All I can do is communicate both to the American public and to the individuals seeking protection that they need to wait. We are not saying don't come. We are saying don't come now, because we will be able to deliver um safe and orderly process to them as quickly as possible. What point does it become a crisis? Well, I would say, I don't think we need to meet your bar of what we need to call it. We had the Secretary of Homeland Security yesterday conveying it's a challenge.
We're going to approach this without labeling. We're going to approach this with policy, with humanity, uh, and with a focus on what we can do to keep these kids safe. So I was struck by a level of what seemed to me at the time dumbness yesterday of arguing over whether something is a crisis or a challenge. Right, But then I did see some quotes come forward from people that called it a crisis when it was at a much lower level when was president, but now say this
at a much higher level is not a crisis. So to discuss the messaging and more importantly, the reality, it's a pleasure to welcome back to the Armstrong and Getty show, Mark Recordy and the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies Market It's been too long. How are you. I'm doing very well. I guess we can't transfer germs now, you know, over the phone, So I'm happy to come back now after a while. Well, the reason we hadn't talked to you is the whole immigration thing got solved
and there was really nothing to talk about. So yeah, so hey, Mark, let's start with what is this situation on the border and or moving toward the border right now? The Biden administration has basically advertised that they're gonna undo all of the stuff Trump did. I'm not gonna tear down anymore wall with the're not building anymore. And more importantly, they're discontinuing these various policies that Trump put in place.
Since Congress isn't changing changing laws to sick plug some of the loopholes that were drawing people, he had to do stuff with executive authority, and that means Biden can undo it. He is undoing it. The thing is for him, he realizes that if he just undoes everything all at once, you're gonna have huge number of people just show up at the border. So they're trying to slow walk some of these changes, and you know what, the illegal immigrants
aren't cooperating with the Biden administration's agenda. Yeah, exactly, And so that's why you end up with these farcical performances where the Homeland Security Secretary is saying, no, it's a it's a stressful challenge, it's not a crisis. I mean, it's ludicrous. Uh, and they just can't admit it that. I don't know that they really have much of a way out of it, because if people who are coming across and you're seeing these people with kids who are
coming across. A lot of this you've seen in South Texas, but not just there. They're you know, given a piece of paper and let go, just like it was before the catch and release thing. And you know, these people aren't stupid. They have cell phones. They call home and they say, hey, yeah, you know, it worked, and so they're you know, neighbor across the street and the brother in law says, hey, you know, maybe we should give
it a try to And how do you stop that? Um, this administration has kind of been a blind I mean it's bad for the country, but it is kind of you know, it's kind of like past the popcorn and uh, you know, watch these guys twist themselves like pretzels, trying to explain this ridiculous situation that they've helped create. So
I was trying to dig up. I don't know if you have in front of in front of you some of the numbers that came out in the last few days about how many people are trying to come across the border, how many kids they now have, they're um just I mean, it's it's a huge increase very recently, and you're saying that those numbers could go up from there almost certainly. I mean the unaccompanied miners, these are, you know, people under eighteen, not really on a company.
They're illegal immigrant relatives in the US. Sometimes their parents sometimes other relatives pay smugglers to bring them up to the Mexican border, and then they get across and flag down the border patrols. Those numbers have gone. They grew in January, they were like more than December. In February they were like fifty more than in January, and they're
projecting something like thirteen thousand in May. And I think that's low because last month was nine thousand something like that, of these so called unaccompanied miners who obviously under law have to be dealt with differently rather than just, you know, with the way you would deal with an adult. And um, it's only gonna get worse. I mean, it's just until the Biden administration does something to change what they're doing at the border, there's just gonna be more and more
people coming. And they're not just from Central America. They're coming from the Caribbean, but also from Africa and the Middle East and all over the place. I appreciate you bringing up the stark rise in the numbers of folks trying across the border, because I think the unsophisticator, people who just aren't news junkies, figure, Okay, you've got a more or less constant flow of people who'd like to come into the country. Then you have little changes in
policy and administration to another. But as you point out the change in policy, the announcements by the Biden administration, those echo deafeningly loudly throughout Central America in the world, and the coyotes and the cartels they say, Okay, now let's ramp up our operations, let's pour people into the US border. They react, and they react quickly, of course. Yeah. And I mean the you know, January and February are months when the numbers of crossings almost always go down.
As you can imagine, you know, it's it's flow. They're
going up. And there are you know, there are people from the people who follow this stuff down in Central America are saying that the smugglers are actually marketing Biden's you know, policies and the fact that now Trunk has gone their marketing that in you know, towns and villages in Central America as a reason to get while they're getting is good before the green goes changed their minds and it's so bad, and we published we posted something on this on our website cis dot org yesterday that
some of the smuggling groups are now um making wrist bands like at a water park for the aliens that they're smuggling, to make sure they can keep track of who's paid and who hasn't because there's so many people there, and the different smuggling groups have different color wrist bands with logos. They've got numbers on them, their computerized you know,
have you paid, have you where's your relatives? Live back in the Old Country all that kind of stuff, because it's it's such a flow that even the smuggling groups are having trouble sort of getting a handle on how many people there are. Hey, what do you use for a number for how many illegals we have in the United States? Um, I was watching on Tucker Carlson showing Fox here the night he was he did a montage
of how many people use the number eleven million. It's just like became a talking point over many years, and he said there was a study out of Harvard and m I t I believe it was, and their number was more like somewhere between sixteen and twenty nine million, with the with the most likely number being somewhere around three. Yeah. I mean, we've looked into it some we're doing a deeper dive into it now. And some of the problems that Tucker highlighted in that piece on his are real
problems with the numbers. The thing is, I just you know, I do not think it's twenty million people. It just isn't now. I don't think it's yea. And one of the real you know, the reason people are suspicious is because he look the number isn't changing what's going on. It's been the same. You know, how can it be the same all these years? Well, the fact is new illegals are coming all the time, but people leak out of the illegal population all the time to some go home.
But also one out of four new Green card recipients, new so called legal immigrants, are illegal aliens were already living here. So there's always this churn. There's new people coming in, and there's people who were illegals were basically no longer illegals one way or another. So you know, maybe it's twelves, maybe it's thirteen million. Uh, it just can't be twenty million. You'd see it in the birth records,
the death records, the school enrollment. I mean, you can't just misplace ten million people, you know what I'm interesting? And how many illegals do you need? You know, Mark, we've got about thirty seconds left before a hard break. But even you're occasionally called anti immigrant, which is ridiculous and insulting. Give us thirty seconds on c I S
is vision of immigration policy in the US. We're a think tank as opposed to an advocacy group, and what we try to do is make the case for a pro immigrant policy of lower numbers, in other words, fewer immigrants, but a warmer welcome for those people we do legally lead into our country. And I think that's kind of where most people. I think you're right. I think you're right. Yep. Center for Immigration Studies Market Correans, the executive director c
i S dot org. Will have a link in Armstrong and getty dot com so you can read and look at more markets. Always enlightening. Thanks for the time, Thank you, and uh and who do you take? Should be a major part of the conversation. Um. I like the philosophy We've got enough poor people. Why would we want more unskilled poor people? How does that benefit America? Well? How does that benefit the poor people? Sometimes got a job?
Caesar Chavez. That was one of his main points. He wanted to stop a legal immigration Excuse me, my allergy is going crazy this time here, uh, to avoid undercutting the wages of his people.