His new book is The Third Awokening: A 12-Point Plan for Rolling Back Progressive Extremism (its title in the UK is Taboo: How Making Race Sacred Produced a Cultural Revolution). He also runs a 15-week online course on the origins of wokeness that anyone can sign up for.For two clips of our convo — why race/gender/sexuality are now considered sacred identities, and whether peak woke is past us — head to our YouTube page. Other topics: born in Hong Kong with a diplomatic dad; raised in Tokyo and Vancouver; living in the UK ever since; how the US spreads its culture wars abroad; the BLM moral panic; “hate speech”; psychotherapy and Carl Rogers; the psychological harm of growing up with homophobia; the gay rights movement; wedding cakes in Colorado; Jon Rauch; Jon Haidt; the taboos of talking immigration or family structure; the Moynihan Report shelved by LBJ; Shelby Steele's book on white guilt; Coleman Hughes and “intergenerational trauma”; anti-Semitism and the Holocaust; the AIDS crisis; the tradeoffs in trans rights vs. women's rights; the spurious “mass graves” of indigenous Canadians; the CRA of 1964 dovetailing with the Immigration Act of 1965; Chris Caldwell; Richard Hanania; America's original sin of slavery; Locke and Hobbes; Douglas Murray's The War on the West; Churchill; cancel culture; CRT as unfalsifiable; Ibram Kendi; the gender imbalance in various industries; Chris Rufo; how Trump makes wokeness worse; the absence of identity politics in Harris' convention speech; and being comfortable with being “abnormal”.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Rod Dreher on religion and the presidential race, Michelle Goldberg on Harris, David Frum on Trump, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on the history of animal cruelty, John Gray on, well, everything, and Sam Harris for our quadrennial chat before Election Day. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

The evolution of human smuggling from Mexico to the U.S. began in the early 20th century when restrictive U.S. immigration laws first created a demand for illicit crossings. Initially, small-scale "coyotes" helped migrants cross the largely unregulated border to meet labor demands in U.S. industries. However, as U.S. border enforcement intensified with measures such as the Immigration Act of 1924 and the formation of the Border Patrol, smuggling operations became more organized and sophisticated. By the mid-20th century, smugglers employed tactics like safe houses, hidden vehicle compartments, and more remote crossing routes to evade detection, especially after large-scale crackdowns like Operation Wetback in 1954.In recent decades, human smuggling has shifted from small, independent operators to being controlled by powerful Mexican cartels. This shift was driven by increased border security measures, such as Operation Gatekeeper in the 1990s, which pushed smuggling routes into more hazardous areas. Cartels saw human smuggling as an additional revenue stream and used their established networks, resources, and violent enforcement tactics to dominate the trade. Today, human smuggling is a highly profitable and technologically advanced operation run by cartels, who employ high-tech surveillance, encrypted communications, and bribery, making the smuggling of migrants an increasingly dangerous and costly endeavor.(commercial at 15:11)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.

Jen Rubin is joined this week by Adam Hochschild to discuss his book 'American Midnight: Fear, Magic, and the Reconstruction of Race in America'. He explores the parallels between the early 20th century and the present day, highlighting the rise of nativism, paranoia, and conspiracy theories.  Adam delves into the factors that fueled fear and prejudice during World War I, including the conflict between nativists and immigrants, racial tensions, and the conflict between business and labor. He also discusses the role of figures like Louis F. Post and J. Edgar Hoover, as well as the lasting impact of the Immigration Act of 1924.  Jen & Adam chat about how we all  learn from history to prevent the repetition of such events.

In this episode, Diana and Nicole discuss finding immigration records for ancestors arriving in the United States after 1906. They provide a timeline of important immigration laws and their impacts, such as the 1906 establishment of the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, the 1917 Immigration Act, the 1921 Emergency Quota Act, the 1924 National Origins Act, the 1945 War Brides Act, the 1948 Displaced Persons Act, the 1952 Immigration and Naturalization Act, and the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. They explain the importance of using census records, naturalization records, and other U.S. records to gather clues about an ancestor's immigration timeline. They discuss various types of immigration records, including passenger lists, hospital records, detainee lists, and more. Diana and Nicole share a case study on Birger Gustaf Soelberg, tracing his immigration from Sweden to the United States, his residency in Worcester, Massachusetts, his work as a seaman, and his eventual intended emigration to Canada in 1926. They highlight the importance of thorough research in multiple records to piece together an ancestor's immigration story. Links Back to the Basic with Immigration Records: 1906 Forward - https://familylocket.com/back-to-the-basic-with-immigration-records-1906-forward/ Sponsor – Newspapers.com For listeners of this podcast, Newspapers.com is offering new subscribers 20% off a Publisher Extra subscription so you can start exploring today. Just use the code “FamilyLocket” at checkout.  Research Like a Pro Resources Airtable Universe - Nicole's Airtable Templates - https://www.airtable.com/universe/creator/usrsBSDhwHyLNnP4O/nicole-dyer Airtable Research Logs Quick Reference - by Nicole Dyer - https://familylocket.com/product-tag/airtable/ Research Like a Pro: A Genealogist's Guide book by Diana Elder with Nicole Dyer on Amazon.com - https://amzn.to/2x0ku3d 14-Day Research Like a Pro Challenge Workbook - digital - https://familylocket.com/product/14-day-research-like-a-pro-challenge-workbook-digital-only/ and spiral bound - https://familylocket.com/product/14-day-research-like-a-pro-challenge-workbook-spiral-bound/ Research Like a Pro Webinar Series 2024 - monthly case study webinars including documentary evidence and many with DNA evidence - https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-webinar-series-2024/ Research Like a Pro eCourse - independent study course -  https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-e-course/ RLP Study Group - upcoming group and email notification list - https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-study-group/ Research Like a Pro with DNA Resources Research Like a Pro with DNA: A Genealogist's Guide to Finding and Confirming Ancestors with DNA Evidence book by Diana Elder, Nicole Dyer, and Robin Wirthlin - https://amzn.to/3gn0hKx Research Like a Pro with DNA eCourse - independent study course -  https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-ecourse/ RLP with DNA Study Group - upcoming group and email notification list - https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-study-group/ Thank you Thanks for listening! We hope that you will share your thoughts about our podcast and help us out by doing the following: Write a review on iTunes or Apple Podcasts. If you leave a review, we will read it on the podcast and answer any questions that you bring up in your review. Thank you! Leave a comment in the comment or question in the comment section below. Share the episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app.