¶ Immigration Policy Debate Introduction
The Feudal Future Podcast .
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Feudal Future Podcast . I'm Marshall Toplansky , I'm Joel Kotkin , and today we are going to be tackling the immigration policy issue . And to help us do that , we've got two outstanding guests . Mike Madrid welcome back , Mike .
Mike is a prominent strategist , mostly working with GOP candidates in the past , but now focusing more on conservative candidates . And Dr Daniel DiMartino , congratulations on getting your PhD Almost right .
Getting your PhD .
And an interesting background . You're a Venezuelan immigrant , you started a group called the Dissident Project and you are a fellow at the Manhattan Institute . Thank you very much both of you for coming . Joel , you want to start us off .
Yeah , let me start off maybe asking Daniel is there anything in between sort of what happened during the Biden administration where you know it was , there was seems to be no controls or what some on the right want , which is essentially to eliminate or reduce immigration ? Is there something in the middle that that might make more sense ? Is there ?
something in the middle that that might make more sense . Well , I think you know , when you say something on the right that they want to eliminate all immigration , that's really just talking heads and a few politicians . The large majority of people , of conservative voters that we have even polled at the Manhattan Institute , believe in legal immigration .
They believe in especially high skilled immigration , because , you know , it's a good thing when good people come to the United States . It's a good thing when they create businesses . It's a good thing when they .
For example , the richest person in the planet is an immigrant who came to America , is Elon Musk , who has created tens of thousands of jobs directly and probably hundreds of thousands of jobs indirectly , plus the innovation I mean . There's so many stories like this .
So you obviously want a certain type of immigration and I think that that's what the vast majority of Americans want . The question is more you know , do you want to give the chance to people who are not really that entrepreneurial or intelligent and , if so , to how many and under what conditions ? Right , and that's where I think the debate really lies .
Well , I would also argue that maybe , when you say intelligent , I think the country could do without any more postmodernist literature professors .
Well , you're assuming that they're intelligent .
Well they're certainly well-trained .
They're well-trained sort of like a dog . But you know , I mean the question , I think , is maybe it's not just education level , it's what they can bring to the country . You know , I remember years ago I was talking with Edmund Rothschild in Switzerland and he said I would rather have a Mexican with a work ethic than a postmodernist professor from Eastern Europe .
And it always stuck with me . It's like you know , what makes America great are people . My grandfather dropped out of the seminary in Russia and became , you know , for a while , the largest dress manufacturer in the United States . You know those . I mean , this is direct .
I mean , I think your family , my family , I'm sure you know well , you're doing it originally and , mike , I assume with your family as well .
Yeah , that's absolutely right originally and , mike , I assume with your family as well . Yeah , that's absolutely right . I mean , look , I think what makes America great in the whole context of immigration in this moment is always focusing on the aspirational elements .
There are certainly economic concerns that are dire if we don't increase immigration levels , there's no question about that . But there are also cultural characteristics .
I would argue and suggest the confidence and institutions that the immigrants have of the American idea , the American experiment , are critical at this moment , as critical as our economic strength and might is going to require from more workers .
Lot that's needed at this moment and unfortunately and Daniel correctly pointed out that you know it's just a handful of politicians , it's just a sliver . Gallup's polling is showing the broadest , highest public levels of support for immigration , really in its history since it's polled .
But a lot of those politicians are particularly powerful and in the right places at the right time at this moment , few though they may be , to drive us to a very different direction than where this country's mythology has always been and it is mythology or to where we need to get for economic and cultural and social reasons .
So , beyond the pandering , which is really what you're really describing , mike , is that politicians are pandering to the current populist zeitgeist . But getting past that , what is the right answer here ? What is the right policy ? How should it change ? What should immigration be based upon ? How do we change the system ? Who wants to jump in ?
first in . I just want to start with a little bit , maybe the frame this um , my um , my wife's canadian um , and for many , many years canada had a very reasonable policy . They had a lot of immigrants but they wanted people who were good for canada . Um , and you know , canada is not as easy a sell as the United States for an immigrant .
But many of them came but then they got away from the skills base . How skills based should it be ? What characteristics are we really looking for ? Because Canada lost the plot on that . They now have- .
They lost it , and they did it because of Trudeau , by the way , in the last 10 years . You know , canada before Trudeau still had twice the level of immigration relative to its population as the US and they had much more public support for immigration . Why is that ? Because the immigrants that they admitted spoke the language .
They had twice the share of college educated immigrants as America . In America , one third of immigrants have a college degree , in Canada , two-thirds .
Right .
In Canada immigrants did really well . They didn't commit crime . Right I mean , there were very few stories of immigrant crime . In America . You get a lot of stories of immigrant crime because of actually the education component . So in my research I find something really interesting .
So the likelihood that an immigrant who is a high school dropout going to prison is approximately a thousand times greater than an immigrant who is college educated .
Wow .
Wow , if you just shifted the flow towards more educated immigrants , you are going to see massive reductions in immigrant crime . You're going to see people who pay much more in taxes than receiving benefits . You're going to see massive reductions in immigrant crime . You're going to see people who pay much more in taxes than receiving benefits .
You're going to see people who speak the language right , like you can't be xenophobic against somebody saying , oh , you can't speak . You know , in this country we speak English or whatever , if the immigrants do speak .
English . But can you make a system edufilic ? Can you say , ok , we're going to put a bar down , you've got to have these educational requirements to get in .
I would think skills as a thought right , does that make sense ? I mean other words . I mean I'm not a great believer that college educated people are any better than anyone else , but there are some college educated people . This is not a moral worth .
This is not a moral worth calculation . In fact , many college dropouts are the richest people in the world because they dropped out of college right . I'm not saying that you need a college degree ,
¶ Skill-Based Immigration Benefits
but you know a college degree abroad means something different than a college degree in America . Only 5% of the population of India has a college degree . The Indians that America gets are very different from the Indians who live in India .
Right .
And that is a very important component . Right , the average immigrant in the US from a country is not like the average person from the country they came from , and that's actually a great thing . I just saw a comparison today . That was fascinating . The average Pakistani immigrants in the US make the household income is over $100,000 .
In the United Kingdom it's about $28,000 . And that is because the UK selected for very bad Pakistanis . America selected for much better Pakistanis .
Well , and what would you define better ? What are the criteria that define better ?
Yeah , I shouldn't have said better perhaps , but I mean , on many measures it is objectively better right . They are much less likely to be criminals , which has been . I mean , that's the biggest issue right now in the UK politically the Pakistani rape gangs .
We don't have Pakistani rape gangs in the United States , Thank God , and that is because the Pakistanis who first want to come to America and America lets in are very different from the Pakistanis that the UK and the European countries have allowed in but the biggest group of immigrants is Latino .
How do we approach that ? I mean , obviously , I , obviously I assume in Mexico , more than 5% of the population has a college education . How do we decide ? You know which people from Latin America we want ? You know that is our neighborhood . That's been the biggest source of immigration for at least 50 years .
Well , we'll start with Mike on this .
Maybe Mike ? Yeah , I don't know .
Well , look , and again my my reticence about . There's a reason why immigration reform is only done once every generation , or less in the current scenario , and the reason is because a nation has to grapple with these very questions who are we and who are we going to be ? How is that going to change ?
It's why the Immigration Reform Act done in the 20s was very different than what was done under Johnson in the mid-60s and very different than the 86 reform , and it's why we haven't been able to do it for 40 years . And it's getting more complicated as we become a more racially diverse society .
That is one of the main reasons why it has become so intransigent in our politics . So I think that we run a real risk of just saying that it's economic output that is better Quantifiably . There's a lot of value in that and we must prioritize economic advantage .
You can't just have people who are coming in as a drain on your economy or your society for sure , and I don't know when .
Like the population in the UK that Daniel was talking about .
Yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah . No one here is making that argument . I understand that . I'm not trying to suggest anybody is , but what I am saying is this country is also facing some very unique challenges at this moment . Certainly many economic , which I believe can largely be solved for with a good immigration policy .
But we are also at a place as a society where we have this historically low confidence in our institutions and the idea of America , american democracy and the American project itself . That doesn't come from college-educated , even immigrants okay . That doesn't come from college educated , even immigrants OK .
That aspirational element has not just an economic component for it , because more often than not these folks will do the jobs that nobody else does , for it inculcates the mythology of America with this tomorrow's going to be better , which is kind of what we bank on in this country . That is culturally requires that kind of thinking .
That's why immigration , I think , has always been part of this mythology . We always need somebody to come in with that belief system and once we start to see , as we have a , a , a , with the exception of the biden years , a leveling out of our immigration and an emphasis on the us born , an erosion of the cultural institutions that have made this country work .
I don't think we talked about that nearly enough in this country .
That's a very interesting point because if you were to play that out further , what I've heard thus far is there is some basic economic criteria that defines the people not being a drain on the system , and that there's an attitudinal issue that you're pointing to , that immigrants must have that basically say , hey , I'm here in order to be able to get on the
escalator right to get on the American experiment .
That's one of the big problems in the UK , daniel , because I write largely for people in London , so I have to stay up with it . Stay up with it . You know you get a lot of immigrants who think that you know , you know the whole settler colonial thing and you know in , oh , absolutely and .
And then you've got people coming from the middle east who are basically supporting terrorist organizations and they're much more culturally and religiously different as well I mean the immigrants that america gets are largely christian right
uh , that's another point , and and so I think that we need to grapple with the cultural different as well . I mean , the immigrants that America gets are largely Christian . That's another point , and so I think that we need to grapple with the cultural question .
Mike , I agree , though economically I think we still , you know , I mean , the current system does not select for people who are economically beneficial . The current system allows , for example , to Americans to sponsor their elderly parents , who are all net drags on the federal budget , as I've found , by hundreds of thousands of dollars .
They're just importing retirees , when the entire point of immigration is supposedly to be a demographic boom a lot of immigrants are actually a drag .
So do we end that ? I think that should be ended .
Chain migration in that way should be ended and should be replaced with admitting a lot more young people who are hopefully more educated at least not high school dropouts and have an 60-year-old . They're probably going to have less likely to have a kid than a 30-year-old or a 20-year-old .
So demographically that matters , they're more likely to learn English even if they don't speak it if you're younger . So all these things are about the latter and economic .
And then on the cultural portion , I think the biggest concern I hear from people who are on the right as well as me but think differently on immigration is that what you mentioned , mike , which is that this country has lost confidence . People don't love America anymore . So how can you assimilate immigrants if people don't love America anymore ?
To which my answer is the average immigrant in polling believes more in America and wants other countries to look more like America than the average native-born person . So this is an education problem , not an immigration problem .
I could not agree more . That's exactly it . So much of what is ailing the body politic , if not our society , is this lack of confidence in the American idea , the American experiment we're seeing with polling all the time , and it gets worse as you get older . By the way , it gets worse as you get older and wealthier , which there's a correlation there .
So there's what Daniel's saying I agree with , sorry . What gets worse as you get older the lack of confidence in the future of America . Oh , I see you get older . The lack of confidence in the future of America , oh , I see , yeah .
And so the younger , that younger , and that's why I was saying aspiration is a very important aspect of the American idea , and young people are far more aspirational than old people . And there needs to . We do need to modify for education levels and skill levels . Of course we do , and I would leave it to the three of you who
¶ Cultural Versus Economic Immigration Value
probably understand the economic arguments better than I do and what industries need those . But we certainly can't make it exclusive to that . I don't think anybody's arguing that either , but I do believe we are in a crisis moment , with population decline , with cultural decline , with the confidence and institutional collapse .
Any one of these could be cataclysmic for what this country has always been , because we've almost always been infused by some sort of notion about the future of America , either domestically , at times of slow migration , or when we've had these huge immigration numbers coming in during certain decades in our country's history We've never , at least in the era of modern
polling , had such little confidence in the future of the country , its basic institutions or all of the social institutions that make American democracy work .
That's all hitting right as population decline is coming and as we , I think , economically need to have a sane immigration policy to promote the industries , if for no other reason than keeping you know the economy going , as Daniel correctly pointed out , but also to sustain the social safety net .
Like the charade of Social Security only works with people paying into it .
People paying into it . Well , japan , now you know that had historically been close to immigrants because of their problem that they're losing over a million people a year in population and their massive aging Right .
Like a huge portion of the population is now retired , they're literally just letting now an unlimited number of people to take care of the elderly , because there are no young people to take care of the elderly .
Because there are no young people to take care of the elderly , like your economy would shrink , not just because there are fewer workers because they die , but because more of those workers now need to work taking care of the elderly , but you're not producing anything anymore .
So I think the demographic question is very important , but I do think we need to focus more on education , and you know people blame immigration for a lot of issues that I don't think should be blamed on . Which decade did the US have the lowest share of immigrants of its population ? It was going to be beautiful and great .
That's not really what caused , you know , the strife are the most vociferous about undocumented and essentially open borders people .
But the reality is that we're putting them into an economy , let's say here in Southern California , which is producing very few decent jobs and where these kids are being put into educational system . That is a total and complete disaster . That is a total and complete disaster .
In a study we did at Chapman University , we looked at all the schools with the name Cesar Chavez in the school and the scores were so incredibly low and as Gloria Romero , who was on our show that discussed it , who is a former state senator and actually was a majority leader , gloria just said look , you know , the problem is that that we're putting these Latino
communities .
We were looking at numbers in the 20s 20-ish percent of people who were either met or exceeded the grade level for reading and math who you know .
daughter of immigrants , um , she went to erasmus high school in new york , um and she got a reasonably good education and nobody you know I mean the new york city school system , um was actually quite good at one time and and it was absorbing those in harlem .
If you go to central harlem , zero percent of the kids graduating high school in Central Harlem are proficient in math .
Zero , zero Wow .
That's astounding . And it's not just that immigrants are failing us , it's we're failing the immigrants .
That's part of it , tripwire , though , because if we're going to end chain immigration , how do you handle the parent , the elderly , parents of the younger person coming over to be able to see their grandkids ? Is it a tourist visa ? Is it , I mean , is there a separate class for that ?
I mean , do you , do you pay for the social services you make them bank for that that there's some myth about chain immigration like , oh , americans are not going to be able to sponsor their families anymore .
Americans can't already sponsor their families on their current channels because they're so backlogged that if you want to bring your sibling to the us it's going to take 20 years and in the meantime they can't even visit .
So like you're just letting in people who were sponsored 20 years ago , who have very little education , who are going to get on welfare , and it's really bad . So the extended family of Americans just needs to end and turn into a points-based hopefully system .
But for the elderly parents at least , what Republicans have put out in the past in legislation was to turn it into a visa that allows them to come and live here as long as their children are here , Americans , and they can stay here indefinitely . They just can't get a green card and can't become a citizen through that channel .
And can't get social services .
So that they can't get social security and Medicare , which is the biggest issue .
So , okay , it's fascinating to me this political discussion and , Mike , I'd love you to weigh in here . Republicans actually came up with a solution for this . It was actually a bipartisan thing right . People came up and crafted what happened . Why has this not happened ?
Oh , you mean , like the Gang of Egg Bill , like over 10 years ago , the entire thing .
Right , this is before the last election , right . Why did this not progress ?
I'll tell you exactly why . The right way to solve the immigration challenge from a policy perspective is not difficult . We've known how to do it for 40 years . There's details you can go back and forth on and maybe that's where the devils get caught up , but the policy framework , 85% of it's there . You've got to have tough border security .
It's always started with border security . You've got to make sure that that's where the process begins . And then there's got to be some pathway of citizenship that wrestles with all the questions that we're talking about today
¶ Failed Immigration Reform Politics
. The problem is the politics . Both sides , both sides of the aisle , have had a vested interest in a broken system . The democrats have never put forward up until up until they took the langford build as their own , ironically last year .
They've never in decades , since 86 , ever had a border security policy ever Okay , because they were afraid , for good reason , that the Republicans would say well , let's just take that and not do the pathway part , because the Republicans were not going to do the pathway part in any meaningful way .
What the Republicans would largely get to was some sort of Bracero-styled worker program , and that would of course not meet the needs of the Democrats , and what that would allow is the Democrats to call the Republicans racists and the Republicans to call the Democrats open borders .
That worked really well for 30 years for both sides , until it didn't , and the year that it didn't was 2024 , when Latino voters themselves changed Because the borders were out of control .
They were so high and you were seeing Latinos , even in California at Prop 187 white voter level , saying the undocumented are a burden on the social security system , on the taxpayer . Latinos were saying 63% of Latinos said in a Telemundo poll that undocumented , that the illegal , are a burden to taxpayers . It's exact same number and they are .
I mean they actually are , and that's my point is , both sides are playing irresponsibly with a system that is not that hard to figure out .
The policy framework is not that complicated when it gets done I think people do get hung up in the policy framework in Congress because , just from experience from the people I've talked to , if you go to a Democrat office and you say let's do something about high-skilled immigration , they will tell you no , I don't want to do anything until we give amnesty , I
don't care about high-skilled immigration . They will tell you no , I don't want to do anything until we give amnesty , I don't care about high-skilled immigration . And if you go to a Republican office and you say something about high-skilled immigration , they're like I'm not going to do anything until all the illegals are deported .
And so at the end the illegal immigration issue is actually a big disagreement point now .
It's a political problem that manifests itself in policy . That Gang of Eight proposal is essentially the way this is going to work out , whether it's in 10 days or 10 years or 50 years , because that's the policy framework . That's never really changed . We can argue about what level are skilled or unskilled ?
Yes , that's technically a policy issue , but as you found in that Republican office , that's technically a policy issue , but as you found in that Republican office , it's a non-starter . Why Not ? For policy reasons .
Every large employer in that Republican district is saying I need more immigrants , but they won't because everybody else is saying hell , no , build a wall , dig a moat and light it on fire and shoot them in the legs when they're coming across .
Well , so , arguably , though , right if you look at the reality of the streets , of stopping illegal immigration , the border has actually been sealed up . Right , the , the supposed bad guys are being rounded up .
You could argue about whether the humanity of that is being factored in or not , but at some point in time , relatively quickly , relatively soon , the Republicans could legitimately take the W right . They could legitimately say , ok , we've got it done . When does that happen ?
I think it's going to be soon . Actually , because the one big beautiful bill that passed , I mean the amount of money , I mean ICE is going to have twice its budget over the next four years . They're building detention centers all over the country with this money that are just opening . Now they just opened one , I think , in Nebraska .
They opened the one in Florida . They're opening more in different states In Indiana , I think it's next . They opened the one in Florida . They're opening more in different states , in Indiana , I think it's next . So so they're going to just be detaining more and more people .
The question and this is where I think Republicans are going to have a politically tricky is you know , there will be sad stories and there will be more and more . Now the media has been also good about turning actually very legitimate instances of detention , like it just happened in DC .
Some Washington Post journalists started complaining about this illegal immigrant who got arrested in the National Mall and they're like , oh , I just called and see what happened . Like this poor person was yelling for help in Spanish . Turns out he was somebody who was arrested for assault of a minor , like sexual assault of a minor .
So , like you know , this is not a sad story .
This is a great use of government power to deport someone and , yeah , but I would think that , knowing the media and seeing the tenor of the discussion , the more that these things go on , the more the Hitlerian , dystopic , nazi horror story side of the story is being told , which makes Republicans vulnerable .
So at some point they're going to have to get Kristi Noem off television , right , they're going to have to be able to say we have taken care of it , promises kept , it's done and now here's the proposal for really fixing the problem .
Well , and I think what's missed is you know I've done a lot about this there are many places in the Republican world , you know , immigrants are moving to red states , not to blue states , because that's right . Anybody with a room temperature IQ knows that if you're trying to make it in this country , you're much better off going to Texas and California .
Just , you know , unless because of the Mike Mike's point , of that belief in institutions .
Right . So so I think a lot of Republicans are going to have trouble . Exactly what you said . Like , I interviewed a guy in North Dakota . He's got a , he's got a factory there . Every time , every week , he calls the refugee boards center in in Fargo because he needs workers , because there just aren't enough people in North Dakota to do the jobs .
So I mean there should be some pressure on the Republicans to address this , since it's happening in their own states .
Also , you'll find this interesting just finishing a study for the University of Texas on Latinos and income , and one of the things we found is that actually Latinos do better in red states than they do in blue states when you factor in the income .
Well , in blue states , illegal immigrants are put on Medicaid . This is why California has been so bad . Remember , california extended its Medicaid program to all illegal immigrants . New York did too . So it also attracts a different type of immigrant . That's a good point .
That's going for welfare rather than for work , and that is why America is so fundamentally different now than it was , you know , in the past .
Well , I don't agree with that . I think that there's a demographic explanation , which is why it's so fundamentally different , which is the US born Latino is 80% of the growth . It's no longer over the past 30 years . It was largely a first generation recently naturalized . It's not even close to that anymore .
But you made a really good point earlier when you were talking about the stage being set for Donald Trump to come in and get comprehensive immigration reform done . Irony of irony , right Define the conventionalism . It's all there . It's all set .
Well , it's Nixon in China . Hold on it's .
Nixon in China . That's the exact way . But and the question becomes , will they do it ? So let me poke at that a little bit . The first is you have to recognize the Democrats lost this fight , this war of attrition .
The 2024 election , the Democrats were completely eviscerated because the Latino voter changed , as I mentioned , overwhelmingly US born , changing views on immigration , border out of control , economic pressures , dollar weakening , inflation out of control . Latino voters were like these guys are nuts , Get rid of them , toss them out . And their views ?
The young male , Latino , non-college educated voter looked exactly on a pole , the same way a white , non-college educated voter . On immigration , there was literally no difference . So the Democrats panic . They adopt the Langford bill of all things right , A Republican bill . They tried to call it bipartisan .
All you wanted the Langford bill was a strong Republican bill . We can change our views on that . Now that's just where it's at . That's where it's been for 10 years . The Republicans
¶ Red States' Immigrant Success Stories
then go wait , wait , wait , wait , wait , wait , wait . It's like negotiating with Arafat Wait , wait , wait , wait . We gave you everything you wanted and then it's like wait , wait , wait , wait , wait , wait , wait . I'm not really in a negotiating position here . Why ?
For exactly what I said and I've been working on immigration politics in the Republican Party for 30 years . There is no end point that the Republicans want . There is no goal . The goal is to keep this as a political football Well .
I think you're blaming it too much . Let me finish . Well , look .
I've been doing this a long time . I've yet to see anybody , since right after the 86 deal was done , that can point to me where that was not the case , even Marco Rubio and the Gang of Eight . He held onto it for maybe 20 minutes before he completely abandoned it and said I don't know anything about this or what happened or who worked on it .
Okay , there are pressures , especially coming from California ag , california service industries , hotels , pushing Republican members saying we're in deep trouble if we don't get some sort of relief here on the labor problem that we have .
The more likely resolution than an immigration reform pathway will be a worker program , which is what Congresswoman Salazar has essentially introduced in this bipartisan way .
Well , also , there are also some issues there , by the way , that most people haven't heard of . I mean the entire legalization program , by the way and I , by the way , I love that she's attempting this and I'm a big fan of Congresswoman Salazar personally for her stance on many issues have to pay $1,000 a year for seven years . You're $7,000 .
It's not actually enough to compensate for the cost of these people once they're legal and then , second , it actually exempts them from paying payroll taxes for life . It's a huge problem because her bill was co-drafted with a Democrat and most people are not talking about so .
So there's a lot of issues with the Dignity Act , but you know you blame it on Republicans and the politics of it no , I blame it on Republicans and the politics of it no I blame it on both . You said there's no end point . I think there's no end point in so many issues , right , because Republicans don't agree with each other on so many issues .
What is the Republican goal for health care reform ? What is the Republican goal for education reform ? What is the Republican goal for immigration reform ? The Democrats have it very easy .
They want open borders , and most of them , I would say at least that's what Biden showed they want free college education . They want government health care . So they know where they . Who supports open borders ? I don't even know what that means . I think the suggestion is if you don't have a policy , then you're de facto open borders .
If that's true , and that is a legitimate argument , you can make the same argument about the Republicans not having a plan either , which means- .
Well , no , because we saw it . Under Biden we had the largest illegal immigration wave in US history , over 2 million people a year coming in net .
Well , I guess the question- .
We're seeing no pathway under Trump . Now we're seeing the exact reverse , exactly .
Well , but it's not- . But now , at least under Trump , you can argue that border is closed .
And I said from the beginning , there are two pieces to this . There's an open border piece and there's a pathway piece . Right , you can't do one and take the moral high ground . You can't do one and take the moral high ground . You can't .
It's just , it's disingenuous , it's not an intellectually honest argument , mike but don't you think , yeah , don't you think , that people would obviously prefer the status quo now , where there is no illegal immigration , on the status quo under Biden , even if there's no pathway ? Of course ? I don't know what that means .
I think that the issue is now many Republicans are thinking you know , and I think't know what that means . The 1986 amnesty . How many people were amnestied in 86 ? Three million , Everybody , I hear now are saying that oh , California turned blue because of the amnesty .
No , California was always liberal . That is quantifiably wrong .
I know because half of the illegals that were legalized did not even pursue citizenship . So now we're talking about only one and a half million . Half of them live in California , so only 750K , and only half of them actually turn out to vote . Half million , half of them live in California , so only 750K , and only half of them actually turn out to vote .
And then some of them vote Republican . So you can only explain top like 300,000 net votes for Democrats in California out of a margin of like four million . Right , but step back , step back for just a second right .
Let's just challenge this . But step back . Step back for just a second Right . Let's just challenge this . So in the in the short term before the midterm elections , if there were a Comprehensive immigration reform package proposed and passed , it would have to be attributed to the Republicans . It would have to be attributed to the Republicans .
Yeah , true , there's no way that you would sit down and say , oh , everybody's going to vote Democratic now because the Republicans put the reform in . No , this is an opportunity for the Republicans to institutionalize support among- .
And to do it on their terms , Right so why wouldn't that happen ?
You talked , mike , about the benefit that both sides get from obfuscating the issue and from making it a football , but in fact , here's a case where you could actually institutionalize the win .
Let me add more to this , because you're not only right , there's even more okay If Donald Trump were to go out and do comprehensive immigration reform with just Republican support .
You completely eviscerate all of the non-profit immigration advocacy groups as completely feckless and completely useless , because they've got nothing done since 86 and we're not a part at all of any of the process that got done . So there's a brilliant political stroke , let alone an economic and cultural stroke that goes on there .
So the question becomes why wouldn't she ? And look , let's also be very clear there is a Republican end game to this . There is . It is whatever Donald Trump wants . Donald Trump can deliver whatever he wants and he will absolutely get the votes . Paul Gosar himself said I will vote for whatever Donald Trump
¶ Trump's Immigration Reform Opportunity
wants on immigration reform Anything , gosar . So yes , there is an end game . The question is does it help him and does he want it ? I don't believe that there's anything that he intuitively would want to see with more immigrants , but I do know he is very open to the idea of economic pressures , to say , in order to fix the economy .
This is what we need to do Now . The challenge there is you don't need to do immigration reform to get a huge amount of workers in with a legal process in a Bracero-type worker program without anything immigration-related at the end .
I think it's potential that the type of plan that they would pursue and I still think that's a good plan is actually one that has zero , no amnesty at all .
It's a plan that reforms the legal system and makes it better , that makes it more skills based , that maybe adds some more guest workers , and then he continues using the money that he got from the OBB to pursue mass deportations . I think that's totally plausible as deportations . I think that's totally plausible .
And , by the way , the last immigration reforms was 86 , right , that was the last amnesty , but not the last immigration reform , which was right before the midterm of Reagan's second term , and it was 1990 Immigration Act which actually increased legal immigration under George W Bush HW , and that was also right before the midterms .
So I mean , these things do happen .
Yeah , so watch this channel is what you're really saying is that there's an opportunity that may present itself and from the political side .
This is at least my memory , mike . I might be wrong , but it seemed to me that Reagan did fairly well among Hispanic voters and among Asian voters , and so did George W Bush also did fairly well .
Yeah , yeah , I tend to see this a little bit , though that is all true , and I think Daniel did a really good job of showing why the 86 had very , very little political impact . I mean it's just so overblown right . There's these theories on the right about how this is about getting illegals to vote and making a permanent blue America or whatever .
There's no evidence of that , even with an enormous amnesty . 3 million is a very big number .
The majority of foreign-born Hispanics actually voted Republican in 2024 . Your research found them Like they got the majority .
It wasn't just Hispanics . Research found them like . They got the majority hispanics . It was the majority of all immigrants , dense precincts , every ethnic in the entire country , and that's part of a larger class realignment . So , but back and back , going back to the 80s .
That was never the case up until 2024 , by the way , and it's part of the parties , the coalitions of both parties , changing . What we saw , going back to the machinery of immigrants back around Ellis Island , was that 80 percent of immigrants of Eastern European heritage would come and vote automatically with the Democratic Party .
Part of the assimilative effect would be as they became more Republican . That was true with Hispanics up until 2024 . That was true with Hispanics up until 2024 . So all of this is a clear line of data saying that and that was , by the way , that was the false assumption that Democrats were working off of when they believe that demographics is destiny .
All they needed to do was have Latinos have more babies , and in 18 years .
And we'll have more Democrats .
Right , yeah , we're just winning by Democrats . That was a really bad assumption . I was saying it then , joel . You and I were both saying it then . This is not the way culture works . That's not the way ethnicity works . That's manifesting now . But now we are in this place where Republicans are winning all immigrants .
Every immigrant's dense precinct in the entire country shifted to the right .
I mean they're still not winning Asian immigrants . I think that's important to say .
They did shift drastically to the right .
Like here in Jersey the places that shifted were the Hispanic voters and Indian voters In New York City , in Flushing , effectively taken the good stance on . That overwhelmingly affect immigrant families , by the way , because , think about it , the whole issue of affirmative action was this combination against the children of Asian immigrants .
That's what this issue was about . It was pitting the black base of American voters really rich the rich black base , because those were the people getting into Harvard , not the poor black students against the children of Asian Americans .
You know this is . Let me ask you for a very blunt , short answer on this . If you had to handicap this horse race and give a percentage of likelihood of having some form of immigration reform bill on the docket before the 2026 midterm , what percentage would you give that ?
I honestly would give it a low percentage . I'm a pessimist , but a low percentage that is higher than what I've ever thought , probably 10% .
Okay , mike , what do you think ?
Final shot I would say probably nine .
You just want it to be a little lower .
Yeah , it's very , very low . It makes all the political sense in the world . I just again having worked in GOP politics and understanding what is driving the base . They won't do it for political reasons .
Well , guys , this is from your lips . Hopefully not to God's ears . Hopefully we'll actually get something of concrete nature , but we really appreciate the conversation today and your insights into this . This is obviously one of the biggest challenges our country is facing . It's core to the question that Mike is raising of institutional trust .
Yes , and we really appreciate your sharing your thoughts with us . Thank you .
Of course , I had a great time .
Okay , we'll see you again on the Feudal Future podcast . Okay .
The Feudal Future podcast .