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