All Zone Media. Hello podcast fans, Me James and my friend Scherene and also Cherene's cat Bunny.
Yes, yeah, she is here. She is here and ready to pard.
Yeah. She loves to cast a pod and so do we. Today, Serene, we have the great pleasure of talking about the border again, which is something I talk about a lot, something that politicians also talk about a lot. Today, what I want to talk about is the difference between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump when it comes to the border, because shockingly, there's been a lot of crap reporting on her border stance.
There has been some good reporting, and like, there's always going to be right wing disinformation anytime you talk about the border.
Right.
Just today, Border Patrol released video of a woman falling to her death from the border wall. Border Patrol agents
stood there for twenty four minutes watching her struggle. There was a ladder, and they decided to watch her struggle until she died as she fell, and then she died well watching this like objectively tragic thing, right, Like, when we think about how we get to fascism, we get to fascism when my taxes pay people to stand there and watch a woman die rather than do a single thing to help her, and then a bunch of fuck wits on the internet immediately start excusing this like it's
it's so predictable that it was going to happen, And I'm just once again disgusted by the whole fucking apparatus sit as the border. I guess, so I want to talk about the things that have changed, right, and I want to talk. We'll sort of start by outlining who Kamale is with respect to the aborder. So everything she took over from Biden, Kamala has been sort of offering more platitudes than specifics, right, Like her campaign is mostly
based on vibes. Like I went to her campaign website to see what her stances were on the border, it is not mentioned. I think that's notable. But recently, in some speeches she did offer some concrete ideas of what her border policy might look like. So I'm going to start with her campaign ad. This ad incidentally opens with what I'm pretty sure is a drone shot from Campo, California. I've taken pictures in reverse of that shot hundreds of times.
You can find them on my website.
Slate bought some of them off me maybe a month or two ago, No, not even like maybe maybe two or three weeks ago.
I guess.
I watched a mother breastfeed her five month old child, maybe a couple of miles from there. It was one hundred and five degrees. We were able to give them water. I saw someone in severe hypothermia right very hot. We were able to call them off. I spoke to a Sudanese family who were really struggling with making this long walk. They have to make out there. None of that shit made it into the Kamela Border advert, right, of course not. So I'm just going to play this advert for you, Shulan.
On the border. The choice is simple.
Kamala Harris supports increasing the number of border patrol agents. Donald Trump blocked a bill to increase the number of border patrol agents. Kamala Harris supports investing in new technology to block fetanyl from entering the country. Donald Trump blocked funding for technology to block fentanyl from entering the country. Kamala Harris supports spending more money to stop human traffickers.
Donald Trump blocked money to stop human traffickers. Kamala Harris prosecuted trains national gang members and got them sentenced to prison. Trump is trying to avoid being sentenced to prison. There's two choices in this election, the one who will fix our broken integration system and the one who's trying to stop her.
A cop or a clown? Who should we vote for president?
And that's exactly it, right.
She's leaning really heavily on this, like I am a cop thing and like we have spent and continue to spend billions of dollars on board of cops.
That is not the fucking solution. It will be the solution.
We cannot make this giant border so full of cops that it's impossible for people to cross it.
People will still cross.
It because cops ain't going to go to the middle of the desert, because, you know, be inherent in being a cop is also being lazy. So I want to play some stuff that she said in Atlanta this week.
So here is my pledge to you. As president.
I will bring back the border security bill that Donald Trump killed and I will sign.
It into law.
And so Donald Trump, what real leadership looks like?
Oh fuck off?
Yeah, So I'm going to subject you to some Carmela and some Trump today.
That's okay. I signed up for this.
Okay, So here's another one of her, and this I think is really telling, right where she is bragging about the most conservative Republican supporting her bill.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, he's been talking a big game about securing our border, but he does not walk the walk, or as my friend Quavo would say, he does not walk it like he talks it. Where if so, Look, our administration worked on the most significant border security bill in decades. Some of the most conservative Republicans in Washington, d C. Supported the bill. Even the Border Patrol endorsed it.
So I'm going to read some transcription that speech as well. Just this is pretty much the only point of data we have on her proposed border policy. So we're going heavy on this speech that she gave in at my at a rally.
Right.
I went after transnational gangs, drug cartails, and human traffickers that came into our country legally. I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won, Harris said. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been talking a big game about securing our border, but he does not walk the walk. That's what you just heard, right, And then she goes on to reference Quavo, which is cool and normal. So let's talk about that leadership, and let's talk about the bill she's proposing.
Right.
This is a bipartisan bill that was proposed last year and that didn't succeed. Right, it's the one that Democrats are making a big fuss about. Republicans getting the border bill. It's one of the only good things they've ever done, actually, because it represented a massive right wood swing from where Democrats have previously been on immigration. In the bill, DHS could close the border if border patrol encountered four thousand or more migrants on average over a seven day period.
The border would then have to be shut down if encounters reached a seven day average of five thousand, or if they exceeded five hundred in a single day.
Does that happen on these numbers like realistic?
Yes?
Well, a really important thing to remember when we talk about these numbers is did you notice that it was phrases encounters, not people. So this is a thing that is apparently impossible if you write for a fucking broad cheat corporate legacy newspaper to understand an encounter does not represent a unique individual. Border patrol do not give us data on unique individuals. They give us data on encounters.
And this is important because under title forty two, which I made a series about last year that you can listen to, I would like it if you did, people can be returned to Mexico. And as you'll see, and under this proposal, people can be returned to Mexico and then they will try and come back because most of the people coming to our border are not from Mexico, nor do they have roots in Mexico, nor can they
be safe in Mexico. So they will try and come back, and they will try and come back in a different place, in a more remote place, and that will result in a higher risk to their lives making that journey. Right, So, eighty five hundred individuals across the whole border doesn't mean to have them five hundred people, but yes, those numbers are reachable.
That's just so, that's so disingenuous to word it that way.
Yeah, Border Patrol just had, like I don't know, they had so much success with doing this under title forty two, Like we're flooded with migrants and like I've spoken to people who have tried seven times to cross. You know, it's extremely disingenuous, and I think we're going to get onto this. But this is a debate about the border happening by people who never go to the border and don't understand what it's like, both in the media and in politics.
And I think that that is a problem.
So when it's closed, quote unquote, now, we can't close the border, right like a physically we cannot be We're not going to close the border and be like, Okay, Mexico, no tomatoes, Okay, no tourists can come into Orlando now, right that that's not what it's about.
It is open to.
Capital and is open to wealthy people. All we're doing is it to the people who most need a help, that being people seeking asylum. Right, So, when it's quote unquote closed, they would still process fourteen hundred migrants through ports of entry. That would presumably be people arriving using CBP one, which is a fatally flawed app which doesn't work for black folks, which has been hacked. All the appointments are sold booked up month in advance. You can
only use it north of Mexico City. It's a complete mess. Every single migrant I have encountered has tried to use CBP one.
And given up.
It's not even available in that many languages, right, I think it's English, Spanish and Haitian creole right now, Well, it's it's ludicrous to suggest that this is accessible, and it doesn't work very well on Samsung phones. I have a pra a foil. I guess a foyer out to CBP about that. But you know, maybe in six years, after like several court cases, I'll get it back. But I know that people are buying iPhones migrant advocates both in Mecha Goo City and north of there, to allow
migrants to access the app. They're trying to help them overcome these hurdles, right, but like, fucking come on, you know, we've got the entire US government here and and it's my friends trying to get five bucks from from you know whoever to buy an iPhone so migrants can share it, Like it's obscene.
Only unaccompanied miners.
Would be processed if they entered between ports of entry, right, So that's people under the age of eighteen without their folks, anyone who tried to cross between ports of entries. So port of entry is when you cross the border with your passport and you go through an office that support of entry. Right, So if you cross in another fashion over a river, over a wall, around a wall, under a wall, through a wall, just across the desert, weare
there isn't a wall that's between ports of entries. If anyone tries two or more times, then during a border emergency, they will be barred from the United States for a period.
I think it's a year.
I should note that this bill didn't pass, but Biden did write an executive order setting an arbitrary cap at twenty five hundred encounters per day, which you will notice is lower. And it removes the requirement that border patrol ask migrants if they fear persecution. So this is really important. It's called a shout test. And the difference here is between me saying and ensuring you've just come across the border, are you here because you fear persecution? Can you not
safely go home? And me just saying get in the fucking van, and you having to articulate that you fear persecution? Right, Which is that requires them to know that they have to articulate it. It requires them to be able to articulate it in a language it's intelligible to the officer or whoever's interviewing them. Right, it's a much higher barrier. And in both cases, right, you could have the same person and they could be rejected because they didn't pass this so called shout test.
It's ridiculous.
It's a really bullshit workaround for someone who is clearly eligible for asylum.
Right.
Yeah, And like any good faith actor wants to find out if that person is going to be persecuted when they go home. And so moving to a shout test, like you are consciously saying some people were going to send home they will fucking die, or they will be tortured, or they will face persecution of other means, right, because they didn't articulate in the right words their fear of persecution. And it's just there is not a good faith argument for this. It's just get numbers down at the cost
of human suffering. So in this case, right, I have met migrants with pretty rock SOIDID claims. I don't want to go into the details of their cases too much. I will in the future, but like you know, I'm out at the border a lot, and I'm out in the back country there a lot, and I try and
help people whenever I can. I talk to them about their claims, and I'm not going to ask someone to justify their trauma to me with seventeen documents, right, But some of them have shown me things which I do believe would would be a very cast iron asylum claim, and they seem to be since Biden's executive order, just getting booted back across the border. So he kind of worked around that part of the bill failing. But let's
look at what else is in it. So if the bill that Harris is saying she will reintroduce, of course she herself can't, right, it's a legislative act or senator or how over the House would The bill would limit border closures to two hundred and seventy days, two hundred and twenty five days, and one hundred and eighty days for the first three years, which no, there's no limit in the Biden executive order.
So I guess that's better. I guess.
I mean, fucking two hundred and seventy days when you can't claim asylum, that's a lot of days. There's also funding a lot of funding from more border patrol agents, of course, more asylum officers, as well as more than one hundred judges. We do need to move people through the immigration system. But a lot more pressingly, we need to open legal passways that are not walking across the desert and passing a shout test. It would mandate detaining migrants if they try to enter the US outside of
ports of entry, depending their asylum claim. So this is really big. Actually, it's going to result in a massive increase in the amount of asylum detention beds we need. The bill contains funding for another ten thousand more beds, will probably end up needing more than that. But all of these beds are not in state run facilities, right, They're in private facilities. ICE coordinates with it's cour civic.
It's people who when Biden first came into office, he wrote he wrote an executive order about getting rid of private prisons. These are the private prisons. This is how we reallocated money to those same people doing this terrible thing, right, which is locking people up for profit. I've heard terrible stories about the conditions in some of these detention centers.
And this is the guy who ran on and bragged about closing down private prisons, sending more money to private prisons just for migrants dot citizens because apparently their rights don't matter. As much that their lives don't matter as much talking of things that don't matter, Sharen, should we take an at break.
That was beautiful, James, thank you.
So we're back, and I want to talk about what Harris has done as VP, which is they put her on this root causes beat right, what she's supposed to go after, the root causes of migration. So I want to start with this message, as she sent to the people of Guatemala.
I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous track to the United States Mexico border, do not come.
Do not come.
The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border. They are legal methods by which migration can and should occur, but we, as one of our priorities, will discourage illegal migration. And I believe if you come to our border, you will be turned back.
Do not come. Yeah, I think I've seen that before.
Yeah. She took a lot of shit for that one, rightly understandably.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is not the only time to bide administration said this. By the way, they were tweeting, do not come in and creole in twenty twenty one, Well from the Embassy of the United States in eighty This has been their message and continues to be their message.
Now to the ongoing crisis down at the southern.
Border, the focus of Vice President Kamala Harris's first overseas trip since taking office.
She had to Mexico today after spending yesterday in Guatemala, where she announced several initiatives and delivered a message to potential migrants there, do not come to the United States. The Vice President also sat down exclusively with the NBC's Lester Hoole, who began by asking her about that warning.
In the news conference here in Guatemala City. You had a message for would be migrants, don't come. Why should they believe you when they know that people are getting in.
I've been working on this issue for a very long time, and the kind of violence and danger that is associated with that track, especially when we're talking about from Guatemala through Mexico to the United States, it's extremely dangerous. We are looking at a situation where people are fleeing because of hunger, because of the hurricanes, because of the pandemic. So the reason I am here is to address those issues.
Knowing that the people who are here for generations. They want to stay, they don't want to leave, but they need opportunity, they need assistance, they need support.
Americans don't see a lot of them on a daily basis. What they do see it at their own border. Children being lowered over offences, children coming in with phone numbers stenciled on their hand. And so the question has come up, and you heard it here and you'll hear it again. I'm sure it's why not visit the border? Why not see what Americans are seeing in this crisis.
Well, we are going to the boarder. We have to deal with what's happening at the border. There's no question about that. That's not a debatable point. But we have to understand that there's a reason people are arriving at our border and ask what is that reason, and then identify the problem can fix it.
Okay.
So all of this was while the Biden administration continued to defend and force Title forty two. If people haven't listened to the series that made it about Title forty two, and I've said that twice, but that's like two three hours of me explaining Title forty two, So that would explain it better than a cand of twenty seconds here. Title forty two is a public health law, and the idea of Title forty two is to prevent people with
tuberculosis coming into the United States. An element of Title forty two of the United States Code it contains this. The idea was never to use it as a de facto block on asylum, which is what the Trump administration did for a year and the Biden administration did for nearly three years.
Right.
The Bidens registration did it for much much longer. This ended in May of twenty twenty three, and it was used. They called it catch and release, right, it was used to bounce people straight back. As we spoke about before catch and release.
It's like you're literally like an animal practice, you know, like.
Right, yeah, Like these people are fucking fish, and I don't like doing that to fish. Shouldn't stress out of fish. It's just vibing down there, ruin its day. So later in that same interview, she was very defensive about her failing to visit the border. But I think there are very reasonable questions. Sometimes these criticisms are used in bad faith by Republicans, So is everything right? It doesn't mean that we shouldn't talk about it.
We should.
I didn't see a single elected official from the Democrat Party. I guess fucking Jim Desmond turned up, but I wish he wouldn't. He turned up, told lies about who paid for the aid, and then forced his in turn to apologize for it when a bunch of people turned up at his office.
Really great integrity.
I didn't see a single Democrat for the months that border patrol held thousands of people in open air attention, without food, water, or shelter, and for the months of my friends and I took care of them instead. What Harris was doing was trying to connect business leaders with economies in Central America to quote create jobs.
Right.
She has some success with a Japanese car factor in Guatemala and a Swiss coffee processor buying more beans and committing to more coffee purchases.
Right. But this shit does not work and it has never worked.
Right.
Obviously, my position on global economics is not the same as hers. But we can't trickle down the causes of migration. We can't do this with like a rising tide levels or boats GDP stuff. Even if we do buy this kind of freakonomics tier bullshit, it doesn't matter because the change is going to take decades to come. Right, you can't just just change a national economy. Change deals with unemployment,
with violence, with state violence, with nonstate violence overnight. And it's very likely that the pace of climate change alone will outstrip any benefits that these programs provide. Right, because we are seeing increasingly people coming from countries that are the most impacted by climate change to countries like the United States, one of the countries that has made the largest contribution to the climate change.
Right.
But this idea of like trickle down economics to stop migration, it doesn't address the issue that most of the migrants are no longer coming from the places she's going, Right, So she's worked pretty extensively in the Northern Triangle, Guatemala, Hondordas, in El Salvador. These are places which sent a lot of migrants, may be in the earlier Barbera administration, but
that's not the case anymore. Right, Those are not typically places I see migrants from, Right, I see migrants from Venezuela, and we're going to get a lot more of those. I see migrants from Turkey, many of them, but not all of them.
Kurdish.
I see migrants from North Africa. I see migrants from the Sahel, I see migrants from India. I don't particularly see people from the Northern Triangle. So the idea that like lifting the economy in the Northern Triangle is going to move the needle. It's just not even if we buy the idea that it's possible, and I don't think it is. So that's let's take a look at Donald Trump.
I guess I should give people a trigger warning. I'm only going to include a little bit of Donald Trump audio here, but yeah, you can tap the skiit.
Button if you don't want to hear Donald Trump talking.
So Donald Trump's policies largely are in response to things that are not real or proposing things that the president or Congress cannot do, or that the president cannot do without the.
Support of Congress.
So his first thing is talking about ending birthright citizenship. This is not a thing that he can do by executive order. Right, this is an amendment to the Constitution that requires an amendment to the Constitution to party back. Now, you can mend the constitution, but I don't think you'd ever get support for ending birth right citizenship.
Right.
This has been the case since aster the Civil War, and it exists to stop people disenfranchising the children of formally enslaved people.
Under Biden's current policies, even though these millions of illegal border crosses have entered the country on awfully, all of their future children will become automatic US citizens. Can you imagine They'll be eligible for welfare, taxpayer funded healthcare, the rate to vote, chain migration, and countless other government benefits, many of which will also profit the illegal alien parents.
This policy is a reward for breaking the laws of the United States and is obviously a magnet helping draw the flood of illegals across our borders. They come by the millions and millions and minions.
So another thing that don Trump wants to do is do away with the Diversity Visa program. Are you familiar with the Diversity Visa.
No, I'm going to say no, I'm familiar with it, but I have to like know what it is in detail, So please tell me.
James, Okay, I would love to tell you.
Sharing the DV program, I will avoid using the acronym.
Because it US. Yeah.
They we're just sending cops all over the World's Yeah, the Diversity Visa program, better known as the Green Card Lottery, allows about fifty five thousand or exactly fifty five thousand in theory, immigrant visas a year for individuals from countries that are underrepresented in the US immigration system.
I remember that. Well, that sounds familiar, Yes.
Okay, yeah, So, like you'll meet people almost everywhere I go. I tend not to go to countries that are highly represented in the US immigration system, right, Those being countries that find it easier for people to get visas like h one B's right, because they are more economically maybe close to the United States and have educational credentials that translate across. So the Trump administration had made the diversity visa program, it's such a massive cluster fuck that it
effectively didn't work. And the way that this happened was because you don't just win the Green card lottery and they mail a green cards to your house, like come on over, Bud. You win the lottery, and that gives you the right to go to the embassy to do an interview and then you make the application. Right then they check check you off on any checklist you might be on. All the stuff that would normally apply to
a migrant it's not like an amnust T visa. And what the Trump administration did was make it very hard for people to get these appointments, especially during COVID and this has been the case with the Bide administration as well. They get the lowest priority now the cambuc And appointment, but other people's stuff gets to sort of overtake.
Them in the line.
Right, because you only have a year from receiving it to claiming it de facto, this means that people don't get it right. So we are not fifty five thousand people are not coming because of the diversity visa. Even if they were, this is not very many people, and like it's just Trump. I don't know, maybe he saw the phrase diversity and became triggered. But it's a weird little bugbear like which I guess if you can focus on weird little things. But still, the diversity visa is great.
The people I know who often most deserve visas people who can't even afford to make the trip right to walk here or you know, if you're not in the Continental Americas, it's a lot more expensive.
You have to fly. I guess you could take a vote.
But some of those people I mean, my friend who driving all around Iraq is applying for a diversity VSA and like, I really hope he gets it, lovely man. Trump also has this bug there about DHS paying benefits to quote illegal aliens crooker.
Joe Biden is running a NonStop conveyor belt importing illegal aliens from all over the world into our country, and the Biden Department of Homeland Security is abusing it so called parole authority to give them more governmental benefits than many law abiding citizens, including our vets. Our vets are being taken advantage of. Our citizens are being taken advantage of. It's very unfair and it's not going to stand.
The Department of how My Security doesn't pay and benefits to anyone. I guess it pays like border patrol agents and people who work for it, but it's not giving anyone public benefits. Right, and documented people normally ineligible for most benefits, even people who do have legal status. And he consistently conflates asylum seekers with undocumented people, right, maybe because he genuinely doesn't know the difference, and it doesn't
care to learn the difference. Even people who have legal status face a range of hurdles like sometimes they have a forty quarter work bar for example, right, so that it means you have to have been working for forty periods of three months consecutively. Again, this is kind of He might be talking about something called the public charge rule, which can interfere with your citizenship or visa application if you've taken certain times of benefits. So maybe he's looking
to make that a little bit broader. But again it's really unclear, and it's kind of like identity politics grifting. The next thing is we're getting towards QAnon territory.
Now, great, I.
Will use Title forty two to end the child traffic in crisis by returning all traffic children to their families in their home countries and without then, and I will urge Congress to ensure that anyone caught traffic in children. Of course our border receives the death penalty immediately. And that includes also for women, because women, as you know, are number one in trafficking children are actually number two.
This is some weird shit first of all, right, but he talks about using Title forty two. This is not, as I've talked about three times now, what Title forty two is for it's very obvious that he thinks Title forty two is immigration law because he very obviously used it as that.
Right.
He was not using Title forty two to stop people getting COVID because he did square root fuckles stop people getting COVID, right, and there were not exemptions for vaccinated people. It's very obvious that they use Title forty two cynically as an immigration law. That is not what it is. Also, deporting someone back to the situation they were trafficked from, maybe not smart like maybe especially a miner who is trafficked here, maybe we could help them one of the
richest countries the humanity has ever seen. Maybe not just bumping them straight back to that country, maybe showing a little bit of compassion. Human trafficking is a problem, but this is not the solution. So Harris kind of touts her prosecutorial experience when she talks about human trafficking. She's actually been better than some not punishing people who were trafficked, right, So I was reading that at one point she asked prosecutors not to use the term teenage prostitute because that's
not really a thing. What we're seeing there is somebody who is being trafficked, right, or somebody who has been victimized, taken advantage of manipulated and seeing them as perpetrators is fundamentally missing the fucking problem. And this is what the legal system does far too often, right, is it goes after the people who are the vactims, not the criminals. She twice brought criminal charges against backpage dot Com, which is a website.
I guess whe people can find escorts.
I'm not familiar with these things, but I know that some sex workers were opposed to that because they felt it drove them kind of onto more underground platforms, which which were even more risky to them. But obviously if people were also being trafficked on this platform, So like her record, I guess it is somewhat mixed. You know what else is somewhat mixed? Shereen, what, James, it's the products and services that we get to support this show.
You know, sometimes it's the cops, sometimes it's terrible coffee, sometimes it's gold. You never know what you're going to get. Ooh, we are backed, and we are back to one of Donald Trump's oldest chestnutes, and that would be his stupid wall, right that he wants to build.
We created the most secure border in US history, by far, dealing a major blow to the cartels and traffickers. We built hundreds of miles of war, We renovated hundreds of miles of water. We never had anything like it. And then I got Mexico free of charge. You give us twenty eight thousand soldiers to protect us from people coming into our country illegally.
He talks about building hundreds of miles a wall. He sets up a couple of times. Right, we've renovated hundreds of mile the wall. You know, did they build hundreds that maybe just technically that they really.
Fudged the numbers.
Yeah, I've had a lot of freedom of information requests for that. I guess what's more relevant is that Biden.
Also built the wall, right, mm hmm.
Calm, that's not talking about it. But as we've documented numerous times, Biden has continued to build the wall. He's continued to build the barrier, which.
Is a wall.
He has repaired other sections of war, he has upgraded sections of fence to wall. They're both doing this, right. There's maybe Donald Trump would do more of it, but sometimes I feel like it's general and competence might prevent him from doing any more than Biden's like competent migrant as they call it, de terrents, right, deterrence through death is It's probably a better way of phrasing it. Trump also talks about a total ban on taxpair dollars to
give legal aid to undocumented people. Again, I'm not sure if he knows what he's talking about. I don't know what he's talking about. He might be referring to it. We have a program in San Diego County where San Diego County pays for some people to defend migrants who are detained by ICE, right, so they can have access to a lawyer. ICE has responded to that by moving those people to Texas.
Oh that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, totally normal. Good.
I'm glad we voted for the anti fascist guy. Everything's going great, exactly. You can listen to my episode about that if you want to know more about that. But I don't know if he means like they don't get public defenders if they're accused of a crime.
Certainly.
Isn't it just true that he can also just like use these trigger words to make people mad.
Yes, yes, that is what he's doing.
Yeah, yeah, not necessari always has to be base in fact.
No, yeah, that's to be found with Donald Trump, this doesn't matter. And then finally talking of stuff that doesn't have to be real, he's absolutely batshit insane idea of fucking aiding Mexico to kill members of cartels, which that's yeah, unhinged, Yeah, that is unhinged. That will resolve in more violence, it will result in more instability, it will result in more death. I think, I'm it's pretty much unclear when it comes to that one, Like she is not proposing invading Mexico.
So much of what Donald Trump says is insane and it doesn't make sense. So I wanted to look at some of the people who kind of lean on Trump, some of the people who might be a little bit more coherent right when it comes to crafting that policy.
Right.
Couldn't get Steven Mirr on the podcast Sad, but we did get these people from the Texas Public Policy Foundation who Robert and Gare spoke to at the Republican National Convention. So here's them talking about visas and immigration.
I've tried to hire people from other countries. It takes months and months and months to get that done. It usually spend a lot of money doing it as well, and so the system is disincentivized to do that. So, you know, actually doing the last Trump administration, the start looking at like let's reduce the number of visas and have broader categories. Right, So I think they're trying to get down to about seventeen visas, get to more marit
based program to fit the needs that we have. Make sure that you can you know, it's not about like what is the total number, but if we are needing labor, we needing people in these areas, you can kind of like as a dial, you can turn up and down in certain areas on certain visas. And so I think if you do have to first like stop the problem, and then you also have to make systemic changes that will overhaul the system and make a lot easier so that people are incentivised to actually do it.
The right way. Yeah.
So these people aren't stupid, right, they won't just spew hate. Yeah, They're much more competent in the facts. So I think what we're seeing here, right is this undoubtedly is a way to reduce what they see is undesirable migration, which is to say, poor people and brown people you can phrase it however you want, right, bit.
I mean, in the Republican's eyes, maybe a lot of people, all migration is undesirable migration.
I feel like, yeah, well, people will talk to me. I'm for those of you who have just listened to me. I guess a white person British. You're not white, you're British. Yeah, which is more like a kind of translucent really you think about it. Yeah, so yeah, I am a British person, which is important, I guess because people will talk to me about immigration like I'm one of the good migrants
and they can go fuck themselves. Yeah that position, right, That Like it's a like implicit white people are okay.
Yeah, right, that's all that means. It's like, oh, yeah, you speak English and you're like me, great, come out, come on into my racist country.
Yeah exactly. Yeah, I'm like funny foreign as opposed to like evil foreign I guess.
I think it's also just like they don't see you in whatever in their mind is a threat, right like to I don't know, it makes no sense logically, but.
Yeah it does if you understand it's relents of race.
Yes, yeah, but I mean their perspective makes.
No sense to me.
Yeah, same people who are barking about my fellow British people being a threat because they happened to be Muslim, right or brown, or seek in people that don't understand it seeks anon Muslims. So what we actually need is more legal pathways. He is correct that the visa system needs changing, and we need ways that people can apply and come here safely and not have to be trafficked and not have to take massive risks.
Right.
I wanted to see what Robert and Geh had asked them about this mass deportation seeing because I've seen some people holding like mass deportations now sign at the RNC, and that's always good sign that we're not sort of sidestepping into fascism. So let's hear what you said about that.
Is that plan kind of the mass detention and expulsion of undocumented migrants in the US something that you think is a good idea, something you support as the Heritage Foundation.
Yeah, generally, you know, obviously you got to look at implementation, right and how you actually go about doing that in the right way, But yeah, absolutely generally.
Yeah, and then what kind of time frame then, because you just said this is something you have to like lay some groundwork on and what time frame do you see it being feasible to carry out something like that?
You know, I actually don't have a good answer for that, because you have to first get your arms around the problem. We don't even know how many people are here, and you don't know where they come from, and so it's not like you're just trying to deport them all just to Mexico or something like that, or the southern border, right, Like, you have to first get your arms around the problem.
That's the first step, and then I think from there you can actually understand figure out what a reasonable time frame to do that is.
Yeah, so this is pretty fucked.
Like I should point out that the Bilbah Harris is proposing also proposes bumping people back to Mexico without the permission of Mexico.
Right.
I think so many of these policies just rely on Mexico being kind of a sponge for US policy, like, oh, they'll be fine, like God forbid Mexico act as a sovereign country.
Yeah, but this one seems different. Right.
We had I feel like pretty good liberal support on abolish ice under Trump that has completely evaporated under Biden. But because we solved racism. Yeah, yeah, we fixed it. I've forgotten about that. Yeah, that was that was the
big crunch point. So what this means is taking people who have homes, lives, jobs, and families and tearing them away from one of those things and tending them back to a country that they may not have been to in decades, that they may never have been to at all, a place where they will undoubtedly face hardship, if not persecution, and certainly having lived here having family here, will make them more likely to be ransomed or blackmailed or any
of these things that happened to migrants when they're deported. Right, And this is pretty bleak, Like I guess Harris hasn't advocated for this, which seeing the amount of the amount of people who fucking respond to my tweets with your going home to like I a am a US citizen and be fuck you.
Yeah all the time, all the time. Yeah, it's so funny. Okay, got a life.
But yeah, it does seem that there is a wing of the Trump and I talked to Trump people, right, I was in the mountains this weekend, like I was in Wyoming, mincing about in the mountains.
It's lovely.
But in talk to some people and I've never really come across anyone who can like in the flesh. Maybe it's just because those people are so repulsive, I wouldn't talk to them, And it's probably quite likely. But advocated for this right, like this idea of mass deportations, Like like I said at the start of this show, like, how does a country get into full on fascism?
It is this.
It is my taxes and your taxes, and some of the people who are listening taxes paying for people who have done nothing wrong, right, who have lived here, who haven't done any crimes, who haven't hurt anyone, to be at our expense, expelled from their home, detained in a private prison whose owner company makes massive donations to politicians, and then flown across the world at our expense, and then dumped into a country where they no longer belong.
And that is as close as we get, I think to like someone saying like send them to the camps without saying that like, yeah, look, what was the Armenian genocide? The Armenian genocide was a mass deportation, right of people forced to walk across the desert and die on the way, Like if you don't think this Trump ship is fascist, Like I really don't know what to do. It doesn't
matter if it's fascist or not. Right, Like this is the kind of rhetoric that's genocidal, Like I don't want to argue about like Robert Preston and like different definitions, because that doesn't matter. Like this shit is it is genocidal. It is dehumanizing migrants, which has been a project of the right wing news media and increasingly the liberal news media, and also the Democrat Party now apparently as well as the Republicans.
But this is.
A market step to the right. Both of these are right. The Overton window has moved so far right migration in the last eight years that it's almost an unrecognizable place. And I guess what I when they end up by saying what I always say about this is like the solution is not within the argument about who to vote for.
Like these are state policies. These are also often set by the legislature, as we saw when Biden's board bill failed, Right, and that would require a change in the legislature, Like there isn't a third party that can get a majority in the legislature right now. So the way we fix this is ourselves, right like we are seeing in the UK right now, like violence towards Muslim people, andoance towards masques, violence towards Islamic cultural centers, and people stepping up to
defend them. That is the only way we fix this is by stepping up and shouldering our responsibility to our communities. And people did that in the Trump administration to a degree, Like when I'm twenty eighteen, when I was down in Tijuana looking after folks who are part of the caravan that Trump made a big spectacle in the midterms. People showed up, showed up, a soccer mom, showed up in
minivans and helped us, and it was cool. The thing was fucked, But like, I respect that we look after those people, and that hasn't happened to as much of a degree since, right And we've had more people than we had in twenty eighteen in the open air detention sites, and so like I guess where I want to end is whoever wins, it's still our responsibility to take care of migrants because neither of them is going to And we are continuing with policies that will accelerate climate change.
We are continuing with policies that will impoverish people all over the world and enriching people who are already super wealthy, and those things will continue to drive migration. We can't change those things in an actionable amount of time, but what we can do is try our best to meet people who come here with kindness. And so, yeah, I would urge you to do that. I guess if you want to volunteer, you can email Altro Lado it's Altro Lado dot or border Kindness always need your money, Borderline
Relief Collective always need your money. And those are always things that you can volunteer with or places you can say your money if you don't have your time. But you can also organize in your own neighborhood. I'm speaking to some people today who are organizing in Maryland to take care of some Kurdish refugees who I know, like they weren't doing anything a year ago, right, they saw a need and they saw it being a met and they realized that they could meet it, and they've made
a huge difference to people's lives. So like wherever you are, there are migrs in your community.
And you can do that too. It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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